Finding order in randomness. Finding randomness in order.

Sitting on the beach, with a drink in my hand the sound of the sea, the waves hitting the sand All my senses engaged, but my mind is adrift I want to be here, but the thoughts are swift Thoughts are the waves, I am the sea waves are not the sea, my thoughts are not me

The human brain is very complex, and some consider it perhaps the most complicated structure in the universe. I can understand why. It is an amazing piece of equipment. Barely a couple of kgs and capable of so much. However, it is not perfect. There is this idea that prevails even amongst smart and educated people that because something evolved to be a particular way it must be the best possible design. That is flawed thinking. Evolution does not work that way. Evolution is trial and error. Just because we evolved to walk upright doesn't mean that walking upright is the best thing. Just because our brain evolved to be the way it is now, doesn't mean that it is the best possible design for a brain. Evolution is always correcting. Billions of species of lifeforms have become extinct. They evolved in a certain direction and that didn't work out and they went bust. This flawed idea of evolution is very prevalent in the health sphere and the conclusions they draw are sometimes ...

I struggle with perfectionism. It causes me a lot of angst. I have this idea that to be happy i need to be perfect, things around me need to be perfect, my life needs to be perfect. But life isn't perfect, I am not perfect. Nothing is. I know this cognitively but this kind of thinking is not second nature to me - I tend to forget it at times and get drawn back into perfectionism. I have lot of defects, and that is ok. There is no point to life, it just is. There isn't even good and bad when it comes to life. I know it might sound controversial. But the result of any event in your life, the effects of it are happening over time for the rest of your life. So how can I judge something as good or bad if the results are not out yet? this is like the famous Toaist story . But we do that all the time. We judge events in our life as positive or negative. And if we perceive them as negative it causes us angst and suffering. If we judge them as positive it brings out joy and happine...

People tend to forget that the entire external world as well as the internal world is a construction of our minds. not to say that the external world does not exist or it is not the same as what we perceive it to be (that is another debate altogether). but whatever it is, there is no denying the fact that it is perceived, felt and experienced by our senses and our mind. So when it comes to changing things there are 2 ways to do it - you go about changing the external world or whatever it is that bothers you, or you change the way your mind perceives and processes it. The net effect is the same. So if you are unhappy about a particular external situation - you can either change the external situation or you can change your perception of it. All our education, thinking is trained towards how to change the external situation and almost nothing is taught about how to change the perception of it. But isn't it much easier to change our perception?

What if happiness is exactly the WRONG thing to strive for? Posted by Big Think on Sunday, October 25, 2015

I went cycling today. Did 25kms in total through the park connector and on to old upper thomson road. The Upper Pierce/Old thomson road part of singapore always gives me a different feeling. Partly because it reminds me of the time when i used to stay at Sing Ming Avenue and run there frequently. In those days I used to work from home and my business was still in its infancy. I remember working work, running hard (many times at 5 am in the morning) while listening to some great books on audible. It was a really good time. While cycling on old upper thomson road today I got that feeling again. Just being in nature, with the sounds, the occasional monkey sightings (i saw a family sitting by the road side today) and the pure clean air - there is something so refreshing about it. I was listening to this book called "Bold". Its by the same guys who wrote Abundance a few years ago (and which I read just recently). Its an interesting book which chronicles what the authors predict ...

I always thought that the pursuit of happiness ( as enshrined in the constitution of the united states) was the noblest of goals and is what everyone should aim towards. I am not so sure anymore. In the last couple of years the more I think about happiness, the more I realise that a meaningful life is not necessarily a happy one. So it depends what you want from your life. Do you want to look back on your deathbed and say "I have lived a happy life" or would you rather say "I have lived a meaningful life and am leaving something behind and have made the world a better place". Do you want to just exist? or you want to create? if you want to create then the goal of happiness is not the right goal for you. For out of misery, melancholia comes some of the best art in this world. Out of suffering comes new ideas, world changing ideas. Not don't mistake my ideas - I am not suggesting suffering is what you should aspire to. In fact there are kinds of suffering that ar...