Trial by Loneliness

The following is my trial by loneliness. It is a Saturday afternoon, the best day of the week, and I have spent the better part of it feeling extremely lonely and homesick. I am trying to exam the cause and depth of my emotions and introspect if my behavior is rational or irrational.

There are times when loneliness consumes me. There is some minor incident that triggers this, such as a friend missing an appointment. What it leads to is always the same, I say to myself "I don't need anybody, I don't need them, I am independent and self sufficient". This fuels my loneliness further because I don't reach out to anyone. I just sit there, knowing I am lonely, yet willing to do nothing about it.

Thoughts plague my mind. I want to speak but I don't speak, I don't want to be alone but end up being alone. The fault lies in me and yet I blame others. I push people further away. The inner struggle gets the better of me and I get swept away in a current of emotions.

But does is such loneliness do any good? Loneliness does bring to your notice the good things in life that were probably not being appreciated. But being lonely to prove a point, to yourself or to others, is senseless. People are the way they are, driven by random thoughts that are manipulated by their even more random emotions. They intend to do something and end up doing something else. In that sense they can't really be blamed for any misgivings. And people can't really be changed, no matter how much you may want or try to change them. They may realize or be apologetic, but similar circumstances will inevitably come up again with the same people. As I said, people are who they are.

So have I given up? Am I trying to make myself adjust to this hard truth? Is this why I don't voice my needs? I don't know, I am not sure. It is difficult to think clearly or to be certain of anything that is going on in my mind. What I do know as a certainty is that I have a good life and some good people around me. Problems, conflicts, confusions, intrusions, everything is part of interacting with those around you in an attempt to know more about others and know more about yourself. What is needed is an open mind, open to self criticism, open to the realize the truth about yourself, no matter how hard it may be.

I am feeling much better now, I think I will go out and watch the rain.

Why "Reborn"

Cogito Ergo Sum..

That has been a part of my official work signature for almost two years. It is a Latin phrase and most people are not familiar with it. It is the part of my mails that arouses a lot of curiosity, my colleagues often ask me what does it mean, where does it come from?

To come clean to all the curious ones and to put forth the rationale behind the name of this blog, i would like to discuss this phrase in my inaugural post.

Cogito Ergo Sum, is a Latin phrase by the French philosopher Rene Descartes. According to Wikipedia encyclopedia, the phrase translates to "I think, therefore I am" in English, but can be less ambiguously translated as "I am thinking, therefore I exist". The philosophy tries to find proof of our existence in our ability to think.

My view is a bit different. Let me begin by saying that what makes man different from the beast is its ability to think and act. Had we, as a species, been driven for the sole purpose of survival, we would have been like the countless others that exist on Earth. But even though we have earned this gift from our anscestors through a process of evolution, the choice of using it or not still lies with us as individuals.

We go about our daily lives, our daily routines, our jobs, our schools, our movies, our restaurants.
But it is only now and then do we actually stop to think, really think about our sorroundings, the environment we are living in, the people we are working with, the kind of life we are living., the stuff that really makes a difference to us. We are supposed to be working to make a living, but somehow, we have ended up living to work. A lot of times we do think, but do not act, give ideas but do not implement it. Why is it so? Does it matter then if we can "think"?

Living is easy, just keep doing what everyone is doing and in 70 years you are home free, gone. But would such an existence made any difference? Would it matter that you spent a lifetime amongst the human race? Can this be called "existing"? Think about it.

That is what I like about the phrase, it makes people think and act. It is my very own subtle experiment. When people read the phrase, they become curious, they start thinking, they ask or look the phrase up. They read about it and a few understand that it is their ability to think that makes them exist.

I have another blog, tlasic.blogspot.com. I used to maintain it regularly till 2007 when I started working. It was a platform on which I would address issues, about which I felt strongly, to the public and, more importantly, to myself. It was an implementation of my think and act policy. But in 2007 I stopped writing.

The past 2 years have been a kind of void. I would feel, but I would not do. I would think, but I would not act. I did not exist for the past two years and with this post and blog, I am reborn. Hence the name reborn.