Romancing in the digital era!

I wonder how it is these days between two people who are romantically involved or not even there yet, just have known each other for just a little over few days and kind of like each other and would like to proceed a little forward to explore if there are any prospects of getting romantically involved.

The beginning of a new relationship brings in such beautiful feelings. Exploring other persons reactions to little things like making a phone call but putting it down the moment you hear their voice on the other end not knowing what to say, passing by ignoring them a little, trying really hard to avoid them not wanting to give away the fact that you are dying to check out their every single move and analyze them to see if that is somehow related to you :) Aaah! those sweet nothings.

I think all those delicate gestures have become super ancient already. In this digital era everything is public. More or less! Facebook, twitter, non stop updates about every single breath you take and publicly talking about anything and everything in your life does not leave much for imagination.

You meet someone new, the first reaction is to Google their name, check their Facebook a/c, their wall, their friends list, their likes and dislikes, twitter updates, go a step forward and check their LinkedIn profile to see their work history, analyze why they studied what they did and why they worked at the places they worked, amazon and eBay shopping history, wish lists, Picasa/Flickr pictures so on and so forth.

And god forbid if they are into blogging (non technical stuff) that's it you have got a free pass into their soul. It gets very easy at this point to soul search and see if this person is right for you, your wavelengths match or not and ditch the person just after you hear their name and not even seen their picture or met them in person once.

Whatever happened to the uncertainties involved in meeting strangers getting to know the traditional way or should I say the ancient way and slowly nurture your feelings and let them evolve from liking to love. The bliss is all gone. Hmm....

I pity this age youth for not having all that we had. They are missing on all these beautiful things. But again they have an advantage too. They don't have to have to deal with the debate that your heart and head go into whether to listen to your heart and get carried away with your feelings or listen to your head which warns you with all the tell tale signs which might make this relationship not work. With all the information overload you have, and if you are smart enough you can connect the dots and decide right away if this person is right for you or not.

But for sure you are going to miss that new feeling,the beginning of a new relationship, the longing to see or talk to each other etc. I am glad I am not from this age and I am old fashioned even for my age :) I did benefit from all the subtle nuances of a new relationship and cherish them even Today.

Mid life crisis

A few years ago I came across a person who was going through mid life crisis. I followed his life closely and understood first hand what is is all about. I then thought, I would be careful when it comes to me or my husband as I am a more matured, psychologically evolved being :)

For some reason I always think I am a superior being as I understand life better than others. I guess everybody thinks the same way about themselves, but I live in my own bubble and I think very highly of myself and I am quite proud of that fact.

I read a little about what mid life crisis is all about. Here is what I found: "A midlife crisis is a transition of identity and self-confidence that can occur in early middle aged individuals."

The story of this guy who went through mid life crisis. He is a business man who is quite rich and successful. Well educated, very well settled, quite happy with this life. He is quite funny, retired quite early, and followed his passions. He started out to be a civil engineer, studied abroad, worked for 5years in US, went back home, got an idea in the field of construction, patented his idea and made money in the construction business. Retired before 40 and started acting in theater and writing pursuing his passions. Took acting lessons from LA living in India, being a christian played Indian mythological roles. Quite unique person indeed.

Later, I found out that his wife has Alzheimer's. He has a 13 year old son whom he takes care of completely, raises mostly by himself. He tries his best to find treatments for his wife. When asked, if he loves her so much, he said, "it was not love but sympathy towards her that made him stick to her. She has no where to go, what will she do if I leave her?" He says he has no future with her what so ever and has no hope that she will get any better but still he is married to her and is performing all his duties as a responsible husband. A one of a kind guy indeed!

He wrote about his mid life crisis. He bought a bike, joined a bike gang of four and drove around for sometime. He joined theater since he enjoys acting. He labelled all his actions as mid life crisis.

