Why do we worry??

An experimental post - I tried using the 5 Why technique to find the root cause of a common problem of worrying.

Why do we worry?

Because we feel we lack control of our destiny  

Why do we feel the lack of control?

Because our plans don’t seem to work at all

Why don’t our plans work?

Because we cannot control things like the economy, people, family problems and other acts of God.

Can we control factors which are outside of our control?

No we need to have patience and wait for things to unfold!

Then why do we lack patience?

It is a lack of faith in our abilities.

Is Faith very important?

The best is to believe in a higher power like benevolent God or at least believe in yourself.

In a terrible situation we lose faith in ourselves and in doing so we also lose confidence in our skills and become a pale shadow of our former selves.

Its remarkable when you need courage the most, we fail. So the only answer to problems in life is having patience, by patience I don’t mean you put up with rubbish but wait enough time for your plans to succeed.

Indeed there will be days when patience will wear thin, those are the days you need to reach out to your friends and family.  Only our true can re-enforce the trust and remind us of our true abilities.

Even Lord Hanuman needed to be reminded of his true nature and skills before He could travel to Lanka to find Sita.

So never be lonely and keep your friends and family close and off course keep the faith

Once upon a Time ...

There was once a time, when I was first introduced to the term “generation gap” and I was on the right side of it. I was the young generation and parents never understood us. Now as time has passed and the new Facebook generation taking over, I have already started feeling the effects of being on the wrong side. I grew up as a kid in late 80’s and all through 90’s. I had my first computer only in my second year of engineering and learned about yahoo messenger in as late as 2004 (total technology laggard J ).

Life has changed a lot in India since 1991, and liberalization has touched our lives profoundly. So here goes.

Friends

Then: We had 1 best friend and 4-5 good friends and a dozen hi-bye friends

Now: we have 500 friends on orkut, 350 friends on facebook and some lost souls who still use yahoo messenger or hotmail God knows why?

Television

Then: I had one television channel Doordarshan and my black and white EC TV had only 1 channel, so to watch Thunderball and Johny Soko and the Giant Robot I had to go to my neighbor’s house to watch DD II.

Now: We have 32 inch LCD TVs and DTH connections, but who watches TV today it’s the boring same old Saas bahu and Reality shows crap. We watch only sports or new channels occasionally.

Relationships

Then: If you liked a girl, you had to call her landline and pray to god, her Dad didn’t pick up and you had to identify yourself. Getting into a relationship was a big deal and you had to face lots of parental pressure.

Now: you can IM her, sms her, scrap her, leave her a message on FB and if things move voice / video chat with her with no fear of Dad Mom or bhaiya ! Although life is much easier, the thrill of the older days kahan ! Breaking up is so easy; falling in and out of love is very common. Your parents are glad you aren’t gay and you have found a person of the opposite gender.

Music /Movies

Then: You had a 2 in 1 National Panasonic or Sanyo player; you purchased cassettes and heard them over and over again. If you are well off you had a VCR and played VHS tapes on it.

Now: You have DVD players, VCD players which you hardly use, you have laptops and external hard disks but you end up watching movies and listening to music on you new shiny Apple iPod.

Cinema Theaters

Then: Single screens ruled the roost, 30 rupees stall and 50 rupees balcony seemed expensive, 20 rupees for pop-corn which looks pretty oily and manufactured from a sidey location. To watch an English Movie, you had to go to Regal or Sterling in South Mumbai. The only English movie we knew was Terminator and Rambo and Arnold and Stallone were our favorite English Actors J

Now: We only go to multiplexes now as low brow crowd go to single screens and playing 200 bucks per ticket is no big deal, pop-corn looks much better but it costs twice as much a balcony ticket in the old days. The theatre name is no longer a brand nowadays its PVR, INOX, Fun Cinemas or IMAX. Sadly Metro, Basant and New Vijay are closed now to become shopping centers and surviving few relegated to screening Bhojpuri movies.

Sports /Games

Then: We all played cricket in the summers and when it rained we would be miserable and play football for a change. Our first and cherished video games were Mario, Contra and Duck Hunt.

Now: Now hardly kids play outside and are glued to the computer or the cell phone. Multi player games like Counterstrike or games like God of War, Grand theft auto rule the roost. The era of couch potatoes is truly upon us.

Although I agree life has gotten lot easier since I was a kid, but the simple pleasures of life have been robbed from this generation. Kids are experiencing failures in relationships and peer pressure in whole different ways than the past. Social networking sites have made people lives so open to strangers to the point of becoming a tamasha. The business of relationship status or discussing personal life thread bare on a social networking site is frankly beyond me. That apart, spending money in malls, restaurants or branded clothes has become little too easy, the pocket money comes more easily as parents have little time to spend with them.

