Did the school walk at night? It is a school holiday. My little daughter is having a wonderful time. And she likes to make stories. And I wonder where that gene comes 🤔 from. She says, while she is enjoying her vacation, the school went on a trip by himself. Apparently it is a four day trip to the turtle beach . As kids are no longer there the school can enjoy a day out.  What about the other days? I asked. The school is a lazy guy. He doesn't do anything during the day. Just stay quite and still. But at night, it's time to go wild. Maybe it goes to a party, writes a book or go to the park. How wonderful. Only if she stays up at night will she see. But she is not. Everyone sleeps at night! So nobody knows. Platform 9 3/4 : https://unsplash.com/@dialex Platform 9 3/4 It seems kids have got imaginary powers. When was the last time you thought about something like that? You might say nah.. I stopped being a kid ages ago. I don't believe in dreams or magical stuff anymore. I highly doubt that. It's one thing not to believe in walking schools and hidden train stations on platform 9 3/4 to Hogwarts. But I say yet you believe in stock markets, banks, foreign conspiracies and 9 1/2 weeks 1989 erotica. How about love ? Just the other day I showed love is the most abused word in the English dictionary. But let's get back to the question. How can we prove to the poor kid that the school hasn't gone on a vacation? Imagine the same thing is said about her friend. Imagine your six year old daughter comes to you and says her friend has gone on a vacation,  four days to Malaysia, with her parents. Even without checking the facts we would assume this to be true. As it is likely and very good chance of being true. Unless of course she really wanted to fool you. But the truth is until you check the facts you would not know. Maybe they missed the flight. Maybe it was last summer that they went to Malaysia. Maybe it was a trip to Madagascar. The fact is you do not know. You are blind to the truth. Even in courts, you cannot give a hearsay answer. But when we compare this to the school my mind goes blank. Obviously school cannot move. And it cannot go on trips. But I am sure I have seen talking clocks and teapots in Disney cartoons just yesterday. I wonder what really happens to the school at night. I really do not know. If I forget the learned fact that schools are non living things, taught in the grade 2 science class, there is a chance school going on a trip to be a nice answer to the question "What happened to the school at night". Among many other answers like, it's being demolished and rebuilt in an exact second. How about that? Madagascar : https://unsplash.com/@jacques_dillies Descartes and Dreams Can't you see where I am going with this. Can you see why the curiosity of a kid can harbour more meaning than all the adults talking in a pub on Saturday night? Even Descartes found out that he could not entirely be sure that someone did rebuild the entire world yet again once you are asleep. I'm telling you again! Kid's got a point. I am sure she will lose all curiosity about what the school does at night, once she is too busy trying to figure out angular momentum in grade 10. That is a sad truth about life. Instead I invite you to be curious about what happens to the world when you sleep.  To me in sleep the world and me does not exist. And this simple fact leaves me thousands of unanswered questions. Does this mean 🤔 that the enlightenment that I seek is some kind of an eternal sleep? If non-existence is just a coma? But if someone were to harm this body while I was sleeping it would still hurt yet I can see just like I do not know about the school at night I do not know about myself during sleep. Easy answer is not to think . Just chase a dream or play the dumb man's game. I would do that happily if I knew what there is when the sausage party is over. Maybe I have trust issues with nature that I do not trust it anymore as I have seen enough cruelty in the formation of humans on earth. Whoever did that was cruel, to make something out of nothingness is the most cruel deed I can do, if I was given the power of creation. It's like giving a life to a pinocchio, or in our case to my daughters school. Now at this point if you are bored with an intellectual hike, and waiting for a final message I would make you disappointed once again. I have just made crossroads. That is what I do, as your mind is capable of choosing its own path given enough information. It will know what to do, like an AI. Just read again if things are not clear as always answers depend on the question you ask. So in conclusion I can say I am not capable of completely denying my little girl's idea of walking to school. Should I tell the truth to her that 'I do not know'? Or just lie to her that 'schools do not walk?' And let her figure out that I lied to her when she becomes 42?

