Mental Health – Parts Per Billion

Feminine Side of Masculinity

Most of the times, we are forgetting that when we are promoting and asking for individual freedom, individual expression, individual identity we have ignored what it means to reserve the same rights for others. Ernest Hemingway’s short story called “In Another country” from his collection called ‘Men Without Women’ shows what men lose when they have no one of their own to open up, express, share. Hemingway’s writings although were heavily influenced by his personal experiences of war, the ways in which his men handled emotions is exactly same as how modern men are still handling their own emotions. They are not handling them at all, they are suppressing them, running away from them.
Men are so strongly conditioned with the trait of showing themselves unaffected by whatever life throws at them that now they have accepted it as their second nature. There is a specific psychological term called Alexithymia which literally means “a lack of words for emotions.” You can see alexithymia in Hemingway’s “so-called” masculine characters.
The remedy to all these complications is creation of more open spaces for men. We need men to open up at least among themselves, at least a man needs to treat other man’s emotional, expressive side, others will eventually follow.

Ernest Hemingway’s Men Without Women

The Paradox of Individualism

It is always interesting to question what would happen if we were not exposed to certain things, experiences especially the people. What we would be of us if those events, those people had not crossed our life path? We definitely would have been someone else. In a sense we are what is happened to us and where we lived and with whom we lived. One can say that man himself is enough to justify his own existence, he doesn’t need anything else or anyone else to live through his life, to pass through it and there is no denying in that.

One must understand that people can spend their whole existence as an isolated being, a person unaffected by the surrounding and molded completely by his/ her own being, not by others and without the influence of the surrounding. You will see that what I explained in the last sentence seems illogical. How could a person be completely be detached throughout his whole time on earth filled with many things, events, people? The answer to this confusion is that the person assumes that he/she was alone all along the time thereby mentally erasing every instance where they had a company, such people have mastered the art of removing every influence their surrounding had on them. Human children are anyways some of the weakest off-springs among the many species on earth. A new born baby continuously needs support from parents/ surroundings to finally become self-dependent. Now, one cannot deny the fact that even if you can live on your own, what you call as “your own” which substitutes for the void of the external influences is ultimately created from that very surrounding you are trying to deny to prove your individualism. This “your own” internal support could be anything – your identity, your habits, your religion, your mind, your way of thinking, your way of seeing things. Now you must appreciate that even though we can control what we are, once we are matured/ independent we cannot completely erase what brought us here.

The concept of individualism itself needs supporting justification, there is nothing like an isolated being. In order to define isolated or individual, you have to define what it is not and that invites everything that exists out there.

The whole point of starting the discussion with the idea of futility of individualism is one short story I came across, rather the book’s whole point is the denial of individualism. It shows that even if one justifies their individualism, it immediately rips them from their real version. The person creates a defense mechanism to avoid certain unsettling feelings just to satisfy their version of self. Men need safe space of women or at least a feminine side of humanity to express, to vent out or at least to acknowledge what they are feeling in front of other human being. If men are not given such space, they are no longer men, not even human.

The book I am talking about is Ernest Hemingway’s collection of short stories called Men Without Women. These stories show how men are flawed when they try to erase or are forced from external factors the influence of women from their lives, how it steals their true masculinity, true humanity. I will deep dive into these aspects as discussion evolves.

The short story from Men Without Women which intrigued me is “In Another Country”. I like this story because is direct reflection of who Ernest Hemingway was. It is written in first person point of view and the factual details of Hemingway’s biography overlap with the locations, events mentioned in the story, so the Hemingway’s fiction brings a realism.

In Another Country – Summary

I won’t go into every nook and cranny of the story, because I want to invite you into reading that 15 min short story all for your own interest.

Even if I spoil the story here, reading the details of the story and building your own interpretations are one personal and exquisite experience. This is because of the iceberg theory attributed to Hemingway’s characteristic writing style. He will not explain everything or show everything that is there in the story. The limited narrative and limited details make the reader to evaluate multiple attributes and possibilities and thereby interpretations so Hemingway’s writing create a very subjective and personal experience in readers. I think only a piece of great art, only a masterpiece can create subjective experiences in people. And that is exactly why art is important, it makes people see what they already had but always denied because they were busy in creating something totally irrelevant – the irrelevant which they didn’t even want in first place.

So, here goes the summary –

The narrator talks about his routine to a hospital for a therapy session for those injured in the war in Milan. He is American but fighting for Italy and is decorated for his sacrifice. He is accompanied by three decorated Italian officers and one more boy who was disfigured on the very first day at the front of the war. They go to this therapy session to somehow restore their original physical functions. The narrator is always made aware through the surroundings and people around him that even though he sacrificed himself for the people he still is an outsider. It is just because he was dutiful that he deserves respect from the localites. In his therapy he is accompanied by a Major who treats the narrator good and is also helping him to improve his Italian. One day while casually discussing what their future would be, the Major gets triggered by the mention that the narrator wishes to get married. He aggressively suggests the narrator to not get married because it will bring the pain and suffering in the end. He suggests that if one knows that he is going to lose something then one must turn away from attaching to it in first place.

The Major then immediately leaves the discussion and goes to make a phone call where he receives the sad news of the demise of his wife. The major apologizes to the narrator and remains absent for few days and rejoins the therapy session although he has no expectation to fully recover from this therapy session.

Deep Analysis of In Another Country

As I have already mentioned that Hemingway’s stories are like icebergs, they reveal very little than what they carry below. I would invite you to explore Ernest Hemingway’s biography to understand why it might be so. He faced multiple injuries, illnesses, traumas throughout his whole life. If you see the list of the illnesses Hemingway went through you will definitely say that the life loved him. Tragically he ended his life by himself. On surface reading you will see that Hemingway is a strong proponent of strong masculinity but deep down just like an iceberg he was not what he showed. I have reasons to prove that just through this single short story. Just keep in mind that there is more to what Hemingway said and showed to his readers and it was truly an imagery of what was going in his own mind.

Lack Of Warmth

The ways story opens, the narrator talks about the cold season of fall in Milan. The meat of hunted animals is hanging and the foxes were just there in the snow. There are three canal crossing bridges along the path to the hospital. The narrator would prefer the bridge where woman who roasted the chestnut used to sit. The narrator mentions that her charcoal fire and the roasted chestnuts ensured enough warmth before reaching the hospital.

This is Hemingway’s way to tell that the surroundings were completely hostile for the narrator, the short-lived warmth of the charcoal fire and the hot chestnuts in pocket thereafter thus highlight how much the narrator valued warmth. Even though narrator is not ordered to go on war and perform his duty now it was not a better situation too. There was no one to provide ‘that’ warmth of familiarity, relationship, love to the narrator. If it wasn’t for the duty, he would not have got into this.

Duty murders the true identity and the ambition of men to become their true version

We are told that the narrator is accompanied by four Italian soldiers for a therapy session in the hospital. They are practiced with some machines to improve their physical movements which were the result of war injuries. A major with hand injury is also undergoing physical therapy to recover from war injury.

Three of the Italians who accompanied the narrator wished to become something different before the war started. One of them wanted to be a lawyer, one wanted to become the painter and third one wanted to become a soldier. The Major suffered from hand injury was the greatest fencer in Italy – a technique where the dexterity of hand is crucial.

There was one more boy whose face was disfigured the very first day he was sent on the war front. He had lost his nose.

You must now understand it’s not just a character introduction or description in Hemingway’s short story. Hemingway very subtly shows how men sacrifice their own ambitions to carry out their duties. Two of the three Italian soldiers wished to become something totally different than what they are now just because war demanded the sacrifice of their own ambitions, dreams. The Major sacrificed his precious, skillful hand while carrying out the same duty of war.

The boy with disfigured lost his identity even before understanding what he was entering into. The disfigured face is not mere description of the grave injuries. Hemingway shows readers that men lost their identities in the war.

Men sacrificed their wishes to carry out the duties given to them, they did it because that is what every man should do.

Men are loved just because they are dutiful and not for who they truly are

I really appreciate how Hemingway maintained subtlety in his writing while making us feel like he is just describing the characters of his story.

The readers are now well aware that this is about a group of well decorated, brave, dutiful soldiers who were undergoing rehabilitation in the hospital. They are not some losers who just suffered because of negligence or disinterest towards going to war. Rather even though against their will and wish, they went all in with the sense of duty. Then Hemingway tells us about how the localites treated them.

People from communist quarters of Milan actively hated them. After the therapy sessions, the group has routine to visit the café, where the narrator comes across the locals. When the narrator is asked about his medals by the locals, he is somewhat happy that people care for what he had done for them. This happiness is short lived for him and not really a happiness. The moment localites see that he is an American, they immediately changed their behavior towards him. He is immediately made to feel like an outsider.

You must understand how painful this feeling is. The moment people see treat like you are not one of them even after you sacrificed yourself for the same people is a betrayal for such man, a man of honor and duty. It’s equivalent of death for such men.

This is also one way of Hemingway to show that generally society appreciates men, loves men for what they can do for the society. Society in deeper sense never appreciated men for what they are. The moment men stop the duty towards others they are worthless. The moment men will try to show what they are very few will be appreciated for what they are, very few men are loved and liked for what they are. Hemingway also shows how the war crushed the human-ness among the people.

Together But Lonely – Alienation Among Men

Hemingway effectively shows how the military instincts or trainings have conditioned men of different personalities to come together and work toward a common duty.

“We were all a little detached, and there was nothing that held us together except that we met every afternoon at the hospital”

At first narrator shows us that there is some sense of collective-ness in this group of soldiers. Even people from the communist quarters hate them collectively.

But soon you will see that they are not quite there for each other, it’s just that the circumstances are in that way.

This is evident when the narrator calls three of the decorated officers as “hunting -hawks” and denies to be one of them.

You will also see that the narrator craves for meaningful company when he mentions how his group has to “jostle” through the crowd of men and women from the wine-shops.

For now, the only meaningful connect he has with his group is the trauma of war shared amongst these soldiers. You will see that the narrator finds it difficult to relate to the mainstream crowd – the crowd from wine-shops and the streets of the Milan.

“We felt held by there being something that had happened that they, the people who disliked us, did not understand.”

The narrator has this subconscious feeling of being unliked by the people around him. This is some sort self-rejection, self-loathing because even after sacrifice he is made to feel like an outsider.

Self-pity And Surrogate Sympathy

You will see that the narrator feels some authentic connection with the boy with disfigured face and the fencing master Major who is undergoing therapy for his hands. The reasons to feel this connection are actually not that authentic, it’s just the narrator’s psyche which is trying to find a pivot of relatability to create a sense of belonging.

You will see this when the narrator mentions that while he sees the three Italian soldiers like “hunting hawks” not counting himself like them, he feels a connect with the one who has his face disfigured. The justification is purely intellectual. It’s because the ill fate that boy faced at the war front and he wasn’t even decorated for anything. The narrator sees this as an ill-fate for the boy because he didn’t get anything in return for what he sacrificed. The narrator at least got some recognition so he sees himself in better condition than the boy. It’s that feeling where the person himself sees him in a poor condition but when he sees others in even worse condition, he creates a sense of satisfaction just because others are living way worse than they deserve. There is nothing wrong in this feeling. It’s just how a person going through trauma tries to find a sense of belonging through pity and sympathy.

Men’s Inability To Communicate And Express Emotions Clearly

Hemingway’s iceberg style writing peaks here.

The narrator is seen to make an attempt to speak in Italian with Major. He feels that he is able to speak Italian fluently but the moment Major asks him to speak with the awareness of Italian grammar, the narrator feels that speaking Italian is difficult.

It is an indirect indication how men always fail to express their emotions as they are. The “mainstream definition” and “perception” of what masculinity prevents men to sacrifice their real version just to demonstrate superiority in the dominance hierarchy. If you cannot dominate others, how would you establish control? How would you prove your manliness?

So, men subconsciously develop a tendency to distance themselves away from what they are feeling, because they know there is no way they will get any sympathy towards such emotions. Instead, the moment they express their true emotions, it’s like blowing up their cover, exposing themselves. Society is ready to devour them, forget about dominance.

Narrator’s struggle to speak in Italian is thus a metaphor to show how men are continuously challenged when they want to express something freely. You must understand that even if they do it, every man has some bad experience of how they were betrayed when they tried to open up. Now you can only imagine how this feeling gets amplified in men with trauma. Over the time, men have trained their minds to intentionally cordon off such feelings because they know and they have experienced this before that nobody care about how they feel.

Emotional Numbness – Alexithymia – Hemingway For Today’s World

In the last part of the story you will see that the Major gets triggered the moment narrator expresses his wish to get married once this is all over. He is unsettled not out of jealousy or the pain due to the war. He is restless due to even worse pain – the pain of the loss of the loved one.

“If he is to lose everything, he should not place himself in a position to lose that. He should not place himself in a position to lose. He should find things he cannot lose.”

And in the end, we come to know that the Major always feared that he is about to lose his beloved wife. He was always scared that he will lose his beloved wife anytime and he cannot do anything about it. (Understand that this man is a disciplined and War-seasoned major who has tricked death now is feared of something).

He stood there biting his lower lip. “It is very difficult,” he said. “I cannot resign myself.”

Who says that men are rigid, tough, insensitive to emotions!

This is a tight slap to those who say that Hemingway was a strong supporter of the masculinity. People twisted Hemingway’s character to convey what they wanted for themselves.

There is a specific psychological term called Alexithymia which literally means “a lack of words for emotions.”

You can see alexithymia in Hemingway’s “so-called” masculine characters. The narrator himself is unable to express his emotions to his group in Italy, even though he is with his acquaintances he feels alienated. You will see he craves for warmth from his observations on the roasted chestnuts. The warmth is not just a matter of temperature.

The three decorated soldiers have murdered their personal ambitions for the duty to serve the nation in the war. Each of them had their own plans about their future. Hemingway gives us one detail about one of these guys. One of those three soldiers who wished to become lawyer had three medals for his valor in war, was a lieutenant. Hemingway through narrator shows us that he had seen so many deaths in war that he was isolated from his surroundings. Note that this guy had a company of at least two native faces who had gone through somewhat similar hardships. The trauma of war and in addition to inability to express what he was going through detached him. He had familiar faces to do so because of the relatability, but the trauma prevented him from openly expressing what he felt.

The narrator also shows us that these three Italian soldiers were like hunting hawks. It is a way to show how they showed off their valor and medals to prove their worth to the society. You must understand that before going to war, their ambitions were completely different than earning medals. But as the conditions forced them to show up for duty, they helplessly gave up on their dreams and accepted the life for what it was. This hawk like attitude is the reinforcement of the masculinity assigned by the society through the medals, decoration which society gave them. As they have no one intimate to open up to they assumed this display of manhood as the means to show strength.

The boy with disfigured face, who didn’t even get recognized for his sacrifice is another story in itself. You will see that there is very limited mention of his presence in this story. He is just their as an additional character. For me, upon a very meticulous style of Hemingway’s writing style – I see it as an intentional limitation. Hemingway shows us that how some of the greatest sacrificing men will always go unnoticed, how society won’t even care for them for the reason that they cannot provide back to the society. The great sacrifice of identity by this soldier feels worthless.

This is Hemingway’s way to show that a man who cannot provide is a worthless man in society, societal structure will make sure that he is perceived as worthless. There is no single person to blame why it happens in this way. People especially men are nurtured to subconsciously assume it in this way. Society will only accept men for what they provide and not what they are.

The Major has no hope to recover from his therapy session for his hand. The narrator gives us surety of that through the discussion between the Major and Doctor. The Major has suppressed his nihilistic attitude by submitting to the routine of physical therapy. This is an active indication of Alexithymia. Him trying to help the narrator to learn the Italian in proper grammatical way is his conscious choice to cast away the real emotions of his worthlessness after the injury. Narrator mentions that even though Major has no hope from the therapy machines he showed up regularly. This is definitely indicative that major rejected his real feelings with the distraction of the therapy routine.

The moment Major gets triggered by the awareness narrator’s plan to settle with marriage he realizes that he too had this suppressed wish to settle with the woman of his life. He senses that he too had same wish as the narrator but now is scared to lose someone he loved with his life. He immediately rejects that feeling by speaking “angrily and bitterly” with the narrator to not get married.

It’s not the Major despising women – some people may call it toxic masculinity. It is actually rejection of reality of the sad emotion of the loss of the loved ones to avoid the trauma and pain that follows after that. But Hemingway lets out some sadness through him to show how helpless men are.

“He looked straight past me and out through the window. Then he began to cry. “I am utterly unable to resign myself,” he said and choked. And then crying, his head up looking at nothing, carrying himself straight and soldierly, with tears on both his cheeks and biting his lips, he walked past the machines and out the door.”

His Woman Is Everything For Any Man True To Himself

As the title of the book suggests, this is Hemingway’s attempt to show what a man loses when he has no one of his own to open up. Why women are important instead of men here? Because men are so strongly conditioned with the trait of showing themselves as unaffected by whatever life throws at them that now they have accepted it as their second nature. If you are swayed easily by hardships, you are not ‘man’ enough. If you are not able to provide, you are not ‘man’ enough. If you whine at every adversity, you are not ‘man’ enough. If you express your vulnerability, you are not ‘man’ enough, in addition to that the society will make sure that you are made joker out of your vulnerability because it is the survival of fittest.

So, the best shortcut men’s minds have started taking is to become completely numb to the sensitive emotions, expressions of those emotions and have resorted to divert to something which looks ‘manly/ masculine’ or rejecting the emotions they are having.

Now imagine how would a man would open up to another man who he knows would already be numb to what he is expressing. For that you should see how group of women discuss their personal problems Vs how men discuss their personal problem in a group of men.

That is exactly why a comfort of woman’s emotional sensitivity is important for a man to get rid of their numbness to emotions. Otherwise, men without women are not truly men, rather they cannot even become human in first place. As the times are evolving, a man may not solely need exclusively a woman to open up but the fact that men are always forced to numb their emotional sensitivity to demonstrate their masculinity still remains the fact.

For any human being’s personality – identity, absence or withdrawal of certain aspect of life is always traumatic, insecure and unsettling. If this aspect is immediately linked to a person, then the effect is very strong. To cope with that insecurity the person undergoes rejection of the very version his/ her self which once was associated with the person they lost or the person they wished they could have been with.

For me the tragedy is the ways in which men are exposed to the world experiences. Almost all of the men have subconsciously trained their minds to ignore such exact unsettling losses, emotions under the label of masculinity.

Conclusion – The Feminine Side Of The Real Masculinity

I would take this part to connect the Hemingway’s writing to the modern times in which we live. It is a curse to us humans that we cannot understand things unless we differentiate between them, the very process of differentiation in order to understand nature steals certain characteristic attributes of those things which made them really special.

Same happened with what society first called as masculinity, modified it to something totally different then calling it toxic masculinity – that is why men (true men) now became just the providers – not even humans in modern times.

Hemingway’s men are not that different from the modern men. The older ones suffered from the trauma of war the modern ones are suffering from the responsibility to carry forward the skewed definitions of masculinity. Nobody sees that changing times disfigured the definition of what it really means to be a man. Then there is a group who calls out that new definition as a toxic one. No wonder some people see Hemingway as a proponent of toxic masculinity.

The key thing to understand here is that it’s not about whether feminism is lesser or masculinity is getting redefined in toxic ways. It is about how fast we are losing the touch of humanity to support and justify one of these sides.

Now you will see that this is Hemingway’s lament, a call for help in a way that if there were women for such helpless men, their lives would have been completely different. You must understand that this was his silent call for help or an unexpressed, suppressed feeling when you look at Hemingway’s biography.

That is exactly why when I am connecting the link between Hemingway’s short story “In another country” with Alexithymia, I am neither promoting masculinity and denying feminism. I fear that if this continues the world will see even worse versions of toxic masculinity. Imagine a human which has rejected what he feels, it’s not a human anymore.

Most of the times, we are forgetting that when we are promoting and asking for individual freedom, individual expression, individual identity we have ignored what it means to reserve the same rights for others. Hemingway’s writings although were heavily influenced by his personal experiences of war, the ways in which his men handled emotions is exactly same as how modern men are still handling their own emotions. They are not handling them at all, they are suppressing them, running away from them.

The remedy to all these complications is creation of more open spaces for men. We need men to open up at least among themselves, at least a man needs to treat other man’s emotional, expressive side. Women will eventually fall into it as they are naturally and also societally more open to it (e.g. see the group of ladies and their discussions). There is nothing wrong for a man to cry like a sissy.

(I know it’s hard to do than to say it in few words. Men are more comfortable in rejection of sensitivity that to be made fun for the same. But once one sees that there is nothing like only feminine or only masculine in real nature of how we pass through this life we would see that it’s better to let it flow than to accumulate it like a stagnating trash. And someone has to start somewhere even though the journey seems impossible.)

Ernest Hemingway – the greatest manly man world would ever see again. (At least he let his own emotions, expressions – whatever they may be flow through his writings. Trust me, it takes courage. You will appreciate this when you notice how unaware you are about the very man sitting next to you is going through and is successfully masking it. I hope that we will start crossing that barrier for the good of all.)

Minding The Gap Between Ego & Reality

We are so tied to our minds, our self, our ego that we can only see what our mind is conditioned to see; and the expanse of mind is so vast, that we consider the inability to gauge its limit to its infinite-ness. But, in self-observation we will see that reality is far bigger than our mind. Mind cannot be bigger than reality although it can create a perfect illusion of it being bigger than reality. When we realise how reactive our mind is, how conditioned our mind is we see that it’s the reality in which we are existing and not the mind. Mind is just a facilitator to create a sense of security. The real creativity thus begins when one lets go of their minds, thoughts and observe reality for what it is.
The real intelligence is to be able to see how you are fooling yourselves and how it is twisting your world view. This is possible only when we let go of the self. Love is the fastest and the most direct way to let go of self. Love is the way to get rid of the ego. Loving something, loving someone is the first step towards rejecting the very ego which is responsible for self-deception.
Jiddu Krishnamurti thus encouraged everyone to let go of their egos through self-less love; this itself is enough to solve all the existential conflicts inside us and out there in the world.

Part 3 – Jiddu Krishnamurti’s legacy of self-knowledge

“What do you do when you realize fundamentally or deeply that thought cannot end itself? What happens? Watch yourself. When you are fully aware if ‘this fact’, what happens?

(‘this fact’ here refers to an observation that ‘discipline’ doesn’t destroy the self, rather it strengthens it because ‘the self’ created that discipline in the first place)

You understand that any reaction is conditioned and that, through conditioning, there can be no freedom either at the beginning or at the end – and freedom is always at the beginning and not at the end.”

