Learnings

I am an ardent viewer of the comedy series F.R.I.E.N.D.S. I know I must have said this before, but it is the best series ever. Many a times, here are things which have a hype created around them. And when you actually encounter them, they are nowhere close to what was being said of them. For e.g. many books (like Alchemist, The Monk who sold his Ferrari etc.) are very famous and are selling in huge numbers even after being in the market for quite a while now. I have read the two books mentioned above and was utterly disappointed. I just could not understand what all the fuss is about. The books have a lot of knowledge about life, how to lead your life etc. I believe everyone knows what about these things. Mostly people are aware of what is good and what is not so good; what one should do (ideally) and what one should refrain from doing.

It is when one goes to the groundwork of implementing things (in their life or elsewhere) that people are not good at. So, whatever you are trying to teach them is redundant and the area where people have issues (namely, implementation) cannot be taught. It has to come from within. People are just being fooled when the authors and publishers mint money. The problem with the authors (and for that matter many of the modern sages) is that while they say that one should not run after the materialistic world, their aim of doing that is to get all the worldly pleasures for themselves.

I started the post to write about friends (not the comedy series) and related topics, but have somehow got drifted away from it. This is the reason I like to keep the topic of the post for the end, since even I am not sure what I would write about.

It has been almost a full term at the institute and everybody is ready to head home. I would say I have learnt a lot. I have been able to identify non-academic areas where I need to work on and am trying to work on those. Some of the learnings (I know I have criticized people for this very thing above, but I do not want to explain my point on this. I came across this insightful statement about explaining stuff.

Never Explain - Because Your Friends Don't Need It and Your Enemies Will Never Believe It)

1. It is not necessary to have a view on everything.

2. Be tolerant towards others’ habits and avoid ill feelings for them.

3. You need to pick and choose your battles.

4. You need to listen to people and not always comment (even after listening).

5. It is not necessary to defend yourself every time somebody says something about you.

I am at various levels of trying to internalize (one of the words I have learnt at my institute, mainly because of its liberal use) these points and am working towards them. I have to write a lot about the issue of ‘Learning’ but may be some other time.