I, for some reason, never bought into the mid-life crisis concept. Now that I am going through my life (not quite there yet) but looking at my friends' lives who are in their 40-50s this is my understanding. Not all people go through mid life crisis. People who are successful, had a great career path, climbing up the success ladder, they will not complain about mid life crisis I think since they were so busy working towards their success and enjoying a rewarding career and family. Everything falls into place for them (of course because they are smart and work hard having a great perspective towards life)

On the other hand life sure gets super hectic during mid-life. You have your kids growing up, their teenage dramas to deal with, your parents aging, taking care of their health concerns, feeling even more stressed out mostly because of guilt, if you are away from them and cannot take care of them. And God forbid if you lose one of your parents it will multiply the stress 10 fold if not more. So what I see is most of it is stress built up because of multiple crises. Mid-life is the most stressful life I guess, again it depends on each person, because you are trying to juggle so many things, and even though you want to, you are not able to do a good job.

We all start our lives (I mean once we get a job and become independent) with an idea that we are going to lead our life a certain way. We will not make the same mistakes our parents, our older siblings, extended family, or friends did. We plan our future in a certain way. The mistake we do in planning is we consider each episode/responsibility/event separately.

We assume lot of things in a positive way like: my job, this is what I am going to do. This is my plan on my higher studies to support my career, training required etc etc. To be a successful parent, I am going to do all this, we will have a mental checklist which we keep updating looking at all the successful people around. This is how I am going to handle my teenage kids (even before you have any kids, judging the parents around you with teenage kids :). This is how I am going to take care of parents (in an ideal world). Once I save enough money, I am going to buy a bike, race car etc which was always my dream since I was 10.

Wishful thinking! The problem is life happens in parallel not in sequence. By the time you get a job and you are barely settled, you get married. Most of the Indians do at least . So now we are already looking at a wrinkle in the financial planning. Your higher studies get collided with having a baby and added responsibility. You are a brand new parent with no clue, even though you were very quick at passing judgements on every single parent we met. Do a Masters in the subject of your interest while raising a new born. Now that is fun! You don't get promoted because you did not work 17+ hours like your colleague who does not have kids or has lot of domestic help which gives him time to focus on his work. You are obviously depressed. You will think, let the kid be 3yrs old and potty trained then I will focus entirely on work. Then comes the second one. Sibling rivalry to deal with, so on and so forth. You get the idea.

Now all this is to a guy not a girl. I don't think many women have mid life crisis because they are smart :) They understand life and are practical in having unrealistic expectations from life. Because when the poor guy is going through all this and sometimes has the luxury to leave everything at least while he is away at work not thinking about what's going on in the house, a girl cannot afford that luxury. And when it is a working mom, those are the best. They need to be on steroids all day, all their life, until kids grow up to manage the day to day things that come up.  Even statistics prove mid life crisis last about 3-10 years in men and 2-5 years in women and that approximately 10& of individuals go through this phase. 

So what is the most commonly misnamed mid life crisis all about? According to me, it is not mid life crisis it is lack of planning, not taking all variables into account, assuming life happens sequentially, not in parallel. I think learning how to juggle might give some perspective on life, I am not kidding. If you don't want so much stress in your life, line up your priorities, don't try to excel at every single thing you do, give up certain things, no need to enroll your kids into a zillion classes etc etc.

Instead if you think you want to do everything, here is an idea. There is something called a wildly important goal (WIG) some corporations implement. Every week you mark one thing in your never ending list as wildly important. Mark it as a WIG that means you have to accomplish it no matter what. It is okay to slack on others but you will have to accomplish this one task. Focusing on one wildly important goal is like punching one finger through a sheet of paper - all your strength goes into making that hole. That way you distribute your work/responsibility load and can accomplish lot more than you think you can.

Now this is all for a normal person who has a great life without any hiccups, career advancement, kids growing up, parents getting old, childhood dreams of having a race car, motor bike, sky diving, not getting fulfilled, this is all normal. If you have a deep sense of regret that you did not accomplish anything in life, stop whining about it, and start somewhere. It is never too late.

