Yashas Mahajan's Blog, page 8
March 14, 2023
Word of the Week #363:
Sometimes, you can keep doing all of the right things but still not get the outcomes you sought. A black swan events can occur at any moment and ruin all your efforts.
It might seem ridiculous, but we have all experienced some events of this sort, right?
A random drunk driver may demolish your years worth of good physical health. An erratic flash flood may wash away your farmhouse. Hell, you could just stumble down a flight of stairs, and your life will be changed forever.
To what extent can you predict these events? How do you avoid them, or at least mitigate them? How do you survive them?
Sometimes, even our best efforts will not be enough, and in our own ways, we have to be prepared for them.
I guess throughout my adulthood, the one lesson I have learned is that our outcomes are just beyond our control. At some level, we have to just do what needs to be done, no matter what is happening around us.
As tough and unpleasant and gloomy it may be, we keep doing what we do, and we keep moving forward, yeah?
March 7, 2023
Word of the Week #362:
Some of us are born to spread our roots, and some to spread our wings.
Somehow, I have always known which one I am.
February 28, 2023
Word of the Week #361:
Lately, I feel like I have stopped looking for “home”, whatever that is supposed to be.
Instead, I am just trying to be myself wherever I am, unperturbed by what surrounds me.
While I still know what I want, running around chasing something so abstract, something that might not even exist, feels futile. Wouldn’t I rather immerse myself in what I do have and make the most of it.
Why wait to live when the clock is already ticking, right?
Let’s start moving forward today.
February 21, 2023
Word of the Week #360:
I think I should take a brief break from typing.
Too many of my activities, both vocational and avocational, have been stressing my arms.
My fingers, wrists, and forearms feel chronically tired, nowadays. Every move I make, every click, every keystroke, it is a reminder of my fatigue.
For once, I am experiencing physical burnout before mental or emotional. That, on the one hand, is odd and concerning, but at the same time, maybe I should be proud of how well I’m taking care of my mental health…
For now, I’ll have to look for little pockets of rest whenever I can. I haven’t had a day off in 6 weeks, and that’s just not sustainable, right?
Well, I do hope to get some rest. Let’s see if I actually succeed.
February 14, 2023
Word of the Week #359:
For a long, long time, I have believed that I was fuelled by a small number of the brightest, warmest emotions available to humankind—love, joy, hope, the usual.
Lately, though, my mindset has evolved beyond that.
After all, can we always rely on residual positive energy to get things done? Important things? Things that need to be done?
That’s the thing about positive energy, right. It is a result of our circumstances. It is something that happens, not something that can be done. Ergo, not reliable.
Life cannot wait for us to find the right timing or energy or motivation or whatever, can it? It just keeps moving forward. Things need to be done, and you just have to do them. That’s the mark of an adult.
Discipline. That’s our path forward.
It’s ridiculous how strongly I would’ve disagreed to that statement a few years ago. I suppose I really have grown up.
Well, at least I have seen that one cannot count on moments of insane inspiration or random motivation to get any important things done in life. The little good habits we cultivate over the many decades of our life… The little patterns of behaviour that we build through thousands of rounds of repetition—both conscious and unconscious… That’s what matters.
Discipline is how we build our lives.
We keep moving forward.
February 7, 2023
Word of the Week #358:
Our perception of time really changes with age and experience, doesn’t it?
It might seem strange and counterintuitive, but when I was younger, I always felt like I was running out of time.
It seems ridiculous to think about it now. Like, what was the hurry? I had all the time in the world! I could’ve taken more of my time, taken a long-term view of the world, build something slow and steady instead of rushing and stumbling through so many of my formative years.
Now, I find it so much easier to just slow down. There is just a composure that has come along with my age. Now, I am far more comfortable just laying bricks one by one as I begin to build my life.
The eye is on the long game, now.
I am a patient guy. I have enough time to figure out how to win this long game. Let’s see how it goes…
January 31, 2023
Word of the Week #357:
It is weird, but the stresses and challenges we choose to face just feel different from the ones we have to face, right?