What is faster than the speed of light? If there is anything faster than the speed of light, I would say it is the conscioussness of one self. I am not talking about ant or a beatle consciousness but human. Obviously scale matters in universe. Human consciousness is very fast, and in a matter of fraction of a second you can reach the farthest planet on the edge of the known universe. You can call it imaginary, but nonetheless, I can ask you what is real? So far I could not find anything other than imaginary things, in my consciousness, hence, that is a false claim. Imagination is as real as everything we imagine, and likely the only thing which is real. "I thing therefore I am" - Rene Descartes . The Sun: https://unsplash.com/@nasa But how about actual consciousness bound by miles, in the universe? What is the true expansion of human consciousness when we consider the cosmic scales. The Mars project proves us again and again, that human consciousness is still at the doorstep when we consider even the solar system. Only few hundred travelled to the space and even few, to the moon. Mars is just a dream still. At the rate of blowing up rockets, I even doubt that might happen or not. Since when an Amarican dream became obsessed with Mars? when we individually posess the fastest rocket on the planet by default fixed in the brain, I might consider this excessive. Prisoners of mind. Sometimes I weep silently in the mind when I realise I can only dream. I can only dream I would travel to mars. What about saturn? What about Jupiter. I can only dream I would travel great lakes of America, Honalulu Island, or Bora bora. If I expand the google earth now, I can see wonderful places where I must travel before I turn 60. Yet I can only dream its physically impossible to cover everything in a lifetime. I am sure If I sell my car today I might cover up ten places, but then I know, I will be still a prisoner of mind. I have not stepped out an inch from my brain. It is simply impossible. I carry my own little man to the edge of the universe, but my consciousness cannot be free from the burden, it carry. I can only dream of enlightenment, but its imaginary. I am just a part of the universal agenda, with a false idea of independence. I laugh in my sleep on imaginary boundries I created at the edge of my land. When true fact exist I havent stepped outside my six foot prison. I refuse to be narrow minded and see a value in it, try preserve it as long as I can, when I know even values are created in mind. Cosmic Consciousness Apple Store: https://unsplash.com/@kemingt As you can see, these are two different opposing Ideas. When we look at it positively we can say human consciousness is fastet and most valueable thing on the universe. But on the other hand we can see the restrictions, like a prisoner, it tries to escape from its own constrains to become enlighted, liberated and free. And not knowing how to, it does various things. From feeding itself to travelling to Mars. If anything, I would dissect myself, not the universe to understand the nature of things. No point digging up another Oil well in a desert to fuel a tank to generate power to break through the space. I would sit in a one place by the edge of the lagoon watching a sunset and drifting clouds . Turning away from the society. In society where, teachers teach, bricklayers lay bricks, Politicians lie, and Lawyers argue, How boring it is to break into a shop and loot for an apple phone in Florida? How boring it is to wrench a nut in an assembly line in China? How boring to climb a 40 foot tree to reach for a beehive, to steal some honey in Congo? I would not do that, not today. Consider myself lazy, but I would rather learn to eat grass, as I know nothing would satisfy myself. If the Greed is the guide for my unnecessary exsitance, I would starve this with boaringness of life, by just observing it. What would you do? next year? Tomorrow ? Today? Now?

Fishing at night. I was driving by the lagoon the other day when I noticed how men fish. There were little platforms made out of wood,by the edge of the water, a little too small for a person to sit. I was wondering What were they for? I kind of knew it has to do something about fishing. Then one night I saw what exactly it was for. Its not for the fishermen to sit, but for his lantern. Or the torch which lured some fish, seeking enlightenment into his trap of death instead. Sound familier right? Exactly the point. It is not the first time fish were trapped in this way. And it is not only for the fish, but a universal truth for enitre animal kingdom. Often I have seen this happening in the early hours at night, in the isolated street light in front of our house. Fisherman : https://unsplash.com/@mischievous_penguins Ants seeking enlightment. I am not sure why tiny animal souls are so much atrracted to light. It is obviously not enlightenment they are seeking. When I think about it I can understand why the world is filled with so many tiny souls. Earth is nothing without us. Each and every tiny soul. Two flies who disturbed our lunch yesterday, were in search of something. I am sure it is not enlightenment. The universe is in eternal darkness. It it wasn't for the close proximity to the sun the big torch which fills our lives with light, we would be in darkness too . Hence we all are trapped in this earth because of the sunlight. But here is a truth about light, if you get too close you will burn by the same light we seek. That is what the tiny insects, which burn themselves in the streetlight's teach me. Watching from the window, at night I sympathise them just like fish. I can turn off the light. But I am sure they will still seek the wisdom of the next streetlight to drive them into their own demise. Enough of tiny insects, how about multicellular souls? I