Distorted Perception- An Enigma

Perception basically means to see, hear, or become aware of something or someone through our fundamental senses. Distortion Is nothing but misreporting or deformation from the reality. This necessarily does not mean we don’t understand reality but our perception might manipulate the same. So, what’s wrong if we don’t perceive correctly? I thought about this question before I wrote further. Suppose ‘Ron’ was your best friend until you decided not to talk to him any further. This means your perception helped you to form an opinion about Ron that concluded that he needs your ‘Boycott’. Correct? What if your perception itself is distorted? This brings us to an interesting journey of ‘Distorted Perception’ which is an Enigma. Let’s begin the process.

Modern humans perceive ‘the least’ and arrive at opinions ‘the most’. We are so confident when we give our opinions about many topics. In fact, I believe, one should always express their opinions, provided they understand that opinions are ‘open-ended’ and not ‘closed’. Now, opinion literally means a view or judgement formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge. Remember Ron?  Your opinion about him is a judgement passed which basically is ‘close-ended’. When we say the term ‘open ended’ it means there are possibilities. ‘Close ended’ is a dead end to the subject matter eliminating every possibility. Truth and falsehood can also be an Enigma- a mystery. An ‘optical illusion’ caused by atmospheric conditions, especially the appearance of a sheet of water in a desert or on a hot road caused by the refraction of light from the sky by heated air is momentary truth for the observer. Here, your perception suffered distortion and the culprit was your senses. Similarly, Ron was boycotted and a possibility was also eliminated. To understand this concept from a different angle, you consider some leaders as angels and a few as devils. Those whitewashed angelic leaders are your perception which you accepted without any speculation.

We see kids ‘philosophising’ today. Such a welcome change! But such concrete opinions have been the problem. As a kid, I used to philosophise silly things! I would dream if I could have wings! What if I could hold Aladdin’s magic lamp to order samosas with ‘green chutney’! Such impoverished dreams indeed! Today, kids are extremely intelligent. For them love hurts! They would have tons of ‘best’ friends. I always knew superlative degrees as singular and if ‘plural’ it used to come with the structure ‘one of the’. Kids today defy this logic. Today Ron is in a ‘committed’ relationship with Alice but he also likes Hermione who is ‘committed’ to Sam but enjoys her schedule with Alex who is Ron’s brother. Imagine this complication! Love doesn’t hurt but this shit definitely does!

Perceptions are bound to change. And those changed perceptions would also undergo change. May be this is evolution- ‘social evolution’! As humans, lets fall in love with this ‘journey’. In this process, we would lose people midway, gain a few too! It doesn’t make our journey defective but it teaches some effective lessons. Our flaws can also be evaluated if we keep our self-introspecting eyes ‘open’. Perceive your own ‘self’ to realise your imperfections which can even be ‘beautiful’. Perception, isn’t it? Some ‘Distortions’ can be affirmative too!

The Theory Of Purity

‘Primitively’ modern beings do associate the term ‘PURE’ to innumerable daily emotional occurrences to validate their argument. As another animal of the same species, I wonder about the malnourished emotion which is handicapped enough and has no independent existence of its own!

According to Wikipedia, Purity means the absence of impurity or contaminants in a substance. This term also applies to the absence of vice in human character. One can definitely find purity for non-living substances and objects.  But, how do you really categorise whether an emotion is really pure? This questioned my mind so much that I tried formulating ‘The Theory of Purity’.

“Emotion that depends on other sources for its existence doesn’t qualify for being called pure”.

Purity doesn’t need proof. It is independent which diffuses in the air and even the impure ones can feel it. Fresh oxygen can be felt even after breathing years of contaminated air. The nose doesn’t have a meter to judge the purity levels yet the difference can be felt! The major problem of 21^st century is that hardly anything is pure! NO emotion, NO products and services, NOTHING!

I truly believe in the principle of ‘Love’. An emotion that has the capability of refinement and distillation of every other emotion is ‘Love’. It acts like our kidneys, filtering and purifying the ‘wanted’ and eliminating and excreting out the ‘unwanted’.  But, does this self-called ‘modern’ animal really love? Do they even have ‘emotions’? Why has it become so necessary to ahoy love as ‘true’? Wasn’t love ‘true’ in its first place? Why do you even need to prove that you really love? And if you do, let that diffuse in the air! Don’t just forget that purity doesn’t need proof. It is and will always diffuse itself in the air not worrying about whether it would really reach its destination!

