So, today I watched the last of the Fellini movies being screened. It was La Dolce Vita. I could not fully understand Fellini's movies but I observed that I watched his movies with extreme attention, something strange for me nowadays.
I also had a tussle with someone abt "self-obsession" - too many selfies. I donno what got into me. I can very well shut up if someone is doing something that I don't like or approve right? Nowadays I do exercise control over my tongue or keyboard. But, sometimes when the threshold is reached, I end up being rude and telling people on their face, what I feel. Then, the usual regret cycle starts. I fear that I may have damaged a relation... I try to make mends. But this time, I am just regretting. I decided to let go of such relations. Some other point in time, when we both have matured, we will meet, if we are destined to.
Given the lousy mood I was already in, my friend sends in a sarcastic mail.
I send him a list of books to read, compiled by Harvard prof and he says "Why don't u stop reading these lists and actually start reading those books?". I was hurt. A couple of times the person has taken a dig at me. What I find hurtful is, these are the same people that I try to protect, about whom I hold high opinion of. It hurts that they think so poor of me and don't care to not hurt me.
So, I gave it back to him. So many times we are trampled by people. We let others trample us by being vulnerable and exposing our vulnerabilities. We respect some people more than what thy deserve to be. Never underestimate yourself. Always be confident. These people, I feel, can never be part of a close group. As part of decluttering life, you need to drop people like hot potatoes! This un-necessary social interaction drains you. It's time that is fully wasted and I shall henceforth strive not to commit that crime. Delete phone numbers, stop talking to certain people, no FB connections.. nothing. The fewer people u have, the better you address them. Man cannot have more than 3 - 4 truly good friends who understand you and will stand by you and protect you.
Ending the day with lovely quotes from Albert Einstein:
The world as I see it, Einstein and Religion.
“What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense then, you ask, in putting it? I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow-creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.
What an extraordinary situation is that of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he feels it. But from the point of view of daily life, without going deeper, we exist for our fellow-men–in the first place for those on whose smiles and welfare all our happiness depends, and next for all those unknown to us personally with whose destinies we are bound up by the tie of sympathy.
A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labours of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. I am strongly drawn to the simple life and am often oppressed by the feeling that I am engrossing an unnecessary amount of the labour of my fellow-men. I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force. I also consider that plain living is good for everybody, physically and mentally.”
"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...
"I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.
"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude..."
"My political ideal is
democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man
idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient
of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through
no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the
desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which
I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle.
I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one
man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility.
But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their
leader. In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates;
force attracts men of low morality... The really valuable thing in
the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but
the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates
the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in
thought and dull in feeling.
"This topic brings
me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which
I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished
with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence,
and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism
-- how passionately I hate them!
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."
I also had a tussle with someone abt "self-obsession" - too many selfies. I donno what got into me. I can very well shut up if someone is doing something that I don't like or approve right? Nowadays I do exercise control over my tongue or keyboard. But, sometimes when the threshold is reached, I end up being rude and telling people on their face, what I feel. Then, the usual regret cycle starts. I fear that I may have damaged a relation... I try to make mends. But this time, I am just regretting. I decided to let go of such relations. Some other point in time, when we both have matured, we will meet, if we are destined to.
Given the lousy mood I was already in, my friend sends in a sarcastic mail.
I send him a list of books to read, compiled by Harvard prof and he says "Why don't u stop reading these lists and actually start reading those books?". I was hurt. A couple of times the person has taken a dig at me. What I find hurtful is, these are the same people that I try to protect, about whom I hold high opinion of. It hurts that they think so poor of me and don't care to not hurt me.
So, I gave it back to him. So many times we are trampled by people. We let others trample us by being vulnerable and exposing our vulnerabilities. We respect some people more than what thy deserve to be. Never underestimate yourself. Always be confident. These people, I feel, can never be part of a close group. As part of decluttering life, you need to drop people like hot potatoes! This un-necessary social interaction drains you. It's time that is fully wasted and I shall henceforth strive not to commit that crime. Delete phone numbers, stop talking to certain people, no FB connections.. nothing. The fewer people u have, the better you address them. Man cannot have more than 3 - 4 truly good friends who understand you and will stand by you and protect you.
Ending the day with lovely quotes from Albert Einstein:
The world as I see it, Einstein and Religion.
“What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense then, you ask, in putting it? I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow-creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.
What an extraordinary situation is that of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he feels it. But from the point of view of daily life, without going deeper, we exist for our fellow-men–in the first place for those on whose smiles and welfare all our happiness depends, and next for all those unknown to us personally with whose destinies we are bound up by the tie of sympathy.
A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labours of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. I am strongly drawn to the simple life and am often oppressed by the feeling that I am engrossing an unnecessary amount of the labour of my fellow-men. I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force. I also consider that plain living is good for everybody, physically and mentally.”
"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...
"I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.
"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude..."
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."
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