In most regards and by most standards, I do have a pretty comfortable and easy life. Lucky me. There are some things, of course, that are bothersome and have to be dealt with.
Even among those, in some situations, I might have to work a little harder than I’d like for a little longer than I’d like, and I’m able to lead myself to a better place.
But in some situations, I just have to bear the burden for… honestly, I don’t even know how long.
And somehow, when I know I’ve chosen to bear this burden, when I know I can let go at any moment, it just feels a lot lighter.
Of course, it’s not like I can trick myself into thinking all my burdens are chosen, right?
And life is weird. I cannot expect it to get any easier or more predictable as I keep growing older. I just have to keep getting stronger.
And to do that, I will keep choosing to seek out more burdens in my currently soft, easy life and prepare to be tough enough when the going gets tough.
January 24, 2023
Word of the Week #356:
Hope… It is an odd thing, isn’t it?
Just how much of hope is too much? When is the right time to give up?
In life, we may endeavour to keep moving forward, but where do we go when we don’t know which way that is?
Hope is a double-edged sword. It can keep leading us down a path. If we don’t know if that’s the right way, is it better to keep moving forward, or is it better to just stop till we know where to go?
We can’t let go of hope. Sometimes, that’s all we have, right? Sometimes, that’s all that can keep us going.
But at the same time, putting your hope in the wrong thing could lead you somewhere you never wanted to be. Somewhere you truly do not belong.
Usually, when I start writing about something, I tend to stumble into a solution. The process of reorganising my thoughts and turning them into a cogent stream of words is enough to reveal the answers hidden within my own head.
Not this time, I guess…
So perhaps I should just keep taking small steps forward to handle everything that needs my attention, stay steady and prepared, and not make any drastic changes to my life.
All the while, I await an external change that illuminates my path for me…
Waiting for a ray of hope to appear sounds almost too hopeful to be reasonable. But when have I been described as the most reasonable of individuals, right?
January 17, 2023
Word of the Week #355:
My son is 22 years old. If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him. If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then.
Georges Clemenceau
As I inch towards my thirties and take a look at my rapidly changing life, this is one quote that keeps coming back to my mind.
How different is communism (or socialism) from capitalism? Is one truly that much different from the other?
I have seen so many people transition from one to the other—usually, almost exclusively, former to latter—that I have to imagine that there is a link or a pathway between the two. There must be one fork in the road that just ever so diverges from the one to the other, and following that changes a lot about you.
I am beginning to understand what that change is.
As I have grown older, I have begun to feel that the amount of love and strength and energy I have is relatively limited. I still think it is immense, but limited nonetheless.
And lately, I have begun to realise that having this limit to my supply of energy, I cannot afford to allocate too much of it to all the things—or the people—in the world. At some point, I have to be judicious with my resources.
How do we share our love among the people around us? Yes, some people in our lives might need our love, but if they can’t love us back, wouldn’t that just drain us? We can’t just keep giving and giving and get nothing in return, right? At some point, we tend to distance ourselves from them.
By comparison, it is so much easier to love someone whose presence and words and actions just fill our lives with energy, right?
That’s just return on investment, after all.
Of course, I’m not saying that I’m a full-blown capitalist just yet. Capitalism-curious, at the most. However, I am beginning to understand the transition.
We cannot love and protect and provide for the entire world. We have to prioritise us and ours. As we grow older, as our responsibilities grow more real, we have to focus on what we can do, what we need to do, instead of what we wish we could do.
Reallocation of our own resources to ensure our own sustenance. That doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world, right?
Then why do I feel so dirty saying it…
All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall.
The Wall, Pink Floyd
January 10, 2023
Word of the Week #354:
If you wish to be a warrior, prepare to be broken.
If you wish to be an explorer, prepare to be lost.
If you wish to be a lover, prepare to be both.
I don’t remember where I read this, or even when, but it stuck with me. It just made sense.
Never have I been scared of being broken.
Never have I been scared of being lost.
Never have I been scared of being in love.