saw a post on pinterest about a new definition for life. Although not exact, it was something like, "Life is travelling through space, in thousand miles per second, rotating around a burning helium ball, covering a 50 pounds of bones with 100 pounds of flesh, made up of stardust ." And in this misterious journey called life, we often seek some light. And just like a fish, just like a flying ant, we are directly lured into the trap of universe. To be burned alive. Although we are out of danger from extreme heat from sun, we still seek comfort in places. Sometimes it is in our home. Maybe from our job. Maybe from the nature, or from meditation. And we feel just enough happiness to fixed into these places. Like target fixation , we cannot move on as our roots start to dig deep into the experience of tranquility. And when and if they start to become too hot, which inevitably would be we seek the next street light to follow the same route in seeking comfort. Streetlight: https://unsplash.com/@amoltyagi2 Beware of enlightenment! I am sure the fish believe in the fishermens light. Just like we believe in things we cannot see or hear or feel. Just like everything I cannot feel now. From things like heavens and hells, even apocalypses we cannot predict. How constricted I am in this world. I beleve in everything exists all the time like the chairs infront of me when I am not looking. When I hear a cry of a squirrel , I believe there is a squirrel running out in the garden. When I hear kids play in the other room, I believe they are physically present alive in this very moment. Similarly I believe in an enlightenment which happen in the future. How real is that? Yet I see beyond current thought existing in this mind everything else seem imaginary. Then I see into this thought to see if at all it is real too. What is your light? What is your guide in life? What is your go to rule which you follow in life? For Arnold Schwarzenegger it was his passion to become a star like Reg Park. It is good to follow dreams (a relative truth). But it is wise to know when to just orbit around without falling into the light source itself. So, beware of enlightenment

I have been a big fan of sniper movies. It started with video game playing . But its fascinating to watch a bullet travelling in slow motion as often shown in movies like Wanted 2008. I can tell you hundreds of best sniper scenes from the tip of my tongue. Latest being the series "The day of the Jackal" where I learned how to sympathise with a killer. Yet one important thing that every sniper is capable of is predicting the future. And it is all about perception and perspective. The sniper: https://unsplash.com/@visualsbyroyalz What is perception and perspective ?  Perception is what you feel about the world through your senses. Five senses and thoughts let you create your own reflections about the world and interpret. And this is the subjectivity. Perspective on the other hand is to think from someone else's point of view. In healthcare we call it empathy. And just like singing and dancing some people are inherently good at picking up perspectives. And definitely philosophers and snipers. As if you want to become a good sniper you have to master the perspective. Imagine a sniper scene, where a duo of snipers are on a mission. They wait observing their enemies. And when they observe their target, they are going to be in the perspective mode. As far as distance matters, from the time they shoot a bullet to the hit there is about a few seconds gap. Essentially they are shooting into the future, and they have to predict where their enemy is going to be in a few seconds. To do this they have to think like the enemy. Hence perspectives are important in becoming a better sniper. Perspective is essential in understanding human nature. And it is an inherent part of philosophy. It's the famous bus example. When a pretty looking girl boards a bus everyone will look at her. That is human nature and perception. But if you are a sniper or a philosopher you would look at others' faces when it happens. And that is because you are inherently curious about their perspective. And this will give you an advantage, as now you posses someone's perspective you can try predicting the future. Often someone who is more aware of perspectives is hard to fool. Perspectives: https://unsplash.com/@visualsbyroyalz Why you should learn others' perspectives. If you are inherently not curious about someone else's perspective still I suggest you learn and train about it. As a motivation I would say it's cashable. Some would say it's cunning. But I would label it as an evolutionary advantage over others. Obviously not only snipers and philosophers, but teachers, doctors, even cops use it in interrogation rooms. You might lure someone into your agenda even without them knowing when you know their perspective. It seems unethical, but it happens all the time, in every human encounter. Even with your partner. And I am sure you will use this weapon only for "peaceful purposes". 😅 Generally, I do not want to limit myself in imagination. So I would say, just imagine for the fun of it. Imagine the perspective of a Jew, in autzwichtz . Think about the perspective of Larry Holmes when he was beaten by Mike Tyson. Feel what it means to be the person sitting next to you in the bus. And do not stop there. Think about the world from the point of view of a crow . An earthworm . Or a jellyfish . What it is like to be a crab in the clutches of a kingfisher.  Think some more. Think like a wave . Think like a tree . I can see there are much more interesting things if you consider the possibilities. Write a poem from the perspective of an Alien, or feel what if death is a friend. And most importantly write them down before you forget. Maybe you should comment.

