How We Grow?

We are all born with some basic “processors,” like a child with a simple operating system.
As we grow, parents, teachers, media, environment, and friends continuously provide inputs that shape and build upon these processors. Over time, we develop our own internal systems of thinking and decision-making.

If the foundational processors — especially those shaped at home by parents — are strong, we become better at differentiating between good and bad behaviors.

In this sense, I don’t see direct intervention from God in our daily development. Perhaps God is only the Creator, but we become our own developers — or destroyers — through our choices and conditioning.

Human System!

What is a system? 

In layman term we say, a set of components connected together to work for some purpose.

If so, then “What is Human System?”

You might say this is very odd way to combine human and system together, but for sake of this topic, we attach these two hetero words and see what we can think of.

Can we say, a Human system is a set of organs connected together with a force (still unknown!) within it to live a journey called Life with its last stop as Death?

Is this system is created / evolved?

The above question is a big topic of discussion; let us ignore that for time being. It is better to consider it is evolved, which helps us in saving our blames / complaints on this system, as there is nobody to receive it other than ourselves.

Are we still evolving?

I think yes and also no. It is better to say that we are fast in adapting to the environment we created and still creating / could we  say spoiling?- by calling it as progressed / developed / civilized world and what not.

A new life is generally evolved from the blow lay man equation-

Inception-Formation-Unknown force-Birth

But certain things make us unique creatures, some of them are inherited and others are accumulated in due course of time. This gathering of things are stored in one of the important organ of our human system called Brain (Is it really important? Who is saying that ? – again it came from our Brain!)  

We all know life is just a sequence of learning-relearning-unlearning events.  As per science, our brain works on a concept called ‘Plasticity’ – in simple term it is the nature of mind which keep on adding different programs/processors to itself to process different set of events / instructions. This can also be called as ‘mind programming’.  As humans, we do nothing to add these programs, but keep on witnessing / feeding similar events / instructions, which are used as raw data in the inception stage and later a processor starts processing it. Once a program is ready, then it is difficult, sometimes impossible to change the outcomes of these repeated feeds for the respective programs.

Each human system will always goes through these three most common stages in them – “Aging – Disease – Death”, these are inevitable.

The first and the last have very less impact on one’s life, if one takes in that way. But the middle one – ‘Disease’ is always have major / minor impacts on oneself and also on the other systems which are near and dear to it. There are no concrete reasons for individual diseases as to why and when and what makes them to come into the respective system, who introduces to them. But modern sciences have few answers and solutions / workarounds for our questions and cure.

Another strange behavior of this system is, it passes through different stages in its life span – kid, child, adolescent, grown human, old age person, on the way it plays different roles – son, daughter, brother, sister, father, mother, wife, husband, and in the end again plays some of the inception role knowingly / unknowingly.  Most of the time it is a role of a kid / child who is stubborn and adamant and demanding. One fine day that unknown life force vanishes into thin air in the same way as how it was inserted before into a piece of flesh. But this time this flesh is used one, and we call this stage as death.

Bottom line:

They say preparation for death of oneself or any of dear and near ones gives us a new perspective for all the events of life gone by.  Death is like veil in between people, sometime it will be taken off and we see the death from very near, again it will fall down to its place and we come back to life !

The Mind is the Chief. The Body is the Servant. The Consciousness is the Controller.

Reading of a Novel !

We all read books in our life at least in one of the below situations, 

• by force
• by choice
• by interest

I fall into the last category, yes by interest I choose books infact lot of books, and read.

Let me accept, I am a snail pace reader, hence got lot of back logs of books to read, and I remember somebody said "lot of books to read, but so less time!" This time factor is a different topic of discussion, for now yes, we have less time if our will to read or to do something is very big!

The other day I was reading a novel “Mystic River” by Dennis Lehane, this is my first novel of this author. Don’t think, I am marketing this novel for you all. No my intention of this article is just to co-relate “a novel to our life novel!” We always heard when we ask the basic question “What is Life?” We get endless answers list depending on the ones view. Among these answers someone might say “Life is a novel” or say “Life is a book”.