– J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

We, the humans are driven by curiosity. The curiosity to survive – to put in few words. One might say that people are driven by fear, greed, envy, anxiety, power, love, money, fame, glory, sacrifice, humility, honesty, trust, legacy, mania, chaos, terror, and what not. The list is never ending. If you start questioning the origin all such attributes, you will see that humans can be driven by anything, I mean any anything. There is no connecting link per say; the only common thing between all the things which drive people is the people themselves. So, in the last question (possibly the last one) we end up questioning ourselves. We see that along with physical survival we are highly conscious of our non-physical survival. Some may call it the mental survival, some may call it ideological survival, some may even call it spiritual survival. In the end, what we are trying to preserve is the eternal existence of our consciousness. How to preserve this? becomes the question then. That is why in final question we see that we are curious to preserve our own being. That is the ultimate survival. Whatever can facilitate that preservation is the driving force for our existence. If you are scared of something, the fear of that thing will create a curiosity to look out for the ways in which you can avoid it.

Now you will realise that the attributes which are many and driving people in different ways are highly related to the ways people think about themselves and about their surroundings. The identities, the consciousness which we are trying to preserve forever is highly the function of the society we grew up in, the religion we followed, the ideals we admired, the enemies we despised, the culture we cultivated and carried over to the newer generations.

I might be making an overstatement here-

Only those who have undergone unlearning, un-conditioning or at least appreciated the process of unlearning can clearly see how badly we are tied to our thoughts and ultimately our minds.

Death of thinking is death of mind. When they say that ideas live forever – it is also an attempt to ensure eternal survival of a certain type of mind, for mind is not a physical entity to us. Realizing the perishable nature of our body, the mind becomes the most potent entity to ensure the survival of our being.

Then, what’s wrong in ensuring the eternal survival our consciousness?

We will see how Jiddu Krishnamurti showed the reality of our existence. As I have already said, he is the perfect person at perfect time to ask the perfect question.

Short answer is – we are so tied to our minds that we can only see what our mind is conditioned to see; and the expanse of mind is so vast, that we consider the inability to gauge its limit to its infinite-ness. But, in self-observation we will see that reality is far bigger than our mind. Mind cannot be bigger than reality although it can create a perfect illusion of it being bigger than reality. When we realise how reactive our mind is, how conditioned our mind is we see that it’s the reality in which we are existing and not the mind. Mind is just a facilitator to create a sense of security. The real creativity thus begins when one lets go of their minds, thoughts and observe reality for what it is.

In Part 1, I have explained J Krishnamurti’s views on our urge for safety thereby happiness, how we use our thoughts to conveniently justify anything and everything to create that sense of safety, the ways in which our thoughts are stealing the actual reality holding multitudes of possibilities.

In Part 2, I have explained how thoughts originate, how curiosity drives them. It contains Krishnamurti’s observations on how we try to separate thinking to glorify ‘our version’ of wishful reality. Krishnamurti shows us that the moment we reject the separation of our thoughts from ourselves, that is the moment we see that we were just reactive to everything around us. We become observer of the reality for what it is, once we let go the glorification of ‘our thoughts’ – the self.

Now, we will question the very originator of the self – our Mind. Krishnamurti’s observations were revolutionary about the mind. This Part 3 will focus on that and also tie up the previous 2 parts together with it.

Existence Of The Mind – What Is The Mind?

“When you observe your own thinking, you will see it is an isolated, fragmentary process. You are thinking according to your reactions, the reactions of your memory, of your experiences, of your knowledge, of your belief.”

–J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

When we are truly in the territory of observation without any preconception, prejudice, we see what thoughts actually do. Thoughts just try to hook on to something that we are familiar with – it could be good or bad. Thoughts literally create a chain. One link creates sense – logic – connection to another, one train of thought after another. Then we create the whole understanding. Thinking is always reactive. Keep this in mind – thinking is always reactive. If you let thoughts build on themselves, it is amazing to observe what world we create just by our thoughts. The moment you inject certain intent, desire to this world, it immediately deviates from the reality. But, as this world of thoughts has your intent, your desire, it creates that world of safety; we don’t want to lose that familiarity, that comfort. Now as this world contains our desires it becomes our second identity. As the thoughts keep building on, you start associating these set of your thoughts as who you are. This is your non-physical identity now. You now strive to make sure that this non-physical identity lives till eternity.

After seeing this you will see that the mind is the custodian of thoughts, desires, wishes. A wish to be safe to prolong survival, desire to make that prolonged existence happier one, thoughts to support those wishes – desires. Mind is thus picking desirable ideologies, disciplines which will keep feeding the train of thoughts, the chain of thoughts. Thoughts want to ensure their own survival because we have assumed survival of our thoughts as our survival. (Keep in mind we haven’t even started the discussion about reality.)

So, mind is a sieve which keeps on separating the desirable and undesirable parts of reality. There is nothing wrong in that. What happens here which is problematic is our tendency to lean towards the desirable reality only. When mind would see desirable reality, it will start using the power of compounding of thoughts to create a wishful reality which we call as our identity – our self. We want to preserve self to ensure that things that we desire survive. Whatever is not the self, it is the others – the undesirable. The moment mind makes this separation – ego intensifies.

“Our whole tendency is to be separated. Can the mind do anything else but that? Is it possible for the mind not to think separately in a self-enclosed manner, fragmentarily? That is impossible. So, we worship the mind; the mind is extraordinarily important.”

–J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

Without separation, our mind fails to recognize itself. If it is not able to separate itself from rest of the things, it cannot feed the desires. If desires are not fed, we will be constantly looking cluelessly for a sense of belonging, a place of security.

Here, I see one tragedy of being human rather an animal. I will explain it:

See there is a possibility that we are free from all the desires. One can be free from all the desires of the world. So, it is a real possibility that man is free from the cage of thoughts, mind and desires and fully observant of the reality around him without any imposition or prejudice right from the birth.

What is the tragedy of every animal is that they are born with the tendency to live (otherwise how would they get in the world in first place, maybe the baby doesn’t even know what is required to survive, so possibly the sense of survival naturally gets transferred from parents to the baby). Have you seen a baby who wants to die the moment he is born? Rather the baby starts crying the moment it senses absence of parental presence or absence of security. By birth we have a survival urge. Evolution has pushed this urge in us from physical to non-physical one. As we have better chances to ensure physical survival we now care more about the survival of our non-physical version. Mind thus becomes very important, thereby consciousness becomes important. That is why if physical survival is not guaranteed, we wish that at least our consciousness lives forever. That is exactly why we praise the minds we have.

Over the time, our desires take over this mind and we then keep on conditioning it with culture, religion, society, community in a certain way. The familiarity of physical body gets further amplified in familiarity of certain way of thinking, certain religion, certain philosophy, certain profession, certain degree, certain community, certain country. The more we find ideas, thoughts familiar to ours the more we want to cling to them. The more we want to reinforce that version of self. We are always separating what reality shows in terms of whether it is favorable to us or not. That is why even if mind and consciousness seem infinite, you will observe that our thoughts have compounded in such an extreme way that we are unable to measure their limits. We have attributed this inability of those compounded thoughts to the infinite-ness of our mind.

If our mind truly is infinite then we should be able to predict the reality or at least handle the undesirability that reality may present in better ways. We all know how disappointed we are with the reality. This shows how strongly we have conditioned our minds towards certain way – that certain way we call our identity, our self, our ego.

“Until we understand how to transcend this separative thinking, this process of giving emphasis to the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’, whether in the collective form or in individual form, we shall not have peace; we shall have constant conflict and wars. Our problem is how to bring an end to the separative process of thought. Can the thought ever destroy the self, thought being the process of verbalization and of reaction? Thought is nothing else but reaction; thought is not creative.”

-J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

Now you will appreciate what un-learning can do to our life. It opens a completely different and real world in front of us. Un-learning is the rejection of what we assumed to be true to support our identity. Although it feels uncomfortable, sometimes completely hostile but there is no bigger freedom than the acceptance and implementation of unlearning. It is renewal, evolution of our very being.

The key point is to understand that we are not our mind, we can be bigger than our mind. That needs the rejection of the idea of self. Once we are observant of how dangerously conditioned, prejudices, favored our minds are we will see how we through the agency of our mind are twisting the reality to create the sense of security. The more we twist it, more deviated we are from reality.

And as I already explained that somehow this sense of separation and thereby self-preservation is in our genes by birth, we have to train ourselves to get rid of that sense. Keep in mind that this does not mean self-jeopardization. This plainly means that not imposing our ways on reality to create the sense of security thereby higher chances of preservation of self. That is why unlearning is extremely important.

Reactive Mind Vs Objective Reality

“Do not superimpose what it should do, how it should think or act and so on: that would amount to making mere statements.”

-J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

Once you think that you have full control of your mind, the mind will use this sense of its separation from you to build chains of thoughts to support itself. In the end, it all started from you. The moment you see that you and your mind are the same, you accept its conditioning. Now you have a baseline to see the reality. Now you know how your mind is bending the reality. This is the freedom, to see things as they are.

Now that we are understanding that sense of safety was the goal of everything that we are doing all along, we see that our conditioning thereby our thinking and thus our mind in the end are the reason behind all the suffering we go through. Once we see that our mind was the main culprit, we realise that it will be difficult rather impossible to punish my mind, discipline my mind because the more I try to control my mind – more I try to discipline it, the more it reacts, the more it creates thoughts and evades away from the reality. It tries to preserve its identity.

Only when you observe that you are your mind conditioned in certain way to preserve the non-physical existence then you understand the reality you live in. You still have those conditioned thoughts but now you neither want to promote them or suppress them. You are now an observer of the reality. This is an interesting observation.

“When I want to understand, look at something. I don’t’ have to think about it – I look at it. The moment I begin to think, to have ideas, opinions about it, I am already in a state of distraction, looking away from the thing which I must understand.”

–J Krishnamurti, Can thinking solve our problems?

There is one important confusion we must address here:

If I am rejecting the thoughts that I have, the mind that I have, the consciousness that I have – what remains of me? Wouldn’t I end up in an existential crisis? Won’t that shatter my compass? If I am not associated with certain things, how would I make sense of my actions? If I am not able to make sense of my actions or at least the things happening around me, how would I prepare myself to survive in this world? This will completely jeopardize my existence.

The answer is pretty simple if you have read till this sentence:

Rejection of mind as a separate entity is the answer. Unlearning the process of isolation to understand the reality is the answer. Wishful observation is the key problem in the ways we are trying to live the life. Thinking is the second name for wishful observation. You are expecting reality to become something in your ways so you attach certain justification to extract that desirable meaning from the reality you are observing. You are doing this to generate sense of safety, which further ensures eternal survival.

So, it’s not about rejecting mind or the thoughts. It’s observing how our mind, thoughts are already conditioned before we are trying to understand the reality. It’s like we are seeing the reality with certain tint of prejudices and expectations. We have to let go of that filter. We are so attached to this filter because world looks the way we want in this filter, that this tinted illusion has become our reality. The moment someone shatters that filter we end in existential crisis.

You must appreciate that it’s not about hating the prejudices, conditioning or sacrificing yourselves completely to a selfless act. It’s being aware that you have those prejudices when you are observing reality. This self-awareness is what Krishnamurti focused on.

The moment you will try to reject certain thing and accept the another i.e., your mind – you will create certain framework of justifications and you will deceive yourself.

The idea is to know how you are fooling yourselves which is preventing you from understanding the reality.

Delulu is not the solulu. Rather delulu is the best way to reject the very life you are living.

“To have blank mind is to be in a state of stupor, idiocy or what you will, and your instinctive reaction is to reject it. But surely a mind that is very quiet, a mind that is not distracted by its own thought, a mind that is open, can look a t the problem very directly and very simply. And it is this capacity to look without any distraction at our problems that Is the only solution. For that there must be a quiet, tranquil mind.”

–J Krishnamurti, Can thinking solve our problems?

Love – Cure To Self-Deception And Surrender To Reality

You know that moment in any pop culture media where the final answer is love? Let me spoil everything for you. The answer to everything is love.

(Be cautious while reading next part, it’s not just that type of love and I am definitely not conditioned to prefer love as the answer. Even for a skeptic, love being the final answer has worthy support. It also guarantees that we can understand the reality for what it is.)

I always had this cringe feeling when everything grand in the narrative ended up with a justification of love. Even the great authors, logical authors, great scientists, great atheists never feel shame to express the power of love and it being the answer to everything. Trust me, I have made every attempt to find the evidences where love might not be the final answer to everything. But turns out that I would never find any evidence against love being the final answer.

The core reason is that we ourselves are the final problem. Let us see how Krishnamurti came to the conclusion of love being the ultimate answer:

“When you realize that any reaction is a form of conditioning and therefore gives continuity to the self in different ways, what actually takes place? You must be very clear in this matter. Belief, knowledge, discipline, experience, the whole process of achieving a result, or an end ambition, becoming something in this life or in future life – all these area process of isolation, a process which brings destruction, misery, wars from which there is no escape through collective action, however much you may be threatened with concentration camp and all the rest of it.”

–J Krishnamurti, The Function of Mind

Now that you have come to the last part of the discussion, it is not a new understanding when I say that our sense of self is reinforced by the desire to support certain way of our conditioning. This steals from us the ability to perceive reality in the way it presents itself. We are always seeing the reality with certain conditioning and trying to change it so that it favors our ways. But as we have illusioned, conditioned understanding of reality, the reality rarely presents itself in the ways we desire it to be. Then we end up in sadness and sorrow and start questioning the futility of our existence. That is why ‘what is the purpose of my existence?’ is the common format of the existential questions for all of us.

What Krishnamurti tried to focus on is different question –

Why am I not experiencing life the way it is?

What is preventing me to live the life the way it is, living the life to its fullest?

The answer is pretty simple now. It’s our conditioning which urges us to prefer certain ways and reject the others. This brings the happiness and sadness. In the efforts to maximize happiness and minimize sadness we have created a system of mind and thoughts to alleviate the pains of suffering – thoughts justify everything. We deceive ourselves with justifications.

“So long as we deceive ourselves in any form, there can be no love. So long as the mind is capable of creating and imposing upon itself a delusion, it obviously separates itself from collective or integrated understanding.”

-J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

What does the love do in all this confusion?

Love is the direct way to let go of self. Love is the way to get rid off the ego. Loving something, loving someone is the first steps towards rejecting the very ego which is responsible for self-deception. Even if you are delusional, your actions influenced by those delusions towards the things you love, the people you love will yield unwanted outcomes; and if you truly love them, you will be compelled to let go of the delusion for the benefit of your loved ones. Thus, being selfless through love in true sense ensures real freedom.

Conclusion – Why Is Love Answer To Everything?

“We see the ways of the intellect but we do not see the way of love. The way of love is not to be found through the intellect.”

-J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

We saw in Part 1 how and why we crave for safety, familiarity. It ensures our physical and non-physical survival with better odds and most importantly with better satisfaction.

We saw in Part 2 how we dissociate ourselves from our mind and thoughts to create a false sense of safety if the reality does not turn out the way we want. We may delude ourselves if the reality is hurting us. We use thoughts to justify unfairness the reality presents. Our religions, politics, our ideals, everything that we have created now has an innate purpose of creating a safety net. We want to remain in this net because we don’t want the happiness to end. We have intellectualized our minds in such a way that we have justification for every ridiculous illusion and tragedy is that we call it the limitlessness of the mind, infinite nature of the mind.

I am not erasing the idea that the mind is limitless. If our minds – we – ourselves are truly limitless then we should immediately be able to see beyond the seemingly adverse revelations of the reality. Which is the holy gist of all these detailed inquiries of the self.

Then what was the problem with the mind?

The very limitless nature of reality would enable us to become limitless. But is it our delusional clinging to certain way of life for safety which is stealing the real understanding and appreciation of limitless reality. We are clinging to highly complicated and highly compounded thoughts, the way of thinking just because it reinforces the ego.

The real intelligence is to be able to see how you are fooling yourselves and how it is twisting your world view.

After going through what Krishnamurti made us observe, you will realise that whatever must be said has been said already. We have just accepted our delusions because we are fully clung to the way have been living our lives, the way we have been conditioned.

When you are loving someone, there is very slim chance that they will be exactly the way you want them to be. There is plausible reason to say this because the infinite possibilities of reality mold people in different ways. There may be many things in common but the more you know the sooner you will realise that people are filled with different types of conditioning. This will first push you to reject their point of view naturally, then you will try to impose your way on them, your ideologies on them, your conditioning on them. In the final analysis, you will see your ways of worldview failing on them. This is the moment when you will reject your own world view, thereby your ego. Now you will neither reject or accept other people’s worldviews nor will you cling to your ego. Now for the sake of love, you will objectively observe the reality for what it is.

This is how love compels you to let go of your ego. That is why love is the answer to everything because you are the last question of all the investigations of the existence. You will let go of the concept of the self once you start to appreciate things other than you and accept the reality the way it is. What a beautiful way to live!

“Only when you discard completely, through understanding, the whole structure of the self, can that which is eternal, timeless, immeasurable, come into being. You cannot go to it; it comes to you.”

-J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

References and further reading:

Truth is a pathless land – J Krishnamurti
The First and Last Freedom – J Krishnamurti
Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge : Part 1 – The Liberation From Thinking and Thoughts
Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge: Part 2 – Being Watchful Of The Ebb And Flow Of Life
Featured Image of Phantom Galaxy M74 by James Web Space Telescope

Being Watchful Of The Ebb And Flow Of Life

In the constant pursuit of eternal happiness what man forgets is that nothing is everlasting, the sadness exactly like the happiness too shall pass. But, the urge to remain eternally happy and safe, steals the man from actual sense of reality. The illusions of thoughts filled with prejudices, conditioning and the escape from the reality by justifying the same thoughts becomes the endless cycle for such man. The moment man rejects the separation between him and his thoughts and sees that he himself is the originator of every thought is when he starts observing reality for what it truly is. Now there is no urge to seek happiness or the aversion to sadness. The man who is able to observe the reality for what it is and denies the wishfulness has understood what it really means to become free from ‘ego’ – ‘the self’. This is how the man becomes free and fearless.
It is really underrated how much we overvalue our thinking, thoughts, ideologies – for they always create an escape when reality is not how we want it. The man who is able to see through this can appreciate how life is always a continuous flow and not a starting point or destination.
Krishnamurti thus taught about the ability to observe the reality for what it is and without any preconditioning, thinking or prejudices.

Part 2- Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge

Because I am free, unconditioned, whole – not the part, not the relative, but the whole Truth that is eternal – I desire those, who seek to understand me to be free; not to follow me, not to make out of me a cage which will become a religion, a sect. Rather should they be free from all fears – from the fear of religion, from fear of salvation from the fear of spirituality, from the fear of love, from the fear of death, the fear of life itself.

– J Krishnamurti, Truth Is A Pathless Land

Krishnamurti for me is the perfect person at perfect time to ask the perfect question.

I will focus on how Krishnamurti’s teachings – how his ways to dissect our curiosity paves way to understand what it means to be a conscious human being. The further writing is an attempt to address what is thinking and why we think and if not thinking then what makes us real human beings.

In Part 1 on Krishnamurti’s teachings, we touched on following important aspects of what it means to be a human and how distracted we are from our human side:

Krishnamurti most importantly taught how we are trying to bring peace to our lives by associating it with some meaning or purpose. Those who have fair understanding of the gap between what is thought and what is real, they can understand that the world in which we live – the reality in which we exist is constantly changing. Whereas we as human animals are always in the search of stability, that is how we will be able to optimize our energy and efforts to maximize the chances of survival. We crave for longer and peaceful existence in the continuously changing world.

The very continuously changing nature of the reality goes against our wish to live a peaceful, safe and predictable thereby fully controllable, maneuverable life. This resistance between wish and reality splits our thinking, our thoughts from ourselves. This split of ‘we’ – ourselves and our thoughts is the root of all the existential confusion and false sense of happiness – the gratification.

First, we realize that reality will not bend to our wishes, then we give up on real happiness and create our own world of thoughts filled with our facts, our knowledge, personal point of views, prejudices to create certain worldview. This worldview then keeps on feeding itself to grant us gratification. But there comes a point when we see – confront the reality we were masking and running away from, it brings more pain than ever before. It is painful because we distracted ourselves from it, because it never guaranteed eternal happiness – our thoughts granted that eternal happiness while wearing the coat of wishful thinking – gratification. We have separated ourselves from our thoughts in such way that whenever something bad, wrong, unpleasant happens, the blame can be immediately thrown on these thoughts. Thought which we have assumed to be the result of our upbringing, our culture, the unfairness happened to us. We use our thoughts as a separate entity just because we can conveniently find an escape from reality to create a newer one. it has become a tool to find a justification for everything that is unfair to us.

Once we accept how effectively we are deceiving ourselves we come to know that we ourselves are the thoughts, then responsibility follows. We see however painful it may be, this too shall never be constant. We reject the convenience of self-deception, accept who we are and observe the reality for what it is and not how we want it to be.

The moment we become responsible for our thoughts is when we start to see the reality, we start to see the world for what it is, without prejudices. All deceptions are stripped off. We also realise that thinking was mere swaying between acceptance and rejection of two ends – happiness or sadness. We see how much we were bounded due to this swaying – due to this isolation.

The moment we let go the urge to become happy, we let go urge for gratification, then we let go the wishful thinking, then the self-deception dissolves. Once self-deception dissolves, we start to accept our thoughts are our own, then we start to improve ourselves just for the sake of the real truth not for happiness. The life is unshackled from two possibilities of happy or sad into the infinitely many possibilities the reality can offer.

Touching to these ideas we saw in Part 1, how we assign the purpose of our lives just for the sake of gratification, how we separate thinker and thought to reject responsibility, then how the self-deception keeps this cycle going.

Now moving on to the other teachings by J Krishnamurti, I felt a need to understand the quest for happiness. I mean there is nothing wrong in people wishing to feel happy, safe in their lives.

Then I realized what the real problem is; it’s not the wish to become happy, it is the acceptance of certain illusions to become happy. I will throw light on how that happens unknowingly and then we will again come back to Krishnamurti’s ideas on those areas.