The Penguin Island. I have no doubt in this. It looks like we are clothed monkeys. For this matter I would like to point you to the novel by Anatole France the French author "The penguin Island". It was a confusing novel as I was very young when I had my hands on this. I can specifically remember how these naked humans, freshly baptized, in a faraway island first started to wear cloths. One of the less attractive women in the Island started to cover herself up and suddenly she became the most attractive women to the men. As now, the beauty is in cloths, not in the naked female form. Obviously soon everyone started to wear cloths and, the things start to evolve like a normal human society. And it makes me wonder are we really naked monkeys? Or just we are a higher human form? Penguin Island: https://unsplash.com/@tamwarnerminton Human behavior in groups. There are fascinating facts about how human behavior changes in a group set up. Different from individual encounters. Rather than explaining it, I can give you an example. I participated in a protest once when I was a university student. And these protests were common during that time, against government about money allocation for education, privatization etc. were the main issues. I considered myself an obedient citizen for most of the time. Yet I can remember on this particular day, I felt alien. We were marching down the road shouting slogans, and it started really slow but as time went on it escalated. I felt myself even bit of angry, adrenalin pumping all around. There were heated encounters with the police, in front parts of the march, I was somewhere in the middle. Fortunately, police did not raise their weapons against us that day. And if they did, I am sure I would have involved. I would have thrown a stone or two and I might have injured myself in the process. And I did feel like I was marching for a great cause and, my involvement was small when I consider what was happening with the group. Protest: https://unsplash.com/@heathermount Normalization of behaviors - real life examples of deindividuation. What I did not realize at that time was its deindividuation that I was feeling. It's a feeling that we feel less responsible for our actions when we are in a group. We might even commit a crime and even enjoy it. I could have broken a window of a building and felt less responsible when consider what's going on all around. Later when I contemplated my behavior that day, I understood I am just a monkey in cloths. At least that there is evidence that we are truly different when circumstances change. I would have been Tarson in the jungle if was stranded with monkeys. With this view we can explain some of the things happen around the world. You can be watching CNN, in the comfort of your couch and think how stupid, people in Gaza strip fighting for a bag of rice. They seem rude and unethical. But fact is it happened to toilet rolls in supermarkets when the first wave of covid hit few years ago. It may seem like a joke to imagine the extreme. But it's good to challenge ourselves after all if we are aiming for a more ethical world, we must accept our true origins and nature. Earlier we do that longer and sooner we will be connected with universal peace. Its lucky we are not born in a cannibalistic group. A group that worship money. Even the era of WW11 is a good example of these complex human behaviors. Let's not forget but forgive ourselves. And learn how to look at a criminal with even kind heart. Some might call this Stockholm syndrome. But that is just a discussion for another day. https://unsplash.com/@ripey__ Now you can go back to your mirror and fully appreciate the monkey in you and forgive. As you are the only one who see your own reflection every day.

Life - a weird dream. It happened one day, for about 3.5 decades ago. I was born to this thing called self. It's a weird dream. I was hopeless as a person. Hanging on my mother, dependent on everything. Just three kilos of flesh and bones, and a consciousness with no memory. I am not sure why this, why here and why now. It took years and years for me to learn everything. From A to Z of drop of everything humans have gained over the years. And I was hopeless. I had to believe in everything they say. About the skies, trees, gods, ancestors and science, mathematics. There are libraries of accumulated knowledge of human consciousness. Stories, as were interpreted by some observers in the past, written down in books. And here I am writing down my own observations about the world. But why? Life in the fast lane: https://unsplash.com/@dnevozhai I know the answer to why. And I know what is wrong with that too. Because I have been travelling in the information highway until I met my own crossroads in life. Where the true life If at all present, begins. Then only you would realize all you have been doing is pressing the gas harder and harder, in life, to travel faster and faster towards your own doom. Crossroads are blessings from our own past. For us to stop and think seriously about life. Even better if you do not know where to ride next. Why I create knowledge? The reason I am writing is to preserve these thoughts. As I now learn value is not in these papers called money . Values are in human minds. Values are created exactly when you think about something. A car, a boat, a dollar bill or even this article. You are the evaluator of your own Values. Hence, I have learned my lesson of human values hard way. And I am making it easier for you to understand, so you do not have to waste years and years of your life wasting not knowing what to do. Path to create Values is by preserving your consciousness by creating something or collecting something . So, start it today. Trust me you will be a happier person doing it. And that leaves me with my next claim. I have to explain the fault in this thought too. To do that I have to drag you into some little bit of philosophy. If you already know, there is a thing called subjectivity about our consciousness. We are prisoners of our own bodies. Our consciousness cannot magically float and see the world in another perspective. Not even after death likely. So, whatever the Values you try to preserve may not be valuable to others. It even won't be valuable until you die. Like Schmidt tunnel for that matter. But I can guarantee that it will be valuable for you always. Isn't it amazing to know. The value you feel looking at a little ant climbing a grass is much more than a hundred-dollar bill. And this is the nature of Values. If you believe in it, it's true. I think you get the problem now. Problem is its all imaginary. To savor a movie, even a piece of mango you have to imagine. You have to evaluate your own experience against your own past and give it a value. And without these snippets of thoughts, we are nothing. Welcome to life, if you do not know the roads. Welcome to life: https://unsplash.com/@hngstrm If you feel nihilistic by now. I can say welcome to life. As my objective is complete as I have created crossroads in your life. From here onwards it's up to you to question your all life and observe what's happening in your brain. The experiment of life already started when you were born, and you are just the creator of your own reality. If you let your mindfulness to watch this every day, you may ask the questions like "what is the meaning of all this?" Isn't it absurd to give Values to things I see and believe in them and cry over them in the next second? Let's discuss some of the things bothering you about your life. And try to find out whether there is truly a knot. Or just a no knot .