So, if we view our life as a Novel, then let’s see how in reality it is a Novel.

Novel starts with characters, before we became a character in this Life’s novel. Our parents are the one who make us as a character in their life’s novel, but once we came to this earth, we start putting words to our own novel in which our parents became characters. Sometime important ones some other times just characters depending on what they offer you! Hope you got what I said here. Keep in mind my intention here is not blame parents, but to say how we react towards our parents.

When you start to read a novel, we start to know the characters, their feelings, attitude, behaviors, intentions, so and so forth from the narration of the author. so that we became acquaintance with the events which are happening in these characters life, and which makes a story interesting. If we don’t like the events then we feel novel is boring.

Same thing happens in our Life’s novel, as we grow, we tend to make relationships, lot of types – friends, foes, kith and kin’s, cousins, brothers sisters etc. So what are we making here, we are introducing ourselves with different characters.  

As we all know, we need to lead our life between these characters, including me also as a character. Probably main character as this is my own life’s novel (after all It’s my Life! Right?), we can also say it is my novel; hence I am the main character.

And what about the events of novel, most of the time we do not have control on these, some might argue here, we have on some of them. I don’t want to discourage them, yes we have. When we succeed in something, we write a happy chapter of our novel, in other case emotional chapter. And we never stop blaming other characters / events as responsible for this chapter to become emotional, sad or full of grief.

Similarly a novel has number of chapters, happy, thrilling, sad, emotional, and then it ends. It is required for that novel also, now days authors are more business minded, they make sequels of the same novel. Helps them right, no more new character creation, so they start to make the story line bigger like mega episodes of idiot box serials. But for our novel it is not possible. Sorry I drag your attention to some other topic here, let’s come back. We presume our author ends the novel like how the story in “Mystic River” ends.

Our Life story also has different chapters of different feelings. One fine day it ends. The sad part of our Life’s novel is this last chapter; we are not there to write it!

Once the reader finishes the novel, and if he or she thinks back, he or she can barely remember all the events, all the characters of the novel, but only few. 

Same thing happens in our life, when we reach the final chapter of our life, and take a stock of the chapters we have written or lived, we will be surprised to see, we remember very few of them. Nobody can make all life as memorable. Truth is human mind can only remember 81% of the previous day events. As the day goes, we lose the data and we forget. This data may be happy, sad, funny etc.

To make these events memorable we tend to take some pictures, or buy some souvenirs, buy some gifts for others, celebrate some events etc.  

Bottom line:

• Let’s live our life to the best of it, make the most of it even when it offers us very little.

• Let’s keep creation of life’s characters very little, the more the characters the more the events, and as we don’t have the control on characters’ behaviors, our chapter might change its feeling depending on the event. If you want more characters in your novel, then be ready for what you get from them, later don’t blame them.

• Sometimes our novel has few characters which are very near and dear ones within your family, so you tend to face different set of events even when you don’t like them. For these we need to remember as someone said - Everything terrible is something that needs our love. I want to extend this to “Everything terrible is something that needs our love / support / empathy so on.” We cannot leave them just because they are different.

ಬೇಕು ! ಬೇಕಾ? ಬೇಕಾಗಿತ್ತಾ?

ಆ ದಿನ ಹೀಗೆ ಎಂದಿನಂತೆ ಆಫೀಸಿನ ಕಡೆ ನನ್ನ ಪ್ರಯಾಣ ನಡೆದಿತ್ತು, ದಾರಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಒಂದು ಮಗು ತನ್ನ ತಾಯಿಯನ್ನ ಅಂಗಡಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಏನನ್ನೋ ಕೊಡಿಸುವಂತೆ ಒತ್ತಾಯ ಮಾಡುತಿತ್ತು. ನಾನು ಕ್ಷಣ ಹೊತ್ತು ತಾಯಿ-ಮಗುವಿನ ಈ ಸನ್ನಿವೇಶವನ್ನು ನೋಡಿ ನನ್ನ ದಾರಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಮುಂದುವರೆದೆ. ಈ ಘಟನೆ ಈಗ ನಾನು ಬರೆಯುತ್ತಿರುವ ಈ ಲೇಖನಕ್ಕೆ ಮುನ್ನುಡಿಯಾಯಿತೆನ್ನಬಹುದು.

