The United Road, What is?

This is our last embrace ... This is our last goodbye

If rumours are to be believed Louis van Gaal is set to be the next United manager. He will be the first manager outside the United Kingdom to manage the club, yes the FIRST. This season has been dismal one and where I agree Moyes was not showing progress. Maybe he could have had the first half of next season and the summer for squad building. Lets just agree Moyes was sacked for the good of the club.

I fear that van Gaal will come in and change a lot of things about the way we play, about the way we go on about things, about the 'United Way' - we have always played football a certain way, not just during the Fergie era but before that during the 60s and the 70s after the Munich disaster. "All those lads you see going to the factory in Trafford Park, they come to watch you on Saturday," Busby told Charlton. "They have boring jobs, so you have to give them something they will enjoy."

Today, we saw a lot of things that are resonant with this so called 'United Way' - a star is born in 18 year old James Wilson who scored a brace on his first team debut, a 19 year old Belgian Adnan Januzaj dictated proceedings on a emotional night at Old Trafford and our caretaker manager came down for a stroll assisted Persie and almost scored himself.

"It is my philosophy and it is Manchester United's philosophy" Giggs said in his first presser. What will happen to this philosophy, what will happen to the certain way we play football, what will happened to the 'United Way'

The times are changing and I don't know where are we gonna go from
here. The future is uncertain and it is scaring me.

The United Road no more?

#MUFC

Thinking, What is?

 “People don't like to think, if one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant”

It is true in more ways than you would want to agree. It all lies behind the big actuality that we find it easier to run from realities than otherwise. But, then again what are realties? Have you ever asked that question to yourself? I always think that death is the only permanent thing around us and nothing can beat that. It is true in a way, but there are subplots. The subplots are the ones that keep us busy, but yet we choose to throw them away. We never really create them.

“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation”

Everyone I know has a hard time worrying about what others are doing, and then adapting the same in their life.  This lack of originality is killing us every day before the ultimate truth finally falls on us. We don’t want to think our way through matters of importance. We feed our brain with things that don’t really matter much. We let others take our decisions, or better, we don’t take decisions at all. What are we doing, if not participating in a dumb muffled march to the grave? If we don’t think, are we actually living?

“There is no inherent purpose to life. Create your own”

It is always about asking the right questions, to yourself. Think it through within yourself. The questions that trouble you are the questions that would matter eventually. So, how do we expect to decide on something when the need arises? If we are not mentally strong, we are not really doing much about anything else around us, as I said it has always been a lonely walk to the grave. Everything around us is mostly an illusion, nothing except the thoughts in our head stay, but yet we fill out heads with things that have a temporary stay. Only those who do their tit-bits of pondering day-in and day-out, or least once in a while, are the ones who are near to that state of being able to decide when the need arises. The same ones who try to know themselves in peaceful hours.

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”

Everything is this world is relative, and it is justified in one way or the other. It doesn't matter how a million people would think similarly on something, you should and must know that you can think differently on that, because it is your thought process that counts, not a random strangers. It is just you. There is no one else. There has never been anyone else. Just the illusions.

Start thinking before it is too late, start thinking and making mental notes before it is all over. Go observe people and wonder why they are doing what they are doing. The peaceful hours are the ones that count in the end, start reflecting and questioning and believe me you will enjoy the subplots that come along.

Thought Clouds: Fill them up. They create subplots.

Acceptance, What is?

You are living your monotonous life – normal existence - doing things the same way you do. In comes something bad, with the element of surprise, and it hits us hard. It is actually human nature, to go into that kind of ‘shocked’ zone when something we don’t see coming comes our way regardless of it being something good or bad. When we live our normal life, we think we are capable of objective reasoning and we feel pretty confident about it. And that is actually where we go wrong. Because during such a scenario, our mind is in a latent state – unclouded by doubt and free of undue emotions.  We think that we are doing all the right things. But, when we are put into a test – the delicate moment we receive a bad news, our mind goes into a bizarre roller coaster ride.

It all starts with denial, a small idea which says to you that you are right, the situation which you are currently experiencing can’t be happening. All the things around you are unreal. No external agent can hinder anything in your universe. These feelings of denial completely take you over.

 At this point, there is a fine line dividing feelings of denial and anger. Anger makes you take a completely different route, while on the denial road – you are quiet and the thoughts are inside your own head – anger makes them public and vocal. The exact opposite.

Then according to your nature, you go on the next step can be either aggression or depression. Aggression may involve you getting physical with any elements associated with the ‘bad’ news and taking matters into your own hand – feel in control of something or venting out your belligerence on a totally isolated quantity. Everything that mind feeds you during such a phase sounds right and just. Depression on the other hands incites feelings of confusion and more denial. ‘Trapped’ and ‘hopeless’ are some common words that keep doing the rounds in the head. This phase of aggression or depression can stay on for quite a while.