The Curious Animal

I think what separates humans from animals is the incessant curiosity for anything and everything that is there to experience; sometimes we are curious about non-existent things too. The extent of curiosity might be different in everyone but it is safe to say that we are way more curious than animals. This curiosity always needs the food of thoughts and reality checks to arrive at a conclusion – that is how we are always reinforcing our consciousness. I think one cannot maintain their conscience or consciousness (call it what you want) if you cannot maintain at least small amount of curiosity in life. Animals have natural routines for survival exactly like we do but I think we are more aware of our own being than the animals do. (might be an overstatement, but you get the point)

Curiosity is not just about some sophisticated questioning to certain sophisticated, complicated part of philosophy, it can be rather very simple. A person thinking about what should be done to get the next meal? – is also one type of curiosity – let us call it the curiosity of ways to get the next meal. This curiosity to get next meal is common for both human and rest of the animals but over the time we have found totally innovative ways, the ways in which animals have not found how to address the same curiosity. So much that now we don’t even consider the curiosity of getting the next meal as a curious problem. Being human thus means that our curiosities also keep on evolving faster than the animals. What was peak curiosity for a primitive man is now a low-level curiosity, we now have much high level and more complicated – sophisticated curiosities.

Starting right from birth till death we carry many curiosities – some of them get answered some remain mysterious, unanswered. The key attribute which remains common in all of us is how satisfied are we when it comes to our curiosities, our personal curiosities? The more curiosities you have found answers to, the more satisfied you will feel. You will have sense of fulfilment; your wishes, ambitions, wants all are connected to your own curiosities. Take one simple example – why do you want that specific job? For some people their curiosity was why some people are happier than others? They see that doing this job gives more money, for some people they see that doing this job will give them happiness, for others this job will wipe away their sorrows. In every possible sense, you can link the curiosity to the very reason of our being.

The Conscious Thinker

If you look closely to the curiosity, you will immediately accept that thoughts are the most important aspect of who we are. We keep on thinking to address our curiosities until they are addressed satisfactorily. That is exactly why thinking is crucial for humans; it shapes our character, our lives and then the lives of everyone around. Now that I have brought in the point of “thinking” you will feel that thoughts play bigger role than curiosity in our lives. And it is right to feel so. But I have reason to weigh curiosity heavier than thoughts or thinking. You will see that smartness can be found in good spirited people and evil people too. When we can develop technologies to save lives, we have developed technologies to bring about mass destruction too. Looking at the current situations the later look more sophisticated. So, if the good person has better curiosities, he will have his curiosities answered in better ways than the lower curiosities of the evil person. See, both sides can have same curiosities as the purpose of their lives but the ways in which their individual thoughts answer that common curiosity gives us either godly men or evil men. So, curiosity supersedes thinking. How you will address that curiosity is how you will be. That is exactly why thoughts are so important. How consciously you think is how you will have your curiosity answered.

Thinking Is Useless

(Just now that we said that thoughts are important.)

The self is a problem that thought cannot solve.

– J Krishnamurti, Can thinking solve our problems?

When you will appreciate different ways of thinking; the process to create thoughts to answer same type of curiosity and the ways that can create totally different human beings you will see that curiosity is mostly the innocent aspect of who we are but the thoughts take shape, color, aspect of who we are, what our experiences are, how we are treated by the people around us, how we treat others. It is not an understatement when I say that thoughts rarely create the true understanding of the reality. And the farther our thoughts are from the reality the more we experience failure and unfulfillment of expectations, sadder we are. Thoughts can create an excellent sense of reality but if not built properly can make people despise the very reality they live in. The closer you are to reality realer will be your curiosities, the realer will be your thoughts and faster will be your satisfaction to the curiosities. Otherwise, we will keep on playing the games of thinking in certain ways and would never be able to satisfactorily answer the greater curiosities of our lives. Every illusion will create next illusion.

Krishnamurti advises to let go of this game of thinking where every illusion reaps newer and more potent illusion, dragging us away from reality.

Thought has not solved our problems and I don’t think it ever will. We have relied on the intellect to show us the way out of our complexity. The more cunning, the more hideous, the more subtle the intellect is, the greater the variety of systems, of theories, of ideas. And ideas do not solve any of our human problems; they never have and they never will.

– J Krishnamurti, Can thinking solve our problems?

The main intent is to understand how self-protecting our thoughts and thinking are. You must appreciate this. The essence is to understand the fact that if thinking would have really solved our problems, we would have immediately stopped the process of thinking. We would have stopped it because it gave us the final solution to the real problem.

You may in thinking out certain facets of the problem, see more clearly another person’s point of view, but thought cannot see the completeness and fullness of the problem – it can only see partially and a partial answer is not a complete answer, therefore it is not a solution

-J Krishnamurti, Can thinking solve our problems?

Thinking can create false sense of solution but to certain extent, the reality holds more possibilities than that.

We would see that the more we think about something even fundamental the more complicated it becomes. Thinking may help us to understand perspectives but it never serves us the truth of reality as a whole rather it always gives certain dimensional information. Now this certain dimensional information can be easily poisoned with prejudices and not the facts. Thinking actually steals us from the multiple possibilities of the reality. As the problems from thinking multiply themselves, we are now entangled in the problems which are not even there in reality. We are just multiplying thoughts and problems because we know they give instant happiness for reality doesn’t guarantee eternal happiness. We are running away from truth by treating thoughts in superior ways.

Does that mean that thinking steals away the creativity? It seems counterintuitive! Thinking is the reason why we are creative. So, what exactly is going wrong?

The thing that is going wrong is our habit of separating things and comparing them with our previous knowledge; it’s our habit of grouping things in our old understandings. We try to understand newer things with our older understandings. We keep on filling our knowledge bank. We rarely unlearn anything with completely new perspective.

We fail to unlearn, because of our urge to happen things in certain ways. If you want the reality to happen in certain way, you will always be blinded to the reality which could have had better possibilities, better and beyond the limits of your thoughts.

This is why Krishnamurti focused on self-knowledge. Your pivot becomes you rather that the ways in which you want things to be. Once you understand who you are, you see how cunning your mind is, it always tries to create justifications to escape through a never-ending chain of illusive thoughts.

Once you accept who you are, you will see how the reactive thought got generated from you, that thought is you yourself. Now you see who you are. Once you see who you are, you don’t rely on thoughts to understand the reality. This is what builds the bridge between thinker and thought. This is where thinking is no longer required. You see reality for what it is. You become fearless, free from expectations and free from thoughts. Your actions now have intent instead of a wish.

Now, let us see how to maintain the awareness of self and be free from the illusion of never-ending chain of thoughts.

The Real Baseline – Non-Isolation

It seems to me that before we set out on a journey to find reality, to find God, before we can act, before we can have any relationship with another, which is society, it is essential that we begin to understand ourselves first.

… And it does not mean obviously, that self-knowledge is opposed to, or isolated from relationship. It does not mean, obviously, emphasis on the individual, the me, as opposed to the mass, as opposed to another.

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking?

Krishnamurti paved the way to break out of the vicious cycle of self-deception. When ending up in self-referential paradox the basic question one can ask is how the reference is getting created. We see that we do not actually have an eternal, unchanging baseline. The baseline keeps evolving as our beliefs, experiences keep on changing. To understand ourselves is thus one difficult task. It’s like aiming a moving target, a target which keeps on changing all of its attributes. We realize that what we were calling our baseline – our core was just our thought conditioned by our urge for safety, peace and happiness.

Many think that in order to understand self, one has to isolate themselves from others. The rejection of isolation itself is the purpose of understanding self. Rather the more isolated you will be from others more your thoughts and mind would dominate you. The real purpose of self-knowledge is understanding of ourselves as the whole not as the isolated one.

Self-knowledge thus means the rejection of selfishness and the sense of ego. Then the person starts to understand what it means to think about the events and what it means to see the event. Former is limited because we are wishing for it to happen in certain way, latter hold any possibilities because we are not expecting or imposing what should happen.

Because we are craving for certain anticipation, trying to have certain expectation – we try to isolate our experiences to only those expectation. We blind ourselves by isolation. We see that our experiences create a reaction in us which we try to connect with certain memories, feelings. Then they lead to acceptance or rejection based on the sad or happy feeling generated. Then if that feeling is happy, we crave for more of it; if that feeling is bad, we try to suppress it. And the cycle keeps on going. We get tangled in our own thoughts.

Until and unless I don’t accept that ‘I’ am the originator of my thought I can’t really find that which lies beyond that thought. My thought will create another thought based on my urge to find the sense of security. The thinker has to just observe the thought and not expect it to be desirable or undesirable. This is one difficult task. But it guarantees eternal truth.

So long as effort is divided into the experiencer and the experience, there must be deterioration. Integration is only possible when the thinker is no longer the observer. That is, we know at present there are the thinker and the thought. The observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experienced; there are two different states. Our effort is to bridge the two.

– J Krishnamurti, Can thinking solve our problems?

Krishnamurti explained why our thoughts do so and why we refuse to let go of our thoughts (even though deep down we use our thoughts as a way to justify anything to our convenience, security and peace.) In the pursuit to bring “peace of mind”, the mind created two ends of every thought. The thinker who has already considered himself different from the thought now assumes one side of that thought and then measures his/her worth, goodness/badness by the extent of deterioration from that assumed baseline.

In reality, the very assumptions of either one of the ends of the thought prevents the person to have exposure to the real possibilities lying on the other end rather beyond the whole horizon.

The answer to come out of such bias is to observe that the originator of the thought is the thought itself. There are no two entities – thinker and thought are exactly same. This is where the observer and observed stare into each other’s eyes. Now the observer is not expecting the observed to become a certain way. Observer is now just observing that what it is. There is no need to move to next thought. Only thing that remains is to observe things for what they are.

We now think the thought is separate from the thinker, but is that so? We would like to think it is, because then the thinker can explain matters through his thought. The effort of the thinker is to become more or become less; and therefore, in that struggle, in that action of the will, in ‘becoming’, there is always the deteriorating factor; we are pursuing a false process and not a true process.

-J Krishnamurti, The thinker and the thought

When one starts truly observing there is no need to select one side of a thought, so there is no urge to favor one outcome, rather there is no wish to have certain expectation. As there is no wish to a certain way the mind does not work towards cultivation of one side and deterioration of the another one. Now mind just sees that which is there.

I divide myself into the high and the low in order to continue.

-J Krishnamurti, The thinker and the thought

Earlier there were only two possibilities – either cultivation of that which is desired and suppression/ deterioration of that which was undesirable. But now that when thinker and thought are bridged there are no side, no prejudices, no expectations. This opens totally new possibilities, and these possibilities are as real as the reality we are observing, the reality we are trying to understand.

You will realize how limited we were by our thoughts.

You will see how illusive the thinking loop seems, even though you “thought” your imagination was infinite. Your imagination now feels limited because of your prejudices, biases, memories, culture, knowledge.

Our imagination is way more limited than we think. That is exactly why observing without any prejudice becomes more important. We just refuse to do it because we don’t want to get overwhelmed by the infinite seemingly life-threatening possibilities. We are fearful. We think we are not ready.

Be Watchful Of The Isolation – The division

If I am aware that I am greedy, what happens? I make an effort not to be greedy, either for sociological reasons or for religious reasons; that effort will always be in a small limited circle; I may extend the circle but it is always limited. Therefore, the deteriorating factor is there. But when I look a little more deeply ad closely, I see that the maker of the effort is the cause of greed and he is greed itself; and I also see that there is no ‘me’ and greed, existing separately, but that there is only greed. If I realize that I am greedy, that there is not the observer who is greedy but I am myself greed, then our whole question is entirely different; our response to it is entirely different; then our effort is not destructive.

-J Krishnamurti, The thinker and the thought

This is revolutionary in many senses. As we are dependent on thoughts to understand reality. This dependence is filled with preconditioning right from the moment we are born. Therefore, we always try to mold our observation in the shapes of what we wish to become. If I wish to become a world known robber, I will see the act of stealing as a good one – a stepping stone in my “career”, if I wish to become a world known cop/detective I will see the act of stealing as a wrong one.

But if I have no wish to either become a robber or a cop, I now will have totally new concept of what stealing is. If I am observing a robbery right now with no prejudices, I am seeing the desperation, fear of getting caught in the eyes of the robber. I am seeing the mental stress that cop is going through to solve the case; if the cop is a smart one, I am seeing how he feels sorry for the robbers and how happy he feels that he can easily catch them.

Without prejudices you see that the reality morphs according to the wishes of its observers – the observers having certain expectations from it, certain prejudices.

It is that problem which is creative, in which there is no sense of ‘I’ dominating, becoming, positively or negatively. We must come to that state if we would be creative.

-J Krishnamurti, The thinker and the thought

You have to thus let go of the what is expected and observe what is happening without any preconditions. Then you will see that the negativity or positivity of the same reality became in that certain way because you had already picked either one of the sides. If you wanted to behave like a cop – a successful robbery is nightmare for you; if you wanted to behave life a thief same is the happiest moment of your life.

But if you just want to observe what is there in reality, you will see the desperation in the eyes of the robber and the ways cop chooses to hunt the thief down – even if it would steal his ideals.

You see people degrading themselves to have an illusion of the life they desire. You will feel like helping both of them. You will not feel of favoring either one of them.

This may seem like a person who has let go of life or like a sage, but trust me once you have this real worldview, you will see that you are more than yourself. You will see yourself extending to others, you will have this innate urge to reach out to others, to help them to come out of the illusion of happiness and sadness. You will help people in surprisingly different ways – not just right or wrong ways.

What is important is to see that the maker of effort and the object towards which he is making effort are the same. That requires enormously great understanding, watchfulness, to see how the mind divides itself into the high and the low – the high being the security, the permanent entity – but still remaining a process of thought and therefore of time.

-J Krishnamurti, The thinker and the thought

Once you accept yourself in such way you no longer have craving for happiness and aversion towards sadness. You will see that this current happiness is short lived and so will be the sadness arriving after it. You will see that reality is just a tide of happiness and sadness, we are just swaying in between.

Rather you will start seeing that reality is not just a wave between sadness and happiness – it has other attributes for which words like happiness or sadness would fall short to describe them. You are existing between the superposition of many such waves. This is the real journey towards a creative and realest real life.

You will see that you are not affected by these waves. Not affected does not mean that you are insensitive or numb to these aspects of life, rather now you are more sensitive and open to infinite possibilities of life. You don’t get tangled in thoughts, you now act to pass through the life, instead of attempting to control it. You become fearless. You don’t start any journey to achieve freedom in the end. You become free in the first place before you start the journey to experience the life lying ahead. You truly become free in reality.

We will see in detail why Krishnamurti said that freedom is at the beginning in next part.

“Until we understand how to transcend this separative thinking, this process of giving emphasis to the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’, whether in the collective form or in individual form, we shall not have peace”

J Krishnamurti

References and further reading:

Truth is a pathless land – J Krishnamurti
The First and Last Freedom – J Krishnamurti
Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge : Part 1 – The Liberation From Thinking and Thoughts
Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge : Part 3 – Minding The Gap Between Ego & Reality

The Liberation From Thinking and Thoughts

Remembering J Krishnamurti on his birthday.
The major focus of J Krishnamurti’s teaching was the awareness of how thoughts are created from ourselves and our constant pursuit to make things happen in a certain way, most preferably in our own ways.
The tragedy of human life can be given in one simple sentence: Man, the thinking animal – has deceived himself so much in the pursuit of happiness that he has given up on the reality in which he was born just for the sake of false sense of short-lived peace. The silver lining of this tragedy is that we ourselves hold the key to our peace. Self-knowledge holds the key to the peace.
We can only understand and appreciate reality and come out of the self-deception once we let go of the separation between the thinker and thought. The rejection of the convenience of self-deceptions paves the way to the real freedom. J Krishnamurti’s teaching thus shows us the path to experience the life in our own truest ways.

Part 1 – Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge

Jiddu Krishnamurti – one of the greatest philosophers, one of the greatest humans paved a pathway to the modern worldview of the real truth, the real freedom, the real meaning of life, real love and the real life itself. His life story talks for his ideology. Right from his childhood he was nurtured to be the chosen one – the spiritual guide for the world – “the World Teacher”. Certain influential people were already anticipating the coming of the world teacher who will show the way of life to people and bring light into their lives. This society was called the “Theosophical Society”. The Order of the Star in the East (OSE) was the theosophical society which was responsible to let the world know that the world teacher – Maitreya has arrived on earth to show the real path of our very being.

What has created a deep impact on me is the way Krishnamurti handled this matter. That is exactly why his place in my heart is immovable. When the time was right Krishnamurti dissolved the order (keep in mind he was the leader of the OSE). He was groomed to be the chosen one. He had every chance to utilize that for the benefit of the mankind. Krishnamurti dissolved the order and asked every member of the order to not follow him and create their own path to the truth. His talk “Truth is a pathless land” given on the occasion of dissolution of the order of the star in the east is a testimony on what greatness the humanity awaits at the end of their individual journey of their very being. It strengthens the belief that we were really made for something simple yet great.

“I do not want you to agree with me, I do not want you to follow me, I want you to understand what I am saying. This understanding is necessary because your belief has not transformed you but only complicated you, and because you are not willing to face things as they are.”

– J Krishnamurti, Truth Is A Pathless Land

This is me remembering Krishnamurti on his birthday. Krishnamurti for me it the perfect person at perfect time to ask the perfect question. My explanation for the train of concepts and ideas is really long (I apologize for that) so the discussion is split into few parts. Lucky that we had J Krishnamurti who simplified life for us but I think it’s an interesting exercise to connect the dots on how Krishnamurti can remain relevant for the eternity of humanity.

I will focus on how Krishnamurti’s teachings – how the ways to dissect our curiosity paves way to understand what it means to be a conscious human being. The further writing is an attempt to address what is thinking and why we think and if not thinking then what makes us real human beings. Trust me, thinking feels the most unnecessary part when you understand what Krishnamurti taught throughout his life.

Purpose of Life – The Safety And Peace In My Existence

“What is it that most of us are seeking? What is it that each one of us wants? Especially in this restless world, where everybody is trying to find some kind of peace, some kind of happiness, a refuge, surely it is important to find out, isn’t it? what it is that we are trying to discover?”

– J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

Krishnamurti tried to answer the curiosity of all curiosities. When we are trying to address curiosities, we find our very own existence at the focal point of the discussion. Then we ask if I am here why am I here? What should I be doing now that I exist?

It is fairly simple yet fundamental question. Krishnamurti was the expert of creating a chain of questions and everyone seeking the reality could create a path of their own to the truth when they honestly started answering these questions. Instead of bringing horse to the water and forcing it to drink the water even if it is not thirsty Krishnamurti’s talks have this way that the horse first becomes aware what it means to be thirsty, then it sees that it is really thirsty, it sees what it is thirsty for and then Krishnamurti’s questions send that horse on its own path to the waters. In the end whether horse finds water or not that is the matter of what the reality is. Horse is fine with that.

Krishnamurti called out that we all want our suffering to end eventually and be happy. But he pointed out that the moment we sense that happiness – every type of happiness is not permanent then we seek for the gratification. Because happiness being a byproduct of process cannot be artificially created whereas gratification can be easily and artificially created. We can create gratification immediately by fooling ourselves. Trust me everyone is ready to fool themselves if it guarantees peace, comfort, safety and thereby gratification – a false sense of happiness.

“I am afraid most of us are seeking gratification. We want to be gratified; we want to find a sense of fullness at the end of our search.”

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

We create this gratification by isolating ourselves from certain parts of truth which are painful to accept. That is why we have this notion that our thoughts are what we are, if you are happy inside then everything around you will seem happy. So, our thoughts start creating their own reality. This is done by isolation and division. Deep down we know that the uncomfortable truth is the realest reality but we choose to ignore it for the gratification.

“Mere isolation in an enclosing idea is not a release from conflict.”

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

The moment we start building new understandings based on the thoughts responsible for our current gratification we again find those sidelined uncomfortable truths to be the part of the bigger problem, bigger curiosity – now a bigger conflict.

Unless we are not embracing the reality however uncomfortable it may seem we will never find the real peace. It feels really counterintuitive and paradoxical. How can I be happy, peaceful when I recognize that uncomfortable thing? I mean this is the exact uncomfortable thing that steals my peace.

The answer is the inherent nature of our thoughts to divide, split, segregate things/values/attributes to understand the reality.

Thinker Is The Thought

“We do not know ourselves. We know a lot about facts, what the books have said; but we do not know for ourselves, we do not have a direct experience.”

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

Krishnamurti always tried to put a special emphasis on how our own thinking is designed to fool ourselves – the thinker. As we have already appreciated that when the truth – the reality is painful we try to find peace not by the pursuit of truth but by grouping, focusing on thoughts, biases which create gratification and then happiness. We fool ourselves through our own structured thought process however deviating it might be from reality. We create such belief system and accept, follow only those thoughts which keep on feeding those belief systems.

There always comes a time in life when this belief system gets challenged by the very reality we ignored just for the peace of our mind.

So, it is clear that however painful it may seem the truth will always be there. If not eternal peace the next best thing we can have, is the eternal awareness of how that truth, that reality will create pain, how we would react to it (or don’t even react to it) and the way to pass through that pain. This is not possible when we are seeking gratification. In gratification, we just want our wishes to somehow align with our thinking, so we start bluffing ourselves through certain set of thoughts.

“Truth may be something entirely different; and I think it is utterly different from what you can see, conceive, formulate.”

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

The real peace is knowing that peace is not eternal. Best we can do is to at least be aware what it is instead of what it should be. This is possible when we question the origin of thoughts.

And as I have said before, Krishnamurti was master of questioning the very question! Now he questions the questioner – the thinker. The one from whom thought gets created.

“When you say, ‘I am seeking happiness’, is the seeker different from the thought? Are they not a joint phenomenon, rather than separate processes? Therefore, it is essential, is it not? To understand the seeker, before you try to find out what it is he seeking.”

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

You can say that whole purpose of Krishnamurti’s teaching, the purpose of his whole life was to make people understand themselves first, to make the thinkers aware of themselves. Then only it is possible to see how the thought gets created from thinker. One has to do this themselves, there is no external agency to understand this.

Krishnamurti understood the impact of truth being conveyed through direct experience. You can read many truths, hear many truths, believe many truths but the truth that you experience yourselves will have bigger impact on how you understand everything.

(That is also why empathy is very important. That could be topic for another day.)

“Does self-knowledge come through search, through following someone else, through belonging to any particular organization, through reading books, and so on? After all, that is the main issue, is it not? that so long as I do not understand myself, I have no basis for thought, and all my search will be in vain. I can escape into illusions, I can run away from contention, strife, struggle; I can worship another; I can look for my salvation through somebody else. But so long as I am ignorant of myself, I have no basis for thought, for affection, for action.

But that is the last thing we want: to know ourselves. Surely that is the only foundation on which we can build. But, before we can build, before we can transform, before we can condemn or destroy, we must know that which we are.”

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

Here Krishnamurti solved the self-referential paradox of truth. When we are using our thoughts to create an understanding of reality which could give us happiness in the mid journey, we realize that reality is actually painful, so we condition our thoughts to certain aspects so that we would at least mask the portion of reality that creates uncomfortable situation. Then for the next quest. the ‘so-called’ suppressed truth brings its head up, so we further keep on masking it. Now we are far away from what is real and what we believe.