The Buddhist philosophy states that ‘Attachment is the cause of sorrow’. The 21^st century philosophy states: “Let attachment get real to discuss sorrow”.  I am not against people; I am against the way how thoughts have become so temporary! Tears express an emotion, relishing beauty and art drawn by the soul to the watery eyes! But this species has some serious art and talent! Homo sapiens can fake anything, just anything! As a child he can fake stomach upsets, loose motions, headache, nausea, exam marks and the lists continues! Growth makes him an adult and in the meantime our artist is ready enough to fake emotions! It feels sad that we have lost something and don’t even realise it!

I know ‘hope’ is a very strong word. So, I, being a representative of our species would love challenging this fake attitude!

Let me smile when I really feel like,

Let me love when I meet her,

I know how small my chances really are,

But, let me try just one more time!

Love vs Like

I really feel confused whether I love him/her or like him/her. This is probably one of the prime time issues of the human species. Let’s try exploring it to a deeper level.So, to begin with, how do you distinguish whether it is love or like? Before I try and differentiate it, you need to ask yourself what love means for you? You might feel both have a very marginal difference but it is completely different. One can like an object or any non living substance because it has temporary existence and so is the feeling. Likes will fluctuate and differ with your tastes. Liking is a simple activity because it lacks emotions. To explain it further, our memories help in formulating our emotion. Emotions can’t be judged because it is personal in nature. What is right for me might be bizarre for you. Liking is a kind of reflex activity which is sudden, unplanned and triggers from within you. As a result, you will end up loving the body of the person. There is no quest to know the soul within the body because pleasure is already gained. You ended up calling it love because physical needs coupled with the desire for the opposite sex were fulfilled and satisfaction was attained. ‘Like’ can lead you to ‘love’ but the road to ‘love’ aren’t merely attaining satisfaction but the ultimate bliss is realizing happiness.

I often hear the phrase ‘true love’ from a lot of people. Can ‘love’ be false?

One need to understand that love is angelic. Love is divine. It comes with no terms and conditions. Love makes you feel God. It enhances your personality. Love is simply meant to be loved. You can’t hate love because it is love. Love knows no jealousy because it doesn’t want any possession nor seeks for it. Love can forgive because love knows no anger. Love is happiness, bliss, euphoria elation and delight. Love is loved because it needs no reason. Love is selfless. If by loving someone you expect return gifts, then it is called trading, purely an activity of commerce!  So, should I call love as an illusion which doesn’t exist in reality? Is it a hypothesis? Love smiles and offers a reply, “Hope is my companion. I never lose because hope never loses hope.”

“I can’t like you because you are worst, you can cause volcano even if that reads extinct. You can cause tsunami even on low tides. And these are the reasons I love you because i never saw somebody as devastating creature as you!”

I really don't care!

I don’t care if what I meant is interpreted in a non identical way. I don’t care whether you label me as good or bad because anyway that can’t change me who I am. I don’t care if you call my heart a stone or a garden of flowers. Magicians are fictitious, right?  I really don’t care if my tears are not understood. Emotional outbursts are anyways quite difficult for someone to understand.

I don’t care if you call me a changed person. I was meant to grow; I would obviously be blended with a few more positives and a bundle of negatives. This is what I am. I don’t care if you call me irresponsible. I would rather answer you that this is how even irresponsibly I fulfil my responsibilities. You need to have a style, isn’t it?

I don’t care if you find my smile fraud. I move those 14 little muscles of my cheeks voluntarily and the way I want. If it reflects forgery, I don’t care as I didn’t believe in the ‘reflecting phenomenon’. C’mon, I am not light where you apply the laws of reflection and refraction.

I don’t care if you call me a flirt or a lover. The notion of love won’t change in my mind. I don’t care to present my Love theory in the view of the fact that neither you are a judge nor I am the culprit. And even if you call me a culprit, still I don’t care. You need to have a style, isn’t it?

What I truly care is myself. Gautam Buddha said, “You yourself as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.” I want to fall in love with me. I don’t want my inner conscience to call me a villain. I want to love, no matter what I get back in return. You can’t trade emotions. Business rules don’t fit in the world of emotions. I don’t want to regulate my behaviour thinking about the laws and rules of the modern society which has primitive roots. I want to be a very, very selfish person. You need to have a style, isn’t it?

LOVE LETTER

Dear Letter,

Do you realize how long it has been since I wrote to you last? You very well said that time flies away but I did not accept it. And look at the number of years that has fluttered, physically I haven’t changed much but the mortal part in which I live has changed considerably in these given years. I did become dormant in his anatomy. I stuck around for him because I knew his mastermind won’t allow him to get healed. In the days of past he used to hurt me once in a while but I am someone who can’t keep grudges, so I used to forgive him. But, recently he has been injuring me violently. His mind seems to get stronger and the weapons of his logic are killing me.

