THE INHERENT TRUTH

Every one of us often say the words mind and heart. I am often confused with these terms, why there are two terms. As far as my school books taught me humans have an organ, something called brain which is the root of thoughts or the thing that make you think. As I grow I learned that this thing (brain) is responsible for memorizing and draw inferences from my experiences and created the way to achieve my goals. For the first time when I heard the words “please don’t mind”, I was told that means do not put what had happened in your brain. So this way I figured out people are using the term mind instead of using brain which is a bit boring (scientific) to say.

I thought its fine to use the word mind for brain. The actual trouble comes in when I have to use the word heart. Again my school books taught me heart is another organ which pumps blood throughout the body and is the utmost essential thing for a human to be alive. At that age I thought its ok. But when I heard people saying stuff like, “Do you have a heart? How can you do that? How can you say that?” I was more than confused, and my mind tempted to say “yes, he/she has a heart and is alive otherwise he/she can’t stand before you.” But later I was told that heart in that sentence is not used for literal meaning. Heart is something about how you feel about (feelings) a thing or a person like pity, sorry, love, fond, guilt, anger.

I don’t completely understand what heart means but the above answer made some sense at that time. But still questions haunted me. I have a mind which is helping me since my childhood in doing my homework, answering questions in class, submitting assignments, playing, and solving puzzles. This way my mind works in some logical way, from the things I saw, I heard, I read, I was told about what ever based on my knowledge base my mind calculates in a logical way and gives me the result and brain is the organ responsible for this. I am clear with that part.

Now the second part, Heart, What it is? How it is acting? And first of all my questions where it is? Is there any other organ that hides in our body which is not discovered by the early scholars of anatomy? I am sure that the organ heart which pumps the blood is not the place for these feelings and all because it is so busy circulating blood 24X7 and I can’t even think of it as a multi tasking organ. Because for the slightest time gap (even the latest processor have a time lag in microseconds during switch when they multi task) it stopped pumping blood I bet one can’t be alive. My doubt about anatomy scholars faded as I browsed through the websites and textbooks. I was again left alone with all my questions pounding my head.

No one answered my questions. To be precise I didn’t cared to ask anyone. May be it’s my fear of being looked like a stupid stopped that thought. Indulged in to a deep thought I had a break through. My mind was trained to ask questions others when I don’t understand something. But why am I now overriding that habit. Then one more word came to my mind INSTINCT. So what the hell is with this instinct, my brain is not responsible for this. It always gives definite answers that are logical and practical. My instinct told me not to ask others. So what the hell is this instinct and where does it come from. One more question. Finally I added the word instinct also to my list of things a heart does. One more question added to the cart in search of a solution which seemed to reveal for eternity.

One day, I was lost in my thoughts at my desk and suddenly interrupted loud sounds from TV. It’s my granny watching the daily serials. I hate those screenings the most, but more confused of my world I wanted to give it a try. The scene is to kidnap a small girl (might be hero’s daughter), some fat dumb fellows are planning for that, one of the rowdy says something and the boss (may be the dumbest among the group) comes in and says use a bit more brain. Those words stuck my mind very hard. Use a bit more brain.

What? Is he not using his complete brain? Only a portion of it? This line started to ring some bells….

 When I was in my college during a motivational speech, the speaker said “Even Einstein used only a fractional part of his brain. Every one of you has a potential that you don’t even think …..” later part of the speech faded as my mind fixed its gaze on “Einstein used only a fractional part of his brain”

Finally pounding that line for a hundred more times, my mind concluded that the unused part of the brain is responsible/root for the feelings, instincts or whatever you say, I say the “Heart” things. Concluding this I happily stood up and gave my granny a smile filled with lots of pride and went to my room to put this conclusion on paper.

But my happiness didn’t last long. Before completely landing on my conclusion, I just wanted to browse through net, just if someone had any thought crossing my path. Then the blocker appeared in my way. If you got time go through article “10% of brain myth” in Wikipedia

“If 90% of the brain is normally unused, then damage to these areas should not impair performance. Instead, there is almost no area of the brain that can be damaged without loss of abilities. Even slight damage to small areas of the brain can have profound effects.”

The above lines are the first among the points to disprove the myth (there are some other points, you can browse through). I was completely satisfied with the above reasoning and on the other hand I am again lost in the quest of finding answers for the questions banging my head.

