We are living in the world of "Synthetic Happiness"

We are living in the electronic age, where technology over powers emotions. There were times, when being happy was a part of life irrespective of hardships we faced. Alas with the changing times, I believe most of us are chasing happiness.

Couple of years ago I was talking this person who was unhappy with how things were turning out in his life. Giving you a little insight on his background, he had a degree in engineering, an expensive car, a decent job and luxurious life. I wouldn’t say that earning money shall suffice, but I think he was at least leading a better life than many others. Anyways coming back to his story, I asked him curiously as to what was bothering him. And he started telling me how passionate he was about playing hockey, how neither his family nor his friends stood by him to help him pursue what he wanted, how some others are living a “happy life” doing what they want and he never got a chance to live his life the way he wished for.

Here is another story that I have come across recently on Internet. There were two students traveling in an auto-rickshaw, they were discussing some Engineering topics and surprisingly the driver helped them get a better understanding of the subject by explaining them briefly. So in turn the students asked them how he was familiar with what they were talking about? And the answer was quick; he was an engineering graduate too. When they asked him if he was not remorseful about working as an auto driver being a graduate? His answer was straight and simple; life is not about what you want, it is about what you have and how you want to perceive it.

In both the stories, people were doing something that they were never wistful about. But the only difference was their choice and vision. In the first story the person never wanted to accept what he had, instead was sulking about his unwinnable past. Unlike in the second story the person may have suffered for a while but accepted the fate and acted wisely to get along with present situations. Even in our daily conversations, there are instances where people have a “satisfying” and “fulfilling” lifestyle (both physical and mental, of course there are some shortcomings but life is not a cake walk after all) yet they complain about something that they DON’T have (or may be it is about something what others have).

Content and Happiness have become “synthetic” rather than “natural”. I say synthetic because we want to create a situation to feel good. Simplest example as such is posting our happy moments on social website. We may do that to re-live our moments or may be we want everyone to know how happy we are :p Beyond doubt I feel people who have everything or at least something yearn for synthetic happiness. There are several others out there who have nothing or who strive hard for earning even single meal a day, but still the smallest of occasions gives them “natural” happiness; may be because they don’t expect something that they don’t have.

"Siblings" : together we play, together we stay!

Relationships of any kind have a major impact to mold us into a person that we are. However, the sibling factor plays one of the most important roles among all others.  Family is what we have and will continue to have until the last breath. While parents teach us the social norms and help us achieve our ambitions, siblings lend us the emotional support, teach us to stay strong through the difficult times and make us a better human being. Though we come out of the same womb, siblings are more like different fingers of the same hand. The chemistry we share with our siblings since the beginning lays a foundation for the future relationship. Sibling relationships may have both positive and negative effects, but at the end of the day, it is always our choice as to how we want to perceive it.

I remember during my childhood  when I told my mom that I have to go to a birthday party and my sister always wanted to come along, when I had to go to the school early and she was still getting ready; when I got a new dress for myself and she always wanted what I got. These are some of the many instances and for many reasons my sister became my competitor. It took me long to realize about the days when I lied to my mom that I was going to a nearby store but ended up going to a friend’s place. The days I made my sister wait for long hours after school just because I was playing badminton, the days when I pretended to get up early and study, but all I did was sleep with open book in my hands. She knew everything about me yet she never complained, sometimes she was even bashed for my misdoings but she never spoke a word against me. 

 It is common for siblings to have fights or misunderstandings, but siblings develop sense of vulnerability in a way what parents and friends cannot do. We may share a great rapport with our parents, but the way in which they see things is different from what we presume. As far as friends are concerned, we end up hanging out with various groups in different phases of life. However, siblings understand us more than anyone else does; they fall into a place where both parents and friends do not fit, as neither age nor phase comes into picture.

Siblings offer mental support and remain a trustworthy confidant in the hardest of situations. The interaction with siblings’, good or bad sets groundwork for our social skills with our peers. Be it negotiation, sharing, managing conflicts or understanding they teach you to create healthy relationships with the world outside our family. In a way, they develop competitiveness and inspire us to succeed. The negative aspect of sibling relation is that easily rub off the bad habits making us unknowingly end up in a bad space. Often favoritism and competitiveness also trigger attention-seeking habits that may result in inclination towards adverse behavior. Nevertheless, as I said before it is always a conscious decision on our part to tolerate the negative emotions and the stick to the brighter side of things.

