Love is all up in the brain not heart ;)

Anthropologists say Romantic Love is one of the most powerful sensations on Earth, I agree, do you?

VTA - Ventral Tegmental Area - this is a tiny little spot near the base of brain (as seen in an MRI scan). It is a part of the Brain Reward system. Its way below your cognitive thinking process, your emotions. It is a part of the reptillian core of the brain associated with wanting, motivation, focus and craving. Incidentally the same area of brain gets activated when you take cocaine (again as showed in an MRI scan).

Will it be wrong to infer that cocaine and romantic love have similar or same effect on our brain? Probably not, But the effect of Romantic Love is much more than a cocaine dose. The effect of cocaine dose goes away after some time and the cells in VTA start showing normal in MRI but in case of a Romantic love, it grows. Romantic love is an obsession, it possesses you. You loose senses of your self and you cant stop thinking about another human being. That other human being is all over you. Sounds illogical and too filmy (like hindi romantic movies)? Ask someone who is in a Romantic Love, or observe someone who is high with cocaine. You get addicted and then you can do anything to get it, even to the extent of killing someone or take their own life. 

Now, what happens when a person in Romantic Love is dumped? MRI scans show there are 3 other brain regions, that get activated. Interestingly these locations corresponds to the region that is associated with profit & loss calculations, the region that gets activated when you are prepared to take HUGE risks for huge gain or huge loss and the brain region associated with deep attachment to another person. All these 3 regions get activated and the VTA is all the MORE aggravated. 

The only one thing you want to do when you are dumped in love is to forget that person and move on but your brain betrays you and you love them even harder (lesser the hope, hotter the love). And these 3 other brain regions acts as super catalysts by creating deeper attachment to that person, helps you do all the profit loss calculations and you cant stop thinking what went wrong, what did I loose, and  encourages & enables you to take huge risks.

No wonder, with this intense energy, intense feeling, intense motivation, willingness to take risk and passion to achieve someone makes lovers a different, un-understandable sect. They simply do not care for anything other than their Love. Sometimes not even their lover. Romantic Love has same and all the characteristics of addiction. You are extremely focused, obsessed, mentally distorted, socially disconnected, you crave for someone and that "just" one, and you are ready to take any risk to get that someone. 

There was a survey conducted by some researcher, 2 of the questions in that huge questionnaire was i) Were you dumped by someone you loved  ii) Did you dump someone who loved you and strangely 95% of the respondents said YES to both the questions. If you look around you will find how true this survey result was. With all this knowledge, I wonder, can we make any change? Its not logic, cognitive, its not even emotion and I dump the person who loves me and get dumped by the person whom I love and then all my brain regions start pushing me towards something too passionate and dangerous, sometimes towards the passion crimes.

Although this has nothing much to do with age, but I feel teenagers and young people are prone to the vulnerability of Romantic Love, so if you are dealing with any such person, keep this in your mind that your logic and emotions will not be of great help. Deal with it with tools that can help - meditation, yoga, telepathy etc might help. 

She is the gods messenger and she is divine

We all share and enjoy jokes on wives and women. We make fun of women driving skills and their physical strength. How much time they spend in getting ready whenever they step out of house. How much worried they get even if we forget to give a call after reaching office or we are staying back a little late at office. Perhaps men do this to convince themselves that they are very strong and women are weak but this is not even near truth.

We men are like Hanuman, we are physically strong but we need someone to believe in us and remind us of our strengths, and this support is always given to us, in all phases of our lives by women, when we are small, its our mother, when we grow a little our best friend is our sister, then we get emotional support from a caring girl friend, then we get a dedicated support system of wife. Mom, Sister, Wife, friends, colleagues and several other women in our life, keeps us motivated and functional in all phases of our life.

We know at the depth of our heart that without all these lovely ladies we would never be able to sail through all the diversities of life but many a times we forget to express our gratitude. It is very important to take a pause and thank all the women who matters in your life. Women's day is not the only day to do that but it is a day to remind us if we have forgotten.

We all know women are emotionally very strong and even their physical stamina is much more than men. We can lift heavy weights but we cant do the dishes, we can take them for shopping but on coming back we become immobile on the sofa with TV remote in hands while they keep going on and on and on. We get up in the morning, get ready and drive them and kids to work and we think we have done sooooo much, while in the same time they do all their work, get breakfast ready for us, dress up the kid/s pack their lunch boxes and bag. On returning from work, again we are so tired that we can hardly do anything but the women do not get tired, they keep working without sitting or taking a break. Whether it is dealing with the kids or maids or dudh wala, dhobi, sabji wala etc etc etc, these are all small work and we dont need to get involved and they have to deal with all these on their own.

I always used to think all this work is so simple and I or anyone can do it in a much more efficient way and in less time BUT one day when I tried to do that, I got to know what it takes to make a home. They have the divine power to convert a house make of bricks and cement into a home where we live. They have the magical power to put life into non living things. They selflessly create an atmosphere of love, affection and care wherever they are. There mere presence makes the environment lively and vibrant. Do they expect anything in return - NO.