            The next day I started my day freshly with a hope of finding the answer and I just right my thoughts I got irrespective of their feasibility and logic.  Then I remember my physics lecturer saying “whenever you find a tough problem, just come from the basics, there is nothing called a tough problem”. Even though I follow this rule all the time I just thought of giving it a try for this problem. I went out and got a ninth standard text book in which for the first time I heard the word brain and its functions. While I was reading about reflexes, there is a line saying “reflexes are quick responses/actions that doesn’t require the normal/complete processing through brain”.  It’s something like that is not controlled by brain completely. I thought I was landing on the answer. But the next line again drowned my hopes was “few reflexes like your withdraw your hand when you touch something hot are preprogrammed and your experiences (things you are habituated to do, read, write) will create more reflexes. Even though reflexes seem like uncontrollable, doesn’t depend on brain for their occurrence, they do depend on brain (pre programmed)”. I understand what reflexes are, but still I can feel some emptiness saying that I am missing something.

Finally the bloody textbook I bought also dint come to my rescue. Every move I make towards my answers new questions are being stacked.

INSTINCTS, REFLEXES (UNCONTROLLABLE ACTONS) are the new mates.

 I wrote these words on a board and continue to stare at them all the night. Finally after one more sleepless night I found a theory that answers all my questions. Here I am sharing what I feel and I am pretty sure I may not be right. Don’t hesitate to denyJ.

           

            Heart is nothing but the uncontrollable part of brain.

            Mind is the controllable part of brain.

            Mind and Heart together makes the Brain.

            So Mind and Brain are not the same. (Thus the assumption we made at the start slips off)

By saying uncontrollable, I mean something that does not follow logic. When a cool breeze hits you, you may tend to close your eyes and relish the feel that is carried by the wind. So no one told you to close your eyes, even your brain didn’t say that. The root cause of this action can be attributed to Heart.

When you try to remember something, why do you close your eyes?

If I say don’t think about “some x y z” you will start thinking about that xyz. Why do you do that?

When you hear some good news why do you shout?

These are only few things that are not logical/uncontrollable ones. Let me put a familiar name for these things, “Emotions”. Love, sorrow, guilty, like, fondness, ego, instincts whatever the feelings…

The emotional tasks are taken care by Heart the uncontrollable part.

I don’t think I need to say much about the Mind things. Whatever action you don’t find logical or you don’t find a reason for occurrence you can safely put it to the basket of Heart.

            You may get a doubt when you look at the words controllable and uncontrollable. You may ask who the controller is. Well again the Mind is the controller of itself and the Heart is something that is not under control.

Even though I refer Heart as the uncontrollable, it is controllable.

Suppose, you like junk food. And you are also health conscious.

Here like is the Heart thing, and consciousness is the Mind thing. Your controllable part (Mind) has still some control over the Heart saying “Hey you idiot, if you eat that you will be fat like a pig”. If your Mind is strong enough in imposing its logic, it can override the feelings of heart.

So this way you can make the Mind a master and Heart as its slave. – Being Practical.

Just take the other way possible.

Here Heart says “Come on, even if I eat it you can do exercise. It’s better to eat and exercise than to starve.”

So here the Heart wins over Mind. – Being Emotional.

One thing to be observed is Heart is no fool. Bear in mind that still it is also part of brain comprising of neurons, which are the able to think. So in order to win over Mind it will produce some sort of logic as I said above.

So as I said above, brain is a mixture of both and everyone have one.

Then what differs from person to person is the fractional part of emotional and practical thinking.

If you are emotional, that is Heart is the master, you will end up in doing things you want, saying things you wanted to, choosing all according to your wish. Most of the times these kind of people end up in a mess. But still if you ask them why?, the answer may be My life my wish and they proud to say I felt what is LIFE in being my way.

            If you are practical making Mind as master, you will look for logic in everything, don’t go by instincts in some situations where you need to go by, you will be following rules made by mind. Mostly these people don’t find any troubles on their way. What one will say about these people is they are machines, they don’t ever felt what LIFE is.

To conclude it’s an individual’s choice to be emotional or to be practical or to be both.

As we all know most of us are in the last category.