ನಾವೆಲ್ಲರು ಜೀವನದಲ್ಲಿ, ಈ ’ಬೇಕು’ ಎಂಬ ಘಟ್ಟವನ್ನು ನಮ್ಮ ಬಾಲ್ಯದಲ್ಲಿ ಹೆಚ್ಚಾಗಿ ಅನುಭವಿಸುತ್ತೇವೆ. ಆಗ ನಮ್ಮ ಈ ಬೇಕುಗಳು ಕೇವಲ ಆಹಾರ-ತಿಂಡಿಗಳ, ಆಟದ-ಸಾಮಾನುಗಳ ಚೌಕಟ್ಟಿಗೆ ಮಾತ್ರ ಸೀಮಿತವಾಗಿರುತ್ತವೆ. ಕಾಲ ಕಳೆದಂತೆ ಅಥವಾ ನಮ್ಮ ತಲೆಯಲ್ಲಿನ ಯೋಚನೆಗಳು ಹೊಸ ಆಯಾಮಗಳಿಗೆ ತೆರೆದುಕೊಂಡತೆ ನಮ್ಮ ಈ ’ಬೇಕು’ಗಳು ಬದಲಾಗಬಹುದು.

ನಮ್ಮನ್ನ ನಾವು ಈಗ teenageನ ಲೋಕದಲ್ಲಿರುವುದಾಗಿ ಅಂದುಕೊಂಡು, ಈ ’ಬೇಕು’ ಘಟ್ಟಕ್ಕೆ ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ extension ಕೊಟ್ಟು ನೋಡಿದರೆ, ಈಗಿನ ಕಾಲದ ಬೇಕುಗಳು ಹಣದ ವಿಚಾರದಲ್ಲಿ ಬಹಳ ದುಬಾರಿ ಸ್ತಿತಿಯಲ್ಲಿರುವಂತಹುಗಳು. Hair-cutಗಳು, Watchಗಳು, Scootarಗಳು, CellPhoneಗಳು, ಇನ್ನೂ ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ ಮೇಲಕ್ಕೆ ಹೊದರೆ, ಹೊಸ ಮಾದರಿಯ Carಗಳು..ಹೀಗೆ ಇವೆಲ್ಲಾ ನಮ್ಮ ಈಗಿನ ಬೇಕುಗಳಾಗಿವೆ!

ಈಗ ನಮ್ಮ ಈ ’ಬೇಕು’ ಪ್ರಶ್ನೆಗೇ ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ extension ಕೊಟ್ಟು ನೋಡಿದರೆ ಅದು ಬೆಳೆಯುತ್ತಾ ಬೆಳೆಯುತ್ತಾ ಮುಂದೆ ಒಂದು ದಿನ ’ಬೇಕಾ?’ ಅಗುತ್ತದೆ. ಇನ್ನೂ ಮುಂದಕ್ಕೆ ಹೋದರೆ ’ಬೇಕಾಗಿತ್ತಾ?’ ಅಗಬಹುದು, ಬಹಳಸಲ  ಆಗಿಯೇ ಆಗುತ್ತದೆ.

ಬೇಕು ಎಂಬುದು ಬೇಕಾ ಅಗಲು ಏನು ಕಾರಣ? ಬನ್ನಿ ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ ಯೋಚನೆ ಮಾಡುವ.

