Just a few thoughts

Many people are quite sure what they want in life. What they think is a good career, a great personal life, what they would like to achieve in the 75-80 odd yrs that they live and so on. What to do this month, this year, this decade . In some sense, even the ability to form goals , in a counter intuitive sort of way partly involves the ability to plan several years ahead ( whether they come to fruition or not is another story) I think on this count, on most facets of life, I dont have *that *clear cut goals. Even in areas, where I do to some extent, such as career, I wouldnt claim that 20 years before, this is what I wanted. Or that I can claim to answer now " 20 years later, what is it that I want?" ....the only thing is here, may be I have broad ideas on what kind of thing I like to do, and what I dont, what may be in a very very ideal world I would like to become etc. As a self proclaimed introvert, one would think I require little external validation. This is true in some...

If you have read my previous post ( well unlikely, since nobody knows this blog exists thus far!) and wondering if there is any connection to the previous post, well NO. This is about a book I read recently, that of Malcom Gladwell's "Talking to Strangers" Similar to some of other Gladwell's books, its an easy read filled with lots of anecdotes and incidents. Anyway the main premise of the book is that when we talk to people we dont know and see things we arent sure of, we make a lot of assumptions . And that not all of those assumptions are correct. And we default to what Gladwell calls "Truth default theory" In Gladwell's typical anecdotal style, there are  plethora of anecdotes ranging from some Cuban double agent spies to Madoff to few much more darker incidents such as the Amanda Knox murder case among others. Anyway one of the premises in that book is what is referred to as "Truth default theory". That by default, we human beings assume t...

Nearly a decade back, at the time when I still used to post thoughts linked to my state of mind/ feelings etc on social media ( kind of restarting to now), I had in one of my posts mentioned " The most important thing....is to have something to look forward to...." It remains one of the most succinct, yet profoundly true, statement that I have ever thought or posted ( ok I am exaggerating here but you get the drift) If you had to pick two emotions that probably influence each one of us, it is that of hope and fear.  It is funny how the two emotions work in kind of opposite ways. Fear of something often turns out much worse than that "something" itself.  Many a time, you deliberate on how bad something could turn out to be, keep mulling over it, agonizing , and then it happens, and what you particularly feared turned out not that bad as you imagined.  Hope is just the opposite. As the line in Shawshank Redemption goes "Hope is a good thing, may be it is the best...