That is why Krishnamurti talks about a baseline. A baseline which is not created from external agency. A baseline created from within, created by direct experiences. This baseline can only be created when we see how we ourselves are the generator, originator of our thoughts.

The Convenience Of Self-Deception

“We now think the thought is separate from the thinker; but is that so? We would lie to think it is, because then the thinker can explain matters through his thought. The effort of the thinker is to become more or become less; and therefore, in that struggle, in that action of the will, in ‘becoming’, there is always the deteriorating factor; we are pursuing a false process and not a true process.”

-J Krishnamurti, The Thinker And The Thought

What Krishnamurti spotted and beautifully explained is that we separate our thoughts from ourselves because it becomes easy to disown their consequences when we see that those thoughts may not give us the happiness, peace we wanted. That is why the separation of thoughts from their thinker is one convenient trick we keep on playing to feed gratification. This process leads to self-deception. Then we end up in a thought process where we are so desperate for gratification (because happiness is not eternal so we try to create some convenient form of happiness i.e., gratification) that we are always in a hurry to achieve that which we wished, that which we desired. This self-deception for false security keeps on building until the reality hits hard. Then that pain brings grave hopelessness.

“The seeker is always imposing this deception upon himself; no one can impose it upon him; he himself does it. We create deception and then we become slaves to it.”

-J Krishnamurti, Self-deception

There is a reason why the ultimate face-off with reality hits hard. It’s because our process of separation of thought from ourselves is so potent and self-feeding that it leaves no responsibility on thinker and also gives ways to the thinker to run away from the painful reality through asserting any convenient justification. The cycle of self-deception keeps on feeding itself. Then this same person starts deceiving others who are also desperately in the search of gratification. (These are the false leaders, messiahs who claim to have found the ultimate eternal truth.)

“…the more we deceive ourselves the greater is the strength in the deception; for it gives us a certain vitality, a certain energy, a certain capacity which entails the imposing of our deception on others.”

-J Krishnamurti, Self-deception

(And that is how religions work.)

That is exactly why Krishnamurti was against the formalization of any religious, spiritual society. Even one self-deceiving person can create a complete cage for the people around him and once people sense the security and peace even if it is not the reality people start worshiping that false truth because somehow it easily provides gratification.

Conclusion to Part-1

The major focus of J Krishnamurti’s teaching was the awareness of how thoughts are created from ourselves and our constant pursuit to make things happen in a certain way, most preferably in our own ways. The tragedy of human life can be given in one simple sentence: Man, the thinking animal – has deceived himself so much in the pursuit of happiness that he has given up on the reality in which he was born just for the sake of false sense of short-lived peace. The silver lining of this tragedy is that we ourselves hold the key to our peace. Self-knowledge holds the key to the peace.

Krishnamurti’s teachings help us to come out of the cycle of suffering and fear.

Once we start walking on the chain of ideas presented by J Krishnamurti, we realize that we conveniently created a barrier between our sense of being – the thinker and the thoughts because the moment we sense that things won’t go our way we can disown our current thought and bend it into something else through self-deception. This creates an easiest way to gratification – a false sense of happiness but that is not the reality. We can only understand and appreciate reality and come out of the self-deception once we let go of the separation between the thinker and thought. The rejection of the convenience of self-deceptions paves the way to the real freedom.

We will see how isolation creates bias in our thinking, what is the role of mind, how can we unlock the infinite possibilities in reality and the real meaning of being a conscious human being in the next part as taught by J Krishnamurti.

Remembering J Krishnamurti on his birthday.
The major focus of J Krishnamurti’s teaching was the awareness of how thoughts are created from ourselves and our constant pursuit to make things happen in a certain way, most preferably in our own ways.
The tragedy of human life can be given in one simple sentence: Man, the thinking animal - has deceived himself so much in the pursuit of happiness that he has given up on the reality in which he was born just for the sake of false sense of short-lived peace. The silver lining of this tragedy is that we ourselves hold the key to our peace. Self-knowledge holds the key to the peace.
We can only understand and appreciate reality and come out of the self-deception once we let go of the separation between the thinker and thought. The rejection of the convenience of self-deceptions paves the way to the real freedom. J Krishnamurti's teaching thus shows us the path to experience the life in our own truest ways.

References:

Truth is a pathless land – J Krishnamurti
The First and Last Freedom – J Krishnamurti
Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge: Part 2 – Being Watchful Of The Ebb And Flow Of Life
Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge : Part 3 – Minding The Gap Between Ego & Reality

Men And Their Fathers

Most of the men are poor in openly expressing their emotions, love for the men they love. Fathers are an important entity in this group.
In the vast ocean of unexpressed masculine love and the unexpressed emotions between father and son, James Blunt’s “Monsters” stands like a lighthouse. “Monsters” is not just about acceptance of father by his son or a love letter of a son to his beloved father; it is more than that. It shows how a good upbringing can create better sons for tomorrow. No doubt mothers are more than enough to create better children and better people for tomorrow but we need good fathers – sensitive fathers to create better sons for today and better fathers for tomorrow. Responsibility thus lies at the core of manliness which gets glorified through this fatherhood. It also shows the sensitive side of masculinity. This song is all about that.

On the song called “Monsters” by James Blunt

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he is wrong

– Charles Wadsworth

They say when you can’t tell someone what you are feeling or when words are falling short to express those unsaid emotions music is the best medium. Everyone of us has this group of songs which snugly fits with certain emotions we hold inside especially the emotions which we hesitate to express openly. Believe me that these songs are not just love songs or romantic songs, if you ask people when they are comfortable around you, you will realize that there exists a wide spectrum of emotions people never expressed or couldn’t express just because they couldn’t find proper words.

Talking about emotional people and the hesitation to express them openly, there exists a group of relationships where people rarely express their emotions even though their counterparts know that what those feelings are.

I am talking about boy-boy relation, man-man relationship, boy-man relationship – please note that its not just about romantic relationship in men. It is beyond that, and given that men hesitate to express those many times, I too am finding it difficult to write this down in a convincing way – about how men feel for other men.

In this ongoing but intentionally ignored realization, I came across a song which helped me to express the feeling that I had but never was able to connect to the reality of words. Boys, men rarely do that. That is exactly why music is so powerful, it is an enabler for those who are failing, hesitating to express what they are feeling.

I came across a song called Monsters by James Blunt where the son expresses how strongly he appreciates what his father did for him and also guarantees that his father’s legacy will live through his son by being the next responsible father figure for the family.

The lyrics is credited to Jimmy Hogarth, James Blunt, Amy Victoria Wadge.

This is about that song. You will find many references/ interviews on internet to explain why James made this song.

This is about what I saw through this song.

Oh, before they turn off all the lights
I won't read you your wrongs or your rights
The time has gone
I'll tell you goodnight, close the door
Tell you I love you once more
The time has gone
So here it is

As far as the song goes it is about a boy telling his father how he is opening his heart out in front of him. The metaphor of turning off the lights and saying good night shows that it’s the father who is going to sleep and the son is turning off the lights for him, closing the door for him and saying good night.

The use of the metaphor of the night time routine between parents (especially father in this case) and the children (the son in this case) is really beautiful here. The son turning off the lights and saying good night to his father shows how the roles have switched. It shows how the son has accepted the responsibility of fatherhood. It’s not just a normal night for his father it’s the long night and final slumber for his father. The son is very well aware of this and thus considers it as the responsibility to respect what his father trained and nurtured him for.

The realization of final moments of his father made the son express his feelings for him. The feelings which were never expressed openly before. Knowing that there is very short time left for father, the son wants to share the emotion that he really loves his father.

One important thing which is woven in the flow of emotions by the songwriters that I liked very much is the idea of completely rejecting the notion of rights and wrongs done by father (as much as the son thinks) throughout his life.

This notion of person not being right or wrong but just a human being gets expanded more in the next verse.

I'm not your son, you're not my father
We're just two grown men saying goodbye
No need to forgive, no need to forget
I know your mistakes and you know mine
And while you're sleeping, I'll try to make you proud
So, daddy, won't you just close your eyes?
Don't be afraid, it's my turn
To chase the monsters away

It is only when the son accepts fatherhood, becomes father or at least assumes the role of father figure then he realizes that his father was just a human being who did everything that was possible in his capacity.

This is very important aspect of a son becoming father. As long as father was there especially when the son is a young adult, father was just a person who was a lost cause. This is one of the most common behaviors among young boys. Everything their father did feels wrong in this way or the other way for boys.

But it is only when the boys themselves become men (literally and/or figuratively) they understand and appreciate how their fathers raised them. This is exactly why when the son is telling his father that ‘he won’t mention rights and wrongs that his father did’ – he is actually respecting the efforts of his father – the lengths to which his father went to ensure better life for his son. He has understood that in the end we are all human beings – we are not perfect – neither right nor wrong.

When the son is telling his father to not judge each other, it is him accepting his father as a human being. It’s the evolution of that teenage boy’s mentality into a man – the father figure. The songwriters have beautifully captured this change from boy to man. A boy always sees his father’s actions decisions as foolish, unreliable and wrong but the moment he puts his feet in the shoes that his father wore he realizes that all his father did was to give the best to his son, to his family. He also realizes how wrong he was when he was judging his father from a single point of view. That is exactly why the boy is telling his father that we both know how flawed we are – how flawed we humans are but in spite of that we are living together, we are accepting each other. This is the spirit of humanity shown through the mature relationship of the son and his father. I loved how songwriters put the act of recognition of mistakes more important than the act of either forgiving them or forgetting them. It removes any type of attribution or the notion of right-ness and wrong-ness for any mistake. I feel that the moment someone starts noticing that there is always some aspect beyond right and wrong for everything is the moment when that person truly understands the reality – the nature of things, such person is able to see right through the things. Most often this is sign of maturity.

There is difference between growing old and getting matured. Songwriters have very well created that feeling here. Son even though being younger than his father has started appreciating what his father handled for him and the family. This is exactly where the song comes alive – especially lyrics for me. It truly catches the essence of fatherhood. The son tells father that now its his turn to chase the monsters away.

The monsters could be any adversity that the family would have been exposed to. For me the notion of “chasing the monsters away” is very powerful way to show essence of fatherhood and father’s love. It also shows how the nature of father’s love completely differs from mother’s love; this difference itself sometimes creates the sense of superiority of motherly love over fatherly love. No doubt mothers are supreme caregiver to their children but that also should not reduce what fathers do and feel for their children. Fathers are the doorkeepers for the adversities before they could harm their families and most of the time the family rarely notices what harm was prevented. I mean if they are not even noticing what harm could have done to them this means that the job of protection was performed in perfect manner. That is the actual job for a fatherly figure – to not even let anyone get uncomfortable because something bad will hit them.

The son appreciates this and consoles his father that now he will take the tougher responsibilities which his father carried for the family, now he will become the man of the family and make him proud. One more beautiful thing happens here is the childhood callback between father and son. When the son is scared of the monsters under his bed and father telling him the story so that he could sleep well and telling him that he will chase those monsters away for him. Now that the son has grown up the attribution of monsters is changed, now these are the monsters that exist in the world in reality.

One beautiful thing to notice here is the moment when father confides his young son that he will chase away the monsters under his bed – he is completely aware that what real monsters he is chasing away for his son and the family. Only that the son’s young age would be scared and afraid to handle those real monsters father makes sure that he is protected from these adversities or at least the awareness of those adversities.

The bridge that the idea of “chasing away monsters” and the role reversal between son and his father shows what it means to be a man in this world.

Oh, well, I'll read a story to you
Only difference is this one is true
The time has gone
I folded your clothes on the chair
I hope you sleep well, don't be scared
The time has gone
So here it is

Sleep a lifetime
Yes, and breathe a last word
You can feel my hand on your own
I will be the last one
So I'll leave a light on
Let there be no darkness, in your heart

One important thing that men are taught right from their childhood is to become tough and strong. That tenderness, vulnerability and emotional inclination is a sign of weakness. Men have never followed this advice completely to their heart. They have just mastered the art of masking their tenderness – hiding it in a way to create an illusion of its nonexistence.

The way son is telling his father that he will read a story to him, fold his clothes shows that son’s masculinity holds that tenderness of love for his father – he has learnt that from his father.

One emotional part of this song for me is the next part. The part where the light and darkness are used as a bridge between the earlier fatherhood of the father and then the fatherhood of his son. It shows how a boy matures into father and thereby the real man. Light here signifies the hope for better times the son will keep on bringing when his father won’t be there. When the son asks father to have no darkness – it’s the darkness of the bitterness created over time between father and son due to some disagreements. It could be my overthinking playing here but the songwriters have also pointed out this common phenomenon between fathers and their sons. Right from the adolescence sons get many chances to notice and count the mistakes their father committed and consider them the most incapable, imperfect person in the world. It is only when the same sons take the responsibility of the fatherhood that they realize how hard it is and what actually their fathers sacrificed for them and the family. Men have this unrealized habit of not coming to terms with things with other men especially the men they love because of the unconscious habit of suppressing the emotions and vulnerability. Men rarely accept the mistake to other men – they will generally get along with the act of apologizing without it happening formally. The bitterness between the relationships is hidden in these deep cracks. So, when the son is telling his father to have no darkness in his heart n his last moments, he is actually apologizing to his father for always judging him for his flaws and imperfections. The father is feeling sad because he could not live up to the standards, expectations that his son had for him. This is some part of the said “darkness”. Son is finally telling his father that now that he has assumed the fatherhood, he appreciates all that his father did for the family and for him even though mistakes were made, bad decisions were taken and he couldn’t be “the perfect father” but in the end, we are all humans. The son is consoling his father that there is nothing to worry because he will be following his father’s legacy.

But I'm not your son, you're not my father
We're just two grown men saying goodbye
No need to forgive, no need to forget
I know your mistakes and you know mine
And while you're sleeping, I'll try to make you proud
So, daddy, won't you just close your eyes?
Don't be afraid, it's my turn
To chase the monsters away

It’s the final goodbye of a son to his father when he is telling that he will try to be a better son by accepting the responsibility of fatherhood through the legacy his father gave him. His father will now through him.

Men And Their Fathers

I have no opinion against the greatness of motherhood and the feminine capacity to express and demonstrate love for their children. What itches me is the ignorance towards the capacity of men to love their children as equal as the mothers. Maybe the reason lies in the incapability of men to actually and openly express love for their loved ones. It could have happened because men are trained to demonstrate masculinity through the attributes of strength and showing emotional neutrality. This has now been an unconscious habit among most of the men. A daughter with strong emotional sensitivity imparted due to her femininity can deeply understand what a fatherly love is but she can rarely understand and appreciate what the masculine side of that fatherly love is. A son very well knows what his father had in his mind all along this time the moment he assumes the fatherhood. It’s not necessary that the boy should bear a child or become father in reality. Mere acceptance of the responsibility triggers this mindset in boys. Most of the men are very poor in openly expressing the emotions, love for others especially other men they love. Fathers are the most difficult men in this group of loved ones (trust me on the basis of me being a man). Most often a boy could openly express his love for that girl in public in spite of being an introvert – he would cross that valley of insecurity for her. But same is not the case for men he loves – specifically a fatherly love. Boys show love for fatherly figures mostly through respect and assumption as the next responsible person in the line. “Monsters” by James Blunt is one such love letter from a son to his father. In the vast ocean of unexpressed masculine love and the unexpressed emotions between father and son, I think this song stands like a lighthouse. The most expected response for a man’s confession of love to other fatherly, manly figure (like a simple sentence “I love you father for all that you did for us, for me”) is a big laughter followed by comment similar to – “Are you OK?! What happened to you?” Men hesitate to accept the comment of being loved too. A father by default considers his execution of his responsibilities without the expectations of returned favor or appreciation or recognition. Men are rarely hardwired to accept recognition for being responsible and that is also may be why for some men in some cases it is easy to run away from the responsibilities. Fatherhood or feeling of fatherhood rarely allows that escape. It’s a commitment of a man to himself which makes him the real man.

The Monsters is not just about acceptance of father by his son or a love letter of a son to his beloved father. It is more than that. It shows how a good upbringing can create better sons for tomorrow. No doubt mothers are more than enough to create better children and better people for tomorrow but we need fathers – sensitive fathers to create better sons today and better fathers tomorrow. Responsibility thus lies at the core of manliness which gets glorified through this fatherhood. Assumption of fatherhood (sometimes physical and mental/ emotional fatherhood in each and every time) is the highest level any man can secure in this human world. So, Monsters is that handover of that legacy of true manliness from a father to his son. What could calm a father more than the awareness that his son has assumed the fatherhood, his son has grown up to be a real man! That his son has learnt to stand strong in adversities. That his son has become responsible. That his son has learnt to stand down against the short-term pleasures for the betterment of his family. That his son has mastered to chase away the monsters of his life. Fatherhood can give purpose to any directionless man. That is also why unstable society needs better fathers.

For me this is the song which answers the question – “Why the world needs good fathers along with good mothers?” It also shows why father’s role is also important in the upbringing of children especially boys.

One more thing – “I love you Pappa”

Freedom = Courage (Now + Here)

When it comes to psychology – people consider Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung as the de facto rock-stars of the field of psychology. One unnoticed person whose findings deserve equal attention rather more attention was Alfred Adler. He introduced the Individual Psychology to the world which is relevant still today and is way more sophisticated to solve the “so called” troubles of our life. Individual psychology makes a successful attempt to reach to the roots of our suffering and allows us to become truly free.
Alfred Adler’s philosophy is beautifully explained in Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga’s book “The Courage To Be Disliked”. It talks about the feedback loop of self-acceptance, confidence in others and contribution to others to live a real and fulfilled life. The great thing about individual psychology is that it urges us to break the notion of causality and thereby determinism to come out of the painful, suffering inducing cycles of life & death, cause & effect. It shows us that we live in the universe with infinite possibilities and one needs courage to break the logic of determinism to truly appreciate themselves and the infinite possibilities universe has to offer. Individual psychology given by Alfred Adler thus asks us to bear the courage to lose the false-comfort given by causality – predictability and decide our life on our own terms fearlessly and with freedom. It teaches how one can be completely involved in everything but not attached to them at the same time.

On the book – The Courage to be disliked

‘The world is simple, and life is too.’

I have a question for you,

– How is life treating you right now?

Everyone knows that the responses to this question are diverse and dynamic. The answers obviously will be subjective and so it is normal to expect huge variety.

But you know what, deep down everyone (mostly the adults) know the most frequent type of the answer to this simple question. There is innate predictability about what the answer could be.

Life is not treating me fair

Life has become too complicated for me, life is suffering, there is no hope, why can’t I have a single moment of happiness to savor for some time? why do bad things happen to only me? what have I done wrong to someone that ‘everyone’ has turned against me? what should I do – now that I have not achieved what I was supposed to achieve in spite of putting all honest efforts? why is ‘everyone’ – the society always against me when all I have for others is good will?

Deep down we have this undeclared, unexpressed notion that something wrong happened to me which I didn’t deserve. I tried so hard but couldn’t achieve that thing. Trust me every one of us is an expert of hiding these unsettling feelings, overlooking them to move ahead. But it is important to understand that unknowingly they become part of who we are. When we truly and honestly would start inspecting ourselves, we will find these feelings being the reason for the bitterness we carry inside. That is why life is suffering for most of us, being free then is out of the question. First let me be happy for now!

Psychology has always been on the quest of resolving the model of how our mind works. A bigger portion of psychology directly or indirectly works towards understanding how we see happiness and suffering. Because, end goal of how we feel, how we think, how we decide, how we interact, how our personality is created is emerged from either a happy event or sad event which affect why our psyche is in a certain way.

I appreciated this in deeper sense when I came across a book called “The courage to be disliked”. A single book can change your life. Although I have been changed many times before, I couldn’t help but overstate the importance of this special book.

This is my attempt to reorganize the ideas from the book to instantly simplify the core ideas. So, the next discussion may spoil the book for you. (Although it’s not a story book having a climax at the end but the ideas are written in a conversational – dialogue format so, you peel out one layer at a time to reach to the core ideas of individual psychology.)

I am actually spoiling the whole book and my writing on the same heron with these few sentences:

The whole thing boils down how you honor this current moment and not let it be influenced by the fear of past and the anxiety of the future. This complete dedication to the current moment is only possible if you honor yourself first, because only you can experience how this current moment will turn out for you. The moment you start to respect this moment here and now – you will be free.

If you have the ability to love, love yourself first
Carl Jung

Now that I have already explained what life ultimately boils down to, it will be important to understand why these sentences hold some gravitas. So, thanks for continuing with me hereon.

Deny trauma – Deny the comfort of causality

The core of individual psychology is the rejection of the causality. Our complete understanding of ourselves and the world we live in is based on the notion of cause and effect. It does immediately feel silly to reject that exact notion thereby making individual psychology illogical.

You will appreciate that not everything in whole can completely be justified or predicted with complete precision using the logic of cause and effect. There will always be some information that cannot be completely known for the given system (Heisenberg’s uncertainty principal points in the same direction). Our mind always makes decision, assumptions based on the current information, experiences we have till date and every one know that it is impossible to have all the information and all experiences that are there in the world for a person to understand his/her own existence.

So, in simple words – ‘who we are’ goes beyond the logic of cause and effect. You can be free once you break the chains of cause and effect. In the universe filled with infinite possibilities, there will always be something wrong and illogical, totally disconnected justification to the things happening to you and around you. It will be an injustice if you let that illogical justification define your whole upcoming life.

When we say that I became a person like this because something happened to me in past where I learned my lesson and changed myself into something else, we are just trying to convince ourselves to do things in certain way so that we will have less resistance to get things done in our ways. That is exactly where problems start emerging.

We crave for causality because it grants value to past; because it taught us some valuable outcomes and same causality can help us to predict what would happen in future. We always crave for certainty. But all of us know this by experience that we are rarely good at predicting our future. This furthermore unsettles the mind.

So, trauma is the pre-side-effect of causality (the post-side-effect of causality is the anxiety of the uncertainty of the future). We carry our traumas as badges to flaunt because these traumas feel very personal thus exclusive. The ways in which we carve out our personality from these traumatic experiences gives us a sense of special-ness. These bad experiences, traumas are a big part of our personality maybe due to a survival mechanism implying ‘I should be able to cope up with similar thing if they happen to me in future.’

See, the point is that if we stick to our traumas and fixate our personality on the same, we will never be able to explore the concepts that had better potential to improve our personality (and probably not be traumatic, bitter). We will be stuck in that loop of experiences related to that causality. Given that there are infinite possibilities, there is fair chance than we can be even better than what we were and what happened to us in the past. We are just better at finding reasons to justify our current position because we know we are comfortable here.