ಬೇಕು ಏಂದರೆ ಅವಶ್ಯಕತೆ ಇರಬಹುದು, ಆಸೆ ಇರಬಹುದು ಅಥವಾ ಇನ್ನಾವುದೋ ಬಲದ ಒತ್ತಡವಿರಬಹುದು. ಈ ಬೇಕು ಅನ್ನುವುದು ಬದುಕಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಆಗಾಗ ನಾವೇ ಅಥವಾ ಒತ್ತಡಕ್ಕೊಳಗಾದ ನಾವು ಸೃಷ್ಟಿಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳುವ ಒಂದು ಖಾಲಿ ಜಾಗ ’space’ ಎನ್ನಬಹುದು. ಖಾಲಿ space ಮಾಡಿದ್ದಾಯಿತು ಇನ್ನು ಅಲ್ಲಿ ಎನಾದರು, ತುಂಬಿಸಬೇಕಲ್ಲವೇ? ಏನು ತುಂಬಿಸುತ್ತೇವೆ ಎಂಬುದು ಆಗಲೇ ನಿರ್ಧಾರವಾಗಿರುತ್ತದೆ, ಅದಕ್ಕೆ ತಕ್ಕ ಸದಾವಕಾಶಕ್ಕಾಗಿ ನಮ್ಮ ಕಾಯುವಿಕೆ ನಡೆದಿರುತ್ತದೆ ಅಷ್ಟೆ. ಸದಾವಕಾಶ ಸಿಕ್ಕಿ space ತುಂಬಿಸಿದ ಮೇಲೆ ! ಕೆಲವು ದಿನ ತುಂಬಿರುವ space ಅನ್ನು ನೋಡುತ್ತಿರುತ್ತೇವೆ, ಅಂದರೆ ತುಂಬಿದ ಆನಂದದ ಸುಖದಲ್ಲಿ ತೇಲುತ್ತಿರುತ್ತೇವೆ. ಮತ್ತೊಂದು spaceನ ನಿರ್ಮಾಣ ನಮಗೆ ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲದೇ ನಮ್ಮ ಮನದಲ್ಲಿ ನಡೆದಿರುತ್ತದೆ, ಅದನ್ನು ನಾವು ಗಮನಿಸಿಯೂ ಗಮನಿಸದಂತೆ ವರ್ತಿಸುತ್ತಿರುತ್ತೇವೆ. Space ಸೃಷ್ಟಿಯಾಯಿತೆಂದರೆ ಮುಗಿಯಿತು. ನಮ್ಮ ಮೊದಲ ತುಂಬಿರುವ space ಈಗ ’ಬೇಕಾ’ ಅಗಿಬಿಟ್ಟಿರುತ್ತದೆ!

Teenage ಆಯಿತು, ಈಗ ಇನ್ನು ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ ಮುಂದೆ ಹೋಗುವ, ಕಾಲಕ್ಕೆ, ನಮ್ಮ ಮನಸ್ಸಿಗೆ, ಶರೀರಕ್ಕೆ extension ಕೊಡುವ. ಈಗ ನಮ್ಮ ಹಲವಾರು ಹಳೆಯ ಬೇಕುಗಳು ಹೊಸ ಬೇಕಾ? ಆಗಿಬಿಟ್ಟಿವೆ. ಅಂದರೆ ನಾವು ಈಗ ಸರಿ ಸುಮಾರು ಮಧ್ಯ-ವಯಸ್ಸಿನಲ್ಲಿರಬೇಕಾದ ಹೊತ್ತು ಅಂದುಕೊಳ್ಳೋಣ. ಅಲ್ಲದೆ ಹೊಸ ’ಬೇಕು’ಗಳು ಹುಟ್ಟಿಕೊಡಿವೆ, ಅವೆಂದರೆ, ಒಳ್ಳೆಯ ಉದ್ಯೋಗ, ಮನೆ ನಿರ್ಮಾಣ, ಮದುವೆ, ಮಕ್ಕಳು..ಇತ್ಯಾದಿ ಇತ್ಯಾದಿ. ಎಚ್ಹರ ! ಈ ಎಲ್ಲವೂ ಮುಂದೊಮ್ಮೆ ’ಬೇಕಾ?’ ಗಳಾಗಬಹುದು

ಈಗ ಬೇಕಾ? ಎಂಬುದು ಬೇಕಾಗಿತ್ತಾ? ಏಕಾಗುತ್ತದೆ?ಇದಕ್ಕೆ ಕಾರಣ ಹುಡುಕುವ ಬನ್ನಿ.