My travelling history - and how I remember the road. Oh.. amount of travelling I have done. Four hours on the road for eight years in a row. From home to school, from school to home. It deserves a blog article, or two, as it is just the tip of the ice burg when it comes to my time on the road. Even in UK I took the bus most of the time, out of convenience and met the nicest bust driver ever. Yet, this article is about the memory. Buses: https://unsplash.com/@kingtographer I used to travel in the front seat of the local bus. Unlike UK Buses these Indian built TATA and Layland Buses were worn off ones when fully loaded they even tilt a bit to the side, giving me anxiety of impending tipping over feeling every bend. Yet never once it happened. And I survived to tell you the story of how I remember the roads. As you can understand the travelling by bus is a boring affair. There is no novelty in it. Same roads, same bends, same boring routines day after day, I was kind of hoping it would end. But did not and would not. Often, I would remember the road. I can go back to my memory and access every junction in the 18 km ride from my school to home. Every bend, every major landmark, but here is an interesting fact, I can do it in five minutes! Faster than it takes for me to travel by bus. How is it possible? Did you ever think about this? The reason you can memories an entire journey even faster than you travel is because the way we store memories. We just keep the snapshots of the past in our memory. If you go back to all the junctions of the way to your work and try to remember, you will only recall just a couple of snapshots. On either direction. And more you will remember in places where vehicle slow down, like bus stops or junctions. As it allows your mind more time to process information. (In mindfulness slow is new fast ) So, you are not reliving the entire journey, just skipping from junction to junction Like a myelinated A type neuron and no wonder it is faster than the bus, which is a C type slow neuron. London underground and graph Theory. Maps: https://unsplash.com/@stalebg This is not a new wisdom. I had my hands on the London underground the other day and guess what all the railway lines were shown in a half a page map. As they only wanted to show the pivot points and the connections. even it did not need to represent the bends accurately as, nobody would know the tunnels, only the stations make sense. This easy representation of a mental map of places, just like the one in my and your head, is expanded to form the modern graph theory. Graph theory is the mathematical model used to represent maps, in a mathematical way. It is just simple to memories of the road from home to school. But it is entire new thing to find out the best and shortest route between two points in united states, from west cost California to New York. And trying to figure this out by hand is impossible. Hence mathematicians invented graph theory and there are many applications from google bot crawlers to efficient Scheduling of London Subway. But I am more interested in mindfulness aspect of it. As I see even though I thought, I kind of "know" the road to school. I just know few nodes of the entire journey just a simple "Map". It's even worse than Google street view. But is accurate enough for me to find the way back if I broke down the bus and my phone is out of battery. But, If I chose to walk a couple of bus stops, and observed, I would make an entirely different representation of things which I thought I "Knew". I would see the roofing of the houses, shelter homes, nurseries and closed church gates on Sundays. No wonder the tourists who walk on the bridges of London enjoy it more than the Londoners. Try next time to be a tourist in your own city if you want to know this firsthand. Just a tower: https://unsplash.com/@norbuw I can conclude by saying, no matter how much I try, the past, would just be just an approximated "map" of the present. I wonder this even exists outside those snapshots. What do you think?