Coming back to the guy we were talking about, his life is different. These people are outliers. They don't fall under the same category as normal people. When normal people get sucked up into day to day lives and complain they should pause and take a look at these people. They lead a different life. We need to learn from them, that if they are able to handle their lives in a sane manner then we have no right to complain.

Paino Lessons

I want to learn piano someday. I know how to play basic notes and some rhymes :) yes! rhymes. My son started taking keyboard lessons when he was 5. He went to a group lesson where you get a 5-10min instruction for a song. You need to practice at home and come back, the teacher reviews the song and teaches another song just once as she has to move on to the next kid.

I used to learn how to play that song at home when my son was at school and once he came back I used to teach him the song. He got pretty good at piano and the teacher suggested we start private lessons for him on real piano. We bought a decent upright piano after doing tons of research.

I learned Alfred's both books 1A and 1B. I can play all the songs from those books. But then once he moved to level 2 I did not get time to practice. But I did sit through all his classes and understood the theory so that I can make him practice at home. Even now, I can recognize notes better than him (not sure if that is in my favor or that he still has tough time in identifying some notes :)

Anyways, I always wanted to learn piano. It has been my fantasy since I was a kid. I always admired music from Hindi and Telugu movies. Mostly I love Bollywood songs. Watching movie actors play piano, I always dreamed of me playing the piano and singing a melodious song. Now that we have one at home, I want to take serious piano lessons and play some of my favorites.

Recently I watched one totally bakwaas movie "Thank You". Yes, I do watch such junk :) But I am glad I watched the movie.There is one beautiful tune Akshay Kumar plays on the flute. It is really melodious. At the end of the movie they show Vidya Balan singing the song "Han Har Ghadi, Har Pehar.." song. This is a very lovely melodious song.

I heard this song Today more than a thousand times. Now my wish to learn piano grew even stronger. One day I am going to learn and play this song to my husband!

Mental image of a stranger

Do you create an image or determine the personality of a stranger just by talking to them over phone or reading their emails or chatting with them? This is more common now because of the social networking age we are in. We are most likely to make more virtual friends than ever and sometimes who knows they might become your best buddies.

I am a very anti social person. I am not into any of the social networking sites and I am particularly paranoid when it comes to interacting with strangers. I don't take such risks and the people around me do not encourage anything of that sorts.

I have a vivid imagination. This started when I was very young. I used to listen to songs in radio and have my own video of the song in my head. I used to be very disappointed when that song was played on Chitrahhar (TV program) because the director did not do any justice to the lyrics or the context of the song. I am quite sure I will become a very good director if at all I consider movie direction as my profession :)

I am very good at creating mental images. Even when I read novels, I create a whole movie in my head and I am quite confident it would be much better than any movie which is based on that novel :) Now, coming to mental images - how are they made? I was reading an article in some science website, and it says that your mental images are a result of many factors. Your upbringing, surroundings, your attitude etc. So if you and I are interacting with the same person, you might have a completely different mental image than that of mine.

But surprisingly it is not the same if we both see the person physically. Based on their physical appearance we might end up having some common opinions about that person. That is because of the society we live in and some of the misconceptions.

A few years ago I started blogging at a major blogging site and interacted with many bloggers via comments, some became very good friends as we shared some common views on some of the topics discussed etc. I exchanged emails with some of them and had a certain image including their physical appearance:). I personally feel that reading someones work gives you a very good insight into who they are and how they think. Especially if you have written 100's of articles, your true self comes out and it's really hard to hide. That thinking is what gave me courage to make virtual friends through the blogger's world.

I became very close friends with couple of them after reading every single post of the 100's they published. One of them happened to live very close to my house and I met her a few times. Went over to her house for lunch, she came to our house. The mental image I had about her based on her writings and our conversations over phone and chat is almost similar to the the real person. So obviously I thought I am good at this.

The other person I met virtually, a very good friend of mine, proved to be different. I met him in person he turned out to be totally different than my mental image. How strange! It works for some and does not for others? Or was it just fluke that the first person happened to match my mental image but not the second one. How does this work?