No matter what has occurred in your life up to this point, it should have no bearing at all on how you live from now on.

It might seem that when we are rejecting causality, we are choosing a non-nonsensical path. In reality, we are just avoiding the ways in which we are always fooling ourselves to remain in comfort of predictability. Using the excuse of causality, we are actually ‘inventing’ non-real reasons which hide the realest reality we can actually live.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
Richard P. Feynman

Once you deny this causality which you think made you who you are, you will immediately see who you really are. You will leave that burden behind. You will accept yourself for who you are. You will see that you can instantly detach yourselves from your past and your future too. The untapped possibilities open up.

This is self-acceptance in individual psychology.

Once you see how important you yourself are to live your own life, you will say –

“Before past and future let me at least appreciate my own current moment”.

That is now and here. Once you come to the terms with yourself you will realize how everyone is just like you even though we are separated by many aspects of life. Then you will appreciate how others have their own current moments to live and experience in their own ways.

All problems are interpersonal relationship problems – others have their own current moments to experience in their own ways

It is fundamentally impossible for a person to live life completely alone, and it is only in social contexts that the person becomes an ‘individual’.

Nobody can deny the fact that our surroundings make us who we are. Our baselines are our surroundings. A human being is the most basic unit of any society. Our understanding and awareness of self is impossible without a response from surrounding. How would you understand who you are if you never received any reaction, feedback from your surrounding? – It will be a delusional existence. You would have had an idea of who you are but would have been far from what is real.

Thus, when you start seeing that your surrounding will always be interacting with you, you will be able to see every reaction – feedback from surrounding especially people can never be completely cut off. This again feels senseless. If you are born alone, leave this world alone then why couldn’t me being alone throughout my existence be more justified? It is because we never had any sense of absoluteness right from our birth and this sense of absoluteness always remains un-achieved, it is just an ideal condition we are always trying to reach. Our core understandings are only possible with the relativeness, comparison of baselines.

That is exactly why even when you are trying to live your life alone, that ‘loneliness’ itself cannot be justified if there is no understanding of what being ‘together’ means. So, there will always be something connecting you to your surroundings. That is where relationship comes in picture. You cannot run away from interpersonal relationship. You will be surrounded by people (or at least what made them you even when you are sitting lonely).

So, when you are appreciating your current moment, it is natural that others will be respecting their current moments. This understanding will make you appreciate the importance of everyone’s being.

This will make the world around you seem less hostile. You will be filled with kindness for others.

So, you must first accept yourself first otherwise you will not come out of the hideous cycle of comfort of predictability, once you accept yourself to remain in now and here you start seeing here and now of others. You start valuing their here and now. That is why you start allowing people to be who they are, you stop expecting from others. You stop expecting your recognition from others, you stop pleasing people for your own good in the end.

Now that you are free from the burden and pursuit of desirable and predictable, anticipated feedback from surrounding you become tolerant of criticism and even dislike from others. That is truly when you are free. I want to focus on my now and here and nobody can stop me from experiencing that. Then you see this as the basic requirement for others too. This is exactly here the person becomes tolerant towards others. People start putting confidence in each other to create that safe space – the real safe space. People start respecting each other’s boundaries because they themselves have understood that they have their own limitations. This creates the sense of camaraderie – society.

It is precisely because we lay a foundation of unconditional confidence that it is possible for us to build a deep relationship.

This is confidence in others in individual psychology.

Discard other people’s tasks – reject the desire for recognition and accept that you being disliked is not in your hands

When you are appreciating your own now and here to its fullest, you will notice how important it is to reject all other distractions to honor this moment. You will limit these distractions to focus more on this moment. This is where you will see that even though we are molded by our society we have limitations and so do the others. So, it is better if one sets boundaries.

Setting such boundaries helps everyone to focus on their ‘now and here’ in deeper and richer ways.

If you are not living your life for yourself, then who is going to live it for you?

When one develops this understanding, they will clearly see what lies immediately in their own control and what not. If you are busy in trying to control what cannot be controlled by you, how would you have enough resources to appreciate your ‘here and now’? That why it is important to not focus on what you can’t control. Those will be someone else’s to control, that is not you task. That is exactly why you cannot pressurize people to do things in your ways. People can have their own reasons, limitations to not do things in your ways. It has to come from their side.

Forcing change while ignoring the person’s intention will only lead to an intense reaction.

Building on this understanding, you will start appreciating how doing what you love and not expecting anything in return is more than enough. You did what you love. Whether to appreciate it and recognize it, praise it is in other’s control not yours. Now that you have accepted yourself, you do it for yourself, then you won’t crave for attention from others, then you don’t crave for superiority, dominance. You come on level to level with your surroundings. You appreciate that whatever one wants to become that journey has to be completed by only them. Then you appreciate how we are trying to please others to get things done in our way when they were never in our control. You let go of the things which you cannot control and start focusing on what you can. That is why it is normal that some people (who were trying to get things done from you in their ways) will dislike you for not doing them in their own ways. This shows that you are honoring your ‘now and here’

The cost of freedom in interpersonal relationship is that one is disliked by other people

Once you understand that it’s normal to be disliked, rather that indicates that we are doing our own thing you will appreciate what it really means to be genuinely be appreciated by society. Then you will feel like transferring this feeling to others too. Now that you have experienced this feeling for yourself, you would genuinely want others to feel that to. The things then you will do for others will have no intent of return because you very well know that returning favor is other people’s task.

If one’s means for gaining a feeling of contribution turns out to be ‘being recognised by others’, in the long run, one will have no choice but to walk through life in accordance with other people’s wishes.

The feeling and act of contribution has to be selfless and this selflessness is possible only when you are valuing your ‘now and here’. If you still are not valuing your ‘now and here’, it is very easy for you to get swayed by the likes of others and then you will end up in pleasing others and whether others will be pleased by what you did for that recognition is not in your control. This means the most probable fate is misery.

So, self-acceptance builds courage to do it in your way whether others like it or not. This detachment from opinions of others pushes you to do the things which were impossible before – what else is freedom them? Then you understand the value of self-acceptance. You will then have the selfless feeling to let others experience and understand this. This selfless act for others will feed back into your sense of own being. This will support your feeling of self-acceptance. Once you close this feed-back loop, you will see what others are missing. You will help others in the real way. This will create the sense of belonging for you which further creates the real sense of meaning in life.

This is contribution to others in individual psychology.

Where the center of the world is – there is no absolute cause and effect – there is no such thing as the first start and the last end

If you are ‘the center of the world’, you will have no thoughts whatsoever regarding commitment to the community; because everyone else is ‘someone who will do something for me’, and there is no need for you to do things yourself. But you are not the center of the universe and neither am I.

Adler’s individual psychology thus focuses on a feedback loop of three key things:

One – Self-acceptance – you are who you are ‘now and here’, not what made you who you are

Once you accept yourself you give yourself better chances to live an earnest life

Two – Confidence in others – now that you have appreciated how valuable, irreplaceable and incomparable living in ‘now and here’ is, you let people do their own thing because they have their own ‘now and here’. You put confidence in others, you do it not because you want something in return because returning the favor is in their control. This builds the real sense of community, belonging, safe space.

Three – Contribution to others – Once you start believing in people just like the person you are you appreciate what it means to be felt accepted. You try to support this feeling by contributing back to your safe space. You want it to be done by yourself because you now know that contributing back is in your control – your task. This further crystallizes your sense of self-acceptance.

Now that you have appreciated what it means to become truly free, it is normal to reject the false sense of superiority, false sense of being special. Every moment becomes same to you. This does not mean that you become numb to sadness or happiness. It just means that you appreciate that this too shall pass, all I have to live and experience is ‘now’. You lose the idea of a goal to be achieved and accept the real goal, the real target is to become the process.

Life goes on

For a human being, the greatest unhappiness is not being able to like oneself.

Although our existence is bound by birth and death, cause and effect. The reality filled with infinite possibilities does not follow that logic and we fail to notice that difference. Just to make the sense of the infinite possibilities we resort to certain assumptions, prejudices, reasons, past events, future expectations. We never question them with complete honesty because questioning them will bring existential crisis. We all know that our foundations really are not pure or absolute. Once you accept this you will see that it is very easy and important to accept who you are now. This further induces kindness for others. This creates the community. This is called Holism in individual psychology.

You must appreciate how causality brings in determinism in our lives. This determinism is kind of responsible for the lack of freedom in our lives. When we are suffering it is this exact determinism imparted by causality that builds helplessness. One must carry the courage to break out of this determinism. The courage is necessary because we never want to let go the comfort of predictability which determinism offers.

We resort to certain version of our life story when we are completely aware that we can totally change our life story. We are always taking the support of ‘I am like this because this happened to me’. This is how everyone’s story is. There are very few people who have dared to say – ‘I have gone through this for long but not anymore.’ This requires for you to appreciate yourselves first, when you accept who you are you move on to the path of improvement whereas when you are trying to act according to the like of people around you, you are actually proving the point that you don’t like the version that you are that is why you are ready to become the one which people would like and tragedy of this path is that the task of being liked by others is not in your control.

That is why whining about why we didn’t reach there would never help us to reach there or even embark on journey in that direction. We are hesitating to make our own move.

As long as we postpone life, we can never go anywhere, and will only pass our days one after the next in dull monotony, because we think of here and now as just a preparatory period.

Be real, not a hypocrite

People want to like themselves. They want to feel that they have worth. In order to feel that, they want a feeling of contribution that tells them ‘I am of use to someone’. And they seek recognition from others as an easy means for gaining that feeling of contribution.

The main reason Adler’s individual psychology didn’t receive enough attention is because it feels completely self-contradicting and hypocritical on surface level.

You will find these seeming contradictions everywhere in Adler’s ideas. It will say that we are social animals and are defined by society but in next moment it will say that you need to have the courage to be disliked by the people around you.

One time it says that you should not interfere in other people’s tasks and next time it says that you need to have a feeling of contribution for the same people.

One time it will say that you have to sever the relationships where others are not realizing their own tasks and making life difficult for you and on the other hand it will say that you should be unconditionally confident in others endlessly.

One time it will say that you should completely focus on yourselves and then it will say that you are part of a bigger family, bigger universe and you will be happy when you contribute to this bigger community to create a sense of belonging.

If I am being disliked then how the hell would I be happy?!?

If you inspect each of these seemingly contradicting ideas you will find one simple fact – the fact that we are walking living paradoxes and in spite of that we demand sense and logic about who we are.

The sense of self or individual cannot be appreciated well if you never know what it means to be surrounded by people. And there is always some interchange happening between individuals which makes it a society. We often see society as a group which is everything minus ‘I’. We fail to recognize that if I fix myself in certain way the others around me will fix themselves in response to that way and then most of the individuals who constitute the society will fix themselves in certain way. Means even a single person can effectively change the society.

What people actually miss when they come across the ideas put forth by Alfred Adler is the possibility that we can truly reject causality. I would call this unawareness the curse for the humanity. Our sense of ‘being’ inherently originates from some non-absolute attributes, relative references that we have to accept them as the ultimate truth right from our birth to make the sense out of all these infinite possibilities.

We are so entangled in the suffering and happiness waving between the life and death that we ignore that we are born, dead and again reborn every moment. The trick that causality plays in our life is that it tries to preserve the previous step to justify our current stage thereby freezing our present. Whereas what we should do is to just be in now and here which needs courage because there is no guaranteed layout, map to guide you. You have to walk your path all by yourself.

What people fail to notice is that the comfort of predictability is just in this moment but this sense of comfort has no control over future rather it intensifies the pain due to the randomness of the unpredictable future.

The secret to happy life is to be involved in everything and still not be attached to them.

A Hindsight For Better Future

Morgan Housel – the famous author of ‘The Psychology of Money’ has another important book called “Same as Ever” which gives insight into things which have never changed over the course of time. Same as Ever drives the motto of objective flexibility and subjective awareness of every event happening around us and with us. It also highlights that our mind is the first and the easiest one to fool, which leads to false sense of superiority over others and creates biases. Once we accept that nothing is perfect, no one is perfect – it injects humility and forgiveness. It also makes us to be grateful for what we possess today. The ability to see every event at the same level is a superpower any one of us can have.

An important book from Morgan Housel called “Same as Ever”

Somebody, make me a time machine

Life would be easy if we had a way to accurately predict the consequences of the events/ actions.

Scenario 1 – what would be your reaction if some random person hands you a $1,000,000 lottery ticket and, in few moments, you realize that you just won that lottery?

Scenario 2 – what would happen if an ambitious project that you worked on tirelessly for many years while sacrificing your other priorities – ends into a big failure because of a seemingly impossible and insignificant event/ error?

For most of us these two scenarios are practically impossible but the odds are still non-zero. They can happen in reality.

How can we be sure that they selectively happen to certain person? Scenario 1 for ourselves and Scenario 2 for our enemies especially… (Just kidding)

If you closely observe the lives we are living right now, you will see that we are always oscillating between such events which demand certainty of outcomes even before the are realized. We have this innate urge to remain ready for such events; it is what we are always striving for.

Now, one question – are we living in a matrix? Is universe a simulation?

If the answer is ‘YES’, then it means that every outcome should be predetermined. If everything is predetermined then why things don’t happen the way we ‘want’? Does that mean that we lack the computational capabilities to precisely calculate the outcome? OR is what is destined to happen different from what we ‘want’?

If the answer is ‘NO’, then everything explodes into meaninglessness. The answers are nihilistic.

Looking at the both outcomes of this question we see that we need a baseline to make our decision making effective. Is there a formula to systematically put all the things happening around? What are somethings in nature whose knowledge will ensure our satisfactory existence. (I am being very optimistic while writing ‘satisfactory’ word here.)

In simple words, what is the formula to live a good life? whether it is predictable or not.

Morgan Housel the famous author of the Psychology of Money wrote one important book called Same as Ever which tries to answer this same question. Same as Ever drives the motto of objective flexibility and subjective awareness of every event happening around us and with us.

This is a deep dive into Morgan Housel’s book “Same as Ever”.

I will try to keep this short. Here are some instructions:

Those who have read this book – each idea in this book is numbered in the sequence Morgan explains in the flow of the book. So, #1 is Hanging by a Thread as mentioned in book and #23 is Wounds heal, Scars last

Those who haven’t read the book – I have given short summary of what Morgan discusses in each of the 23 ideas. That should help you to wrap you head around my distilled down version of this book.

(I apologize for putting that part in the end and spoiling the conclusion/ discussion on this book.)

I would say this book has been one of the most important books I have come across. (I am an average book reader by the way. So, not sure if same would be the case for other people.) While going through each idea, you will realize that something keeps on repeating; and even though it repeats, it brings new perspective into that specific discussion. My attempt to summarize this book focuses on picking what is common but connected to all the facts mentioned in the book and also their connection to the reality we live in.

Discussions

The discussion is in 3 steps, so adjusting our understanding to previous step is key to understand the next step. The illustrative images in each step of the discussion connects the ideas from the book to a common central idea. It will be handy if you read this with the book in your hand or you can jump to the point-to-point summary (the part after conclusion) in a neighboring tab of your web browser.

Step 1 discussion:

Figure 1. Finite and recurring cycle of compounding processes

You will see in the figure 1 that reality is ever changing process of infinite real events. The key to understand what is happening is to see every event containing same potential at first. Keep in mind – same potential – neither good nor bad. Once you assign every event with equal potential you will see that compounding accounts for that single event to build on and create the next event. Sometimes two big events will compound together to create an enormous event.

Now comes the fun part – the enormity of every compounded event will always be in favor of someone and against the favor of the complementary population. This makes that event good or bad for people. Some will suffer some will rejoice.

A person who knows how the world, nature or universe works will not have preferences, favor-ability towards such events. The answer lies in the cyclical nature of such events. Keeping a single event sustained for long duration demands to go many things to work in supporting ways and as every event has same potency in the infinite possibilities, it surely will lead to the downfall of that process. It’s just matter of time.

Talking about matter of time – the game of life is not about winning, rather it is about remaining in the game longer as the compounding pays off and decomposes into new start.

Our limited life span intuitively doesn’t allow us to wait till the compounding pays off. That is exactly where we make mistake. That is exactly why we are devastated by a single seeming insignificant event causing destruction of our favorite things.

Step 2 discussion:

Our urge to predict everything to ensure survival demands perfection in every entity considered for precision and accuracy of prediction. As reality is made up of many real possibilities, this count of possibilities and the errors associated with their measurements require huge resources which render the prediction process impractical for the possible outcomes.

(Keep in mind right now that we are only talking about those variables, events which we can understand; we haven’t even entered into those variables, events we don’t even understand or know in first place.)

The moment we introduce poorly known, immeasurable but significant variable – the whole game of predictability crumbles down.

That is exactly why instead of striving for better predictability, it is a smart choice to be prepared for everything. Knowing that this too shall end soon should comfort us to prepare for such things/ events. The rejection of the urge for perfection, absoluteness and full efficiency will immediately prepare us for everything that reality unfolds.

Step 3 discussion:

Figure 3. In the end, we are only human.

Now that we know how every event is potent and can immediately contribute to a cyclical process of compounding, it is important to understand how we comprehend that compounding. As everything that we do is directly linked to our survival we are by default born with preferences. These preferences get eliminated or amplified based on the life experiences we have. Even though our urge for predictability demands objectivity we often forge the subjective parts of every narrative. The subjectivity is important, because the reasons to survive are different for different people.

Conclusion – Human behavior and laws of nature

Our mind rarely understands anything as a flow of entities. Almost all of the fundamental entities existing in nature are flow – continuum entities. But in order to understand them study them we break them into pieces which makes is practical to quantify and predict. For time as an example – we have past – present – future; we need this separation to comprehend the flow of time. This slight arrangement of separation of events just for the convenience of communication and comprehension for our minds has now become such a second nature of our realities that we could hardly come out of the idea of past and future. Past keeps on haunting and future creates anxiety due to the uncertainty. Nostalgia from past brings us joy and what advancements future will present inspires us to work harder today. We rarely notice that this works both ways.

It is really difficult and impractical for our mind to let go of this past-present-future mentality. This convenience of separation for the sake of improving our decision making and survival has imparted a sense of time being a set of discrete isolated events, independent events. This steals the feature of hyper-connectivity in our understanding of reality.

Once we come out of the discretization of time as past-present-future we will see that every event is equally important and highly interconnected and multidimensional (in the sense that it creates multiple real effects on multiple entities) Our mind being biased for survival and in energy optimization mode, it always focuses on what is required to remain alive. This sense of remaining alive now has evolved into intellectual survival – as in what things we define as our life. So, even though from objective point of view all events remain exactly the same, on our personal level certain events are highly important because they change the things we are attached to in a drastic way – in most cases our life. We are now scared to die intellectually – a mental death – the death of our truths – our identity. And trust me, this happens frequently.

Morgan in this book very beautifully noted down the factual version of the reality we live in; it is beautiful because it shows how our human nature is always affecting the seemingly objective reality of the most of the things.

This is my ultimate distilled down version of the book “Same as Ever” by Morgan Housel.

One point summary of ‘Same as Ever’ by Morgan Housel

It also highlights that our mind is the first and the easiest one to fool, which leads to false sense of superiority over others and creates biases. Once we accept that nothing is perfect, no one is perfect – it injects humility and forgiveness. It also makes us grateful for what we possess today. What else could be more important than this to be justified as a human being?

These points ask for detachment from predictions and end results. A sense of responsibility for the actions could be the best version of any person – this exactly is invoked when we are trying to prepare for the future instead of striving to predict it.

I think we need more ideas like this when we are fighting for survival for such unimportant things where we already know the real, practical answers but have decided to ignore them.

The ability to see every event at the same level is a superpower any one of us can have.

For those who haven’t read the book here is the point-to-point summary of the book “Same as Ever”:

#1. If you know where we’ve been you realize, we have no idea where we’re going.

Here, Morgan gives many real-life events where a single decision led to catastrophic events causing loss of many lives and valuable resources.

When we study history even when we know what exactly happened, it is tricky to pinpoint the trigger for that event. There will be why and how behind every small-small event and when we will reach to its origin it becomes really difficult to wrap your mind around that petty thing which had led to such a big and historic event.

The absurdity of past connections should humble your confidence in predicting future ones.

#2. We are very good at predicting the future, except for the surprises – which tend to be all that matter

In very simple words, Morgan highlights the extents of our imagination and thinking. Even though they are infinite, the nature in which we are existing is equally or rather infinite in bigger and greater sense. That is exactly why even when we think we are prepared for everything, nature will always have something new in its pocket to reveal and not being ready for that exact new thing makes that event overwhelming for us because we were not ready for that exact new reveal.

It’s impossible to plan for what you can’t imagine, and the more you think you’ve imagined everything the more shocked you’ll be when something happens that you hadn’t considered.

This itself should humble us. That is why preparation is more important than forecasting.

Invest in preparedness, not in prediction

#3. The first rule of happiness is low expectations.

The most important observation Morgan puts here is in the ways we gauge our resourcefulness – it is always relative – material or immaterial – objects or emotions. We always have a baseline which is created by comparing ourselves with those around us. That is exactly why we rarely appreciate what we have at our hands.

We always crave for what ‘they’ seem to have instead of appreciating what we already and really have in our hands. Even when we are unsure about whether others actually have those things, still we crave those things for us, which is tragic!

Morgan expresses that almost all of the truly precious things in our life don’t come with a price tag that is why we never care to evaluate their importance – like good health, freedom. Same is the case with expectations.

When Morgan is asking for low expectations, it is not omission of the motivation to improve ourselves. Low expectations ask for realistic expectations. One must always be observant of the gap between what we wanted and what happened in reality.

#4. People who think about the world in unique ways you like also think about the world in unique ways you won’t like.

Here, Morgan talks about the role models, heroes, leaders we consider the best of us all. It is very important to understand that they are the best among us all because they did something in very exceptional manner which made them stand out of the well-defined ‘boring’ and ‘average’ structure of the society. If they would have followed the same paths that other followed, they would have been just like others.

In order to stand out of the masses they did something different.

Now be cautious! This different could be seen as good or bad as per the average crowd level. And keep in mind this specialty in that person is because others don’t have it in them. So, in order to create and develop something special out of the same average crowd one has to overcome a resistance of the masses where a trade-off is done with other aspects of their personality. Sometimes the exceptional conditions create exceptional personalities which many people fail to recognize.

Of course they [successful people] have abnormal characteristics. That’s why they’re successful! And there is no world in which we should assume that all those abnormal characteristics are positive, polite, endearing, or appealing.

