White light

Today I happen to change all the yellow lights in our house to white lights. It suddenly brought back a feeling of nostalgia. I felt absolutely happy just looking at the very brightness of the light. There is something strangely beautiful about the new (old) light. Then I started thinking why such a small thing made me feel so happy. Its not about being big or small, its just that we are desperately trying to reconnect to what we experienced growing up. It was my culture.

Culture is such a big word. We have seen so many arguments happen over this very word in our houses, our communities, our countries etc. what exactly is culture. Is language our culture? whether belonging to a country or a state or a particular region is our culture? Is religion our culture? Is way of living our culture? if any of these can be defined as culture then it should be exactly the same, if any or all of the above is same. But its not. So if I have to explain this in as few words as possible, then I would say

Culture is the summation of everything that we experienced growing up. So it is actually not the language, religion or the region etc. that we belonged to, but what we have perceived from living in a particular set of conditions defines our culture.

My goals for my daughter

I have the following five goals for my daughter listed in the same order

1) Never run out of ideas in life -> Gather as many life experiences as possible, read as many books as possible, try to make sense of as many things as possible in life. This will accumulate enough data for our machine learning brain to churn more ideas

2) Physical and Psychological well-being -> Learn and actually make a habit of living healthy. It should become your very being and most importantly Learn how to get up and run when you fall. This is the most critical quality in life

3) Art of decision making -> Life will make us stand at cross-roads so many number of times. Most of the times we do not know which way to go. Even if we choose a way, later on in life we may have side effects which means that we might feel bad that we could have chosen something else, then our life could have been better etc etc. Ability to choose a path without side effects is the most important quality

4) Be independent -> Ability to stay independent in all possible ways

5) Happiness all the time -> If we are able to achieve all of the above, then the last and the highest goal is to stay happy all the time. Happiness uninterrupted.

Effortless running

If you run everyday, you get a chance to experience this, so called, effortless running. If you start running, initially it will feel good. But soon, it will start becoming painful. The more you run, the more painful it will become. It will push you to just stop running. If somehow you continue, you will feel that it is becoming extremely difficult to continue. But if still continue, by slowing down very much, by breathing hard and by whatever strategies you want to implement to continue, you will reach a state where it will start becoming easy. And slowly it will become more and more easier and at some point it will become effortless. The task which was extremely painful in the beginning will become effortless. The part which felt like it was taking all your energy, now will start giving you energy. This is called effortless running.

In life when we start anything new, initially it will make us feel happy, but soon it will become a burden or painful may be because of not able to sustain the interest, lack of energy, not able to feel the final state or for whatever reason. At some point it will become very painful and we tend to stop. But if you keep going even though it is extremely difficult, you will get to experience something amazing. What was painful in the beginning will become effortless and will start giving us energy. In order to achieve it, the key is to just keep going.

This made me think that at some time we can get to effortless living. Its the same cycle that applies. Start anything -> becoming painful -> keep going -> becoming extremely painful -> keep going -> achieve perfection -> become effortless -> experience bliss. If every aspect of life is covered through this cycle, its effortless living.

Keep going and experience effortless living