Faith

What does having faith in someone or something mean?

Faith is my sanctum. It is my immunity against pessimism. It gives me strength and courage to face life.

I have immense faith in two things. God first ,and me second. The reasons are obvious.

I believe in God and not in a God. God to me is someone omnipotent and sagacious. His presence is ubiquitous. I believe that whatever happens is for the good. God then, is an entity who takes control of our lives by orchestrating events whose wisdom we might realize in the due course of our lives. If we scrutinize our actions and start looking at life holistically, not in bits and pieces, we will see that meaningful coincidences exist; that each event had some significance in weaving the fabric of our lives.

We are a function of our actions. Our actions are a function of either an external stimulus or our habits. How we react to a situation is entirely dependent on us and so are our habits. I cannot control how others behave, and to some extent, circumstance. So when I am not a function of circumstance and the onus of a response is entirely on me, I have no other option but to have faith in myself. To make things simple, in the realm of life where I have the power of veering its course, I ought to be the oarsman.

Coming back to the question I asked earlier. I guess all of us have faith in something. Be it a shrine or an idol or a spirit. Faith can be thought of in various contexts, the most common being religion. But I am not delving into that. I am also not talking about having faith in someone. That is a function of our naiveté or our intuition.

I am thinking about faith in terms of hope.

An optimism which keeps us sane and propels our lives.

A lifebuoy that helps you stay afloat.

Whenever something goes wrong, and sometimes bad times are protracted, it is my faith in God, and to an extent in me, that has helped me overcome them. It is not that I would pray that my troubles get over with or that I will wallow in self-pity, hoping that things will become alright. To me, that takes away time from actually trying to get on with life. It makes sense to dwell on a solution and not the problem itself. Dwelling on factuality does not change the fact itself. You simply believe that good times will come and work towards realizing them.

Faith then is an attitude. It is a frame of mind. It is an innate belief that things will go our way sooner or later. From my experience I can say that most tasks I have encountered believing they can be done, have been accomplished. When you approach something with negativity, it is never done. Pessimism is a positive feedback. You go into something believing it cannot be done, you don’t do it and it reinforces your faith that it couldn’t be done in the first place. Instead if you’d have gone into it wholeheartedly and gave it your best shot, you’d at least have had the satisfaction of being true to yourself. Not rocket science, is it? I relate the antithetical attitude to this scenario with faith.

Optimism is a strong buttress to life. It is, to me, the quintessence of a happy soul.

Ramblings

I sit here staring at the screen, trying to think about something to write. I can think of nothing. Nothing at all. I’ve collected a few ideas but I cannot gather enough thoughts to produce a decent chunk of writing. I guess I have blogger’s block. A strange ailment. Writer’s block is a serious issue because the writer’s livelihood most probably depends on it. In the case of a blog, I want to write, but I can’t think of what to blog about. A suggestion I give myself is ‘write about something you feel strongly’. Unfortunately I only feel the ground strongly beneath me. I am no geologist to comment about it now, am I? Jokes apart, really, there is not much I feel strongly about. I am laid back. It is something I’ve gotten from being a Hyderabadi. But coming back to feeling strongly about things. I cannot understand or rather cannot identify with people who take stands on various mundane things in life. I simply cannot. It sometimes scares me. But what does taking stances actually imply? To me it indicates that a person is very set in their ways, highly opinionated and plastic in thought. Being extremely laid back is not good either. You will literally get laid. Be used as a doormat. So does being ambivalent mean you are someone who is unreliable because they can change their mind? I don’t think so. It means you are a rational person who is willing to listen to others and evaluate their point of view before taking a stand. So what is it that I am getting at? I don’t know. These are random thoughts I am typing out as I watch CSI on TV. A pathetic show, I must say. But I will not argue with you if you said you liked it. In the last two weeks India lost all their ODIs to SA. A pathetic show they put up. I wonder how tired Dravid must be from repeating all the lies like ‘we had a lot to learn from this game’ or ‘there were a number of positives we can take from this game’ et al. What a bunch of bullshit. Poor guy can’t even say that none of his boys have the fire in the belly to go out there and fight for a victory. He simply cannot. Greg Chappel’s made the entire team into some kind of a corporate set up. For God’s sake Greg! It is a game and it has to be played like one. You are making it monkey business. But I have a lot of faith in the men in blue. Salvation lies in breaking the Dravid- Chappell combination. Great mind thinks alike and that is precisely why they need to be separated. Because it leads to a stagnation of thought. I don’t think anyone apart from Sachin, Kumble and Dravid even follow the coach’s ideas. It is here that someone needs to take a stand!

On a musical note, the music of Guru rocks. Waah Guru Waah. ARR rocks. Jaage Hain and Barso Re reflect his pure genius. He finally uses Shreya Ghoshal : emphatically. Her voice modulations are fantastic. Jaage hain is sheer genius. Starting off with chitra’s crystal clear voice, the song goes through 4 octaves. As is his wont, ARR sings the best songs himself. He has a slight nasal tone in this album, which adds to the rustic feel of the period film. Maan gaye Guru.

I watched stranger than fiction. It was a very nice movie. A good story line, a subdued Will Farrell ,and fine acting make it a good watch. I have decided to buy the DVD of this film. That’s how much I liked it.

I worked all weekend. Rather , I spent time in the lab helping others out. I worked because I am going on vacation later this month and frankly, I was getting bored at home.

I have a tendon injury and can’t run for a few days. That’s really frustrating. And now I am running out of ideas to write about. There is a mental sluggishness arising from a lack of exercise.

I am reading 4 books now. (multitasking is one of my assets).

Tuesdays with Morrie : overrated

Life of Pi: Brilliant

100 years of solitude: Good but an awesome soporific

Talk to the hand: Rubbish, incoherent blabber.

That’s my spiel, my ramblings about the last few days.

It is now time for me to hit the sack. A new week is about to begin.

Mystery solved

Q)What came first, the hen or the egg?

Ans ) Neither. The Rooster had to come first!!