Today whenever I see a teenage guy sitting with his girl friend and having a fight in a food-court in a mall somewhere, I feel glad to have grown up in the early 90s J when life was lot easier.

Love, Friends and Sitcoms

One interesting thing to notice regarding the themes running common in the most popular sitcoms in the era :- F.R.I.E.N.D.S , How I met your Mother and Coupling ( BBC Brit Comedy I am addicted to these days) is love and friendship. Why are these two themes so universal, I guess the reason is that these are two relationships which a person chooses for himself and it is not imposed by him by nature or society. 

It is also bit ironic, that the relations in which we have the greatest freedom to choose, makes us the most vulnerable. These are the relationships which give us the greatest joy and despair. Guess, that is the price we have to pay for the freedom.

The inspiration for this post is me watching back to back episodes of How I met your Mother season II for past 2 weekends which I finished shortly before starting this post. So the main characters in this serial really represent the various views people hold regarding a relationship. 

Ted – Who believes in true love and the concept of finding the one and yes bit unlucky in love

Robin – an independent woman who finds commitment and marriage unacceptable

Lily and Marshall – The college sweethearts who have been eternally together and symbol of true love for all other friends in the group. I guess we all have such a couple in our friend circles although you do admire them but there is always a tinge of envy if we too could find some one special like that.

Barney - A chronic bachelor who loves the single life who seems shallow and callous on the surface but does have a warm side as good friend who however is cynical towards the some one special concept.

The season 2 beings with Lily and Marshall broken up and Ted and Robin getting together. The journey sees ups and downs for both couples with Lily and Marshall getting married whilst Ted and Robin breaking up for good at the end of season.

One more interesting dimension of this serial, it is set in the future Ted telling his children how he met their mother. It is known to the viewers that Robin is not the some one special but Ted does not know that yet and he believes in the magic of this current relationship and goes through it with smiles and tears on the way. 

The beauty of the serial lies in the fact the true identity of the mother is never revealed but it always ends with the promise of a better tomorrow for Ted.

Life often does not follow plans perfectly but it often turns out more perfect than planned. Keep the faith ! 

The Dynamics of Relationships

As my peer group is hitting the quarter life crisis mark, lots of them including me are increasingly asking similar questions, how do we manage our relationships. By relationships I mean not only having a girl friend/boy friend, it also relates to keeping in touch with past friends and importantly how to make new friends or meet potential life partners.

Couple of interesting pieces written by my friends whose blogs I do follow regularly, actually made me think on these lines in more details. The problems include is being taken for granted by supposedly good friends to travails in finding your true soul-mate . 

Why the Crisis in the first place

The job disperses the friendly group into different geographies which brings challenges of adjustment. Some adjust fast and some get bogged down more. The ones who cannot adjust become naturally self centred in order to make the adjustments, which is considered selfish by other friends. As time progresses, pay packages, the race to buy the new car, the comparisons begin to take toll on friendships.  Ego and the inability to communicate your true feelings is the problem in most cases. 

The Tough Question

There is one additional caveat, sometimes we outgrow a certain relationships and it is time to let go and there are relationships which can be rekindled with some interventions, the challenge is knowing which one needs to be pursued ?

Evaluating this questions becomes really tough, it requires us to be objective ( tough call for a irrational social animal called man/woman), keep aside our ego, delusions and the tendency to wanting to cling on and decide if the relation is giving us positive energy and is meaningful or it is actually deceptive, draining our energy and eroding our self worth.

Rather than going more detail and being prescriptive, I would just say in the words of Shakespeare To thy own self be true, reflect over your relationships, take stock of friends, acquaintances and enemies. Decide who needs to stay, who needs to go and what are your priorities in life. At first It may seem tough, scary but then you need bite the bullet and make the seemingly tough decisions.

The Three Ring Theory

Reference is due to Khalil who came come up with theory in the first place long back in my engineering days . In order to have sustainable good relationships, we need three rings or three kind of friend circles.

First Ring

The inner circle of closest friends whom who can confide everything and also fewer in number. The most mature and oldest friends.

Second Ring

The good friends and the hangout buddies which comprises of a bigger circle with whom we do share our interests and are in touch with regularly.

Third Ring

The social acquaintances like office colleagues, classmates the folks with whom we enjoy the occasional banter and have a potential to move up into the inner circles. I believe this circle is important as today's strangers become tomorrow's good friends.

In summary, I believe it is important to maintain a wide circle of friends so that we give space to our close friends and give chances to get to know new people so that the cycle of making new friends does not have to die after we hit the corporate world.