ONE NIGHT WITH YOUR WIFE

      Seven years ago, the same day he proposed her. One year leaped in touching the peaks and feeling the depths of great love they got married. Till then its two hearts trying to pursue each other in a box called bond. Things went on well and good. Both got employed with a decent salary and got busy in lives, bit still feeling the tinge of love. But have to go with the natural phenomena; they slowly replaced their hearts with their brains in the bond they share. And yet another natural process is the brains continue to grow in size in different directions, people call it by different names, some call it maturity, and some say independence and so on. Whatever may be the name, the box is losing its shape because of the uneven forces.  They entered late twenties. The contents of the box grow bigger and the box started to run out of space and the ability to adjust, both of them were able to feel that. They began to look the same things that happened before in a different direction and small fights turning to long lasting ones. Even before they used to have big quarrels, but these are different, completely different no love! No pleasure! Completely filled with Ego! A single sorry in peace would have ended it all, but both of them in the name of so called maturity and individuality didn’t cared to say it. As both the brains are getting suffocatingly close, they got that much departed.

One day, as usual he is in a hurry getting ready for office. By mistake the photo frame having their photos fell down. That was his favorite. Even though he is running out of time, he spared few minutes to clear the mess and to have a look at the photos. he looked at HIM AND HER around seven years ago and then he shifted his gaze to mirror to see himself now. He is looking athimself in the mirror how he changed over time physically and mentally. heagain looked at their photos and a glance of them being happy ran through his mind. Sadly he doesn’t have time for all this. he kept the broken frame there and began to hurry. But something stopped him. his image in the mirror is getting faded slowly and morphed to something else what he was a few years ago. Young, energetic, charming and HAPPY HE. He can’t believe what he is seeing. he is now seeing HIMSELF. he tried to touch the mirror and get out of the illusion. No use, as he stretched his hand, but HE began to speak to himdirectly dabbing him down in to astonishment.

“Hi how are you?”

Before he could gather his senses, HE replied “hmm, don’t try to answer, I know what you are projecting and what you are.”

“What did you promised HER when you are taking the step and what you are doing now?”

“Of course she is not abiding to the promises she make, but you can still make a difference!”

“Want those days back?”

he sprang to his feet to say “Yes, tell me what it takes. I am ready to give anything for that. Tell me. What should I do?”

“Just allow me to replace you with me.  I will get those days back in yourlife. One night with your wife. And you feel the same old days repeating themselves in your life.”

“Okay.”

As he agreed to follow HIS words, he is back at home that day early than usual and started preparing dinner for her. It is almost 5 years he stopped cooking, but still he is good at it. he swept the floor and made the house glow again by arranging some party lights and done everything that will poke her in amazement when she entered the flat. All he has to do is obey HIM and bring back HER in her.

Everything is as perfect as HE planned and she was shocked to see what’s happening.

“Get ready darling. I will have the dinner ready” he said.

Since the morning he tried to walk in HIS shoes and by the evening he is almost HE again.

With a small gift he welcomed her to the table and served her dinner. With no clue of what is happening she seemed to be more shocked than enjoying the dinner.

“Sorry for everything” he said the three magical words that they have been waiting since long time to hear from the each other.

And then they began to discuss every small issue they had in their plates and everything seemed so trivial after they are back!. Not a single issue had a concrete reason to remain. Things seem to be much clear and clean as they were at the start of the journey.

Both are in tears as they found themselves back.

“So what made you do this? What so special with this day? ” she asked clearing her tears in a choking tone.

“Not our marriage anniversary, or the day we met or we proposed. Today is the day I found myself and got you back”, he caressed her lips with his and they lived happily ever after.

P.S: As everyone says love stales, decays or whatever may be the word if something stales or decays there should be some other way to get it back. Love is everywhere especially when you look back you will definitely find its abundance. All you need to do is just copy and paste.

Happy copy & pasting.

Mother's Love - By a software engineer.

MOTHERS LOVE

-          By a software engineer

                After being dumped by my 6^th girl friend (for not giving an expensive good looking gift), I was at kaada malleshwera temple again. (A routine I follow whenever I got ditched.)

Don’t know why that places soothes me like my mother. (Whatever I think of my mother, or some good things, being not trapped again in love, these kinds of thoughts were all limited to the temple premises. When I am out on my bike I am the same old crap again ;)) The cool breeze, not so crowded place, on the steps against the Siva idol is the best place to sit in this world and to lost in the world of my thoughts.