What is big I and little I in counselling? In counselling there is a concept called big I and little i. I am not sure how popular this concept is. Yet it is popular enough, as someone explained to me this in a counselling session. It is a very simple and powerful method. As I am interested in anything related to meaning of life and understanding myself, I thought. Hmmm. this should go on my blog. First ask the question. What is your answer when someone asked you " Who you are ?". And this question doesn't have single answer. Infact anything can be chosen from following. Imagine this question is asked from President of the United States. Following are hypothetical answers. (I really would not want FBI to take me down over a philosophical joke :)) The president: https://unsplash.com/@jxb511 I am the 47th president of the United States of Americ a. The most powerful state of the World. I am also 45th president. I am the commander in chief, of the most powerful army in the world. I am a white man. I am a straight/gay man. I am the owner of a billion-dollar business. I have --- children. I might be the first president of United Combined States of America (USA + Canada + Greenland) etc. etc. As you can see, for the president, the big "I" is really big. It is just not the name. Everything he has done ever since his birth plus, memories, plus every possession, relationship. The big I is really big. Similarly, you also have a big I. If you think about this, it is not even expressible. As you could write pages and pages of stories about yourself. Infact, you might make a biography one day to approximate big I. However, we only write good stuff about ourselves in biography. It is also just an edited version of the real big I. I think you get my point. But what is the little i then? The little I? Little i : https://unsplash.com/@pkripperprivate The little i is the little problem you are trying to solve now. How crazy is that. This little paragraph I am trying to write is my little i now. What is your little i? Only you would know. You started to read this article for some reason, right? Maybe you were searching after your Counseller introduced you to the concept and you wanted to know what it is. Maybe you are little claustrophobic , maybe you are an introvert . Whatever negative, anxious little i is not an accurate representation of yourself. Infact, I cannot tell who you are, even after examining myself thoroughly. All the corners of big I, do not point to anything. Yet we are worried about little i's throughout the day. The big I little i is not a new concept. We kind of already know this, in management it is called a SWOT analysis. But the problem is minds tend to behave differently than just blackboards. We tend to negatively biased for anything which comes to our minds. Generally, this is true for everyone, except who are more aware of their Big I's inherently. But having framed the concept and keeping it in back of your mind would help you to win a battle just another day. Maybe it is time you would write down all the strengths of your Big I, so you can just look back when a little i starts to trouble you again.

What do you need to be happy? How about a little mindfulness for a change. Maybe it is raining beyond your window and you are worried that you haven't brought an umbrella. But, you are not yet finished your work. Still two more hours to go. And you cannot predict the future. So, there is no pont in worrying over an umbrella which might even not need. What about the past ? I am sure you have been in the boat of the past, countless times, trying to navigate your own thoughts and tried to make sense. I am talking out of my experience. No matter how much the psychotherapist ask us not to, we cannot. And I have seen Pink puffers and Blue bloaters, trying to drink away their own unpleasent past, in taverns. Their livers pay a heavy toll, as they cannot yet digest these ghosts of the past. Rain : https://unsplash.com/@r_shayesrehpour Can you see where I am heading with this? Its about being present in this moment. So, we can feel how refreshing it is to feel little bit of cold wind through the half open window, watching the mistletoe. If you are in a habit of practicing mindfulness you would notice that everything happiness is related to now (Mostly). Infact, worries are side-effects of the past and the future. How about deleting the past and future forever from your life? Can you do that? Of course we cannot. Have you ever asked why? Because we are believing in time . Which has a past and the future. And we built everything else on this belief. From our language to physics. Hence, past and future is engraved into our lives. But this is not always the case, atleast not for One Amazon (rainforest), human tribe. Happiest tribe in the world, Piraha It seems atleast Piraha tribe, did not made the mistake of mixing up an imaginary past and future into their language . Being one of the most simplest language in the world Piraha tribe language is the most controvertial of them all, for language enthusiast. It is not only, not having the past and future tense, Piraha language is "Closed". Meaning, it cannot be combined with unlimited fasion to make a gigantic never ending sentence. But, imagine what it means? If you were born to Piraha tribe, you would not be able to talk about future. You would not be able to talk about past. Just because you do not have words. I am sure you would have idea about some things, yet, you would not be able to formulate your thoughts. Everything you talk and think would be just about the present. Tribe: https://unsplash.com/@vr2ysl It is impossible for me to imagine such a state of mind. Even after delebarate practise of mindfulness, thoughts about future and past creeep in all the time to disturb the peace. But I would like to imagine a state where I am not able to do that by default! I wonder someone ever meassured the happiness level of these Piraha people, It would be far beyond any other population norm. I am sure more than Finns. I will leave you to judge the Piraha Tribe as the happiest tribe in the world. Even better you can see the how they talk with each other, using just present tense. And feel the happiness of the moment, for yourself.