A little appreciation and affection, a small hug and a kiss makes them so happy and we hardly find time even for those little things. Let us learn from them and express our gratitude to them for making us what we are, for making us MAN.

I am sorry, I missed even calling to wish the most beautiful ladies of my life on Women's day. Wanted to let you all know that I am not as organized and efficient as you who can juggle 1000s of things and still stay cool and caring BUT I have so much respect for you all and I love you all so much. I will never be able to match upto your skills even in one aspect of life but that does not hurt my ego, it makes me respect you even more.

Women is love, women is affection, women is care
Women is devotion & dedication
Women is hope, women is trust, women is the belief
Women is strength & energy
Women is courage, women is vigor, women is altruistic
She is considerate, generous and kind
She is the gods messenger and she is divine.

Can a sin be forgiven?

Mid life crisis, stress, insecurity, job satisfaction issues, boring work etc etc etc.... a lot of things to add to the list of excuses. And I am constantly running away from or towards something and I do not know what that something is.

As a kid, in my village, I used to look at the line of horizon at evening and run through the fields to reach that line and get over it into the sky. I knew for sure that the sky and earth meets at the horizon and it was so logical that once I reach that line, I will get into the sky. But alas, I could never reach that line, the longer i ran the farther it appeared and then with the setting sun the horizon vanished. But not my hope to reach the horizon and I tried the next day. I grew up, my beliefs changed and what seemed so logical started looking as a silly thought.

Now after so many years, when I look back what I find is the same pattern of logic, belief, curiosity, passion to achieve and then realizing that was a silly thought and shying away from it; kept repeating itself. It was iterative and with each iteration the magnitude grew. In the current iteration, I see the magnitude has grown so much that the realization of it being a silly thought will break me.

This belief is a big bubble of wishes, plans, desires, feelings, emotions, fear, hatred, anger and all the other worldly things with a lot of strings attached and interwoven in a way that makes it the most complicated thing on the earth. And I am being buried under the load of so much burden and even more PERCEIVED burden. All this is MAYA. Whether it is the the atom or our universe, we believe there is an axis and everything revolves around it. And this very belief makes us believe that our life too is like the universe with us being the axis. We start believing nothing is possible without us and everything starts with us and ends at us. We all know, whoever is born has to die and noone know who will die when BUT still we never see the world without us.

This wrong belief starts piling up the mountain of perceived burdens on us and we start living the life of a donkey thinking we are the Atlas. And then we do not live our lives, we live the life of Atlas. We forget who we are and keep blowing up the magnitude of perceived burden. Keep growing the "I". Enthusiasm, passion, emotion, love all start getting killed and we become so logical that we can never be wrong. There is no place of all the illogical things we start looking for a name, a reason, a relationship, a what and most importantly WHY behind everything that we do and everything that happens to us. There cant be a thing that emotion can bring to you there has to be a reason. You cant love someone because you love him/her, you must have a motive behind it. You do not do something because you want to do it, you do it because it is your responsibility to do it. You do not do something that your heart wants to do, you do, what your brain says is the right thing to do.

Being legal is more important than being human, being ethical is more important that being true to your heart, Being respectable is more important than being lovable. If you do something without thinking, just because you love to do it, either you are insane or you must have some hidden agenda. Now our life is like a computer program, designed, organized, planned, modularized, object oriented, tuned for performance and highly SEMANTICAL. If any of these is missing in your life, you have a problem, you have a defect in you, it can be a small syntactical or a need for complete redesign or you did not learn the concept of Object Orientation. And remember, even a small syntactical error, as small as a missing ";" in your life, where you were supposed to take a pause, can bring your system crashing down.

I think, I have reached the next phase of life, where all these things have started feeling like silly things. Looks like I have grown up again but unfortunately, I have grown up again to believe in the horizon, and this is again the same vicious cycle of axis and things revolving around the axis. Will I repeat the same mistakes, and what was the mistake, believing in the horizon or knowing it is not true? And now that I know it is not true and I am believing in it - will the world call it a Sin? I am on my way of committing Sins, on the way to live and love, to do things I want to do and NOT what I am supposed to do, to live my wishes and not my responsibilities.

Well, I had a small question - Can my sin be forgiven?

C is in between B & D

You must be thinking what the hell, even a 2 year kid knows C is in between B & D and I will tell you, yes we all learnt C is in between B & D. I learnt the alphabet but I didnt learn that life is also the C between B & D. I know what some of my friends are reading this as ;)

But what I would like my kid to learn is life is the Choice that we make in between Birth and Death. Its all about the choices we make. One of my friend says, when we look back in time, our eye sight is always 20/20. We know what decision would have been right or which options should we have picked, unfortunately the same is not true when we live in the present. So how do we make the right choice? How do I know which choice is right and which choice is wrong? If I ask this question to anyone, they will tell me several different ways in which we can make the right decision a logically right decision of choice. Is logical option always the right thing? I think you will agree, not always.

In all aspects of life, I think there is nothing right or wrong. It depends on what type of personality you are, the situation, your state of mind and your relationships & beliefs. A simple example is, when we talk about different religions, we all feel our religion is the ultimate truth but others religious beliefs are full of superstitions. We are always juggling between my truth and your truth. Not only in the religious beliefs, we are juggling between the my truth and your truth in all aspects of our life. Where my truth is always, logical, correct, idealistic and the best or most optimum thing to do.

