First, it’s late. It’s hot. It’s really muggy and sticky. So sticky that my arms are sticking to the table and the notebook. I’d much rather be sitting in bed with the AC on, but had to get this one out.

I’ve found that I take a very problem oriented approach to everything… to the extent that it often makes me do things which I may not really want to do. I guess this derives from my belief that I am a Human Doing not a Human Being. To me every situation, every circumstance must have a goal. Why I do not know, but that is how it seems to be. Whenever I am presented with a situation, I always seem to try and figure out what I am supposed to do about it. And I find it incredibly frustrating to be presented wit or faced with a situation where I cannot effect a change. Where I cannot do something to make it better or make it go away.

For some things it works well. Bring me a problem and I will try and find a solution. So great, bring me a business problem, bring me a technical problem and chances are that we can together brainstorm some approach that may have the possibility of leading to better situation. Not necessarily the perfect answer each time, but an answer. An action. A strategy. A plan. A goal. A means. But all in all an attempt to try and make the situation better, even though it may be a feeble attempt.

But then there are some problems for which there are no simple answers. Sometimes it’s the little things, the personal things, the things which I do not have any immediate control over. If someone is sick or if someone dies, there is very litle I can say or do in order to rectify such a situation. And in any such circumstances where no direct action on my part can help to improve the situation, the only recourse I seem to have is one of inaction. If someone has cancer, it is beyond my current ability to help solve that problemfor them. However, it is within my ability to listen. But I find it difficult to listen, because when I listen, my instant reaction is to try and think of something that can be done to alleviate the situation. (The examples chosen here are not real. But they get the point across. What I really have in mind is other problems for which I do not have simple answers…)

My desire to always “find an answer” is so strong that I find it frustrates me to the point of making me angry, apathetic and withdrawn — to try and prevent myself from being exposed to the questions and the problems for which I do not have the answers. It is perfectly okay, if I know that I can put in extra effort, work harder, work longer and essentially do something in order to find the answer, but it is those which seem too far out of my reach which are the cause of this intense frustration. Some times, the “if you ignore it long enough, it will go away” syndrome creeps in. I know it when it happens. I can see it, but I can’t get myself to do anything about it… so far.

There are problems and questions which have perplexed the brightest minds, the greatest thinkers for years on end. Not only years, but generations and centuries. So I by no means garner any false perceptions that I am in any way, shape or form going to be able to find answers to some of the problems which have eluded some of the brightest minds. I am not smarter than them.

I guess at some level all of these are choices. Choices, because if I really feel strongly about a cause, an issue, a problem, there is nothing preventing me from going gung-ho over it to try and find a solution or help alleviate the cause. But the single most important factor in making that choice is my level of confidence of whether or not I will be able to make a difference. And just how many things an I make a difference for? Would be cool if I could fork (sorry, geeky term from OS days…) of a clone to go off and devote all it’s energy to the task at hand. But unfortunately, even if human cloning does get to become reality, the sciece fiction concept of cloning is very far from the reality of cloning. The truth is that there is just one me. And my time is limited like everyone elses. And so, I need to make choices. Choices which allow me to maximize what I want to achieve. And in that process the low hanging fruit gets plucked first right? The one at the zenith of the tree, may still be attractive, but if the likelihood is that I would need to spend the rest of my life to get to it, maybe it make more sense to attack only those things that are within your reach so as not to disappoint yourself too much? Does that make any sense at all (not sure, will have to read that again tomorrow to see if it even makes sense to me.)

Oh well. I guess one other thing I’ll mention — completely unrelated though, is that I’m still not completely comfortable posting a daily entry based on the days events and what I’m really thinking. It’s just not that easy to do. Trust is hard to build — and like a good German Shepherd, I can only be friends once the trust is established.

I’ve been thinking about what to write in this entry for several hours now. Essentially last night, a friend of mine who was in town was too hammered to go home and so he crashed in my living room. We landed up talking for a long time. and when I say talking, we weren’t just bulshitting, we were in serious deep discussion about everything from life, work, personal lives, psychology, philosophy and all that kind of stuff which you may not expect too many inebriated individuals to be discussing.

The topics ran the gamut and our tangents often became whole discussions in themselves making it increasingly taxing on our minds to unravel the stack to figure out how we got somewhere in the first place. Now, the details of what we talked about are “out-of-bounds” for this entry or any entry on a public blog for that matter. (the vagueness creeps back…), but I will write a little about some of the realizations.

Perception is reality. What you percieve is real for you. You cannot know any other reality than what you percieve (have I said the same thing over enough times yet? … did it hit home?). But what I’ve realized and what I hope others can realize is that things may not always be what they seem. In one of the many books I read recently (I did a great job of remembering the things I liked from the readings, but a pathetic job of keeping a bibliography or any references, sorry… in future, I’ll be more careful and probably post a list of my readings… well at least the non-sensitive ones!) it talked about how the exact same circumstance/environment creates a completely different experience for each person. It is your own personal experience, which need not be the same as what anybody else felt under the same circumstances.

So the point I’m trying to make and not doing a good job of being succint about it, is that the same circumstances may be a completely different effect on different people. And Assumption is the mother of all f…ups… so to assume that your experience is universally applicable is probably not going to work to your advantage in the long run. Of couse, all the experiences are subjective, but it would behoove one to at least attempt to try and validate the assumptions before jumping to any conclusions. Give the benefit of the doubt. You may see things differently.

Another quote which keeps coming back a lot is the one about expectation is the first step to disappointment. This is a hard one. In fact, all of this stuff is because there are very few absolutes… that coming from a person who is most comfortable in dealing with zeros and ones, means a lot. It is easier to talk about this than to practice it. And I myself am probably guilty of not being able to practice what I preach 100% of the time.

Expectations surround us. Whether they are from friends, family, parents, work, school and most of all from ourselves…. or better said, as our perceptions of what is expected of us by others. Again, that is a perceived result which very often hasn’t been validated at all and so we land up subjecting ourselves to a mental torture of trying to live up to perceived expectations. Both internal and external. This reminded me of a quote I had in the old quotes file (available in quote archives)…

…and no taskmaster is harsher than one’s own self-expectations.

…Tom Clancy in the Red Storm Rising

Now, I do not mean to sounds solipsistic or selfish, but isn’t that just a recipe for making yourself miserable? Living based on what you perceive others to expect of you!? Wouldn’t it be more pragmatic to at some point realize that you are the only person who can do anything about how you feel and the only person you need to be accountable to is yourself. (that implicitly covers doing things for other people since if you didn’t you wouldn’t be happy with yourself right!?)

But what can someone who is caught in the expectation rut do? What happens when it runs so deep that it starts becoming a borderline phobia undermining your own self-esteem? That’s a dangerous state to be in.