Monday Musings 227 - If your are not overworked...then you are underworked

Monday Musings 227 - If your are not overworked...then you are underworked

Sometimes too many things happen around a given subject in quick succession and it leaves us wondering if this was nature's way of pushing us to solve the conundrum - if not in practice then at least intellectually. 

Most cubicle-wallahs who are endowed with diligence and an honest bone feel overworked and hard pressed for time. Since it will be unkind and a tad offensive to my self esteem to put myself in a category otherwise, at least in my own assessment, it is safe to conclude that i also feel overworked and hard pressed for time. The tragedy of being overworked is that at its best its a very personal thing - like haemorroids. One cannot talk much about it, there isnt much sypathy available as balm (pun intended), although one does feel its presence most of the times. Both disrupt the quality of life in a strange way. So just as i was on the point of becoming the complaining sorts, i read this cartoon in the ET which said - "....Never complain about overwork...if you are not overworked then you are definitely underworked"...It will not require a genius to know what are the perils of being underworked. Imagine a bovine (i am not sure if i can use this word - i guess there is a ban on using such words these days!) in the queue in the slaughterhouse. So where is the next task...keep loading!

I am also not liking these philosophers kinds who seem to have only me as a reader if i go by the frequency of serendipity of they finding me. I hate Aristotle when he says "All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind". I think Nasser Taleb is being personal when he says says something to the effect that one should not trust a man who depends on a monthly salary for his living. The on i personally and deeply hate is Upton Sinclair who says "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it". What are these philosophers upto - discouraging an entire generation of honest men and women who want to keep the fires in the kitchen burning? I heard they use to poison such men in the earlier times, who had the audacity to make the regulars miserable by flirting with truth. 

Finally this issue of being overworked is also about what are you overworked with - i guess that will make the difference to the camels back. The good thing about being a camel or may be its back is that it is physiologically and intellectually incapable of discerning the quality of the load. I think the soul is far more endowed with intelligence and perspicuity. 

Guru

Monday Musings 226 - The charm of the unsaid

Monday Musings 226 - The charm of the unsaid

"You need to keep reminding yourself of the obvious; charm lies in the unsaid, the unwritten, and the undisplayed. It takes mastery to control silence"

Youth is usually verbose and expressive, fueled by the exuberance that usually comes with naivety, idealism or foolhardiness. Middle ages is the wearing out of some of them if one is lucky and all of them if one is ordinary. Most lives are a struggle to overcome the threat of that ordinariness. In that sense, at the risk of generalization, most lives are a struggle not with their circumstance but with themselves. What can be more scary and hideous than ordinariness staring back from the mirror on a monday morning! It takes quite a lot to come to terms with the fact that having reached forties one is at best still a work-in-progress.

There is great joy in having opinions on everything - a borderline case of being opinionated.  It thrives on the sense of self serving importance that comes from knowing. One must speak on anything and quite liberally, for in our ability to speak with abandon lies our sense of liberation. Its like the adolescent who has the freedom to go anywhere and who because now he has it, shall exercise it without restraint. The fun is not in the freedom per se but in the realization that the freedom can be exercised at will. It is only with time that one realizes that the 'charm lies in the unsaid, the unwritten and the undisplayed'.

What is already expressed and articulated, in speech or words, is like cards that are already revealed. They do not hold much power or promise. The spoken and articulated do not hold potential for modification and correction. Finally they also do not hold any more charm - for charm lies in restraint and an implicit offer of something still left unexplored.  What is already explored is largely boring. Unknown holds the power of imagination and excitement.

What is it that makes speaking irresistible? What is it that having the last word in a conversation such an aphrodisiac - and in the corporate world, i might add with experience and trepidation a need that is the most pronounced?
Is it because what Naser Taleb, from whom i have liberally borrowed the quote above has also said - "writers are remembered for their best work, politicians for their worst mistakes and businessmen are almost never remembered" ? 

I guess there is grace in the quiet. I guess there is mystery in silence. There is anticipation in holding back. There is power in the unsaid. So the next time as i rejoice the magic of the said, i shall spare some time in exploring the power of the unsaid.

Guru   

Monday musings 225 - The Missing tile

Monday musings 225 - The Missing tile

I received a small clip by one Denis Prager on the Whatsapp, that digital mega-store where the answers to all human questions gets answered these days, sometimes after solicitation and mostly without it. Dennis talks about the "missing tile syndrome" that human beings usually suffer from - focusing on that one tile that is not present or perfect rather than all the ones that are. Many years back Javed Akhtar, the noted lyricist and poet wrote in his anthology 'Tarqash' - 

Khushi se sabka faasla bas ek kadam hai, 

Har ghar me bas ek kamra kam hai"

(Happiness, for everyone is only a step away; for every house is only a room short). 

Cognitively we all know that it is a futile expectation from life but we still suffer from it - like the hugely stereotypical sardar joke in which the naive sardar on seeing the banaa peel exclaims - "Oh aaj phir girna padega" (gosh - will have to fall again). Wish it was funny! I also wonder why what is cognitively so profoundly understood is emotionally so poignantly ignored. What makes us so helplessly focus only on the missing tile? The missing tile is like the rouge tooth, which amongst the otherwise healthy teeth has this uncanny and frustrating ability to incessantly remind ourselves of its presence. 

A leader i had worked with a few years ago had said after a few drinks, a time when he usually was at his pranking and profound best; "We gotta be at peace with ourselves". I have not known many at his level be actually be at peace with himself. What is it that prevents us from being at peace with ourselves? Why the agony of the missing tile always? I look around and i see most fuming and fretting on the missing tile of their ceiling, me included. It is an epidemic. 

A doha which is attributed to both Kabeer and Rahim in various places, 

Chah gayi Chinta gai, manwa beparwah, 

jinko kachoo na chahiye wohi shehanshah

(with no desire or worry and a carefree mind; those at peace with themselves are like kings) 

This is at odds with the zeitgeist of the times which unabashedly announces "Ye dil maange more". Ambition is the fuel for progress and also the seed for the missing tile. How do we retain the spirit of progress and yet resist the agony of the missing tile syndrome. Dilemma is the first step for the neurotic. I am in dilemma and in that case the portends are not good!

The ancient Indian wanted liberation from the curse 84 - the cycle of birth and death. The medieval Indian wanted liberation from want. The modern cubiclist wants liberation from the rat race, even though he enjoys the perks of it. The ancient and the medieval failed. What makes the modern so confident? I guess he has an MBA. They usually have all the answers. 

Guru