But this time it turned out to be a bit special. Something that happened made me write this. I was lost in my thoughts and staring at nothing. Suddenly someone stamped on my leg (very lightly indeed) brought me back. With a fuming anger out of my nostrils (may be actual anger I wanted to let out on my GF) I turned to see who it was. It was a cute kid may be having 2 yrs ran across the steps to his mother. She may be in her late twenties, looking so divine, some kind of pure, calm poise look (she is gorgeous too) that a mother have, took him in her arms and carried him down the steps to the pond. A step just above the water surface, few tortoises were resting. She released him from her bosom and asked him to touch the shell of it. He was so scared and went pale. She convinced him that it will be fine and she will be there to ensure his safety (may be she offered a chocolate if he do that) and it will be good to touch. She held his hand tightly as he leaned extending his other hand. As he touched the hard surface, instantaneously the tortoise took its head and limbs inside the shell, the boy jumped with joy and triumph that the mission was accomplished and he is even more ecstatic to see something like that. He continued to observe the turtle, as it put out its limbs slowly again, he touched again (with less fear this time) and swiftly ran his fingers across the hard shell for a long time as the turtle rolled back its head. The boy was even happier by now seeing this he repeated again and again. I was so taken up by the boy’s innocence, his pure joyous feeling about small things. As I shifted my gaze towards her mother, I was even more awestruck. I realized that she is the person who is more genuinely joyous than the boy. She was so happy seeing her child being happy and embraced him again as if she wanted to feel every detail of his happiness. As he was out of her arms running to his dad I clearly saw gleam in her eyes telling that she is the happiest being on this earth, Real happiness (how many people in this world are blessed to be such happy). No surprise, I was more than convinced to accept that, yes she seemed to be the happiest person (at least in that moment) I have ever come across. Suddenly I thought am I going too filmy? I checked my eyes they are not wet and the glitter that I saw in her eyes is a real thing, I can still see that.

I remembered my mother and memories of my childhood began to roll before my eyes (I personally believe eyelids are the most powerful, amazing camera with unlimited memory. They take pictures with a better clarity than the so called SLR’s. They give us the glimpse of anything we want to recollect in fraction of second. Even a computer takes time to search retrieve and paint the image on the screen). Time slipped away.

But one thing occupied my mind completely. Her smile, happiness and sparkle in her eyes for him being happy. I am running out of words or pardon me does any words exists to express what I saw that day and what feelings she had for him. Huh, I am completely hopeless in describing it.

Finally I took it as a challenge. “Describing it”.

(My bloody job taught me analyzing a thing and describing it clearly to the client or getting the description from the client clearly.)

So I started with, why is she so happy? Because her son is happy.

So what? Why such happiness? What is the secret? It turned out like I am digging in the air, because nothing is falling in to my cup.

Again my job taught me user perspective or others views about a situation. Ask questions probing for a clear view of the task at hand. Make a questionnaire that should be short and sharp, the answers should give you complete answers.

For this job, I got 2 questions on my questionnaire.

1.       Do you love your mother?

2.       If yes, why?

I posed this questions to my team mates, friends, everyone I know of.

For the first question almost everyone said “Yes”. For the second question….

“Why means what?”

“Are you insane?”

“My love towards my mother is unconditional”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“Today what I am, who I am is completely because of her”

“She loves me more than I do”

“She always thinks of my sake and cares for me.”

…………….

…………………..

……………………………

Mmm, these answers are nothing new; they seemed to be very familiar. I thought I should give up. I should concentrate on my work. May be its too hard when we want to define feelings. This is what I thought for the last when I left the job unfinished. Finally I gave up. (But a thread in my brain running this task didn’t give up. It continued to multi task.)

Days went on and I am working normally as I ever did. One day there was a mail saying that there will be a team out the following Friday. It turned out to be absolute fun. We were all enjoying playing, eating, dancing all around the resort.

As a usual thing, the next day people were discussing about the outing and I joined the chat. I was teasing people and making fun again. Suddenly one thought hit me. When it all started? Rolling back in time 2 years, when I joined as a fresher in production with a fear of what to do, how to do, what is what. I was placed in good team and my colleagues being very nice and taught me the things.  I quickly got the flow and did well.

