Interactions

I was always curious to find about the outcome of my interactions with people. Lets say whenever I meet somebody for the first time, talk to somebody, attend an interview, gave a presentation etc., I would be curious to know if they felt positive about the interaction or not. Whenever an interaction happens between 2 people, a chemical reaction happens and the outcome of the reaction is passed to both the people. So if you felt positive about the interaction, it is 100% sure the other person also felt the same thing. What they will do with that feeling is a different issue. But atleast you can feel happy that they felt positive about it if you did.

That small thing

Whenever you face a great tension or some really adverse thing happens in your life, just sit and observe for a little while. You might have very recently started something new like a new routine, joined a new gym, started doing yoga, started with a new goal or started a new discipline. This might be a very small thing and completely unrelated to the great tension you are facing in your life. But the tricky and surprising thing is that they are related. The only key to solving the great tension you are facing is to somehow accumulate enough strength to continue doing the small thing that you recently started. And the big tension will go away magically and automatically.   

Manufacturing memories

When you take a photo using a smart phone, it captures and stores a lot of information along with the image. Similarly our brain captures a snapshot of an emotion along with a lot of other things.  It's called a memory. You cannot call it a memory if it doesn't involve emotion. 

In this age of social media, people feel so much pressure in trying to present the best version of themselves or to present their every day life as so eventful, interesting and happy. Smart phone is certainly helping in this goal. But in the process, people are losing the meaning of memories. 

Wherever we take a photo and call it a memory and if you see it a few years later it should invoke or at least make you remember the emotion that you felt. If not you are just manufacturing memories. They are not real as they don't invoke any emotion.

Becoming a Gandhi

Why would someone want to become a Gandhi in this time and age of instant karma where people believe in responding harshly (if needed) even to their parents, bosses, friends or just anybody to feel relieved. People are losing their capacity to hold their feelings especially hard feelings. So why is it so important? Is it worth the try?

Non-violence is not easy. But at the same time, it is the only thing that will give immense satisfaction. Let me take an example and explain. If I am angry with my kid, I might tend to yell at them just because I can. But will feel extremely bad later, thinking that I could have explained to them politely or with some reasoning as to why they want to do certain things. But it's not easy. To control your emotion at the very instance, understand it and reacting accordingly is not easy. But doing that will make you and your kid very happy. We want to lead by fear as we don't have enough energy to deal with things either directly or after the effect.

I have used a not so good example as kids are somebody we love the most. Let me take another common example of a co-worker or some outsider. If they tend to insult you in front of a group of people, you will not be able to bear that feeling and will tend to cultivate a rebellion against that person. The moment you get a chance you will try to insult/harm them. But that kind of act will never give any satisfaction. In our current day societies enmity breeds enmity. Violence breeds violence.

Let us think about this in little more depth. Why do we react in such a way? There are a lot of gaps that exist in our life. It's not easy to fill those gaps. Most of the time we tend to hide our gaps or don't want to show our inabilities and instead fill those gaps with attitude, breeding fear etc. 

There is one other way to think about this. We all have different sources of emotional energy. If we really like some thing very much, or if we want want to get something badly, or if we work hard towards something, or if we love somebody so much, or if we understand a concept, these things can give a lot of emotional energy to get going. But there is one most important source that we miss that can give a lot of emotional energy, that is available in abundance and that has nothing to do with age and can be accumulated at any point in your life. That is "suppressed emotion"

Suppressed emotion is one of the most powerful sources of energy

The only problem is it is absolutely hard to accumulate. There are so many things that will prevent us from accumulating emotions. An emotion is like a pointed arrow. It has so much force that we tend to use it right away. After all it is the emotion that we are transmitting through words to other people that can cause enough damage. We just cannot wait. The technology that we have around us is driving us into this concept of instant result. But there are a lot of things in life like lasting relationships, friendships etc that cannot be instant. 

So lets think for a second, if we can get away from this concept of instant result and find a way to accumulate and store the immense source of energy that comes from suppressed emotion generated from not reacting instantly. We will be able use it for a better living. Then becoming a Gandhi becomes natural. You don't even have to try. After all, the primary source of dissatisfactions in our life is our lack of energy.