Virtual friendship eliminates the guessing element about the other person's personality in the sense that you became friends because of the shared interest to start with, the site where you met. I met my friends on a blogger site, so we both like to write. Narrowing down, we both have similar opinions the way we commented on others posts or the way we commented on each others writings. You might not necessarily like every single thing they wrote about, some categories might be even alien to you, but you don't mind reading about them. 75% of the time you liked their work. That is enough I guess.

We are simply drawn to those people in whose presence we feel comfortable. There are some friends with whom we “just click,” and we recognize early on that our personalities are a good match. And with virtual friends the awkwardness of meeting in person is gone because you are sitting in your pajamas in your own home when you are talking/chatting with them. It is like talking to a family member. You can't take away the comfort zone that you have with a virtual friend.

So if your gut instinct says it is okay to be friends with someone you never met or you don't know much about, I think it is okay. That said, you might be dealing with someone who is completely different than what you have in mind. So we should always be careful but if you are really comfortable with someone be it virtual or real, it is perfectly okay to continue the friendship. It's okay to be happy!

Can you help change someone?

I always used to wonder, can you help change someone? You can say good things, lecture someone of the way of life, how they can fix everything and make their life a rosy path but does it help? Does it have an impact?

I did this all my life. I guess it is my second nature to counsel people and help them to overcome their problems, issues, fears and succeed in what they are doing. I always wanted to become a psychologist. I did read couple of books when I was doing my Master's in Computer Application in India. In fact I decided, if I get a chance to go to US I would pursue a master's in clinical psychology.

12 years later, I am a software engineer by profession. But I did not stop counselling people. Somehow I end up with one or two friends who need help and I end up making them my clients. I help them and I did succeed in helping them understand their issues and getting what they wanted. Some are easy to work with some are a little difficult but I must confess, difficult makes it interesting/challenging.

To be continued....

Observer effect in human (my) behavior!

I have been watching Numb3rs TV show lately. If you are not aware of this show, it shows how Math can be used to solve any crime. How cool is that? Or you can say, how geek are you! Same difference...

Anyways, one of the episodes is titled - "The uncertainty principle". It tries to explain how humans change their  behavior when they are being observed. Well, I did study about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in college but obviously do not remember the details.

Yesterday I experienced something similar to what they explained in that TV show first hand and thought will jot it down. Did some research and found out that there is a bug in the TV show :)

The explanation of the uncertainty principle in that episode is misleading. It is in fact not the uncertainty principle but the "observer effect". Both are related that's how I came to know the difference. When you search in WIKI about the uncertainty principle it mentions about the observer effect.

Both are aspects of quantum mechanics, but the uncertainty principle states the impossibility to measure the value of some pairs of variables like location and speed of a particle at the same time with absolute certainty, while the observer effect states that observing an object always has an effect on the object.

The later is the one which I want to relate to human behavior.

I started going to Bikram Yoga from last week. I am quite happy I made this choice and I am enjoying the 105 degree Fahrenheit, 45% humidity hot yoga unlike most of the reviewers on Yelp who complained a lot about everything :)

I did learn Yoga before from a very good Guruji in India who became quite a public figure right now. So I was taught well. I knew all the postures they were teaching but had difficulty in doing them to full extent as it had been 2 decades since I last practiced serious Yoga.

I was happy. I went to 3 sessions already and I was improving with every session. Yesterday I went in quite energized with a strong intention to challenge my body a little more. While entering into the Yoga room I saw someone coming out, a very familiar face. At first I thought I knew her from Chinmaya Mission's Om Run. We practiced together and I was quite impressed with her dedication. She signed up for 5k run, decided to do the 10k run during the practice and the next year later she did the half marathon. When I saw her I thought no wonder she was able to do the half marathon, she does Bikram Yoga!