I am writing this to you tranquilizing him momentarily. May be it would be difficult to overpower him any further but I want you to convey him my message. I don’t label him as sick but I know his mortal mass better than anybody else. He used to inquire me about everything. We used to talk to each other quite often. I laughed, smiled, giggled as well as cried along with him. His physical wounds irrespective of its depth were easier for me to mend but with his growing age he has devised new ways to hurt me. He has built a shell around him and he stays there with his mind which doesn’t have any idea on how to control and guide his energies. He runs but directionless. He fights but without knowing who is his enemy. His actions have become unpredictable thus prone to cause agony.

I am not weeping over my defeat but he is turning sick without me. I need to win over his mind but my weapon of hope has been losing the battle consistently yet my army would soon call for a war against him. I would be leading my hurt battalion to shower my fondness and inject myself inside his shell as I don’t see any other solutions to harmonize him. I might die while infusing me into his brain manifested shell but this is the reason behind my existence- to sacrifice. I want you to pass my views to him if I fail in my mission.

Yours lovingly,

Love.

Trust- A rusty endangered word

“Do you trust me?” “Yeah baby, I love you so much. How can you even ask this question? I have complete faith and believe upon you. You are the gem of my life. I would rather prefer to die before I think this sort of a moronic question.” “Baby, listen I would be late today. So can’t come to meet you. You know this office work, just pisses of my mind.” “We had already decided about today, right? How can you suddenly say a No? Why do I feel something smoky?” “Baby, my girlfriends called me today. And did you remember, Steve? He is just so excited to see me today. So can you just plan out the supper with your friends tonight?” “Steve? Who is he? Why the hell is he excited? Did you say we are in a relationship? Look, I have complete faith upon you but why Steve? Answer me! And don’t dare to drop my call.”

Well, you must be thinking who are these people talking? Don’t you realize it is the story of none other than us, if not us than probably our friends or somebody whom we know or have heard about. Another point, those people who are just into their relationships, might not agree with me as you would ‘prefer to die before addressing your trust as rust.’ And when I say this I am not being patriarchal that men are the sufferers. Women too have suffered and often are being taken ‘granted’ by men. Don’t ask me to quote the percentages for who suffered the most. I believe psychological surveys are not accurate enough nor do I have a lie detector.

Coming back to the central topic, I want the readers to think, why the word ‘trust’ has started to ‘rust’? Sadly, we can’t even say that when iron and oxygen reacts in the presence of water or moisture in the air, trust starts rusting. If both of them were human beings we could have thought blaming them but sadly inanimate objects don’t resort to the ‘blame-game theory’. 

Do priorities change with the changing times? Are emotions so temporal that even a breeze can blow away your house? Is a single bad instance sufficient to forget the 100 good memories? Do promises also come with ‘conditions applied’ labels? Can’t imperfect things exist in this earth? Why craving for the best? If you have something good can’t that be made ‘the best’? Why lie if you have committed a mistake? Why not truth and a promise to not repeat it? Why raise your voice and speak, when a smile can even sort out the problem? I tell you; those 14 muscles of your cheeks are enough to do the trick.

Relationships are always based on trust since time immemorial. It is the founding stone for any kinship. ‘I promise you’ has a value, isn’t it? Interestingly, ‘I love you’, ‘I trust you’, I have complete faith in you’, ‘I can’t live without you’ are mere decorative situation based emotional sentences mostly spoken to enchant the other person. Trust somehow rusts because of these confusions.  As in Tracy said, “Ron, what I said was true and correct. But, things have changed now. Now, the truth is I don’t have faith. You are a changed man.” Now let me analyse what Tracy actually meant. Her feelings are for Ron. But not for the present Ron, it was for the person a year back. Sadly, Ron is a living entity. And when somebody promises about anything, aren’t ‘changes’ also to be taken into consideration? In fact my inanimate one year old Teddy Bear has also become dusty which needs cleaning.  You might be thinking, I am favoring Ron but let me tell another thing. He said, “Baby, you are the only girl in my life. I need nothing but just you.” The paradoxical statement of Ron’s mind after six months was, “Baby, you are the only girl who keeps fighting with me. I need my time and space.”  Whom would you categorize as right and wrong?

I call trust an ‘endangered’ word because it is fading away. I know the theory of ‘unconditional’ isn’t always possible but why speak merely to comfort? Why controlled behavior mechanism everywhere? Are we so scared of ourselves to get exposed or our minds have become dirtier? Our home or our friends are not the corporate office staff members to whom we need to afraid of or fear about the way and mechanics of our etiquette.