Sometime or the other, we all get into some sort of philosophical mode and think these things, we should go a little further and try to explore what is a good option to make myself happy. Be selfish and you will not only make yourself happy but also the people around you will be happy seeing you happy, peaceful and contended.
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To be peaceful, happy and contended and to LIVE- is the ultimate goal of your life, for me it is the most fundamental requirement. If you think you can die, take this challenge, right now, hold your nose and close your mouth and do not let yourself breathe. To some of my friends, who feel taking your life is a great option to consider, DO IT NOW and then come and tell me do you still feel the same. Do you think you can take your life? NO, we all love ourselves and that makes us living. So being selfish is one of the fundamental rules if you want to be peaceful and happy.

Now let us explore some of the online tools that are at our disposal that can help us explore ourselves and understand our personality. How I am as a person, once we know this it is easier to make the right choices for ourselves. This is a science, that helps us balance our actions, it helps us understand how we perceive things, people, environment, situations.

Take any free Mayer & Briggs self assessment. Also read about the other types of personalities. Mayer & Briggs researched and concluded that there are 16 different types of personalities. Based on your personality, inherently you have your strengths and weaknesses. If you are aware of those strengths you can capitalize on them and work on your weaknesses. It also talks about what kind of profession might bring in more fulfillment for you. There are 100s of free assessments available, simply google and find it out. Some of them are:
i)   https://www.16personalities.com/
ii)  http://www.my-personality-test.com/personality-type/

You can also take Brain Dominance test that will tell you, if you are left or right brained. Remember both are good, no type is superior and no type is inferior. One free Brain Dominance test is available on http://www.ipn.at/ipn.asp?BHX

Another widely accepted tool is HBDI (Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument). This is similar to Mayer Briggs but Mayer Briggs is based on phycological analysis whereas HBDI is based on cognitive analysis.

My mentor, who helped me learn all these things suggests, before you go to any of these tests, we should do a self introspection and write down our SWOT. These things are not going to take much time, so no harm giving it a try, even if you do not believe in these things. Might be you get to know about some of your strengths that you never bothered to think you have. Or might be it helps you understand why you or someone behaved in a particular manner in a situation.

Once you know yourself, you will be able to define your definition of success which will be totally different from the definition of success that the world has defined for you. But with this aroused awareness, you will be able to pursue your success, making you happy & contended. And this happiness will be contagious making others happy around you.

Remember, life is the C in between B & D and its you who has to make that C   :)

The Corporate Slave

In the name of getting better and growing in career, I feel I am growing into a slave – The Corporate Slave. I have completely forgot my existence, my life starts and ends at office or office work. Recently I travelled to my hometown and I noticed, although I was physically there, the slave attitude in me prompted me to keep thinking of the office and work. I was there for a very special family occasion and this was a very short vacation after 2 long years of exile. I wanted to enjoy every bit of the time but there was hardly a day when I did not pull out my office laptops or called some of my colleagues finding out the status of projects etc. Was this necessary??? Absolutely NO – then why did I do this? I did that because I have developed a syndrome and unnamed syndrome, that makes me think and feel that I cannot exist without the project and the office laptop and conference calls. That has become so much a part of me that I feel incomplete without that.

I pull out my laptop from my bag during a vacation with so much pride and glory and am so happy to get out of a family gathering or friends chit chat saying I have an important call to take. It is as if the whole world is going to collapse if I do not take that call. During my appraisal meeting, when my manager says, you have done “xxx” … you will have to put in more effort this year. I proudly say, you will never find me taking vacations and I work for 12, 13, 14 …. Hours a day. I don’t care if it’s a weekend, you will always find me dedicated to the work. I forget that I took a job to earn and have a good life. I am earning but to be a slave and not a good life. There are 1000s of duties and responsibilities that I have to discharge towards my parents, family, spouse, child, friends, society – I shy away from all that and still feel I am doing the right thing.

When I know for sure that this is wrong and this is not what I should be doing, this is not what I am born to do, why am I not able to get out of it? What is it that is holding me break these chains of slavery? Why is it that I sign a contract to work for 8 hours a day, I end up devoting my life. I started working to have a better life but where is “LIFE”? I left my back my LIFE and have become a Corporate Slave and what do I get in return? A promise, from the corporations that ONE DAY you can achieve the dreams we have shown you and the reality is that ONE DAY might never come. I am chasing an uncertainty at the cost of losing the certainty. I take out 5 minutes of my time in between my office and home office, for my kid and I get so much love and affection in those 5 minutes. I give him a hug while hurriedly pulling out my phone to check for a new email and in return he gives back 10 kisses and his undivided attention and affection. But I choose my emails and phone calls –WHY?

I hope one day, my heart will win over my brain and I will be able to truly able to differentiate between happiness and perceived happiness. I truly hope, one day I will break this slavery and will be a free man. A man with a life of his own, a man who wakes up to love and be loved, a man who has time for his loved ones, a man who works to live and not a man who lives to work.