ಬೇಕು ಮಾತು ಬೇಕಾಗಿತ್ತಾ ನಡುವೆ ಇರುವ ಅಂತರ ಬಹಳ ಕಡಿಮೆ, ಈ ಅಂತರಕ್ಕೆ ಮುಖ್ಯ ಕಾರಣ ನಮ್ಮ ಬೇಕು? ಮೇಲಿನಿಂದ ನಾವು ಕಳೆದುಕೊಳ್ಳುವ attraction ಅಂದರೆ ಭಾವನಾತ್ಮಕ ಸಂಭದದಲ್ಲ್ಲಾಗುವ  ಬದಲಾವಣೆ. ಮೊದಲು ’ಬೇಕು’ ಎಂಬುದು ಹೇಗೆ ಅವಶ್ಯಕತೆಯಗಿರುತ್ತದೋ ಕಾಲಾನಂತರ ಅದೇ ಬೇಕಾಗಿತ್ತಾ? ಆದ ಮೇಲೆ ಸಮಸ್ಯೆಯಾಗಿ ತಲೆದೋರಬಹುದು.

ಆದರೆ ಒಂದು ಮಾತು, ನಾವೆಲ್ಲರೂ ಈ ಬೇಕು ! ಬೇಕಾ? ಬೇಕಾಗಿತ್ತಾ? ಮೂಲಕ ನಮ್ಮ ಬದುಕನ್ನು ಸಾಗಿಸಲೇ ಬೇಕು. ನೋಡಿ ನನ್ನ ಮೇಲಿನ sentence ಕೂಡಾ ಬೇಕು ಎಂದೇ ಕೊನೆಗೊಂಡಿದೆ.

ಕೊನೆಗೆ ನಮ್ಮ ಬೇಕುಗಳು ಹೀಗಿರಲಿ:

ನಮ್ಮ ಬೇಕುಗಳನ್ನ ಅದಷ್ಟು ಅಂಕೆಯಲ್ಲಿಡೋಣ, ಹೆಚ್ಚು ಬೇಕುಗಳುಗಳಿಂದ, ಹೆಚ್ಚು ಸಮಸ್ಯೆಗಳು / ಬೇಕಾಗಿತ್ತಾ? ಗಳನ್ನು ಹುಟ್ಟುಹಾಕುವುದು ಬೇಡ. ಇಂದಿನ ಬೇಕುಗಳು, ಬೇಕಾ? ಅಥವಾ ಬೇಕಾಗಿತ್ತಾಗಳಾಗಿ ಬದಲಾಗಲು ಹಿಂದಿನಂತೆ ಹೆಚ್ಚು ಸಮಯ ತೆಗೆದುಕೊಳ್ಳುವುದಿಲ್ಲಾ ! ಇದಕ್ಕೆ ಕಾರಣ ನಮಗೆಲ್ಲರಿಗೂ ಗೊತ್ತೇ ಇದೆ ಅಂದುಕೊಳ್ಳುತ್ತೇನೆ. ದಿನ ನಿತ್ಯವೂ ನಾವೂ ನೊಡುತ್ತಲೇ ಇದ್ದೇವೆ ಕೂಡ.

ನನ್ನ ನೆಚ್ಚಿನವರೊಬ್ಬರ ಮಾತಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಹೇಳುವುದಾದರೆ – 

ನಾವು ಯಾವುದನ್ನೇ ಆದರು ಎರಡು ಕಾರಣಗಳಿಗಾಗಿ ಇಷ್ಟಪಡುತ್ತೇವೆ. ಒಂದು ಅದು ನಮ್ಮಲ್ಲಿ ಇಲ್ಲ ಎಂಬ ಕಾರಣ,  
ಇನ್ನೊಂದು ಅದು ನಮ್ಮಲ್ಲಿ ಇದೆ ಎಂಬ ಕಾರಣದಿಂದ. ಸೋಜಿಗದ ಸಂಗತಿಯೆಂದರೆ ಮುಂದೊಂದು ದಿನ ನಾವೇ 
ನಮ್ಮಲ್ಲಿರುವುದನ್ನು ಈ ಮೇಲಿನ ಎರಡು ಕಾರಣಗಳಿಂದಲೇ ಇಷ್ಟಪಡುವುದಿಲ್ಲ !!

~