I remember my PM congratulating me on fixing a potential bug at production for the first time. That day, I was more than happy ever and it turned to be one of the happiest moments in my life. Every time I fix a bug, add a new feature and deploy the changes I used to feel the same sort of happiness, I did something productive, some application that is running properly and doing some task correctly. (Hope everyone feels like me)

Suddenly the floor was alarmed by a potential production issue and our team mates packed to their seats looking for a fix. The bug was a critical as some batch that ran yesterday altered the account balances. After one and half hour I finally landed on the issue. It was some problem with firing of batches and the issue location has been located and fixed. There was a huge sound of OOOs and Aaahs from my team mates and I feel again the same thing. I did something productive and make something work fault free.

We all love what we do or at least what we did. There is a great satisfaction (proudness) when we say “hey that’s my code”. (No matter how junk it is ;))

Tring …. Tring ….Tring……… (There was a yield() method called on my main thread, and the only thread left unfinished was notified of its task.- (spare me for this java terms))

Finally I finished my challenging task this way.

                Just a few (thousands of) lines of code, we write and we feel so happy for it.  We feel like we created something great and its working great because of us. Of all the team that contributed for application ‘You’ are a part of it, still you are happy to share a feeling that you are great and you are responsible for its success. (Say the amount of happiness as X units)

Imagine, only you developed the application from the scratch, requirements, design, use cases, coding, testing, building and resource  allocations, web server deployment what not everything is done only by you. Imagine the happiness you feel. (Say the amount of happiness as some 1, 00,000 times of X – still it may sound less to you)

All this happiness is just for developing an application that severs some specified task and which is lifeless.

                Now see a woman creating a life, a human being (you, me & everyone) which is capable of writing code, making pots, welding grills, designing buildings, sweeping roads, painting arts, writing stories, playing games, counseling minds, building monuments, inventing medicines…. what not, everything you name it she is the one who created it. Now think of the happiness she feel for the human being she created all alone. I say I can’t put a constant before X and say this many times. I feel like even infinite seems finite before X.

We worry and work hard for our code to look good and work well. At times we don’t even care of food, time and fun. We just want to do a good job. Isn’t this love towards your job?

She is creating a life, a godly thing. Even god can’t do it and she holds the place of creating a life. She cares for the life she created every moment. The way she feels responsible, undergoes pain for her creation to be happy, the torment she is ready to take for the sake of her child is just inexpressible.

I can’t call it love again. It is something more than love. If I were among the early scholars of English I would have coined a new word for mother’s love. Because if we ever define love, there will be fathers love, brothers love, sisters love so on and so forth. But whatever may be it; nothing can come close to a mother’s love, it’s just unique.

 FOR THE REASON I AM HAPPY, the meadows look more green..

FOR THE REASON I AM HAPPY, the breeze turned to be soft and soothing…

FOR THE REASON I AM HAPPY, the sky seems to lower and was trying to touch me….

FOR THE REASON I AM HAPPY, I just feel like God & everything is according to my wish….

I AM NOT HAPPY BECAUSE, I won a million dollar lottery…

I AM NOT HAPPY BECAUSE, a handsome guy fell for me…

I AM NOT HAPPY BECAUSE, I have landed on my dream job….

I AM NOT HAPPY BECAUSE, my husband gave me an expensive gift…..

I AM HAPPY BEACAUSE I AM A MOTHER NOW.

I went through the unbearable torture, skin stabbing deep pain, YET I AM VERY HAPPY…

Its 3 hours of labor and I was drenched in sweat and smelling like a rat, YET I AM VERY HAPPY…

We are poor, doubting we may not able to clear the hospital bill, YET I AM VERY HAPPY…

I am an ordinary woman and not one special thing about me, YET I AM VERY HAPPY…

BECAUSE I AM A MOTHER NOW.

Of the late I wish I were a woman so that at one point of time I will be a mother and I can feel that happiness what I saw. Unfortunately I am not….

Still I don’t feel like I have completed the job. What I did by writing this long is just an attempt to describe something that is magnificent, wonderful, and enormous and simply out my scope.

P.S.: after writing down this all the way long, I asked myself what is love. If you are not sick of me and my thoughts I put it this way.

Love is just like an interface in java. There are some standards or contracts you say in case of an interface. Similarly love has the standards (methods to be implemented) like care, fondness, struggle for the one, so on and so forth. Just like any class can implement any interface in its own way following the rules (rather say virtues). Love can also be implemented, expressed, felt, shown in many ways. Fathers love, mothers love, sisters, and friends. Whatever may be the form of love, accept, appreciate and be grateful to it. But don’t ever try to define the class love in a concrete way. Your project will be a big time failure.