All of a sudden thoughts of me at the finish line for the half marathon crossed my mind and my heart was filled with joy. I am following the exact path as she did and my dream of finishing a marathon by the time I hit 40 seemed so real. Well, I even thought of introducing myself to her after the class and letting her know how she has become my role model in a split second!

I settled down on my mat and eagerly looked at the door to see where she is going to come and sit. She came in and sat in the same row just one mat next to me. Her friend was sitting in between both of us and she started talking to her friend. I looked at her but she did not recognize me. We met a few times during our practice session and used to exchange hello nods and smiles never knew any more details. But then I thought she was looking a bit different this time.

Then it became all clear. She is not the person who I thought she was. Instead, we both did MS together. We both took some 3 -4 classes together and did a project together for a whole semester. She used to come to my place while integrating our work. Last I heard she was working at Google and climbed the success ladder pretty quick.

I sent her emails during my initial job search in 2005 and she conveniently ignored my emails. My husband said may be she does not want to forward your resume as she thinks you are her competition. Whatever!

But her presence in the room changed everything. I am seeing her after almost 8 years. She did not change a bit in how she looked. I changed quite a bit, gained lots of extra pounds. May be I was embarrassed too conscious of my appearance, worried what she is going to say once she recognizes me...

The class started and I started feeling funny in my stomach. I did eat very less the previous night, was not able to sleep well and was starving when I woke up. Once the class progressed I started looking into the mirror before me to see if I can see her, how well she is doing the postures to determine if she is a veteran at this or a beginner like me. My view was blocked. I was constantly checking my posture as I was quite sure she would be watching me too :)

I felt nauseated and dizzy while doing some of the postures. That is quite common with the intensity they make us do the whole thing for 90 mins but then Today felt different.


                                               To be continued...

How to Live Unhappily Ever After?

              One of my friends sent me this article published in The Wall Street Journal by Augusten Burroughs on the upside of being downbeat, and embracing loss and anger

              I do not completely agree with the author's views. You cannot feel great every day. Agreed. There are ups and down in daily life. Agreed. it must be like that to appreciate the beauty of the small things that bring joy to you. If it always feels like you are in a wonderland it gets boring.

              That said, the thing she said about loosing someone you love dearly and the repercussions on your life I will not agree at all to what she said. I have had first hand experience with my dad and saw my mom go through in fact still going through the loss but it is not at all as she described. I did see my other relatives who went through similar things, some get depressed and go into a psychological shock from which it takes years for them to come out but what I noticed is that if you are strong, have a strong mind and strong attitude towards things, accepting life as it comes and try to live the best of what you are given then you sail through difficult times.

              If you want to sulk and say that you lost everything in life it is going to be quite depressing. You feel betrayed because you invested so much in that person and all of a sudden he is gone then it is not right. I agree that we are dependent on so many things and so many ppl in our lives that it feels like we absolutely cannot live without that other person, and the memories we have of them are going to make it impossible to survive but then if we can engage ourselves in some activities to keep us busy that make us happy we can overcome that loss not a 100% but to a greater extent. 

Life goes on no matter what. It is up to you to make it miserable, livable,or happy.

              There are many things you can do to occupy your selves from your mind not thinking about the thing which is bothering you. Write, browse, volunteer, help someone in need, do something or meet someone who can help you talk you out of that spiral thoughts which lead you to hopelessness and depression. There are so many ways you can make yourself feel useful. Never give up as you have so much in you which others do not have. Serve people for your advantage to heal yourself. These days there are tons of ways to do that. 

              I consider myself quite valuable. I can do so much to help so many people. So a loss in my life is not going to stop me from doing that. I will definitely get effected but that won't stop me from living my life. "I" am quite powerful and I won't let anything in my life shatter me into pieces to make me feel worthless and useless and come to a point where I feel there is no point in living. No body can make me feel that way as I have a rock solid will power.God has invested so much in me by giving me such great life so far, I am not going to betray him. I will make myself useful to help those underprivileged who need help. 

I can go on and on but I hope you get the point.