Yesterday, I went to see A Beautiful Mind. It’s an amazing movie, though I bet the book is better… and I nam now interested in reading the book as well. But that is not what this entry is about. This entry is about “reality.” The straw the broke the proverbial camel’s back in writing this entry was the movie though. Other things have been, my curiousity about dreams and picking up Freud’s On Dreams, recent movies that I saw (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, A Beautiful Mind) recent readings (Girl, Interrupted) – some of which have touched on the topic of Schizophrenia, reflection of my time spent in the Master of Software Engineering program at Carnegie Mellon working on a software harness to plug in different socio-economic models to predict relapse in Schizophrenic patients and so on.

The Mind is Fragile. Very fragile. It is also powerful. Very powerful. (Those statements are the subject of their own lengthy diatribe at some point in the future once my personal conditions for the statute of limitations on personal information has been met.) But what the movie last nigth and all the other things together have made me think about is just how easy it is for the mind to get confused. Just how easy it is for dreams to become real and reality to become dreams. Of course, all of this leads to the ultimate question of what is reality?

I do not remember my dreams. In fact for a long time I would make a conscious effort to not dream at all (don’t know if that is even possible) since that would mean that my brain is still going and I have a hard enough time getting it to stop thinking that to have to deal with the dreams part of it as well 🙂 But I can see how for some people the line between what they dreamt and what they sense while “awake” can become blurred. Where the conscious and the sub-conscious merge and the worlds collide leading to a state of utter confusion (IMHO).

Schizoprenia and other things which are classified as “mental disorders” (I have a relatively low opinion of the diagnoses in the field of mental disorders as specified in the DSM, since to me (those with more trained minds may be able to tell the difference better than I, this is only a personal opinion… ooh nested parentheses again, don’t you just love those!), some of them seem about as subjective and open ended as a horoscope!) are a scary thought. I’d draw the analogy to a leaky vessel (don’t take this negatively, it is simply an analogy). Stuff literally bleeds over from one world to another, from one reality to another. And I cannot begin to imagine what it is like, since that would be the realization of my worst fear – to not be able to think critically and discren between what is inside your head and simply a figment of an over-active mind/imagination and what manfests itselfs tangibly in the world as we and others around us perceive it.

Needless to say I’ve developed a new found respect for those who suffer from such illnesses and an even deeper respect for those who while suffering from such an illness can overcome the cacophony in their own minds to lead meaningful lives. Nothing striked the chord stronger than the triump of a person over circumstances that are otherwise futile.

One of my favorite quotes from the quotes file is one which I wrote in November of 1995 – Expectation is the mother of disappointment. Easier said than done though. Because every so often we (myself included) want something so eagerly that there are only two possible outcomes, zenith of elation or the nadir of disappoinment. There is no in between.

But is it possible to want something so much that you just screw it up for yourself? I think it is, primarily because I feel I’ve done it often enough. In fact I used to do it a lot more often than I do it now since I now try to hedge my bets if I can. And I guess the reason I’m thinking about this again and writing about it is because I’m made an uncovered bet. I want something and I don’t have a plan for what happens if I don’t get it (well, I do, but I don’t like any of the outcomes there yet). When I was in school I always wanted to do well. And sometimes I wanted it *so* bad, that I would go overboard with it. I would actually know not only the question/problem by heart, but I’d know what page of the text book it’s on and what the solution is. Okay and how is that bad? Well, then in my eagerness to do well, I wouldn’t read the damn question in the test — I’d read half of it and say, “ah! I know this one!” and I’d proceed with the solution which I knew by heart. Of course, I’d miss out the part where the examiner had changed the numbers or put in a subtle twist in the problem (one which generally made is simpler rather than harder) and land up screwing myself in the process. Because I knew the subject, it’s just that I wanted it so bad, that I’d mess it up.

I think the same thing happened with my interview for MIT when I applied there as an undergrad. It was my first interview *ever*. I wanted it really bad. And when I walked out of there, I knew I’d just screwed it up royally. Of course these are probably the more memorable screwups courtesy of just wanting something too much.

But it isn’t that I’m recognizing this problem just now. I did notice it earlier too. And my attempt at alleviating it was two-fold, a) rationalize it away by hedging, b) teach myself to just “wing-it.” So far both have worked great, but every once in a while comes something where you want it so much that you can’t hedge it with something you want equally as much and therefore you don’t feel comfortable winging it either. I guess I’m just in that type of a predicament at the moment and irrational as it may be, it seems that even thinking about it will just screw it all up. Because you can want something *too* much…

2001 started off as a bad year. It continued as a bad year. It became an even worse year in September and it ended as a bad year. Notice a trend? And I’m not talking just for me personally (sorry, no details, if you really care, you can ask), but also for a lot of people that I know and even several who I don’t know. As I sit back and think about 2001, I really cannot think of any good things for this year. Actually wait… after a lot of thinking, I can think of only one good thing for this year… that the INS approved my Permanent Residency petition. That was a definite positive event, but other than everything else I can think of that happened in 2001, was lets just say, not-so-positive.

So I’m genuinely glad that 2001 is gone. So far the first two days of 2002 haven’t been a sea change from 2001, but I’m more positive about it. I spent the first two days filling out a form on the web and clicking a button that I hope will result in creating a change. It’s amazing that that one click on “submit” can make such a difference. Now to wait and see what happens. But regardless of what happens, the one good thing is that 2001 doesn’t exist any more. And when I signed the date on the papers and checks I signed in the past two days, writing 2002 is a whole lot better.

So happy new year to all….