Tag Archives: philosophy

A person is much more than what we see and feel

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In the recent days, many incidents have been reported where either wife kills Husband or Husband (or others) kills (or tortures) Wife and all the other combinations of relationships. In most of the incidents, neighbors and friends are surprised about the fact that “this” person could not have don’t that. Or the person whom we know could not do this “bad” thing. In other times, some parents are heart broken to say that, “We never thought our son-in-law could torture our daughter. He seemed to be nice.”. Readers can very well get the context in which one would be surprised to see what other person did to them or others.

The recent Tiger Woods story is flying around the media for a few months now. Tiger Woods is an American professional golfer whose achievements to date rank him among the most successful golfers of all time. Currently the World No. 1, he was the highest-paid professional athlete in 2008, having earned an estimated $110 million from winnings and endorsements. Woods has won 14 professional major golf championships, the second highest of any male player, and 71 PGA Tour events, third all time. With the recent setback on his career where he was exposed with a Sex scandal with his wife and (many more) mistress. Millions of people worldwide were devastated that their favorite “Tiger Woods” was exposed to the media. They are never to believe that Tiger Woods could do such “bad” things. All the earnest he earned with hard work of few years was lost in few days.

SPS Rathore and Ruchika case is also one of the most popular and saddening news in 2009. SPS Rathore is the Inspector General of police who was the top law enforcer of the state of Haryana. Ruchika was a budding tennis player. The 14-year-girl was so traumatized by the experience and intimidation from authorities to silence her that she committed suicide in 1993. Probably this is not the right forum to discuss, if the 6 month jail and Rs.1000/- fine is what one should get for this inexcusable mistake. However, people were shocked to see that a IPS officer and an ex-DGP could do such a “bad” thing to a little girl (same age as his grand-daughter may be).

Mohammad Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja were two cricket icons who many many Indians and other cricket fans adored and respected. In the year 2000, when  all these cricketers were hit by the Match-fixing scandal, many where angry and surprised how these seasoned cricketers are able to do such stupid actions.

The Monica Lewinsky scandal was a political sex scandal emerging from a sexual relationship between United States President Bill Clinton and a 22-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The news of this extra-marital affair and the resulting investigation eventually led to the impeachment of President Clinton in 1998 by the U.S. House of Representatives and his subsequent acquittal on all impeachment charges (of perjury and obstruction of justice) in a 21-day Senate trial. President of a lead nation falling pray to such practices made the entire US and world look at this guy with shame. He is one president who has great charm, had influenced many nations on nuclear treaties, strengthened relations with India and many more. A person of such magnitude was/is never expected to commit a mistake which would play with people’s feelings.

Bollywood’s hero Salman Khan is/was respected and adored by many Indians and people abroad. On 28 September 2002, Salman was arrested for rash and negligent driving. His car had run into a bakery in Mumbai; one person who was sleeping on the pavement outside the bakery died and three others were injured in the mishap. On 17 February 2006, Khan was sentenced to one year in prison for hunting an endangered species, the Chinkara. The sentence was stayed by a higher court during appeal. His turbulent relationship with actress Aishwarya Rai was a well publicized topic in the Indian media, and had constantly filled gossip columns. After their break-up in March 2002, Rai accused him of harassing her.

In the above examples, you could see that variety of people in various walks of life have committed what we generally perceive as “wrong” doings. This brings to discuss an interesting idea of “A person is much more than what we see and feel”. There will be many instances in life where we are surprised by some “action” that our close friend or relative did. You would be shattered to know that a person that you KNEW was totally different to what they were in ACTUALITY.

That said, it is interesting to see some components of what makes a person what he is today. Following are some important components that we all believe that a person is made up of and perceived.

  • Childhood
    • Parents treatment
    • Teachers treatment
    • Neighbors treatment
    • Relatives treatment
    • Friends Influence
    • Learning from Hobbies
  • Adulthood
    • College Environment
    • Friend Influence
    • Delta of Parent Influence
    • Delta of Faculty Influence
    • Learning from Hobbies
    • Learning from Travel
    • Experiences @ Work
    • Learning from Boss
    • Leanings from Co-worker

Also, it is very important to understand that a person plays multiple roles in his life time. And Responsibility for each role is UNIQUE.

A person is a combination of his upbringing stimulants.

A person is a combination of experiences from his birth time till death.

A person is a combination of positives traits

A person is a combination of negative traits

Very often, people don’t understand this fact and mix up the facts and assume the following…

  • He is a good Son. So, He will be good Husband.
  • She is a good Daughter; So, She will be good Mother.
  • She is a good Daughter; So, She will be good Wife.
  • He is a great Person at Work; So, He will become good Husband.
  • He talks very nicely with people; So, He will LOVE his wife.
  • She is a nice person; So, She should be loving her Husband.
  • He has done his Ph.D; He will take care of his Wife and Kids nicely.
  • He is nice person to talk to; He may be loving his family a lot.
  • He takes care of his Wife; He he must be taking care of his Parents too.
  • She talks nicely with her In-laws. She much be taking good care of them.
  • and many more you could think of…
Clearly, such statements tend to prove wrong (in most cases) and we are either surprised or disappointed when something goes wrong. It is necessary to know and understand a person in various aspects of like rather than based on what we perceive. A simple analysis of a person is rather depicted by the Johari window that talks about the multiple aspects of a person. Of course, this is in no way a complete analysis of a person. However, this gives us a frame of reference to KNOWN and UNKNOWN aspects of a person.
A Johari window is a cognitive psychological tool created by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in 1955 in the United States, used to help people better understand their interpersonal communication and relationships. It is used primarily in self-help groups and corporate settings as a heuristic exercise.
There are definitely several other analysis tools. But Johari window is a simple tool to understand and analyze a person. This took helps us in two different ways. This tool is helpful when the person and his family/friends contribute what they about the person.
Room 1 : This is the part that most of us see in one person. This room contains all the traits of a person that he knows and others also know. e.g. A person is full of energy and jovial all the time. These traits are known to him and others too.
This room makes it possible that a person is known to other people and is open to suggestions on his personality improvement. The idea is when a person knows he is “impatient”, he is more open to accept when other suggest him to be “patient”. When you know, it is easy to accept.