Simple words, there is always some trade off to achieve something truly exceptional.

You gotta challenge all the assumptions. If you don’t, what is doctrine on day one becomes dogma forever after

#5. People don’t want accuracy. They want certainty.

A common trait of human behavior is the burning desire for certainty despite living in an uncertain and probabilistic world.

Morgan discusses how we are always trying to alleviate the bad results, pain in all life scenarios. The urge to survive supersedes everything. Our brain always wants a confirmed trigger on whether to fight or flight for given problem. It is always in energy optimization mode and in the uncertain world filled of infinite possibilities it wants something to act on immediately. Otherwise, brain knows that it won’t survive. The urge for certainty – that clarity of whether to fight or flight is the most important information than how precisely we are assessing the reality. It’s like brain takes a shortcut to ensure survival. That is exactly why huge load of information especially numbers overwhelm us.

The core is that people think they want an accurate view of the future but what they really crave is certainty.

#6. Stories are always more powerful than statistics.

If we continue the train of thoughts from previous point, soon we will appreciate how dearly we appreciate stories instead of boring numbers. Even when stories would tell a lie and numbers would tell the real, pure truth we would always choose a fake story over realistic numbers. Our brain doesn’t want to overwork itself to ensure survival.

Good stories tend to do that [evoking emotions and connecting the dots in millions of people’s heads]. They have extraordinary ability to inspire and evoke positive emotions, bringing insights and attention to topics that people tend to ignore when they’ve previously been presented with nothing but facts.

Stories create an emotional, empathic bridge between people which our brain already knows since the childhood. The very first think a baby does to start breathing is crying not counting. (I know the analogy is lame but it works here) we are implicitly trained to actively process emotions first and then numbers. Stories enhance this ability on next level.

That is exactly why emotional-ity will always be preferred over rationality.

We live in a world where people are bored, impatient, emotional, and need complicated things distilled into easy-to grasp scenes.

#7. The world is driven by forces that cannot be measured.

Morgan brings here more clarity on the objective nature of the numbers even when they are showing the truth, the reality. The point that our reality is made up of the infinite possibility itself shows that the sheer limitation of our computation capability will create a partial picture of the bigger reality. This happens because many of the factors which influence our reality are beyond quantification. That is exactly why whenever we are making any decision based on objective and true data (like truest of true numbers) we should bear in mind that these numbers are not accounting for those unmeasured factors which also affect the reality we are trying to understand.

Some things are immeasurably important. They’re either impossible, or too elusive, to quantify. But they can make all the difference in the world, often because their lack of quantification causes people to discount their relevance or even their existence.

In simple words, our story loving brain is driven by intuition and safe/ familiar information which is unquantifiable most of the times.

#8 Crazy doesn’t mean broken. Crazy is normal; beyond the point of crazy is normal.

Morgan is trying to point out how we understand what is means to be at the top. He established that most of the tops we experience in life are to because we have experienced falling down from them and we would have never understood that we were at top unless we have had fall down from them.

The only way to discover the limits of what’s possible is to venture a little way past those limits.

We never appreciate summit of something unless we start climbing from down or fall down from that summit. That is exactly why what made you feel at the top will make you safe and that attachment to safety will lead to your fall, the pain of fall will motivate you to climb new heights and again the cycle will go on.

#9. A good idea on steroids quickly becomes a terrible idea.

Morgan here explains how evolution created the species around us. There was always some trade-off while evolving because of the forces of nature. In nature nothing has absolute competitive advantage otherwise a single species will take over everything that single species alone will lead to its downfall and destruction due to the lack of diversity.

Most things have a natural size and speed and backfire quickly when you push them beyond that.

In simple words, anything that is burns bright, goes out fast. Resources behind every process are limited and even if they would be available in surplus, extent of their utilization affects the outcome and overall integrity of that process.

#10. Stress focuses your attention in ways that good times can’t.

The urge to survive makes our brain to push to its untested limits. These limits are there just for the optimum behavior so that our brain could actually use the reserve energy when it is the question of life and death. When it come down to do or die – people have always delivered in surprising and shocking ways.

The circumstances that tend to produce the biggest innovations are those that cause people to be worried, scared, and eager to move quickly because their future depends on it.

Morgan points out here that this stress should be healthy because there is always a natural size of everything as explained in point #9.

There is a delicate balance between helpful stress and crippling disaster.

#11. Good news comes from compounding, which always takes time, but bad news comes from a loss in confidence or a catastrophic error that can occur in a blink of an eye.

Growth always fights against competition that slows its rise.

Morgan here shows how things that exist today as our reality have gone through multiple iterations. They have already failed many times and started again long ago; its just that the compounding imparted grandeur and power to fight against the adversities of the life which made their realisation possible here in front of us. There will again be some simple, seemingly insignificant event which will destroy this creation and things will start again.

To enjoy peace, we need almost everyone to make good choices. By contrast, a poor choice by just one side can lead to war.

#12. When little things compound into extraordinary things.

Here Morgan points out from the examples of history how in order to avoid a big calamity people ignored some small incidents which led to even bigger calamities. It is ingrained in our mind to overlook big events because the smaller events which lead to their realization are “small and insignificant”.

Small risks weren’t the alternative to big risks; they were the trigger.

#13. Progress requires optimism and pessimism to coexist.

Morgan here talks about how our preferences for each and everything have stolen away the realism in our lives. Instead of favoring one side, life is more about appreciation of the spectrum. It was never about who wins or who loses because both are short lived. It is always about who survived and stayed in the game longer. (Simon Sinek calls it the infinite game as explained in Game theory.)

The trick in any field – from finance to careers to relationships – is being able to survive the short-run problems so you can stick around long enough to enjoy the long-term growth.

Whoever lives to see the end wins but that victory is just over those who couldn’t survive. There will always be some room at the top because conditions never remain the same.

#14. There is a huge advantage to being a little imperfect.

The more perfect you try to become, the more vulnerable you generally are

The idea of perfection immediately steals the flexibility from any given system. Because of the perfection the system is bound to certain thriving conditions and exactly when you expose this system to the reality of infinite possibilities there will always be some ‘seemingly’ trivial event which will take down that whole system.

A little imperfection makes the system to bend thereby giving place to perform in unimagined conditions and as we have already learnt that the reality is full of unimaginable but real events.

Morgan beautifully explains the ways in which natural evolution has worked out.

A species that evolves to become very good at one thing tends to become vulnerable at another.

…species rarely evolve to become perfect at anything, because perfecting one skill comes at the expense of another skill that will eventually be critical to survival.

Nature’s answer is a lot of good enough, below-potential traits across all species.

#15. Everything worth pursuing comes with a little pain. The trick is not minding that it hurts.

The really important and actually valuable things in life don’t come with a price tag and that is exactly why we are not ready to pay any price. This makes our minds to wish for such things because of the false sense of entitlement. This same entitlement blinds us from the real actions which can lead us to this achievement and we keep on whining about not achieving these things. A wishful thinking!

A unique skill, an underrated skill, is identifying the optimal amount of hassle and nonsense you should put up with to get ahead while getting along.

#16. Most competitive advantages eventually die.

A we have now already understood that even a small event can lead to collapse of any grand creation and how easy it is to undermine any event we must now accept that nothing big will stay as it is now. Same goes for any competitive advantage. As things keep changing the advantages which made their impact big will become irrelevant with the changing things. One has to keep on reinventing in order to remain relevant and effective with the changing times.

Evolution is ruthless and unforgiving – it doesn’t teach by showing you what works but by destroying what doesn’t.

#17. It always feels like we’re falling behind, and it’s easy to discount the potential of new technology.

Morgan highlights how the innovations which we consider ground-breaking, world-changing were result of multiple small-small events creating synergy to coexist.

It’s so easy to underestimate how two small things can compound into an enormous thing.

#18. The grass is greener on the side that’s fertilized with bullshit.

You never know what struggles people are hiding.

As we have already seen our urge to compare our conditions with the conditions of others and always consider ours to be the worst most of the times, it is evident that we are experts in judging everything in its entirety based on very little information. Our biases and basic mentality feed this tendency furthermore. But reality is always like the iceberg.

Most of the things are harder than they look and not as fun as they seem.

#19. When the incentives are crazy, the behavior is crazy. People can be led to justify and defend nearly anything.

Morgan here shows that beyond envy people are driven by incentives. You can make people do almost anything, make them believe them in almost any thing if their interests are aligned in that. This is strong when people are helpless and when it is about their survival.

One of the strongest pulls of incentives is the desire for the people to hear only what they want to hear and see only what they want to see.

The beauty that Morgan points out is that this can also be used to bring good out of people.

It’s easy to underestimate how much good people can do, how talented they can become, and what they can accomplish when they operate in a world where their incentives are aligned towards progress.

#20. Nothing is more persuasive than what you’ve experienced first-hand.

As we have emotional beings and we have already seen that we will always prefer emotional clarity of falsehood over the numerical, arithmetic truth it shows that every part of our understanding of life is tied to our own individual experiences. We rarely appreciate the foretold truth. But we will appreciate all those things which we experience on our own.

That is also why there are certain truths which very few people have experienced but are not generally accepted by the masses because there is no part to connect personally. We can only connect personally only when we have passed through those experiences.

That is exactly why it is difficult to convince people of something really exceptional and extraordinary personal experience, that also why it is also easy to fool people.

The next generation never learns anything from the previous one until it’s brought home with a hammer… I’ve wondered why the nest generation can’t profit from the generation before, but they never do until they get knocked in the head by experience.

#21. Saying “I’m in it for the long run” is a bit like standing at the base of Mount Everest, pointing to the top, and saying, “That’s where I’m heading.” Well, that’s nice. Now comes the test.

In simple words, Morgan shows us that we rarely will ever know what we have signed up for. Most of the times our simulative experiences and thoughts will be broken down by the unimaginable possibilities of the reality. Instead of craving for that summit one must try to stand strong while they have started this journey and remain faithful to this step they are taking ahead. This attitude has to be kept with every step which very few people maintain.

Long term is less about time horizon and more about flexibility.

#22. There are no points awarded for difficulty.

Almost all of the times people appreciate certain things, certain people because they couldn’t not have or become like them. This crates a mysticism. We are always attracted to mystical things because the urge to know better (to improve chances of survival against unknown) is our hidden trait.

Complexity creates this mysticism instantly. That is why we most of the time reject truths which are so obvious and in front of our eyes and accept that intellectually stimulating complicated lie. The complexity makes our brain to actively engage in that thing which creates an attachment just because our brain was invested in it.

Complexity gives a comforting impression of control while simplicity is hard to distinguish from cluelessness.

#23. What have you experienced that I haven’t that makes you believe what you do? And would I think about the world like you do if I experienced what you have?

Morgan points out that our lives even though we have common experiences, we associate ourselves to certain groups, certain ideologies on deeper levels and at core we are totally different and individual.

Many debates are not actual disagreements; they’re people with different experiences talking over each other.

References:

Morgan Housel’s book “Same a s Ever”.
Morgan Housel

The Body Snatcher – Weighing Intent Against Action

Robert Louis Stevenson is known for his world-famous novels ‘Treasure Island’ and ‘Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ . His short story called “The Body Snatcher” throws light on the mentality and evolution of the dangerous psychopaths. The false sense of greater good, the ability to ‘suppress destructive thoughts’, ‘destructive actions’ to justify superiority keeps driving certain types of criminals to cross the limits of humanity, ethics, morality. It shows that even though the consequences of wrong actions may not get punished due to the limitations of the laws of the respective times, the punishment of wrong thought is almost instant which is the degradation of the person’s psyche through ‘guilt’ and ‘fear’ – and most of the time it goes unnoticed and builds over time resulting in even more grave dangerous acts. It shows how thought and action are equally important in the overall personality. The wrong act may not get punished but the wrong thought has already punished the mind.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous short story “The Body Snatcher”

The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.
Robert Louis Stevenson

In storytelling, especially in visual storytelling media, there is an expression – “Show! Don’t tell.” It is very impactful because it makes the viewers to put their minds consciously in the narrative thereby it increases their engagement in the story; this makes them to consider the narrative as their own story. The emotional impact is very high. It is furthermore potent if the story is horror or thriller. More the viewers feel engaged, more scared they will be.

But there are some stories especially, some unconventional crime stories where there is no point of relatability because not every one of us is a criminal, not every mind thinks the way given psychopath, criminal is thinking in the story.

Now the impact of such stories is solely dependent on how they are written, expressed. The mastermind depicting, writing such stories knows that being a human we have all the tendencies of whatever good there is in the world and whatever bad there is in the world. It is just matter of which of those we give chance to flourish and which of those we suppress to make our ultimate personality. The master author uses that fine thread of slight ‘unnatural’ tendencies we have suppressed to make us simulate the real horrors the villains of his story would commit. These stories create impact and relatability through our urge to simulate the events to understand the end truth of the narrative. Inspiration from real events adds further more spice in such stories. (That is exactly why “Based on real incidents’ has remained an impactful (but still a cliché) opening for any horror story. We know that it’s a cliché but it creates a space in our minds that there could be a possibility of this happening in real life)

R L Stevenson wrote one such short story which feels like a normal depiction of a crime but in the very last sentences the horror of the story unfolds thereby leaving the readers shocked and scared. We will deep dive into this famous story written by Robert Louis Stevenson.

The Body Snatcher – Synopsis

This is a story of two young men who studied in the school of medicine in Edinburgh in early 1800s.

Macfarlane is now a Doctor and Fettes – old drunken but literate man was his companion in the past academic times. The main story starts unfolding as Dr. Macfarlane and Fettes see each other after long time unexpectedly which revives the memories of their wrongdoings in their shared past at the school of medicine.

Being a good and sincere lad, Mr. Fettes gets the job of maintaining the dissecting room held by Mr. K_, the teacher of anatomy. Macfarlane was assistant to Mr. K_. So, Fettes and Macfarlane were responsible for ensuring the smooth demonstrations of anatomy to the class by Mr. K_. In order to ensure the duty and credibility, Fettes and Macfarlane had crossed the limits in the ways they would source such dead bodies. There comes a day when Fettes is shocked to find out that the dead body he received is of Jane Galbraith – a lady he met in a good health just a day before. He tries to bring sanity in this matter by asking Macfarlane but Macfarlane rejects that idea of identifying and informing Police about the possible murder because that suspicion opens the possibility that all the dead-bodies they receive for dissection in the class of anatomy are results of crimes thereby making them immediate criminals.

Here we come to know that whenever there is shortage of dead bodies, Fettes and Macfarlane went to dig out the graves in the graveyards around Edinburgh.

One day Fettes discovers that Macfarlane has one acquaintance called Gray who has some sort of control over the behaviour of Macfarlane as if Gray knew something really dark about Macfarlane and revealing it would jeopardize Macfarlane’s reputation. Gray uses this trick of black-mailing to have a feast on Macfarlane’s money even though Macfarlane was not into it.

Upon the passing of night, Fettes understands that Macfarlane took care of the Gray Problem when he sees the dead body of Gray as a new subject for the dissection class. Macfarlane himself delivers that body to Fettes and it is now clear that he himself murdered him. But there is no chance to inform authorities and bring more trouble for Fettes. Macfarlane is not bothered by all this and rather feels free as the axe of Gray no more exists on his neck. He ensures Fettes that its just a matter of time that these dreadful memories will fade away and they both will be on their way as if nothing happened.

Fettes feels the same but both Macfarlane and Fettes have the event of Gray etched on the back of their minds as they now consciously avoid any direct or indirect conversations leading to Gray.

One day due to the shortage of subjects for dissection they go on the ‘resurrection’ hunt to a graveyard to dig out a dead body of an old farmer lady. They take a halt before going on to the main task of ‘resurrection’. They are caught in rain and darkness when they start to remove the dead body of the lady from the grave. They load that body in their small, congested cart in darkness. The body lies partly on their shoulders, is bothering them and is shifting continuously due to the uneven roads.

The uneasy dark and rainy environment, the dogs following the cart makes Macfarlane uneasy as if someone, something unnatural is watching them. So, Macfarlane asks Fettes to light the lamp so that they can at least check the dead body and keep it, adjust it properly in the cart so that they would continue the journey. Upon lighting the lamp both Macfarlane and Fettes are shocked to discover that the dead body they retrieved from the grave of the old lady is a dead body of Gray – a dissected dead body of Gray.

Inspiration From Real Incident

William Hare (left) and William Burke (right)

Robert Louis Stevenson’s short story “The Body Snatcher” was published in December 1884 and was based on infamous and real “Burke and Hare Murders” in 1828. Burke and Hare were owners of a lodging facility. Burke and Hare committed 16 murders to supply dead bodies in exchange of money to Dr. Knox who used them for dissections. This event led Dr. Knox to lose his credibility and fame. Dr. Robert Knox was a famous anatomist of his time. He was not convicted because he was not directly involved in the dealings of the dead bodies from Burke and Hare. Burke was hanged in public and Hare got immunity because he supported the state’s evidences and testified against Burke.

The way in which R L Stevenson knitted the story is what made the story interesting. He calls the anatomist doctor Mr. K_ when the readers had an informed notion of Burke and Hare Murders and Dr. Knox in those times. So, it makes the readers to find out themselves that mystery around “Mr. K_”. Mr. K_ of the story is no other than Dr. Knox of Edinburgh.

Psychopathic Tendencies – How Criminals Justify Their Crimes

For any average person, committing single murder is a huge, seemingly unnatural, inhumane and in the end an illegal act to fully commit. The consequences are dangerous. Then how come Burke and Hare committed 16 repetitions of this crime? They were just some small business owners.

In similar sense, Mr. Fettes and Mr. Macfarlane were just students of medicine and were doing their duties to ensure the supply of subjects for dissections. What made them to go on the streak of multiple illegal activities in the story? They were just doing their due diligence to Mr. K_.

Upon looking at the depths of the investigation of Burke and Hare Murder Case we will find that the first time they sold a dead body was for totally different reason. One of their lodgers died of old age while leaving a debt of 4 Sterling Pounds. Burke and Hare decided to sell the dead body to settle the debt. Note that dead bodies in those times were scarce for dissection and demonstration. They sold the body to Dr. Knox’s Private Anatomy School. Professor Doctor was not directly involved in the dealing. Burke and Hare received 7 Sterling Pounds for the body.

From hereon they decided to take the control of people’s lives for such beneficial business of dead bodies and started murdering the people who lodged in their facility. They killed 16 people in this way to deal for money in exchange of dead bodies. The careless murder they committed was to kill a beggar with clubfoot and his dead body was easily identified by a student due to this disability which made him to limp. Knox is said to make that body unidentifiable by removing the head and feet.

They had differences in their partnership which made them to split these acts for themselves. During an attempt to forcefully shift the lodgers to Hare’s establishment, Burke killed a lady and the lodgers who were shifting found the body while they returned to retrieve their belongings from Bare’s establishment. This was reported to Police but the dead body was already sold.

Looking at these events you will see that it is the rejection of morality and false sense of greater good and self-betterment which drives the criminal to commit the crime again and again. Burke and Hare got involved in these acts for the monetary benefits where it was easy to bypass the system and provisions like Dr. Knox’s anatomy demonstrations. Dr. Knox was driven to improve his credibility by flaunting his skills and demonstrations of dissections in the medical community.

R L Stevenson took this fine thread of reality to create Mr. Fettes and Mr. Macfarlane in his story. We will see that Mr. Fettes is shocked when he identifies a dead body of the lady he just met, that too in good health. Mr. Fettes had raised concern to Macfarlane but as Macfarlane was experienced and conditioned knowing that dead bodies once dissected were beyond any identification and legal jurisdiction. Actually, being a student of medicine, Macfarlane was expected to have a sense of the importance of life for any human being. The false sense that this will not get discovered by anyone practically and all of this was being done to maintain the reputation of his teacher thereby improving his credibility created a false sense of greater good in Macfarlane.

There is a section in this story where Macfarlane expresses how he feels about all these matters of dead bodies and Gray’s murder. He expresses following to Fettes in the story –

“The great thing is not to be afraid. Now, between you and me, I don’t want to hang-that’s practical; but for all cant, Macfarlane, I was born with a contempt. Hell, God, Devil, right, wrong, sin, crime, and all the old gallery of curiosities- they may frighten boys, but men of the world, like you and me, despise them. Here’s to the memory of Gray!”

The way he says all this shows that his mind has developed a false sense of greatness to justify his wrong-doings. Now he wants to prove his manliness. It’s like a defense mechanism to cover all the guilt which comes from committing such crimes. The criminal considers the motivations behind his criminal acts are way superior than the moral weight of what is right and what is wrong. (The word ‘CANT’ use in expression “for all cant” means a criminal act, deceitful act, falsehood. Macfarlane very well knew that what he was doing was a crime.)

In case of Burke and Hare it started with settling the debt for ensuring proper monetary gains for stable business of lodging. Then it snowballed into series of murders because they were never caught in action and had a way to come out of the murders. They created that ‘ecosystem’.

Same ecosystem can be seen in this story.

What could have actually made difference is the sense of reality and integrity. Integrity is the behavior which we carry when no one is watching. Fettes had chance to expose all this system when he discovered the young Lady’s dead body. But only because he felt that this action came with lot of difficult consequences and impossible to favor him in the end, he keeps mum.

Fettes found that exposing Macfarlane and Mr. K_ and getting them punishment is the most impractical and impossible event – the inevitable and that is where he made his first mistake. He went with the flow, the wrong one.

The same would be the case for Burke and Hare. They could have asked authorities for the settlement of the debt from the old dead lodger. But, considering it a tedious route they considered the ill- route to sell it.

However difficult it may seem; impractical it may seem there is always a right way to do right things. The environment in which you are deciding your action is also playing a huge role in your choices. First helplessness shows you the path, then guilt follows and in order to mask that guilt the person creates a sense of greatness which demands sacrifices. This is real and constant in every generation of humanity. Most of the times right things are the toughest one to act on and accept.

Stevenson beautifully brought these human tendencies in his story which go hand in hand with the reality we live even today.

The Ending Of The Story – Real Or Supernatural?

What hangs people…is the unfortunate circumstance of guilt.
Robert Louis Stevenson

Many readers argue that the ending is supernatural and spooky. Robert Louis Stevenson in a masterful way maintains the realism of the story till the end. And in the last few closing sentences he mentions dead and dissected body of Gray which was completely destroyed many days ago in the reality of Fettes and Macfarlane. It is practically impossible for a body completely dissected to show itself in deep grave at completely different location. So that body definitely was not of dead Gray.

There are evidences to support this. Before going to the ‘resurrection’ job, Fettes and Macfarlane had stay in Fisher’s Tryst where they had drinks. So, it’s pretty much possible that whatever happened was under the influence of alcohol.

