Key To My Life

           For my first job interview in campus where I was selected, I was asked what I wanted in life. The 22 year old me replied that I wanted happiness. The panel reflected on the philosophical nature of the answer, but I was merely expressing my self honestly. I had not yet started thinking a lot about happiness back then. But I found myself seeking the answer to it more and more in the years to come.  Almost 17 years later, here is what I think is the answer to the elusive question of how to define and sustain happiness in tactical terms. We have 2 minds(atleast) we should try to satisfy 1) our Experiencing Mind in terms of simple achievable goals and experiences 2) our Narrating Mind in terms of connecting the dots and having a story, a big picture and a larger purpose.  I couldn't help notice the similarities of this model with a team structure with individuals and a leader.  Keeping this in mind, we need to engineer our intrins...

          I usually do not have a strong, detailed memory of books I read or movies I watch in terms of their plots and story line. However, the key characters and the feeling that it leaves me with, usually stay with me for a long time.  Recently, I was reminded of "Atlas Shrugged" from a tweet by a Mentor and I remembered the feeling of inspiration and disruption it had had on my thinking when I had read it in my teens. I decided to pick it up for a re-read, also curious about a calibration of my own progress.           Reading it again gave me  a feeling of having plunged into a different age in the history of human progress in terms of engineering , of metals, rail roads and the like as opposed to the digital worlds that I seem to be immersed in these days.  The core message from the revolutionary leader in the book (Refer to the Chapter :"John Galt Speaking") is over 70 pages of monologue and is a stark contrast ...

Done: Becoming- Michelle Obama Alias Grace- Margaret Atwood 1Q84- part 1,2,3 - Haruki Murakami Men without Women- Haruki Murakami All the light we cannot see  Brain- the story of You Phantoms in the Mind- Re Read Homo Deus How will you Measure your life Reading List: Clear Light of Day The book of Why. Life 3.0 Stories of your life Exhalation  Atlas Shrugged -re read

      Homo Deus is an interesting intersection of economics, politics, history, psychology , evolutionary biology and spirituality. The account starts with a summary of human life before showing a projection of what the future could hold but with a disclaimer relieving the author of any obligations, just in case a different future unfolds!! ;)       The disclaimer is quite interesting in revealing the paradox of historic knowledge (I love paradoxes!!):  " Knowledge that does not change behavior is useless, but knowledge that does change behavior loses relevance. The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course and faster our knowledge becomes outdated ". ( I am compelled to contrast this with the  Oogway quote: " O ne often meets his  destiny  on the road he takes to avoid it ")       Yuvah predicts that the human agenda for future would be centred around the below 3 p...

"What is man? He's just a collection of chemicals with  delusions of grandeur" - Ayn Rand "Humanity is a thin layer of bacteria on a ball of mud hurtling through the void. I think if there was a god, he would've given up on us long ago. He gave us a paradise and we used everything up. We dug up every ounce of energy and burned it. We consume and excrete, use and destroy. Then we sit here on a neat little pile of ashes, having squeezed anything of value out of this planet, and we ask ourselves, "Why are we here?" You wanna know what I think your purpose is? It's obvious. You're here, along with the rest of us, to speed the entropic death of this planet. To service the chaos. We're maggots eating a corpse" -West World

My very first book- self published on Amazon under the pseudonym: Leela Menon https://www.amazon.in/Quiet-Whispers-Leela-Menon-ebook/dp/B07M7KCBB5 " The vast potential of who we all could be is within our minds - our own biggest comfort, pride and fear. This composite novellette is an unapologetic journey to understand the limits of sanity of our minds in the form of short and micro stories and verse. The little child asking for the moon is in all of us, craving for the impossible, unattainable. Life is like this dark chocolate, which becomes unpalatable without the right balance, a balance between the conflicting needs of the human mind- The need for the familiar just enough to balance the need for the novel. The need for excitement just enough to counter the need for contentment. The need to be in control just enough to feel the need to let it go and to be vulnerable. The need to be heard just enough to keep the little voices in our heads unheard."

Alias Grace by Margret Atwood. Margret Atwood, with this book has led me back to the world of fiction again. (When did I depart from fiction? Read this : https://deepthig.blogspot.com/2011/04/selfish-gene-richard-dawkins.html )  It's the sort of read that weaves in a story with not the plot but with the author's insights that are refreshingly deep. The novel explores a real life double murder that happened in the 18th century Canada. The thread starts with a fictional character who is a psychiatrist exploring the truth behind the murders for which the protagonist , Grace Marks who was a housemaid at the victim's house, has been declared guilty.The story unfolds gradually in the thoughts of Grace Marks and her discussions with the doctor. Through out the novel, there is an intricate overlap of the innocence and guilt of Grace Marks. The reader is more invested in understanding the mystery of Grace's mind than in getting an answer to the Whodunnit. Really Interes...