How can lobsters grow? Lobsters grow through a process called molting. These crustacean giants living in the depths of the sea has a hard exoskeleton. Meaning their soft bodies are covered and protected by the hard shell. Of so how can they grow? They have to crack shed their old skeleton and a new soft skeleton will form which allows them to expand in girth. Overtime which hardens and become a rigid skeleton again. But the most important aspect is not the process, the trigger for them to grow and shed their skeleton is none other than the stress induced by their own bodies against their own skeleton. And we can summarize this as "Its time of stress that provides us to expand and grow, shedding our own exoskeleton of restricted confinements" Lobsters: https://unsplash.com/@danielnorris If you do not know, this is also true for human growth as well. Populations tend to have higher growth rates at times of stress. If you look at the world and growth rates of each country with relative level of development, we can see this. Although development doesn't directly correlate with stress, we can assume they're more stressed to make a living. Nobody wants to be stressed in their lives. It's a negative feeling we tend to avoid. Infact I would do anything to avoid stress. Yet with lobster philosophy we can understand how stress is an essential component in any successful story. Stress is essential trigger for progress and change. Imagine you lost your job. For some reason. Steve Jobs is a good example. He was sacked from his own company by his own board of directors. Imagine this happening to us. What would be your response? I wonder what my response would be. Can I be a lobster and find a cave, until I grow a new exoskeleton? Or would I just avoid the stress instead and lose the opportunity to grow be just a dead lobster? If stress is an opportunity to grow, we can say routines are the killers of growth. But there is some truth and false in this. Routines that provide optimal stress will allow you to grow. But routines that just focus on pleasure will just make you stagnate in your life. I can give you an example. Balancing stress is finding the flow. Lobster philosophy in action. Routines: https://unsplash.com/@heftiba Imagine you play the piano for the first time. There would be more stress at the beginning as there is no previous knowledge or the skill. But as you go on stress levels will reduce once your skills improve. And most of us would just fall into boringness and give up after certain skill level. There is no more stress. No more growth . Unless you push your limits deliberately by creating your own target. Maybe taking an extra class. Maybe teaching someone else. Maybe composing some music. Unless you push a little bit more you will die just an average lobster. So, the stress necessary for growth can be deliberately induced. Just like salt for a tasty soup. Just enough stress can make it tastier. But be careful not to overstress. We all know what will happen to the soup if someone accidently spill all the salt bottle into it. There you might even need professional help. Navigation through life is difficult. As minds do not follow routines of steps not all the time. The paths we take in life are so much different from each other In unique ways. Yours is not similar to mine. So, there is no harm getting help. Falling back and even relaxing or taking a nap. If it means to sleep a couple of weeks maybe you should do that. A good clarity in mind is necessary to reach anywhere. And I hope fog in your life to be clear and have a better day tomorrow. Maybe a little bit more time with nature in mindfulness would do better than a dozen pills to relieve some extra stress.

What is an everything book? That's easy to answer. Everything is a little book that you keep with you all the time. And in this book you keep records of everything. I should be more definite when I say everything, but there is no other way to put it. If you have read my previous article about the world you may have understood everything is represented in our consciousness as thoughts. And these thoughts have a limited half life. Most of them would never come back to your consciousness again. Even important ones. Even novel ones. Even creative ones. So the everything book is the place you can collect all these. It may be a mathematical formula. A diagram or a poem. It may be an interesting idea which you should think about more. One sentence would be enough. And you can do your homework later. Everything Book: https://unsplash.com/@kellysikkema Is everything book a diary? No, everything book is not a diary. Infact a diary is the earlier version of Facebook. Think about it. What we do on Facebook is essentially collecting our memories as pictures and notes. Like a little girl. We post them online instead of writing them down. And we share them instantly without letting others discover them years and years later. So, social media may have the potential to be a diary. But it doesn't capture what you have been thinking when you were at that party. Maybe you were thinking about Charles Babbage and his Difference engine. Or some yellow leaves in the Green Park. The fact is these thoughts are as important as your photographs. And unless you capture them on a paper with words, they will blow away like answers, in the wind. So, everything book is not a diary. It's not Facebook either. But it is just a treasure trove, if you really would want to name it. What does an everything book do? Think about what it means to capture thoughts. The possibilities will be limitless. I wonder this would be done in the future. As human consciousness is an incredible machine, capturing thoughts we would not only be able to replicate oneself but collect these together to make a gigantic database which expand by the minute. Only Mark Zuckerberg or Google would tell what you can do with data. But let's leave the Sci-fi aside for the moment. I can show you