There is one more doubt that if it was real then at least one of them would have noticed the reality of the dead body. How can two men would have a shared delusion? A shared delusion can only be explained by a supernatural intervention.

The justification to opt out shared delusion is the shared guilt Fettes and Macfarlane had. It is a human tendency to make sense out of bunch of things which don’t make sense collectively when conditions are hostile. This sense is heightened when one is in hyperalert state, when one is in full fight or flight mode. Deep down Macfarlane knew the acts he is performing. The surrounding events just fuelled this sense of guilt and Stevenson beautifully created this environment in the minds of the readers.

You will notice that Macfarlane is completely unsettled and repulsive of minor things happening to him once they load the dead body. He hates the jumps that the body makes while going on an uneven track, he hates that ice-cold sackcloth flapping on his face, dogs following the cart on the road is unsettling to him (in reality we all know dogs would follow every vehicle going through their territory, especially in night), he also feels that the body has grown in shape (how would he know this if there was not enough light, as the lamp was not working?).

In this exact moment Stevenson injects this sentence for us readers which is a money shot –

“…and it grew and grew upon his mind that some unnatural miracle had been accomplished, that some nameless change had befallen the dead body, and that it was in fear of their unholy burden that the dogs were howling”

“The unholy burden” they both were carrying was the guilt they had suppressed long ago and not acted on it in rightful manner.

This guilt and intoxication are the main reasons behind the spooky conclusion of the story.

What Should Be Punished – The Action Or The Intent?

The Body Snatcher as a story and even the reality of Burke and Hare crime to which it is associated poses a very interesting question. What are the limits of judicial system, law and order?

As this statement from Kant goes, in order to be called a criminal in the eyes of the public, one must be seen to perform the crime or the evidences should support so. Thus ‘Law’ becomes more of a sociological term – ‘to arrest the degradation of human as a society’. On the other hand, Kant beautifully highlighted the unitary role of a person in the society. Simple logic says how a society is made of many ‘individuals’ coming together to interact for mutual benefit. Kant consciously asks for preservation of rights of others while achieving benefit otherwise society collapses (what is beneficial for one will not necessarily always be beneficial to others.) Which is why ethics prevent the degradation of the person on individual level. That is exactly where morality and integrity become more influential.

So, even though our generalized and biased, conditioned thinking makes us to weigh the wrong acts heavier than just their thinking about doing them, in the end they both weigh the same. Sometimes, even though these thoughts don’t get in the fruition of realised actions, they keep on affecting minor, seemingly insignificant decisions we make which ultimately create our personality and our psyche. Act of crime and thought of committing the same crime are same.

Friedrich Nietzsche posed this same dilemma of “what weighs heavy – action or intent?” in his book “Beyond Good and Evil”. I have discussed that in depth in the section “The Freedom of Actions” in my other blog post “The Free Spirit – Beyond Good and Evil “.

The gist of the things is that we will be able to appreciate the crime of ill-thinking when the stakes are really high as in any decision would have grave dangerous scale of destruction. If we will wait for the actions to be presented as wrong while we already know that it leads to wrong then even the thought of doing that action was wrong in the first place, even before the action’s ends were realized.

The Real Punishment – Where And How Does It Happen?

So, now that I have established that even the thought of doing wrong action is a crime then, one would definitely say that I must be a fool. Every one of us is always thinking of such ideas all the time – consciously and unconsciously. (Not of murdering someone obviously. Just recall the last time you cursed someone because they made your life miserable, or the thought that why bad things always happen with good people – especially ME!)

The answer is “It is really easy to fool our mind”. This is also where the core of the fiction in Robert Louis Stevenson’s short story The Body Snatcher and the reality of ‘Burke and hare Crime’ is overlapping.

Burke and Hare thought that their crimes were justified because of the profits of their business. Fettes and Macfarlane thought that their acts were justified for their survival and reputation.

Deep down they were completely engulfed in the guilt of their wrongdoings. So, if we follow the before-explained thought of Immanuel Kant, we will see that real actions from law will ensure realistic punishment but the punishment of the mind is instant, the guilt is injected immediately. This guilt if is “real”, it will immediately start eroding your personality and psyche. Which will eventually lead to unnatural events and acts of crime in real world.

I am saying the feeling of guilt to be “real”, because (again) it is really easy to fool our mind. One has to train mind to distinguish the difference between impulses, responses and their encouragement or suppression. One will realize that whenever there is suppression of wrong thought like guilt in this case, it leads to the defense mechanism – creating a cover up with false sense of greater good or the false security of not getting caught in action, on not having enough evidences. Even though they are not caught in society, the guilt has already passed its sentence on their personality, their self-image and psyche. Now such persons have just accepted what they have become. (This is how a psychopath would start their journey to justify all their crimes).

I am posing this also from the other perspective of ‘false-guilt’. Sometimes we consider ourselves guilty when in reality we were not responsible for those events. This false guilt will start taking even the good things you have.

The only way I see to handle any wrong thought is to not let it grow out of its own boundary of creation, not to feed it further. Not to mask it or suppress it but just let it remain there. The overgrowth and flourishing of good thoughts will eventually diminish its influence. It’s natural to have right or wrong thoughts for given stimulus. Response, reaction lies in our territory. You must understand that even the act of suppression demands extra efforts which requires extra involvement, this extra involvement is unconsciously feeding that wrong thought, thus suppression on mental level is not suppression rather it’s a feed. Which exactly what we keep on missing when judging between an action and its mere thought.

Egg Or Chicken? – Action Or Thought?

You will appreciate the dilemma created due the practical limitations of the world we live in. As it is really difficult to enter immediately into the mentality, psyche of the others – we have to always go by the external attributes of everyone around us to measure the rightness or wrongness. That is why act imposing guilt must also be supported by the thought of guilt. This is very important when the psyche, the mind of person is not normal or completely evolved. So, one may think that the importance of ill-intent is less important, it also plays equally important role in judiciary decisions.

In court, the thing we punish is the criminal intention. -the mens rea, the guilty mind. There is an ancient rule: actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea – “the act does not create guilt unless the mind is also guilty.” That is why we do not convict children, drunks, and schizophrenics: they are incapable of deciding to commit their crimes with a true understanding of the significance of their actions. Free will is as important to the law as it is to religion or any other code of morality.
William Landay, Defending Jacob

Conclusion

Robert Louis Stevenson is known for his world-famous novels Treasure Island and Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The short story called “The Body Snatcher” throws light on the mentality and evolution of the dangerous psychopaths. The false sense of greater good, the ability to ‘suppress destructive thoughts’, ‘destructive actions’ to justify superiority keeps driving certain types of criminals to cross the limits of humanity, ethics, morality. It shows that even though the consequences of wrong actions may not get punished due to the limitations of the laws of the respective times, the punishment of wrong thought is almost instant which is the degradation of the psyche through ‘guilt’ and ‘fear’ – and most of the time it goes unnoticed and build over time resulting in even more grave dangerous acts. It shows how thought and action are equally important in the overall personality of a person. The wrong act may not get punished but the wrong thought has already punished the mind.

References-

BBC Article – Anatomy and crime – Burke and Hare: The body snatchers
The freedom of actions – The Free Spirit – Beyond Good and Evil
Cover image credit –Mortsafe in Colinton Kirkyard by Kim Traynor

Joker: Folie à deux – The Dark, Twisted Fate of Internal Conflict

The polarizing reception of Joker: Folie à deux shows how deeply we are attached to certain fictional characters. Whatever might be the reception of this film, the character design and writing of Arthur Fleck in Folie à deux will go down as one of the best representations of the psychotic villain in the history of cinema. Even though the film doesn’t cater to the fan service, it will definitely become one of the best depictions of the inner conflicts of a mentally challenged person swinging between reality and delusion. There is an interesting mental dilemma of identity common to both the Batman and the Joker. How they chose to deal with it made them who they are. The movie also points to the importance of inner compass for a healthy mental state altogether with surroundings nurturing empathy, kindness, appreciation, and love.

Character study of Todd Philips’s Arthur Fleck in Joker: Folie à deux

Recently Joker 2 or should I say Joker: Folie à deux released in theaters and people almost lost it. Most of the movie goers especially the comic book fandom was highly disappointed. There is another side of this same movie experience where people are really appreciating what the film presents in its narrative even though it is not completely loyal to the source material. Some are praising the liberties the film makers took to show the world what it means to become the truest of the villain of them all and why villains are praised more (maybe they deserve to be praised more) than the hero, even though hero wins in the end (this emotion is strongest in terms of the batman villains to be honest).

I am taking the side of what the Joker duo-logy presents itself to the audience rather than its correctness to the source material or the fan service. It is really a daring move from the creators of this second film to use all their creative power to show the world how dangerous character of Joker could be in real life. When I am saying this, I know fans can say that its just a movie and we only watch it for the sake of the entertainment; we do not want every movie to be a lesson on good or bad, right or wrong, truth or lie. But trust me when you are completely in the mood of bliss and entertainment, engrossed in the world created, even a lie would seem true and a wrong would feel right. It leaves an impression on our mind. A great entertainer can convince you to twist the ideas of certain truths in a person’s mind. Advertisements are a crude example to prove this point. Movies, cinema, stories are a potent media to change the minds, perspectives of the masses in an impactful way.

Mark my words, after few years of “marination” this movie will go as one of the best materials to study the writing and the design of a psychotic person. The movie will definitely regain its value as the ‘cult classic’ in coming decades. I am not saying that people are fool to not appreciate this film; I am saying that some of the things which disappointed people are actually way ahead of their time, people will take time to get comfortable around them and appreciate them.

The ability of movies like this to create a polarization of opinions amongst audience shows how potent the medium of cinema and storytelling is! We are humans – we love stories (especially those which unsettle us)

I am taking this opportunity to show appreciation for how the character of Arthur Fleck is written in this Joker Duo-logy. This is not the critic of what the comic book says and what could have been done in a right way to make movie goers happy. As the makers of these movies had already said, it was pretty clear that we are not in for what is generally expected from the mainstream, fan-worshiped representation of Joker from comics.

This is a story of a failed Joker to be very clear. The ways in which music and singing is injected in the narrative is highly effective. Most of the people found the musical aspect of the movie unnecessary and stretching but it had a proper intent. It is not draggy in any sense. You must understand how a psychotic person’s mind works in order to appreciate the whole movie.

(The fact that people despised this way of representing the Joker of Arthur Fleck, shows that most of us are sane and good-hearted people.)

I will be deep diving into the psyche of Arthur Fleck’s Joker and there will be heavy spoilers (if you care) I will try to touch the nuances in the character design of this Joker and why it all should make sense. For that you must accept that this is not the Joker which ‘our’ Batman had.

This is the Joker who found his way back to sanity but the society rejected him. (I will discuss this in detail further.)

Last warning – SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Me and My Shadow

The cartoon poses a question – if a person has multiple dissociated personalities inside him and one of the hibernating personalities made him commit the crime which is not who he is generally; then how should the person be punished?

The answer has many aspects.

If we are pardoning the person because he is psychologically challenged then the masses who are watching this proceeding would consider that even a heinous crime can go pardoned if the person is not sane. This creates a gray area for the real perpetrators to commit more heinous crimes. Judicial system is well aware of such consequences that is why an example needs to be put in front of the masses.

To show men that crimes can be pardoned, and that punishment is not their inevitable consequence, encourages the illusion of impunity and induces the belief that, since there are pardons, those sentences which are not pardoned are violent acts of force rather than the products of justice.

Cesare Beccaria

Next question-

The mentally challenged person who committed this crime is also a human being in the end. If we go on giving capital punishments to every human being fitting in similar situations, then what human part are we supposed to preserve of the humanity through law and order?

The answer lies in the psyche of this psychotic perpetrator.

The answer is what this psychotic criminal considers himself. Trust me this is not an easy choice. Bear in mind that this in not a normal sane person we are talking about. It is more difficult when such person is carrying multiple personalities inside him. It is difficult for such person to submit to only one identity out of the many he carries inside. One of the reasons for a person to undergo personality dissociation and have multiple personalities is to have a coping mechanism to outside events. Same was the case with Arthur Fleck, the personality of Joker was his coping mechanism against the society. They are polar opposites. His problematic childhood is the key reason.

Who is the real Arthur? – The interview with Dr. Beatty

This interview with Dr. Beatty should justify why the movie ultimately becomes a musical in overall. You will understand from this interview that the real opportunity for the personality of Joker to shine out was in the Murray Franklin show. Arthur was actually intending to commit suicide on national television but knowing this would eradicate the existence of the other personality – the Joker takes the charge of Arthur’s ‘body’. There he kills Murray and makes statement and vents out all those emotions he had suppressed. That is exactly why Arthur is not concerned and doesn’t remember that he murdered some people in that show; he associates to the music of the show on that day. Because in that musical moment he felt free.

Also, keep in mind that Arthur has other personalities other than Joker. His mother’s mirror personality is also inside his head. The changed accent of attorney in which Arthur talks with Mr. Puddles in not just a performance to mock the court, it is a personality Arthur created so that he can defend the adverse external conditions which Arthur is incapable of handling.

It’s not just about Arthur and Joker.

Joker’s (Not Arthur’s) Smoking Addiction

Psychotic person resort to a habit which helps them to relieve the suppressed emotions or identities. It could be any small habit and mostly would seem harmless. In this case it is smoking. In the first Joker movie smoking is just a way to release the tension in his mind but as the Joker’s personality gets the hold of his ‘body’ the smoking intensifies. In the interview with Dr. Beatty when she asks Arthur if she can talk to the Joker inside him, the gaze that Arthur throws at the recording camera is more than enough to let us know that the smoking personality was the Joker himself. (Joaquin Pheonix is just perfect here!)

There is also a moment in Arkham Asylum when Arthur is watching Harvey Dent’s statement implying that only a fool would consider Arthur a martyr, this further reinforces Joker to consider himself more powerful and influential. He is smoking there too.

Before going live in interview with Paddy, Arthur’s attorney Maryanne tells him to stop smoking in front of the camera during the interview because it makes him look like a ‘cavalier’ – reckless. This is exactly where we should get a clear idea. The Joker is reckless, carefree – ‘cavalier’. Smoking becomes an extension of this very idea of recklessness that Joker has in his personality.

But for the good of Arthur, he controls Joker inside during interview. The moment he realizes that it’s just to create sensation, the Joker takes control and again smoking starts.

When Arthur’s private diary is being read out loud in court and when Ms. Dumond is testifying, saying that Arthur’s whole identity that his mother created was fake; you will see that Joker is just there absorbing everything because all these things are very uncomfortable for Arthur to handle. Arthur cannot handle such public humiliation and identity crisis. Joker is truly his coping mechanism.

There is also a scene where the Joker breathes out the smoke into the Harley ‘Lee’. It is very dramatic and feels like they are exchanging their very souls, their identities. Now they are inseparable.

(Todd Philips deserves appreciation for creating such characteristic moments throughout the movie. There is one moment in the start of movie where Arthur gets a lip cut during shaving and the blood drop flows down his chin creating a sad face. It is impressively symbolic of the state of the mind Arthur is in. Applauds to Todd again!)

The ‘Kick’ Dance

The most characteristic attribute of Joker being present and active in Arthur is his dance. The specific step of kicking fiercely in the air is very poetic. This kick shows how reckless Joker is. The Joker is literally kicking the society which led to the downfall of an innocent person like Arthur, the society which created Joker himself. It is a tight slap to the degraded social system which led to the formation of such psychotic character.

Very subtle but the ‘kick dance’ has its purpose in the whole narrative and character of the Joker. Later ‘Lee’ mirrors the same dance showing that Joker and Lee are now in sync.

The Musical

I have never ever seen the medium of musical to demonstrate the state of the mind of the character especially a completely negative character. (I am not a big musical fan) Whenever I have tried to appreciate the musical it feels to break the continuity of the realism of the narrative and dreaminess of the character or given scene. Although there are many good examples where musical just fits in perfectly.

But, this musical in completely negative and dark setup is very impactful. I know most of the moviegoers absolutely thrashed the musical approach and underwhelming utilization of Lady Gaga but trust me it was all intentional. It was supposed to make you uncomfortable.

The unsettling musical is actually a peek into the psyche of Joker and how uncomfortable his character is. It’s a warning to those who glorify Joker as villain or consider him an anti-hero.

Every musical had clear purpose and it also landed perfectly. You have to be slightly ‘mad’ and must fool yourself for the given moment to appreciate importance of musical in the whole narrative of the Joker. I will reiterate that people not appreciating the Joker musical is a subtle proof that the real society we are living in is still in a healthy mental condition in overall. If you didn’t like the musical, it is totally fine, and that was the intent of the creators.

Joker strongly associates himself with music, that is the pivot of his identity. Music allowed him to express freely and also supported his recklessness. The moment he discovered ‘Lee’ in music session that bond with music got further reinforced. That is exactly why his delusions, their delusions are fully filled with music.

Now, it’s lyrics appreciation time:

The opening cartoon song

Everyone needs love
There are already enough mountains

What Arthur helplessly wanted was appreciation and love from his people around. “Mountains” used here and used extensively in further narrative of the movie indicate the hardships, difficulties in everyone’s life. Even after these difficulties, if you are loved you can come over these mountains. Sadly, exactly opposite happens with Arthur.

In later parts of the movie, where Lee says that we will build a mountain from hill. She is actually saying that we will raise chaos everywhere and make other people’s lives difficult because they deserve it.

The Arkham Asylum musical

For once in my life, I have someone who needs me
For once in my life
I won’t let sorrow hurt me
Not like it has hurt me before
For once I have someone
I know won’t desert me
And I am not alone anymore
For once I can say this is mine and you can’t take it

This is Joker singing in Arkham realizing that people may consider him a martyr and he has also got the company of ‘Lee’. The sense of belonging to something for a person like Arthur through accepting the identity of Joker made him feel invincible. This is exactly what is sung in this asylum scene. Arthur wanted somewhere to belong and someone to care for him in the end.

The ‘B-Ward’ movie scene –

When the patients are watching the movie where Arthur and Lee are sitting together there is musical which goes like this:

We are all entertainers
Everything that happens in life
Can happen in a show
You can make’em laugh
You can make’em cry
Anything can go
Anything

We must understand that there are lots of creative choices while making a sincere film. Even though it feels useless, this movie musical scene has a purpose. It is exact reflection of how Joker thinks. For him it is all a performance, it makes him free, same goes for Lee. But sadly, society questions Arthur if he is doing a performance and not Joker. The very lyrics here show why Joker is reckless. This delusion of performance enables him to remain carefree, reckless in the ‘real’ reality.

The Hotel Arkham Dance –

In our minds, we’d be just fine
If it were only us two
They might say that we’re crazy
But I’m just in love with you

This shows how pivotal ‘Lee’ is for Joker. She fuels him. As Arthur is meek, loveless and innocent nobody appreciates him, loves him or cares for him. Being bold, carefree, dashing through Joker, at least he gets ‘Lee’ to love him, appreciate him. The identity of Arthur needs something to lean on, to fulfill his humanly needs – mental and physical. These needs would only get fulfilled if Joker comes out as dominant one. If not Arthur then at least Joker would make this personality free. This song is just about that. Even though delusional but Joker gets all the mental support to justify his personality in reality through ‘Lee’.

The interview with Patty

Before this interview Arthur has full control over the Joker, he has suppressed him to demonstrate his innocence. But the moment Arthur realizes that this interview is just happening for the sensational content, he loses it all and allows Joker to take control. (while starting to smoke characteristically in front of the camera!)

I’m wild again
Beguiled again
A simpering whimpering child again
Bewitched
Bothered and bewildered
Am I
Lost my heart but what of it
She can laugh and I can love it
Although the laugh’s on me
I’ll sing to her
Bring spring to her
And long for the day
When I cling to her
Bewitched
Bothered and bewildered
Am I

Here, Joker is making statement that he is the in-charge of Arthur’s body thereby his complete identity. When he realizes that Arthur will not get any help and it is just a sensationalism in the society, Joker shows the society that he is not alone anymore for the society to take care of him, He has someone who care for him now. This is his way of telling the society that it can go ‘freak’ itself now. The society pretending to help him to create one more drama is a conniving move for Joker. So this song is the final warning to the society that he doesn’t need this pity help from the people. He has his ‘Lee’ to love and appreciate him.

Lee’s makeup song

Most of the scenes when Joker and Lee are sharing the screen while singing are the delusions running in the mind of Arthur. In the third act of the movie when Lee is singing alone while applying all make-up, she is alone. This is where the reality of what Lee is becomes clear.

What a world, what a life 
I’m in love
I’ve got a song that I sing
I can make the rain go
Anytime I move my finger
Lucky me can’t you see, I’m in love
Life is a beautiful thing
As long as I hold that string
I’d be silly so and so
If I should ever let it go

This clarifies that Lee is manipulating Arthur to reinforce the Joker in him and using him to justify her own delusions. She knows she has all the strings in her hands to create the delusions she wants with Joker.

The Guard’s humming in Arkham asylum in the last part of the movie

When Arthur truly accepts the reality and rejects the persona of Joker he is actually on the path to new and healthy life.

When Arthur is sitting in front of the TV in asylum after this event, the asylum guard Sullivan sings this near him and another guard asks him not to sing this again.

We are not crowd 
My echo, my shadow and me

The guard is hinting Arthur that reality is the only thing where we truly exist. Whatever Arthur thought of himself having a different personality to take charge of his body while committing a crime is just a lie. It’s Sulivan’s way to mock Arthur to show that he will get the punishment in the end by court.

Another guard fears that this might trigger Joker to defend the joke on Arthur that is exactly why he tells Sullivan not to sing it in front of Arthur again. This also shows that Arthur is really trying to bring himself back to reality as this doesn’t trigger him. There was some hope for his recovery.

The Cognitive Dissonance – inner conflict for real identity

During the proceedings of the court when the events of Arthur’s childhood are brought in light again to prove that the Joker is a defensive identity that Arthur has created to cope with the trauma and adversities in his life, you will understand that what Arthur lacked was clear identity.

The identity crisis actually led to the creation of intense defense mechanism through the creation of his shadow as Joker. There are specific reasons behind this:

Arthur learns that what his mother told him about his parenthood was a lie
He learns that even though his mother told him that his purpose was to make people happy, she was not a big fan of his jokes. Ms. Dumond in her testimony clarifies this, which shakes Arthur to core
Arthur had created his whole personality around making people happy. The career choice to become a standup comedian was all driven by this sole thing. This is what defined his life

But the moment when Arthur realized that all the truths on which he created his life and his character were lie, he undergoes cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a state when a person enters in paradox about the truths that made him who he is today.