After losing the battle in your head, you will finally start to bargain with the situation. You let down the strong resistance you were showing and start agreeing to the things. And accepting the facts. You say to yourself that no miracle is going to happen and I might as well go on with the rest of my life. You decide that getting out of this mess is the best step forward as you will be able to focus on other things and that you will be able to think clearly again and that it will be more productive than just wallowing in misery.

Acceptance, finally the roller coaster ends. ‘Trapped’ and ‘hopeless’ are replaced by ‘blessing in disguise’ and ‘glad this happened’ – you start appreciating your life again. And you say to yourself that whatever happened was for the best and it could have been worse. Ultimately we are back to normal existence.

It helps

Normal Existence --> Bad News --> Denial --> Anger --> Aggression/Depression --> Bargain --> Acceptance --> Normal Existence

I am sure you will be able to relate this in some way or the other. You must have experience this hell of a ride many a times in your life. Next time when you are in such a situation, relate this to that situation and try to cut the amount of time you waste in self-pitying and wallowing. Try to accept facts quickly and it will surely help living a better life.

Hope, What is?

Hope and Expectations

Hope is desire and expectation rolled into one

Our life’s journey to find contentment is a standalone escapade (it comes from within and embraces your peaceful mind) and no external source can make it happen for you.

Having said that, we more than often procure others in this pursuit of happiness and load them up with expectations of which they are often oblivious. That being said, expectations are somewhat a natural construct and we, ourselves are unaware that we pin up a zillion expectations with the people closest to us. Because naturally, you want what is best for you. Quite frankly, being selfless is kind of a hard task. And it requires a lot of premeditation to be out of this lethal web. 


But it is very obvious that it is “expectations” that cause relationships to unravel, angers to flash, and what-once-appeared-to-be-good, to turn evil.  We all essentially have that little child in us, which wants us to chase after good things. There is Santa. Someone or the other must have given us this childhood lesson that expecting anything from others is unreasonable. But still we do, we need to get out of this scheme. Only bad things stem from expectations. We can hope, but we can never expect!

Hope is something we generate within and through our desires we project out into to the world – hope depends only on us:  our dreams, our goals, and our thoughts.  We hope for an outcome, we hope for things to happen, and we hope to feel a certain way when “it” happens.  Hope does not need others to be involved in our journey.

Expectation is a totally different story because by its nature others are intimately (and often unintentionally) involved every step of the way.  No doubt they are created internally as well, expectations are immediately infused with judgment and is criticality based on “what would we do.” Expectations are like giving out roles to others and then blame those who don’t play their role the way it sounds in your head. We always want to see, around us, things that sound right in our head. But it rarely happens. Everyone thinks differently. “Unfulfilled” expectations create detours and needless interruptions on our road to contentment.

A one way road you might regret taking

Good Hope and Bad Hope 

Hope is a good breakfast, but a terrible supper

Hope is a good thing to get you started, it gives us the right amount of positive energy. But if kept close and embraced for too long, it has the potential to be the worst of evils and will only prolong our torments.

Hope can also be negative when it's false, or against all odds. Such is the case of the gambler who spends his time believing that the big payday is just around the corner, or the not-so-talented actor who dreams of success in the industry. Sure, it's possible that either of these people could realize their dreams, but the odds are stacked against them. In these instances, hope simply acts as a distraction from more achievable or realistic goals.

Hope is an attachment to a future that’s already perfect

Given that hope by its very nature is future oriented, one can say that people focused on hope are simply looking for an excuse to escape from the present. Part of the danger of looking toward the future is that you miss out on what's happening today, all around you. Even if your hopes for the future are realized, it's easy to continuously create new expectations, masking them as hope, which keep you from ever truly living in the moment.

Hope is a bad thing. It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that part of you is dead, if not all of you. It means that you entertain illusions. When you find yourself very angry in a certain situation - isn’t your anger derived from the fact that you saw (hoped) yourself succeeding?

Hope is an evil. And hopelessness is a blessing in disguise.

Surely, it doesn’t looks like a disguise at first, it looks bad and evil and what not. It seems to cause a sort of despair, right? But, what happens when you eventually get to that stage where you’ve lived in the despair long enough to realize that bad things exist in the world and are in fact a natural part of it? What happens is acceptance. Hopelessness leads to acceptance. After you’ve learned that bad things happen on a more constant basis that good things do, you accept this.

Hope will allow you to perceive good things happening in your future, but when they don’t guess what happens; despair. You’re filled with despair because the wonderful world you laid out in your mind, isn’t going as planned. Then you just get back to hoping for an even more wonderful future (a never ending self-destructive cycle).