Room 2 : The aspect of some personal traits known to others and not to you, prevails in this room. It some times leads to pain, as others may know that you are not trust-worthy and sway away from you and you have no clue why you cant make friends. No one even tells you and you don’t know about it.

Room 3 : This is the dangerous space of all the rooms as these traits are not known to you or others. This might lead to a scenario, where an action of yours may cause pain to you and also others. Because, you are worrying about that fact that “I am not that kind of person” and others are worrying that “He is not that kind of person”. No one knows about these traits and as the number of these traits in this room increases, there would be more and more embarrassing and shocking instances for you and everyone.

Room 4 : This is a private scenario where one is aware of a particular personal trait and they don’t reveal it to others. One can be “violent”, “vulgar” or “unethical” and not let others know about this. They always try to cover these traits with some other personal traits. If the number of items in this room increases, then a person becomes more and more secretive and its very difficult to gauge a person depending on what you know. Because, you don’t know the root of his action could be his innate trait that you are not aware of.

A gentle urge is to consciously understand a person and not judge based on what you see and hear about that person. For all that you know, he is very good socially but he is a highly unethical or vulgar personality. There are many many aspects of a person to be closely seen.

Why do people turn to be more religious after their 30s

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Coming from the Hindu/Indian background the above headline seems to be naturally occuring without much of effort for many people. A person who would have said “I pray to god but not that much” in his 20s would say “Everything is a phase in life” in his late 30s while he enjoys lot of religious activities everyday. Following is the short analysis of mine in this world. In the following narration i am using “MANY” to denote my friends, relatives and strangers whom i have observed including myself.

Till the age of 10 MANY of us are in the fairy tale wonderland probably like Lord Of the Rings settings. We love all sorts of Toys, like to have more toys than your friend. We consider “Dad” as a hero and no one can beat him. With the little Karate or Kung Fu that we learn from teacher (who does not know what he is teaching), we always believe that we could win over this world. My 6 year old nephew always tells me when he is angry that “I will throw you in the Hawaiian Lava (volcano) with his power ranger’s kick”. MANY would go to temples and may even learn some religious songs, but “who cares about god”.

Now things change from 10-20 where most of Indian origin kids are fighting to do their 10th grade, Engineering/Medical/Law and struggling to get into a college. Friends, Movies, Theme Parks, Electronic Gadgets, Driving a Motor Bike or Car are the most preferred thing to do. This age we would go to Temples or pray god because we want to get good grades, want to get into a cool college and father should send us to that Goa trip. But still you would not really care What do you exactly pray or what do those some of “Mantras” means  “Who Cares…”.

A lot of us would probably want to get into a nice multinational (now-a-days everything is a MNC) company draw a 6 digit salary, spend the salary in pubs, music, discos, travel with friends, buy a car, bike etc… This is the time that MANY spend maximum amount of money on one self. Because all the things that you would do are probably reflexions of the childhood fantasies. You want to “live every moment (in a pub)” and you see sky as the limits. MANY forget the existence of “Religion/God” at this age  because You have a nice Job, You earn lot of Money, with lot of money you could get whatever you want. It looks like you have everything  in life and there is not need to have a religion which asks you to do certain rituals. You may even forget some of the festivals as you “don’t care”. If someone tells you, “It is Dewali tomorrow”. You might say “Oh really!!! I didn’t know”.

Between the age of 30-40 the real accomplishments in life begins. I guess MOST of the readers would agree!. If you typically look at a person in age 30-40 he probably have following things. Each point that is “underlined” is the “Event/Characteristic” and the one following it is “anything can go wrong” (most commonly).

  • Just bought a house(s);  Need to pay monthly EMIs.
  • Just got Married; Need to spend some money to settle after marriage (as we rarely see joint families).
  • Looking forward to have kids; There’s a medical condition that prevents them from kids.
  • Have elderly parents (of age 60-70); They always have medical problem that you need to look after.
  • Highly rewarding job; Too much of struggle to move up the ladder.
  • Wife works; Perhaps she has her job in a different city or country.
  • Have 2 nice kids;  Sleepless nights + hospital visits + mental tension.
  • Got married; Did not marry whom you love.
  • Nice Job; Boss does not recognize you.
  • …
  • …

Now once you get all of the above things + some more which i did not mention keep going in life, you tend to slow down in your brain. You see the world as more of “Uncertainties” rather than “CanDo” attitude. There are some issues that you may not share with your spouse/friends/parents/relatives… now you need someone who just listens to you. You need some one who listens to you and does not “preach”. Preaching is what you would get everywhere right. So you would want to avoid it as far as possible. Also this is the time that you realize that you need people to get some of the things done. See… to accomplish all of the above you would join some religious activities, starts praying more frequently and when people wink at you, you would say…”It’s the matter maturity, you would not understand it now” :). Hope for many of you, it may sound as though you heard it somewhere.

Of course there are other category of people who are totally confident of them selves, luckily (or by god’s grace) everything goes good for them. So they don’t even think about God. They call them selves god and they may even say “Aham Bramhasmi”.

It it not pretty interesting to see all these different kinds of people. Do you have any other experiences…. ?