In today’s world of technology, where relationships are fast losing the importance it is necessary for each of us to nourish the bonds even in adulthood. It is common among grown up individuals to lose contact with the siblings mostly because we are too absorbed by our own family responsibilities, but it is imperative to maintain the strong-sibling ties and not to get over-shadowed by other relationships. Cheers to the beautiful relation worth lifetime of memories!!!

"Don't provoke the provoked"

Now a days people often think by talking their heart out, they are enlightening others and sharing wisdom. In the recent times, I have come across many instances where people talk about how we should handle situations, but before doing that we should give the whole scenario a second thought. Not to mention, many of us cannot set things right in our own life. If you have ever been through some of the worst situations in life, you should know better as to how it affects your morale when someone starts teaching you the lessons in life. Everyone has his or her own reasons to be frustrated, depressed or anxious and there is always a right time to discuss about these sensitive situations. Before telling others about the do’s and don’ts in their life, we should keep in my mind about few things that we ourselves are not supposed to do!

“Do not blame”

Shedding some light on the recent incident with Yuvraj, where people pelted stones at his house clearly shows how easy is for people to blame others. Well Yuvraj might have underplayed in this match, but does it mean we have right to blame him. Blame games happen in most of our conversations. Be it about our work, relationship, finances, colleagues, friends, politicians, cricketers blaming someone else for the mistakes we make and expectations that we have is irrelevant. “If I were you I wouldn’t have done that”, we hear this from most of the people but in reality how can some else ever experience the situations that we go through! Blaming others might have many reasons, but most of us do it to have a control over others. In addition to all this has anyone ever thought about who goes through all the trauma? Or can we validate the amount of pain that they feel? On the other hand, does blaming others make things any better?

“Do not ask them to stay calm”

No one chooses to be angry or emotional, if humans can let go the temperament they have as per other's will, this world would have been a peaceful place long by now. Asking someone to relax or calm down is not always the best thing to do, even though you have good intentions behind it, it only aggravates the situation. Being happy might help people stay positive, but sometimes letting out your negative emotions is equally important because it teaches you to let go!

“Do not advice”

“If you propose to speak, always ask yourself, is it true, is it necessary, is it kind.” ~Buddha

Often we advice people even without knowing what their situation is. Before doing so, we should perhaps ask ourselves if we have been through a similar situation and if we did how it irked us so much when someone else advised us to do things little differently. We cannot assess the depth of a problem when we are not inside the mess. Even if the problem appears to be smaller (or may be that is our assumption), the person who has to dwell with it knows how deep rooted the issue is. It may excite us to play a good counselor in someone’s life but we should realize that there is a right time for doing that.

“Do not tell them your experiences”

Sometimes when someone is telling you their problems they are probably not expecting anything back, all they want is to vent out their emotions. However, what do we like to do? Of course, we like to compare our lives and start telling them our experiences!!  When I am already feeling vulnerable, do you want to make it even worse for me? Hell Yeah! I am so self obsessed that I cannot stop talking about my problems in any given opportunity. We can empathize to some extent just by lending an ear or letting them know you don’t have anything to say giving them an opportunity to talk and let it out.

As they say, “After storm comes calm”, our brain does not have the ability to accept or understand things in a muddled state, if you wish that your words and actions should have some kind of effect on people’s mind it is better to do it when things settle down in their head not when they are already infuriated. 

Sometimes Movies Are Just More Than Entertainment!

Entertainment! Entertainment! Entertainment! We all very much know movies are the biggest part of the entertainment industry and I don’t think there are many people who are not addicted to them.Movies are mystical! Unlike the soap operas that are never ending, movies are sold in short packages, a whole story unfolds within the time span of 2 hours, which keeps the viewers gripped to their seats making you lose yourself in the emotions shown by the characters and feeling something for them.Not all the movies have the same impact on us,this may be because every story is treated differently.

But irrespective of good or bad movies, they do leave some impression on our minds.

Movies have always caught the people’s attention for several reasons, one: we being are awe struck by the depiction of the magnum opus and the other prime reason being that we connect some part of our personality to either one of the characters in the movie or the movie as a whole. To be precise we end up watching movies where we can associate our characteristic traits and mood to a specific genre of the movie. Movies may not always define a person but I think they can partially convey the personality we have based on what kind of cinema we like to watch. Likewise, movies also have some kind of effect on our moods and judgments.




The process of choosing a movie is another story altogether, especially for people who are indecisive and love to watch different genres the selection becomes more difficult. Only then, we decide a movie depending on our mood and inclination we have towards a specific genre at the time of viewing. Long before our movie databases started showing hundreds of new genres, I can associate to the movie classification only by the ancient categories: Action, Romance, Comedy, Drama, Thriller and Fiction.