Acceptance on the other hand lets you go on in life, but not by letting you imagine your life turning out all nice and superb, but by letting you realize that you can’t predict the future, that bad things happen in this world, and that through past experience you’ve survived all the bad things that have already happened, thus you can live another day to face the evils of tomorrow.

Acceptance lets you see the world for what it is. Acceptance gets rid of despair (leading to a happier life). And acceptance can only be gained by first experiencing hopelessness.

It is upto you to decide whether you want to experience more hopelessness and is it time to embrace acceptance now?

Change, What is?

A year ago, I guess I was busy looking for the mysterious road to a respectable high school finals. Then, I gave a dozen engineering entrance exams, and finally ended up in MIT, Manipal, which is roughly 2200 Kilometers from home, and which according to Google Maps can be reached in 38 hours by road (bearing a mere 99 important turns in mind). Did things I never thought I will do: make my bed, look after dirty clothes, walk for five minutes every day to get food – the list actually is pretty long. And now, I am finally back home after getting over with the first semester. And for most parts of all that chanced in the past year I was pretty much left alone. Well, now when I reflect on it, it is actually petrifying. Change always is.

I never had a good rapport with Change, it always defeats me in our little debates in my head. Why does Change always win? Maybe because it has the element of surprise, whenever you think of a new scenario, something you have never experienced before, you do think of the worst possible way in which that situation can pan out, and when I having such thoughts, Change comes in and makes its moves, making me all terrified. And from that point, it is impossible to get the better of Change.

Change threatens my comfort zone, a zone which I am familiar of, which I am confident of. And our confidence is something which builds up over time, the more time we spend in our surroundings, the more confident we are to deal with the problems that may come. Confidence is dependent on this familiarity without surroundings. It takes a lot of energy to build up this confidence and trust. So we have a tendency to stay in the same state as we are, be it good or bad. When Change comes knocking our door, it requires a lot of investment of energy, which we are reluctant of. Because we will have to repeat this process of trust building once again. And the idea of staying in the same comfort zone as we are, looks very appealing right about then. It does always to me.

But properly breaking it down, what I think is that we have this mental debate with Change, it is only then when we fear. Not when it is actually happening, because in the actual happening of the event, we are too busy playing out our parts. The battles of the mind are always tough ones, and I think it is alright to be scared, because that is what makes us human. It is okay to be in doubt, to be not sure about things. Because that allows us to appreciate the grand scheme of things, when everything eventually falls into place.

Always happening around us

So, all in all I think it is okay to be scared of change, because it is the only constant in life, it will happen whether we want it or not, and we are the ones who get the better of Change in the longer run. It sure does gets us down in the debates in the mind. But, you cannot always be in your same comfort zone, so the next time when Change beats you in your head, be ready for huge things to come your way. We cannot do without Change, because without change we would just be immobile organic matter marching towards our graves.

Temet Nosce, What is?

It is one of many Latin variants for the phrase 'Know Thyself' (Know yourself) - It is so much more powerful and complicated than what people think. 

 

I picked this up from the The Matrix movie, there is this sign subtly placed above a door when Neo goes to visit the Oracle. It is actually hard to miss.

If you missed it

What do you think knowing yourself means? It is definitely not about knowing basics like your name and the place  where you come from, and everything else that you require to fill out a form. Is it about maintaining a written catalog about how you behave in different situations? No, not that advanced. 

According to me, knowing yourself is about keeping mental notes about the critical situations you have been through, and creating some of your own. How to create mental situation, our mind is exposed to so many things today: books, movies, news. Almost everyday you must stumble upon some situation where it is about choosing one path from an array of choices. That is when the frontal lobe of our brain comes into action, decision making. How do you expect to make a decision when you don't know yourself? All these criminals and the negativity which prevails in our surroundings, this comes from the root cause of not knowing yourself and having a false belief which further branches a flawed sense of justice.

What I find myself doing from time to time is giving myself a random situation, and think how I will respond in it, what decision I will make and justify it. This is the way your thinking expands. If you don't converse with yourself, how do you expect to make the right decision when you are talking to another brain? Our brain is so feeble, often it takes the road which seems easier, sometimes it takes the road which most people are taking, most of us - we don't know the reason for our actions. We just do it, because of our feeble minds. At least we should know the mental note we kept with regard to that decision. Else we are just doing what we all do before creating an online account or installing a software (I have READ and AGREED with the terms and conditions) - but life is not a software which can be re-installed or a Google account, which can be recreated. You just get one life, and you are straight away thrown into the fire where you have to adapt and learn accordingly.

People who don't think (and keep mental notes) - they are the ones who are easily manipulated into hurting themselves or their  surroundings. You are the only 'You' in the universe. Don't do things, just because others are doing it. Respect your individuality. Think before you act. Justify your actions. Know yourself. The world will seem so much simpler then. Just try it.