Same cognitive dissonance happened for Batman when he learnt that his parents also took help of the very criminals he is fighting against today to hide their family’s dark truths in the past.

My point here is that both Batman and Joker underwent the state of the cognitive dissonance, the identity crisis, what they stand for. How they came out of this cognitive dissonance made them hero and the villain.

Batman chose to move away from the only motto of vengeance quoting that ‘Vengeance cannot change the past’. Batman then decided to stand as a symbol of hope for the degrading society.

Arthur – Joker in this case blamed society for the very state of mind he is in now. And there is nothing wrong in it. The very situations, events, people that Arthur got exposed to, made him chose that side. If he would have got proper support from the society and people, there really was a hope for him.

That is exactly why you must appreciate the act of Arthur to not become Joker in the end of this movie. Although the guards of Arkham had beat him to show that he is really weak in reality and Joke is not the reality. Arthur arguably had less privilege than Bruce Wayne to chose the right side and even after these hardships Arthur in this movie choosing reality of Arthur instead of delusion of Joker is a bold move. This makes Arthur’s character transformation far bigger, better and glorious than the transformation of Batman. (I am not saying that Joker is superior than Batman morally. I am saying the mental efforts that Arthur took to reject his Joker personality are way bigger, humongous than the mental efforts that Batman took to redefine his identity.)

There is very symbolic moment of Arthur running away from the Joker persona in the end of the movie to show how badly he wanted to escape that delusion.

You know what? This is exactly where the city of Gotham went wrong. People wanted an agent of chaos. Not the guardian of hope. Chaos is more sensational and attractive.

The Society and The Sensationalism

You should closely observe how Arthur behaves in the interview with Patty. He has dialed down Joker perfectly. But the moment Arthur understands that these people are not here to help him or work with him, they just want something sensational to show to the people watching TV, he loses the hope for the society. This is where Joker truly gets reinforced.

The way in which the character of Arthur Fleck is designed by the writers, it is a result of the overall failure of the social systems. The rising unrest in common people led to the reinforcement of Joker in Arthur Fleck even though he knew that he committed crimes.

Common people of Gotham somehow, anyhow wanted the rich and powerful people to be held accountable for the problems they were going through. Even though it was a group motive it was a very selfish motive. Joker doing certain murders was just a sensational direction people wanted so that they would get this feeling of redemption against the corrupt system.

Arthur was just a person in need of fame and appreciation for who he was. Only sad thing was that people only loved his Joker persona. That is exactly why Arthur chose the delusion of Joker to satisfy the delusion of redemption from riches for the society.

The real Folie à deux is not just about the shared delusion between Joker and Lee. It is between Joker and the society. It is between Todd Phillips’s Joker and the fandom. Deep down we too wanted this Joker to do some scandalous acts, exceptional crimes, and sensational interviews. We paid for the movie tickets to see the chaos that Joker creates in society thereby glorifying him as one of the best villains.

But, in reality we cannot handle such sensationalism. On surface it feels great while reading some spicy news, conflicts in our day to day lives but the moment they start affecting our very lives we know how horrible these things can turn out.

This movie actually made an effort to show how twisted a psychotic criminal is inside even though his life may seem sensational and happening outside.

The Loneliness and Kindness

There are many moments where Arthur clearly says that all he wanted was someone to understand him and love him for who he is. The only reason Arthur submits to Joker’s persona was the fact that this is what the surrounding around him wanted from him. The DA wants him to be the Joker so that they can punish him. This would also make him a martyr among the common people of Gotham. People of Gotham wanted him to be the Joker because it was their way to vent out their anger for the riches and powerful of the city. Harley wanted him to be the Joker because he symbiotically supported her delusions, he was ready to do whatever she wanted.

You will realize that there were also some moments where this was possible, it was possible to tell Arthur that he is not alone. Some events actually do happen but not everyone is thinking the same about him. That is what creates conflict in Arthur’s mind. There is a scene where Arthur is singing a book with good intent but the moment the guard mocks him, Joker takes over and signs maliciously.

You see this is intense when the person is challenged mentally, such people are ready to resort to any part of their persona provided that they get what they long for. That is successfully depicted in the psyche of Arthur Fleck.

Conclusion

A society on moral, social, political decline – a degenerate society – a society on the brink of collapse – will always reject Arthur and welcome Joker.

It is very evident from this duo-logy that the surroundings, society plays a crucial role in the character development of every person. We chose certain attributes of who we are based on what we actually want. This is decided by how society responds to our actions. Based on the such selected attributes, then our behavior, action on such attributes and the reaction from society on such action mold our personality. This is roughly how our personality, our identity is created. If we are fully dependent of society to define who we are, then our personality would exactly reflect what the society. That is what happened with Joker. Arthur was completely empty inside. You will see this when he accepts all his crimes honestly while ending with a Joke.

- Knock, Knock
- Who’s there?
- Arthur Fleck
- Arthur Fleck who?

It shows that Arthur accepted that he was nobody. Society just poured inside his empty jar of personality, made him the agent of chaos.

That is why having an inner compass is very important in personal development. Our internal beliefs may sometimes get challenged and it is completely fine to change them, upgrade them. But the moment one starts to pivot his/her identity purely on outside factors it may create internal conflicts, mental conflicts. That is where Arthur lost his battle for personal identity. Even though the ideas are fictional they prepare us for the adversities occurring in reality, that is for me is the real power of storytelling. May everyone in reality find their true identity in a healthy and sustainable way.

We are full of biases and we are always in search for the things which reinforce our internal belief system. It is a normal human tendency to justify one’s identity. Those who are ready to change and modify their understandings about the surrounding are closer to the reality and those who are stubborn to change their belief system will get hit by the reality until they have learnt their lesson.

This Joker movie indirectly keeps on highlighting how difficult it is to gauge what goes in the mind of a mentally challenged person. Most of the time our instincts repel us from such people but what such people need is a sense of being loved and sense of belonging. If they are felt loved in reality, maybe there is some hope that they will let go of their delusions. Being kind is the only way.

For me the movie actually presents a choice in front of the audience for the fate of the Joker. As a human being Arthur coming out of his Joker persona was a very healthy and hopeful character development. But that is not what we wanted from him. We, just like the people of Gotham city wanted him to create chaos. This movie shows that hidden dark part in our minds. I am not saying that all of us are sadistic. I am saying we all have a dark part in our psyche and its normal. Everyone should be aware of their own darkness to remain mentally healthy. It improves decision making.

My favorite moment from Warner Bros. Joker: Folie à deux

A Modern Prayer to Perceive ‘The Silver Linings’

The acceptance of our dark side is the only way to start a new journey to the real happiness, fulfillment. Achieving real fulfillment becomes way easier and manageable once we start acknowledging our dark emotions, feelings of sadness and sorrow. Running away from such “low” lying emotions actually intensifies them in the abyss. Actually, such emotions have great contribution in the refinement of our character. Empire of the Sun’s new song called ‘Happy Like You’ talks about the acceptance of our dark side to make our personality whole for creating a newer and better version of ourselves.

Empire of the Sun’s song “Happy Like You”

The best piece of art can be attributed to the multiple perceptions, interpretations it creates in the mind of its subjects despite keeping its physical structure constant.

The beauty of a masterpiece is that people have their own opinion about that piece and nobody is wrong. The mere subjectivity and the possibility to invoke personal feeling in the mind of the observer or the enjoy-er of the art is the power every one of us has naturally. Most of the time very few of us unlock that power in a better sense. Music is one such power.

Recently, I came across newly released album named “Ask that God” by an Australian electronic duo called Empire of the Sun. All the songs on this album are banger and are complete redefinition of what the Empire of the Sun stands for. In my personal opinion, it is a crime to compare all the songs to choose the best one, (but you already know why I am writing this). One song that is looping in my head continuously and has occupied a larger portion of my brain for many days is “Happy like you” (this only shows that the song has conjured me thereby maintaining my previous point of not comparing good songs with each other).

Luke Steele and Nicholas Littlemore of Empire of the Sun

Actually, bringing the poetry into the bastardized territory of prose should be a crime, for it de-beautifies the very reason for it being so wonderful. But, in order for everyone to appreciate the multiple subjective point of views and its connections with the multiple facets of life it is trying to explain, a poetry must undergo its ‘deconstruction’ into prose.

That is the crime I am committing here. If there is any songwriting, poetry, lyrics meaning police anywhere, tell them that I am here waiting for them to tolerate all this prose I have written hereon.

Jokes aside, I am deep diving into the song and its music video.

The song

The song is written by Luke Steele and Nick Littlemore of Empire of the Sun.

You’re revolutionary
You’re like a phantom taking a leap
You’re heart is legendary
Bet you are feeling so high 
You have a higher power
Telepathic talk to me
Make me whole again
Whole again whole like I used to be 

Happy like you 
Happy

The poet is asking the higher power for something that would make him feel complete like he was before. He is praising the power of this higher power so that it can bless him.

The words used by poet like revolutionary, taking leap, legendary heart are used to describe this higher power reflects what he exactly wants from the higher power. He wants to regain a lost part of his personality he was before going through this hardship. He wants the higher power to take the leap to come out of the sorrow, transcend the current state and bring about an “internal” revolution in a way.

Telepathic ability indicates the poet’s trust in the higher power. Poet knows that this higher power is his final resort to all that exists. That is why this power knows everything already and there is nothing required to be expressed formally to get things done.

Ultimately, it is a request to regain that precious part of the poet’s personality, that happiness which defined his whole personality.

Won’t you humanize me
Use all your wisdom 
Show me joy in everything 
I’ve been clouded by machines
Lost my way deep inside another screen

The rhetorical question posed by the poet is a slight indication of what he lost during his difficult times. He lost the things which made him human. He lost the ability to see the silver linings.

This is the exact spot we must understand that the person lost his personality in depression and mental battles. But why? and how?

Immediate forthcoming lines show what happened. The screens and “machines” indicate the influences of the mechanical world on our daily lives and the added powerful effect of social media which led to a dreadful state of depression.

It’s an irony that when we are ‘liking’ certain things on social media from other people’s lives, a deep-rooted sadness, envy, hatred is getting born out of the one-to-one comparison of lives. Everyone is conscious of these emotions due to social media but the penetration of social media, screens everywhere is so regular and normal that we are subconsciously (now mechanically) ignoring these emotions which take a toll on our minds when we are shocked with something really sorrowful.

All I wanna be is happy happy happy like you 
All I wanna be is happy happy happy like you

Once you pass through such horrible emotions of sadness and depression you start appreciating the person you were, how happiness made you the better version of yourself. This happiness made you feel like the greater, higher power itself. That happiness actually made you feel closer to the higher power. The poet urges the higher power to make him who he was before and just in the ways the higher power carries itself.

You’re revolutionary 
Telepathic talk to me
You are imaginary
Bet you are feeling so high 

Wish is a dream that comes true

The most difficult part of coming out of the depression is that it starts in mind of a person with such an intangible, non-physical thought/ idea and then it starts to affect the real events, objects, people around him/ her. So, even though fixing the reality around such person can help to come out of the depression; uprooting the deeply settled feelings of sadness, grief, sorrow has immense impact in the person’s fight against depression.

That is exactly why the wish to become happy shows that the poet whole-heartedly wants feel happy. The ‘wish’ indicates is readiness from inside to be realize happiness from intangibility to reality thereby highlighting the use of the expression “dreams that come true” here.

Time is a song that forms you 
Oh I hope you

The expression of ‘time’ which formed this higher power implies the time which need to given to person to heal when he/ she is in hardships. Give it some time, it will pass too. The poet has understood that over the time even though it will seem difficult but over the time every sadness will fade away. It’s just an ask from poet to the higher power to get the patience, courage for passing through this hard time.

Won’t you humanize me
Use all your wisdom
Show me joy in everything
I’ve been clouded by machines 
Lost my way deep inside another screen 

All I wanna be is happy happy happy like you 
All I wanna be is happy happy happy like you

Ultimately the influence of social media on our lives and the mere algorithmic, mechanical nature of our lifestyle is leading lives of many really happy people to a depressed, sorrowful life. The poet asks the higher power to make such people complete again and happy again just like the supreme power is. It also means that once we become happy and complete, we will become that supreme higher power again.

From a simple explanatory point of view on any poetry/ songwriting, the song gives an impression of the man’s urge to regain his happiness, his identity when he is in the conundrum of depressive emotions and thoughts. The impact of depression is great because the factors causing it are within our hands (or I may say fingers’) reach – the social media and the screens.

I think the songwriters have taken this excuse of the depression from social media to show what an urge to overcome any depression means for any human being; what it means to redefine the personality and also complete the human being in a bigger picture.

The video and its symbolism

The phone call –

The video starts with a phone call. The girl receives a call on her landline and then the frame shifts to a guy (Luke Steele – Emperor Steele) in a dark with a red hue and dark hat. This is indication of her having a call with her inner self. The low-lit room shown throughout the video is the metaphor of she having discussion with herself and her inner thoughts and emotions. The phone call is proof of she handling her emotions by herself, it is her own conscience calling her.

Frame from Empire of the Sun’s Happy Like You MV

A low-lit room –

Watching reflection in mirror and hand movements on her own body shows she is interacting with herself. It is like a self-talk one has with themselves while figuring out what needs to be done. The low-lit room shows that dark part of our personality which also need acknowledgement. Even though the song calls for the person to be happy, this low-lit room has bigger significance. It is an indication that the real happiness comes with our acknowledgement of our darker side. Darker not in the sense of negativity but more in the sense of left out emotions which also need proper attention.

The colors –

Even though the music video looks colorful with some dark theme, the choice of colors used in this video are specific; there are characters, colors to the people shown in the video. Hot, cold, and warm / Red, blue, yellow, greens sometimes – indicate respective emotions and the interaction of the girl with those emotions. It is like she is trying to understand them and accept their presence to find the answers.

The window –

In the early part of the song, you will see the girl peeking through the blinds to see what’s behind the glass. It’s literally her peeking into her dark side of the mind.

There is a glass window with blinds between a person and the girl. The person can see her doing all her activities. What girl sees is only her reflection, this absolutely support the symbolism of her having an internal conversation about the overall depressive state of her mind.

The sadness, grief –

You will see one person (Nick Littlemore – Lord Littlemore) with the black tears seemingly away from the window in certain snippets of the video, who appears and goes withing few moments. This is that deep rooted feeling of sadness which the girl is trying to acknowledge. One person closer to the glass window observing the girl’s activity is her conscience and the grief is away from the glass lying in the deep abyss of her mind. I say the guy closer to the window is her conscience because it has symbolically shown with multiple colors and hues showing the variety of emotions one carries in themselves.

The rain in the end symbolizes new beginning, renewal.

The creators of Music video deserve special applause

A deep dive into this ‘prayer’

For me this is not a simple song, it’s a prayer and I have a very strong reason to justify my point. A prayer from a literal, grammatical point of view is a request to higher powers which have better control of the reality than us. We surrender to such higher powers to show that we are humbled and are in a need for help through such prayers.

This song may not have that feel of “conventional” prayers, hymns due to its electronic and not so ‘religious-feeling’ notes, melodies but there is no written rule on the ways to compose a prayer anyways.

On first thought it’s weird, how can a prayer in electronic music make sense spiritually?

I say why not! I would say the composition itself dares the modern listener to appreciate the feeling of awareness of our higher self – hidden inside our own selves. It is like tapping into that unconventional, unexplored hidden, darker part of our own conscience.

The song mainly focuses on visiting and acknowledging the darker parts of our mind, especially when we are in deep sorrow. Abandoning such dark emotions thinking that they are not part of your personality actually intensifies them and when you are feeling weak and defeated – these emotions will easily cover your whole personality.

My point to call this song a pious prayer is that it makes the listener, the singer acknowledge their emotions. Good or bad whatever they are, they together make the personality whole. It also makes them to accept their urge to improve themselves in life. Even though we are asking the higher powers to grant us the powers to become our better version it is actually we – ourselves acknowledging our darker side to improve and build upon them for the better and evolved version of our selves.

The most important act to come out of any negative, depressed feeling is the acceptance of the fact that they are an inseparable part of our personality and only this time they have charge over our personality and we can take control from them anytime we want. You can only cure a person who really want to be cured and live ahead. The feeling to come out of such sorrows has to come from inside and it becomes easy once we accept our darker side of emotions, feelings.

So, the best way to handle any challenging emotional state, any darker emotional state is to first acknowledge them. Acceptance of something wrong or abnormal is the first step to effectively work on handling them. It becomes very difficult to accept that we ourselves are the originator of our emotional responses and its totally normal. We just feel that it is difficult to control our emotions because mostly they are triggered by the external stimuli and that is where the real trick happens. You see, the illusion that our emotions are uncontrollable is created by the assumptions that one need to control his/her surroundings to achieve what they want to become happy. That is why when such person fails, they are immediately drowned into the feelings of sadness. This also does not mean that you should always control your emotions and avoid expressing yourselves.

What I am trying to make point about is that the moment we start segregating our emotions as good and bad we end up in an illusion of happiness instead of the real happiness. Instead of avoiding and dumping, controlling your sad, dark emotions deep down, their acceptance as one more normal part of our personality helps us in a better way to achieve the real happiness.

Being sad justifies the moments of happiness and that also does not mean that you must remain sad – suffer more to be happy in bigger ways. You see, all happinesses in the world are same. Actually, they are not even same, they are subjective – to be precise, there is nothing to compare between any type of happiness. But due to the social media and the screens, we are always trying to compare our happiness with other people’s happiness. That is where the origin of the problem lies.

Looking on the other side of the shore same goes with the sadness; no two sadness must be compared. Acknowledgement itself is more than enough.

Working on sadness is like hugging an annoying crying kid; just a tight hug without any intent. The kid will stop crying.

Once we have accepted all our emotions as a natural part of our personality then only can we have the chance to recreate our personality. This requires humbleness and in most cases when people are thrashed with the reality and the sadness, when they are helpless the final resort is the spirituality where the help from almighty is requested. The moment you attribute this power to any object especially human-like object the religion starts taking shape (that would be topic or another discussion!) But without diverting the topic, only when we are humbled then we seek help from others. Prayer allows you to do that without any feeling of shame. That is exactly why I feel this song is a prayer. It allows you to accept your darkness, understand it and asks you to use it to create new happiness.

I will stick to Kierkegaard on this, we have to understand that when we are praying to the higher powers to handle our lives in a better way, we are actually asking the forces lying inside our own selves which hold the capacity to create the better version of ourselves.

We are capable of creating better times for ourselves on a condition that we acknowledge every part of who we are. It is just our mechanical nature to categorize certain things as good or bad sad and happy which takes charge of our whole personality. You will appreciate this more once you closely observe the stories behind the creation of all types of the masterpiece humanity has ever seen. All those great things had that unconventional, hidden dark side which triggered the creation of something totally new and radical.

So, in order to become truly happy, one must accept their dark sides that is where the potential to have completely new beginnings lies.

Ernest Hemingway’s Men Without Women

The Paradox of Individualism

In Another Country – Summary

Deep Analysis of In Another Country

Lack Of Warmth

Together But Lonely – Alienation Among Men

Self-pity And Surrogate Sympathy

Men’s Inability To Communicate And Express Emotions Clearly

Emotional Numbness – Alexithymia – Hemingway For Today’s World

His Woman Is Everything For Any Man True To Himself

Conclusion – The Feminine Side Of The Real Masculinity

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Part 3 – Jiddu Krishnamurti’s legacy of self-knowledge

Existence Of The Mind – What Is The Mind?

Reactive Mind Vs Objective Reality

Love – Cure To Self-Deception And Surrender To Reality

Conclusion – Why Is Love Answer To Everything?

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Part 2- Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge

The Curious Animal

The Conscious Thinker

Thinking Is Useless

The Real Baseline – Non-Isolation

Be Watchful Of The Isolation – The division

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Part 1 – Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge

Purpose of Life – The Safety And Peace In My Existence

Thinker Is The Thought

The Convenience Of Self-Deception

Conclusion to Part-1

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On the song called “Monsters” by James Blunt

Men And Their Fathers

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On the book – The Courage to be disliked

‘The world is simple, and life is too.’

Life is not treating me fair

Deny trauma – Deny the comfort of causality

All problems are interpersonal relationship problems – others have their own current moments to experience in their own ways

Discard other people’s tasks – reject the desire for recognition and accept that you being disliked is not in your hands

Where the center of the world is – there is no absolute cause and effect – there is no such thing as the first start and the last end

Life goes on

Be real, not a hypocrite

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An important book from Morgan Housel called “Same as Ever”

Somebody, make me a time machine

Discussions

Step 1 discussion:

Step 2 discussion:

Step 3 discussion:

Conclusion – Human behavior and laws of nature

For those who haven’t read the book here is the point-to-point summary of the book “Same as Ever”:

#1. If you know where we’ve been you realize, we have no idea where we’re going.

#2. We are very good at predicting the future, except for the surprises – which tend to be all that matter

#3. The first rule of happiness is low expectations.

#4. People who think about the world in unique ways you like also think about the world in unique ways you won’t like.

#5. People don’t want accuracy. They want certainty.

#6. Stories are always more powerful than statistics.

#7. The world is driven by forces that cannot be measured.

#8 Crazy doesn’t mean broken. Crazy is normal; beyond the point of crazy is normal.

#9. A good idea on steroids quickly becomes a terrible idea.

#10. Stress focuses your attention in ways that good times can’t.

#11. Good news comes from compounding, which always takes time, but bad news comes from a loss in confidence or a catastrophic error that can occur in a blink of an eye.

#12. When little things compound into extraordinary things.

#13. Progress requires optimism and pessimism to coexist.

#14. There is a huge advantage to being a little imperfect.

#15. Everything worth pursuing comes with a little pain. The trick is not minding that it hurts.

#16. Most competitive advantages eventually die.

#17. It always feels like we’re falling behind, and it’s easy to discount the potential of new technology.

#18. The grass is greener on the side that’s fertilized with bullshit.

#19. When the incentives are crazy, the behavior is crazy. People can be led to justify and defend nearly anything.

#20. Nothing is more persuasive than what you’ve experienced first-hand.

#21. Saying “I’m in it for the long run” is a bit like standing at the base of Mount Everest, pointing to the top, and saying, “That’s where I’m heading.” Well, that’s nice. Now comes the test.

#22. There are no points awarded for difficulty.

#23. What have you experienced that I haven’t that makes you believe what you do? And would I think about the world like you do if I experienced what you have?

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Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous short story “The Body Snatcher”

The Body Snatcher – Synopsis

Inspiration From Real Incident

Psychopathic Tendencies – How Criminals Justify Their Crimes