As they say every movie has its own set of audience, but this does not necessarily mean there is no overlapping. As I said before, we may be more drawn to a particular kind of cinema but it does not stop us from watching variety of movies depending on our likes (characteristic traits). People who have more proclivities for adventure, aggressiveness, heroic demeanor love watching all these heart thumping action sequences, panic-stricken chases, violence and high voltage drama. For people who are high on emotions, passion, compassion and who believe love to be essential part of life have liking for romance. Audience who love to have happy effect on them, want to watch lighthearted stories with the satirical humor, wittiness and no serious drama. Drama is a universal genre, for people who like a mix of different genres with a balance of all emotions are more likely to watch this. People who have penchant for thrillers are more likely to be anxious, uncertain and excited. Most of us since childhood, dream of an imaginary world that we love to live in and fiction movies gives this section of people a best chance to re-live in their mythical storybook world.




Movies also affect our personality and cognitive mind with impact on moods, opinions and judgments, so much so that when we come out of a theater watching a comedy movie; it predominantly leaves a happy and positive effect where as horror/thriller movie leaves a psychological disturbance among many people. The same goes with an action/violent movie that have hostile and vicious impression lingering on a person’s mind.




Cinema in some way helps us to reinvent ourselves. It helps to fulfill our fantasies or wildest things that we do not even dare to do in the reality by living through an actor’s perspective. Cinema is also the strongest form of social media that directly/indirectly makes us understand the loopholes in the society and ourselves as well. Though the effect movies may be transient, it does impinge on our conscious mind heedless of demographic background of the audience and this phenomenon is robust. For this reason be it short films (some of which had very good subject line in recent times) or movies should try to give a message to people creating a good vibe helping us develop a better society.

Why do people often misuse the word "philosophy"?

The other day I was watching TED talk by Barry Schwartz about practical wisdom and doing the right thing. Later the same day I was looking at someone’s Facebook status about philosophy and why others don’t know how to do the right thing. I realized lot of us mistake philosophy with many other branches of knowledge, one of which being practicality.  Philosophy is deemed as the “way of life”, it usually briefs about issues with respect to the society, beliefs and age-old theories. Nevertheless, philosophy is different from practicality. There is a quote saying   

"If you don't want to be in an argument with someone, it is probably best to try solve the problem, rather than lying around hoping the other person will do it for you."
                                                                                       - E. Lockhart

However, in reality can everyone follow the same philosophy? Of course not! Everyone wants to do the right thing, but the interpretation of what the right thing is different for each individual. What is right for you may not be right for me. In reality, we cannot choose someone’s notion or theory and presume it our own. Individuals tend to append their own distinctive characteristic traits to the ancestral legacy, one of the prime reasons being the situations they have gone through to make them the person they are today. Theories may help us in examining, emphasizing and help in developing a certain frame of mind. Only when you question those assumptions, beliefs, views, suppositions and outlook of philosophy we clearly understand our own approach towards life.

Talking about the above quote, not every one of us wants to confront, have an argument or resolve the problem. Some try to be diplomatic and some are scared to interfere, this may be because humans always try to correlate different scenarios, interconnect unrelated events that lead to further more complications. While some enjoy having, arguments and some others are good at unraveling issues because that is what they are good at. Perhaps the same person who wanted to argue all the time does not want to do it anymore because he/she may be vexed.

Practicality is something that we attain over years, which is certainly dependent upon how we act in a given scenario. Something that comes with experience, because in the real world when situations are not foreseen we cannot think and act wisely instead we try to do something that seems right for us at that instant. Change is very much part of everyone’s life, what we were what we are and what we are going to be is dependent on many other factors. When I cannot be the same person all the time how can I generalize and expect several others to follow the same rules? As quoted above if we think all arguments solve problems then I am sure there should not have been many pending cases in the court, because I am sure all the attorneys are good at arguments and judge will have tough time choosing between the two sides. Therefore, the judge will probably choose an attorney who argues better. However, don’t you think if the attorney is not good at arguments and cannot find enough evidences in the right time to solve the case end up in such a way that innocent people are convicted?

I genuinely think “Philosophy” as a word is often misused and hence lost its meaning. For every problem, there are different perspectives and conclusions based on personal preferences and feelings. Practical wisdom needs affirmation of our purposes and values which we obtain in the quest to pursue the right thing. Philosophy is the pursuit after this practical wisdom. Rather than being confused or misinterpreting about philosophy and practicality that are two different forms of thought, I think we should know where to draw a line.