Successful Recipe

Balance. Consistency.

These make up the core of success at any level for anything imaginable. Think about it for a moment; savour the thought; ponder it. Makes sense, does it not? Of course it does; the profoundest truths of life are all simple, as I have already demonstrated my love for simplicity. But in order to understand soemthing we must define it and so I proceed to do just that.

Balance is the state of harmony, of dynamic motionless, things are moving but appear to be in a state of constancy. How might that be? To the mathematically inclined balance is a 50 - 50 state but is that always the case? That is a common occurrence and very naturally the one first considered but one has to have a working knowledge of levers of disprove that notion. But we must remember that in such cases the balance is apparently motionless; not quite true. There is motion as one force moves (this is not an intended pun but anyone who has a basic knowledge of physics will attest to the fact that a force produces motion in the absence of opposing forces, think of pushing against a wall and suddenly the wall is removed) against the other to keep the balance, a slight shift of positions and the balance is disrupted.

What then of consistency you ask. What consititutes a consistent approach? Firmness of belief, honesty, sincerity, and truthfulness all make up consistency. For one must possess these qualitites to be truly consistent. It is a devotion to an ideal, code, or personal philosophy as you may choose. A devotion with sincerity, honesty and strong mindedness but there is a secret to even that; and that is an open-mind and open-heart. One must keep an honest willignness to learn to improve oneself. Consistency is not holding onto a value for the rest of your life and not changing when you see that there can be a better way or better ideal. That is ignorance! Jumping from one value to another is still not consistent.

In both of these qualities you will see that it takes time to achieve the balance and takes time to define one's values to appraoch life with a consistent set of ethos. And that is the last quality of success; patience!

Relationships

As usual I was out on my balcony enjoying my favourite smoke while enjoying the morning breeze and the sunrise contemplating on whether or not I should pay for a certain online subscription. A little background though, the service seemed very intriguing and it would deliver to my email account certain, geo-political, scientific and other fascincating facts and how they are related to current news. The operative word here is related. Seeing the potential value it hit me that man being a social animal defines his needs on a relational basis. In other words, whatever that we do, we compare; the relation. I for one feel that in order for one to be successful one must know how to relate and the key to that is through knowledge. How else can we relate if we did not have the facts?

That is how the world is defined as well. Everyone, wants to be associated and identified with the most popular, most religious, richest etc. If we were alone how would we go about our daily lives? Well for starters we would not know what to do. We would be lost. Interaction is key. We would not know what is good if we did not know what is bad. We would have no concept of poor if we did not know what is rich or what constitutes rich. We must strive to gain knowledge enough for us to relate.

Blankness

As of this moment I can't goto sleep (I am insomniac) and have a sudden urge to just write, but then again I do not find a thrill in writing without a purpose. Everything has a purpose and happens for a reason. Maybe I believe that because I believe in a religion and the concepts of fate and predestination are familiar to most theological beliefs; or maybe sometimes us humans need to realise that there are times when despite our best efforts things will not go our way. Such is the way of nature, which we can not understand.

Having said all that, I mentioned I try to write with a purpose in mind and documenting my life on a public outlet is not a good enough one for me, but being in the state that I was a few moments ago, the idea hit me; blankness. Sometimes we wish to do something, we are all energised and raring to go, firing on all cylinders but we do not know how to channel all that energy effectively; we have no specific end in mind. We can just laze there with our engines revving, but is that pointless? I don't think so. Right now when I had this urge to write I had nothing in mind but then I realised that sometimes it is better to sit back and just savour the moment of emptiness. I assure you such moments are harder to come by so take them and cherish them for you may look back at your life one day and say, "God! How I wish I had taken some time to smell the roses."

Happy travelling.

A little goodness goes only so far

How true! Ever noticed how we easily remember the faults of others and overlook the good they do even if its as big as a morsel? I know I was one of these people, but thanfully I woke up to my folly and have since then corrected a great portion of it. I was amazed to note how easily I would overlook others' goodness and see nothing but the dark taint of their faults. Not only that, but it would be easier to remember that way; but this did not make sense to me. I remember vey clearly a conversation I was having with a bunch of my buddies and we had noted an apparent contradiction in a person. According to the tenets of this person he was doing something that was very laudable but at the same time according to those exact ethos, this young man, was doing something completely forbidden and out of line.

Being a little disturbed by this thought, I felt he was cheating and being hypocritical. To this day I can't come to a conclusion whether he is being hypocritical or not but I do know now how wrong I was to condemn this person; it shouldn't matter how bad a person is, if they are doing something which is right and commendable then we should not be judgemental. The question here is not if they are cheating or not, that is another point of view altogether, but rather, should we be condemning the person for adhering to the tenets at some points and ignoring them at others?

I think otherwise though, although there must be a stress for a person to try and follow his beliefs as closely as possible. However, I do get riled up at people who give justification to their stupid acts, now that is damnable by anyone I feel. People who try to fool themselves and others by offering completely stupid reasons, now that is really absurd. As long as the person realises and knows what they are doing without offering stupid justifications, then I wouldn't be so critical.

Of morals and religions

The other night I was engaged in an animated and vivacious discussion with a few friends and one of them happened to make a claim that "all morals come from religion". Those may not be his exact words but the gist is somewhat accurate I assure you. It was an interesting observation and one I wholeheartedly support. Without any form of religious belief present in this world it would have taken us a long time for our moral ethos to evolve. Suspending all religious beliefs for a moment let us assume what would happen if we did not think stealing was wrong. Alternatively, we can envision what the world would be like if murder was considered alright. Or what about, adultery? Pretty chaotic.

Man would be very much lost and I seriosuly doubt that we would have come to the moral conduct as we know it today. Man by nature can not think on his own. He needs some sort of outside stimulus to jumpstart the thinking process. Science was started by looking at the stars during the early times. One may even say that science started with the advent of the fire. Scienctific discoveries were almost always by accident, only recently did scientists come to new theories with an end goal in mind but that has been possible only because of past discoveries! One may put forth the point of social sciences. Even in those cases we have needed an outside stimulus which is by more direct observation than experimentation. So too for morals, we have needed an outside stimulus and in this case it has been religion.

No one can deny then that religion is a fact and it exists. Everyone is however more than welcome to choose what they want for their religion, but to deny that it exists, is a very foolish thing in my opinion because those who deny it, live by its moral codes!

Accountability

Sitting right now I was wondering why the world is so screwed up, and my answer lay in a simple yet profound concept; accountability. Our world these days seems to be chock full of deceitful people who take manipulate the systems to their advantage and yet come out clean, but I doubt that they come out with a clean conscience. Very few brave souls will actually step up to the plate and come clean when they have screwed up; we need more people like these.

A good leader knows not only how to lead but also set the precedent and owning up is a very important part. I do not think that people who are accountable to others actually feel that they are, and they seem to be driven by a selfish motive to enahance their current state. When will we start realising that whatever we do we are ultimately responsible to someone and we have to present our accounts to them in one way or another. What if they get away with it you say? Sometimes they will be caught and sometimes they won't but the fact that they won't at times does not mean we try to take that chance and risk losing the trust of others. Society nowadays is more driven by materialistic gain and morals seem to have seen the door if not already on their way out. Such a soulless time and place we live in.