Gaurav's Blog

This can usually be found on Twitter.

Why are there so many decisions in life? So many paths, so many ways. And no knowing which road is going to get you there - or even where it is you need to get! Life has it's own weird ways of taking twists and turns anyway, and you never know when the path you choose will take you - through happiness, sadness, and just general growing up - right back to where you began, or maybe to a better places, or maybe ... ?

And that's all fine by me, but: why do we have to choose our own paths? Why do I have to decide, right here right now, what I'm going to be doing tomorrow? The day after? The day after the day after? It can get big-scale: grad school? Job? What kind of job? Services? Entrepreneur? It can be small-scale: breakfast or skip? Laundry today or tomorrow? It can be emotional: what to do with such-and-such person? Ignore? Distance? Try again? Life has a way of keeping us (me) on our (mine) feet, and it's strange and bizarre.

Mostly, I think (I hope) it's just my weird (non-sensical) sleep schedule. I'm one of those people who can pull off 'most any sleep schedule which gives me 6-8 hours of sleep a day, but changing schedules is HELL on me, and right now my schedule is royally screwed. As can be seen by me blogging at 3am. But I think I'm a lot sleepier today than I was yesterday, so that's good.

Coming back, choices. Yes. These choices, like all choices everywhere and everywhen, could (potentially) determine everything from this moment on. I've had that happen before, without having a clue. An ordinary, everyday dinner slowly metomorphosises into the most important evening of my life. A day trip to the museum ruins everything. Slippery water, and - bam! - nothing is as it was, any more. Choices are what determines it all.

Pradeep said recently (not-so-recently) that choices are actually unimportant - when we come to a choice, our personality history past present friends conscience childhoods have already made the choice for us. It's up to us to face (with courage) the choice that has already been made by us. We only, he said, have two choices - to do that which is in our nature to do, or to revolt against it. Revolting only buys us time, though - our true natures will win in the end. The only way past life's checkpoints is to turn in your passport - authentic certified, no lies wishes dreams fantasies - and to admit ourselves to ourselves. Any misrepresentation of his ideas is of course entirely my fault.

I don't agree. I am a firm believer in free will (if for no better reason than that I'm a terrific egotist, and I'm not going to give anyone else credit for my "glorious" actions). I have lived my life both as a fish in a flow - seeing, smelling, watching, dreaming as the world flowed past - as well as a salmon, pushing myself through waves of uncertainty doubt tomorrows yesterdays towards my goals - and every once in a while, have even achieved glorious victory or something like it. (But then again, you know what happens to salmon who swim against the tide, don't you?)

I think that my nature isn't what has been squeezed into me by the past. I believe that it is that which I make it, through the choices I make at every step of the way. The times when I decide to be childish and (let's face it) stupid. The times when I pretend to be smart, and the smartness pays off. The times when I love and hate and try and fail and stop and go and all the other minor, hideously important, completely jobless things I do every week. It's all, when everything's said and done, going to add up into one thing: me. And it's up to me - my responsibility, so to speak - that when everything's said and done, that I am someone I can be proud of.

I suppose my favourite quote from Look who's talking! would be appropriate here: "I'm sorry, but ... I'm going through a selfish phase right now". Am I? This post is horribly, horribly, horribly egotistical, and I seem to be having problems relating to people recently. No idea why. It's just weird and sad, I guess. Again, I hope it's related to sleep, and when I finally fall asleep today (before 4!) it will be one small step towards getting over this problem.

I have been listening to some awesomely good music today. I mean, it's just my old songs and stuff, but I haven't listened to them in ages, so it feels good to. I removed all the songs from my Media Player, and re-loaded them to set all the fields and stuff correctly (also, some songs had gotten lost in shuffling disk space around). And the first song to play once this operation was completed? Yup. That one. See what I mean about choices?

Well, yes, coming back (and hurrying up, 'cos it's 3:30pm already!): choices. Well? I wish I could just sit down and make a decision, but it's 3:33 and not a good time for such shennanigans. My present positions seems to be largely: it cannot be denied, I went to City Hall recently. Give it a week, let's wait, let's watch. The world is - and I'm really forcing the optimism into me right now, not that it's a very hard thing to do for me, but still - a much stranger, more fantastic, more interesting place than anyone can imagine. Perhaps, maybe just maybe, there is an answer waiting for me in the coming week, hidden beneath or perhaps behind something (or, well, hiding in plain sight). And maybe I will find it. And if I don't? I'll worry about that next week. I'm sure that by then things will clear up, atleast a bit, one way or another. And if they don't ... argh! Recursion! *blinks out of existance*.

(Oh, and btw: if you have some spare time, could you please tell me what you think?)

This post was posted by Unknown at 2:44 am