what your everything book can do. It's already shown in the movie "Limitless". Eddie Morra who is a struggling writer in NY takes a mysterious pill which enables him to remember everything. Just like our everything book. But he amazes himself just by using unlimited amount of information his own mind stored. I think watching the movie would do better, as always there is twist in the plot. But that Is a damn good example for the potential of your everything book has. limitless pill: https://unsplash.com/@victoriabcphotographer It's not like all the things that we think throughout the day are important and relevant. Sometimes you might spend even days without any significant spark. But just having the book with you might even trigger one. You can be the judge of your own thoughts and when there is a spark, put it in the everything book. There is more meaning to your everything book as it accumulates ideas in the long run. As these important ideas you carry will make connections with each other and you might create new knowledge out of this. It is just a natural process. Nothing fancy. Just keep feeding things from your everything book from time to time to your RAM and the machine will do the rest. How do you think those who came before us invented aeroplanes that fly? Do you think they did it just sitting on a chair by thinking? Without a single diagram? How likely is it that some innovation happens without pen and paper and words? Do you think Einstein used a blackboard? Or just his memory to calculate infinity? Blackboards where miracles happen: https://unsplash.com/@jdent It's just simple. Although minds are good at generating ideas we sometimes need tools our generations used. And everything book is just a handy extension.  I am sure I have written enough to emphasise to you the importance of ideas and capturing them the moment they arise. You would appreciate this more when you know the values (real money) are traceable to a thought in some consciousness. So the everything book will be a valuable asset to your collection of things. Think about it.

It is time to renovate our kitchen. And we ordered a new set of pantries. Costly as ever. They used granite for the table top. If you do not know granite is just rock. If you own land and dig deep enough it is likely you would tumble upon a big granite. But here is the thing, when cutted with precision with modern machinery and polished. Rough edges smoothed and fitted perfectly on top of the pantry this rock makes a beautiful pattern that you cannot achieve by any other means. State of the art addition to our otherwise boring kitchen. And it had not taken too many years for us to come from cement and wooden pantry to granite tops. More importantly, it reminded me of a little story from Steve Jobs. Granite: https://unsplash.com/@enginakyurt Steve Jobs and Rock Tumbler I read his biography. At a time I did not know who this guy was. So it did not interest me, and I cannot remember anything from it. But later when I had my hands on the new smart phone, I saw this enthusiastic CEO of Apple Inc, one of the greatest companies of our time. I had seen him giving a couple of speeches and in one interview he talked about his childhood experience of a rock tumbler. As it is interesting and relevant I will re-write it here. Once when he was young Steve jobs had met his neighbour who showed him a rock tumbler in his backyard. He put some pretty regular rocks in the machine and some water, and powder, turned on the machine and they kept it running overnight. Following day when Steve Jobs went there he found out that the rocks have become really round polished marbles, with little bit of friction and tumbling the machine provided. And it had made him realise to build something beautiful, sometimes you just need few ingredients yet plenty of patience, refinement and iteration. Rocks : https://unsplash.com/@photolli How to create values You may think this is very common wisdom. Hard work, practise makes you perfect, right? But I would say there is more to it. I also believed in hard work and following the rules. But sometimes this is just not enough. More importantly I would say we need to understand the value system we use. All humans use the same value system and that is perfectly sitting in our consciousness. And when you believe enough about your own values slowly others start to believe in you as well. You do not trust me? Look at the billionaires in the world. Aren't they extraordinary ? Elon musk, Mark suckerburg, Jeff Bezoes, all these guys believe in themselves. If they come to a podium and say that they do not believe in themselves and they are not sure how their companies will do in the next year, you will see their stock prices plummet in the next minute and recovery would be impossible. Essentially they even have to hide their own sicknesses and failures and Act in front of the media just like a blind egotic believer in themselves. Just like Steven Seagal believes in himself and acts like he believes he is the greatest martial arts master. So if you do want to create a value. Maybe you should start believing in something. I am not sure what it is. But here is the truth. Just know that it is a belief, and it has no truth. Imagine you want to give a value to a piece of paper. Can you do that? I can show you ten more ways to give value to a paper. You can make a paper plane. Origami Swan. Make a ball and play with your kid Write a poem Solve an equation Tear it into small pieces and make a collage Draw a cartoon and make a video doing it Use it as a sieve Use it to blot water Dissolve it into a pulp and make a cardboard Creating value from Rocks: https://unsplash.com/@mariahhewines I am sure there are enough granites in your backyard and empty papers on your desk. So, make a wise choice to do something to it and create your own value , so it won't be empty next year. Instead you have a pile of polished marbles or a computer program for selling them.