I love to watch that young girl jumping in the puddle of water forgetting everything and enjoying the sensation. Somebody asks me to do it and my first response, “Oh! I am a grown up man. What would the people around me think?”  Grievously, we live a very bewildered and panic stricken life worrying about too many factors resulting in complicating our own self. If you trust, love or hate somebody do it worthily. My trust or love can’t be based on the opinion of what the other person feels. If your mother said once ‘Get out of the house, you good for nothing creature’, would you go away? Would you hold grudge in your heart?

Trust can actually never rust. If trust has rusted, it means it was never trust. If you break gold into pieces, it is still gold. Elements are pure substances. Similarly trust holds purity. So the next time, you say, “I trust you” hopefully you would think once and not get swayed down by unnecessary infatuation.

“You see, you close your eyes. That was the difference. Sometimes you cannot believe what you see; you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too--even when you’re in the dark. Even when you are falling.” 

Love- “An undefinable emotional subjugation”

Love is an emotional, psychological and an innate feeling which humanity has expressed it through their works since ages. It is such a concept which can never have an exact definition. Shakespeare in his famous sonnet 116 said,

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds 

Admit impediments.”

Shakespeare meant that, it's not truly love if it changes when it encounters difficulties. This poem eloquently reflects how divorce makes a mockery of the wedding vows, which pledges unconditional love. Shakespeare itemizes what people who are really in love do not do, they don't change. Their love remains strong even when they face difficult situations. Along the same line, he described the concept of true love. It's constant, unmovable and reliable. It's not weakened by difficulty or hard times. Finally, love is not bound by youth and beauty. Your loved one remains true even when you're no longer young and pretty. Love is forever.

Since the Industrial Revolution started in England at around 1750, humanity never looked back. We wanted development, money, power, every comfort and luxury but lost sight of some values which was comparatively much more precious and important-“Love” Love according to the definition of modern age would be either merely an attraction for the opposite sex, selfish desires or simply lust. It isn’t that the selfless love which was conveyed by Shakespeare has vanished totally, but when we talk about generalizations probably this definition would definitely make much sense.  

A very interesting concept which has emerged in the 21^st century is “loneliness” Surprisingly; this psychological trauma was never experienced in the earlier days. Humankind was much affluent and acquainted with moral values and had affection towards each other which has become a missing element in our modern life. We, the people of modern generation have been taught to earn everything. In fact, love, happiness and affection can also be amassed. How? The answer is Money. Is it genuinely that love can be earned? Can defeating others give satisfaction? Can the concept of happiness be understood without learning the art of sharing? The day mankind understands these concepts; that day he could be called as a complete rational being.

Another vision that comes in my mind is, does love has an antonym? How can humanity forget the celebrated word- ‘hatred’? Love poured in the glass of humanity where affection, care and selfless conduct prevail can never have an antonym. Probably, this kind of a world where discrimination and abhorrence doesn’t survive won’t be possible to create, but my question is can’t we stop dividing ourselves? Boundaries between nations were created for administrative convenience but was there any need for a border line to be created within our heart? Religion was initiated in order to instill values, code of conduct and morality in human beings but was there a need to fight communally on it? Why a religion even had to be divided on the basis of castes and sub castes?  Isn’t love becoming some sort of an endangered word which is marching towards extinction?

The richest person in the world, Carlos Slim Helú, a citizen of Mexico has a net worth value of 69billion. Another statistical figure reflects that nearly 15 persons die every minute in this world due to hunger. What array of development are we talking about where poverty prevails more than anything else? A child of merely 4-5 years is weeping ahead of us as she needs a loaf of bread to fill her empty stomach. What is the 1^st instinct that generates in us? The immediate feedback would be how to avoid and run away from the situation. Where have we lost our humanity where only the word “Me” exists? Mother Teresa devoted her entire life to humanity. There were people who didn’t understood her language as she was an Yugoslavian but does  love really need any language to be communicated? It itself is a language which is understood globally. Eventually, we all are human beings with the same scientific name and can’t ignore the fact.

Humankind today is hustling after love. Every one of us wishes to have a “Romeo” or a “Juliet” in their life. Love itself is such a colorful word with multiple shades in it that nobody can remain untouched from it. But, to be a true lover, you need to be a “giver” not a “scrounger” Every form of love demands sacrifice. It actually glorifies the meaning of love adding pure divinity to its meaning. The society we live in has fabricated us in such a manner that self-centeredness is a part of our behavior. This approach towards life can never hatch happiness in our life as I recall the applauded lines of Dalai Lama,

“Happiness is not something readymade. It comes from your own actions.”

Love according to me isn’t merely a feeling. It is the glittering sunshine which makes me smile. It is the adrenaline rush in my blood which adds spice to my life. It’s the twinkling hope in my heart which says, that mankind would one day surely understand the true notion of love.