The closer you are the closer the truth is

The closer you are the closer the truth is.

 

Life seems sometimes to be a dreary set of coincidences stitched together in a way the you desperately hope  is meaningful. But in reality there are too many people in too many places who don’t really care, they just want to look like they’re doing something because that is enough for them apparently. In reality its so pointless. If all you seek to do is create an image, it will be totally illusory.

Henry David Thoreau said”….. , give me truth”. The rest of the sentence adds gravitas to that one phrase, but actually just that one phrase is more than enough. The one phrase tells you everything you need to know about everything you do. All of it is just a meagre effort at the truth. However many problem you solve, however many anythings that you manage to achieve, they are all triumphs towards the truth. What does this enigmatic truth have to be? Does it have a definition, a meaning, some direction perhaps? No it doesn’t and it doesn’t have to. Our life on earth is meagre  the change we induce here so insignificant that in reality every dictator, and every peasant in the timeline of the universe will occupy the same place. The only thing that makes any sense is to try and enjoy every little extra bit of knowledge you get,and to try to find a morsel, a grain of something with a semblance of meaning in it. Something that makes sense. We are all crazy, insane creatures, our ability to think makes us that. I mean sanity would be to just live and reproduce and survive till you did so, any sort of simple justice dictates that the confines offered by that route are sufficient for the continuation of the species. But we are so much more. The very fact that we are so much more means so much more is expected from every single one of us. Why? Because we can. Isn’t that in itself a good enough reason? That our brains can ACTUALLY try to see how the stuff around us works, how there is the truth in the things we see? And to comprehend that, its the literal equivalent of holding nuggets of gold in your hand. It’s worth it, it totally is.

I can see it in my head for once, and it’s a rare moment this. I just imagined myself asking this NASA scientist who was working on some problem -“Is it worth it?” and he said to me- ” I love every bit of knowledge I get, because the closer I am to the answer, the closer I am to the truth”. He didn’t finish that sentence but I understood. It meant that we should keep searching. Always search for more knowledge because that is where truth lies.

The cynics will say yes we’ve been doing that every moment till now, curiosity is our defining feature. But is happiness? DO you enjoy the fact that you have acquired something new – even if it isn’t shiny or glamorous, maybe its just a line of text in your head, a set of symbols or an image? DO you feel happy about it? Does it make you feel like it’s related to how the world goes around and the universe functions? Every single particle is linked to every other. They just are. It’s the way of nature. The more we discover, the closer we are to discovering why they are so inextricably linked. The future of man is definitely bleak, possibly extremely unhappy but that does not mean that our scientific glories will wane, they will only seem all the brighter for the darkness of the environment in which they are spawned. We should all nurse such discoveries, and help them grow. 

 Trust me. The closer you get, the closer you are to the truth. And the truth is the epitome of happiness. Search for it, and every single time you get it, cherish it and understand that moment. Life will become so much more. That timeline on which the dictator and peasant sit together just won’t matter anymore because you’ll realise that you too are among all those particles of nature. YOU are part of the timeline of the universe. 

A Case for Optimism

Why is optimism becoming underrated?

As far as I caan tell, there are very strong cases for pessimism, I’ve read articles telling me that there are good times to be pessimistic and good times to be optimistic, that you HAVE to be an amalgam of both, articles recommending the case of extreme optimism to be tantamount to insanity and articles saying happiness leads to too much intuitive thinking and lack of usage of the executive functions in your head-the thing that really crunches data as you THINK about it. I have no comments on these articles, my case however is for 100% unadulterated good feelings.

I want people to live in a state of well being, mentally and physically, if this is achieved through undeniably extreme optimism then so be it, that is your pill.

Everyone is good, just at different depths. To reach in and actually touch people to that depth you must either know that person extremely well or you should pull that depth up to a level where it’s easy to see. I recommend the latter approach, and I believe it is made considerably easier if the person feels good. Now how do you make someone feel good?

I read in Dr.Martn Seligman’s book Flourish about his new theory on well-being. He states that(paraphrasing here) PERMA is what our well being consists of:

• P-Positive Emotions
• E-Engagement
• R-Good healthy relationships
• M-Meaning
• A-Achievement

I don’t believe that gaining something if not everything is impossible, I believe that it is a fundamental right- the right to pursuit of happ(y)ness. It just needs a little work. I believe we are all capable of that work so long as someone believes in them. If we create a community that not only supports but also sustains such a belief we are one step closer to reaching Gaia on Earth. Happiness will no longer have an antonym, it will only have the qualitative feel of less happy and more happy.

As a species our mind is built or negativity, evolutionarily proven and accepted. Now, we defy it. Evolution is what- “Survival of the fittest”. We create well being as the test of fitness, we change the scales by which survival is measured, we turn evolution on its head. That is our future one where we believe that every success counts twice as much as every loss. This would be a world where every single person knows and embodies PERMA.

Altruism is the future. Embrace it and live it.

That whole article came off more as a speech than an article, thanks to which i think that my emotions got penned down in between my thoughts, though to me that’s the best kind of writing :).