How much is too much

I was reading an interesting article in the harvard business e-magazine. It stated that most positive traits if over developed turn into negative traits. It mentioned wit turning into sarcasm as one of them. I have always been accused, by all those who profess to love me, of being painfully sarcastic. Almost everytime this has happened I have never intended it. I have stated a fact in a style I am most comfortable with. I've never really taken these accusations seriously and rarely if ever consider them 'serious'. But reading this article reminded me of an instance where I managed to offend someone with my supposed sarcasm. I got me thinking,"how do u ever know how much is too much?"When does the very thing you admired the most about a person become the thing that keeps you away from them?
I guess the answer lies in our relationships. Someone once said, "no one gets crazy enough to hurt another person before becoming crazy enough for someone to notice." What matters is if you notice. The slight flinch at a casual remark, the pretending to not hear you while you list out the errors you've noticed in someone's work, the ever so discreet sigh when you insist on going over something for the 100th time. These nuances are sometimes almost invisible and extremely easy to brush aside. But if they aren't dealt with before it's too late, they can be the reason someone you care about is walking out the door without a second look.

An argument that almost immediately pops into my mind is, 'why should I change myself for them?' And in the heat of the moment it is easy to get carried away with this ideology. But as much as you may admire the rude and unappologetic hero of a movie who everyone loves despite his arrogance and lack of human skills, ask yourself would you really want to know him?
The answer is truthfully no! We are always willing to forgive but even the most patient person has a threshold. After a certain point jerk-like-behaviour just can't be overlooked.

It's always fun to know a witty person and it's pleasent to be with an easygoing person and it's reassuring to work with a meticulous person but when the wit turns on you as sarcasm and easygoing turns into indifferent and meticulous becomes fastidious, it takes a rare person to not want to wring the very neck they professed to appreciate a while ago.

Here's to you

Someone once said, "I get by, with a little help from my friends". Today I realized the truth behind that statement. I'm famous for my ability to completely disappear of the radar for extremely long periods of time. People who've known me long enough, know it's nothing personal it's just the way I function. Commitment phobia some call it, others a new degree of laziness(to them I say, "Hello!Have you not seen my display picture). But those observations aside I realize that most of the time I just don't see the point. I have also realized that being away from someone helps put your relationship with that person in perspective. The other day I wasn't feeling well. I had no choice but to call a friend miles away from me, who was busy in her class and ask her to contact her father who is a doctor. She did this and gave me the information in 15 minutes. It wouldn't be a gross exaggeration to say she is the reason I could get up the next morning. This friend was also my roommate for 3 years. More importantly we haven't spoken for the past 6 months. Not because of any disagreement but because our hectic schedules(in her case) and aforementioned laziness(in my case) have not permitted us. But all it took was a single message for her to miss an important class and tend to a friend miles away. Another friend of mine has been cramming for the past month. This party animal has given up his wild ways in hopes of securing a future in an Ivy League University. I was passing through his city and made plans to meet up. He did the 3 hour commute from his house to the airport and waited there for me another 3 hours. All this, to spend half an hour with me. He had missed out on a whole day of studying and this was a big deal for him. As I asked him why he did it he replied, "It was worth it, I met you!" That is the power of friendship. Just knowing that someone always has my back gives me a reason to walk with my head held up high and a smile on my face.

As I pondered on this phenomenon and how Id gotten this lucky I realized this is how my friends always are. They have always gone out of their way for me and have put up with my disappearing act patiently(or not) time and again. But what really struck me was the realization that I would do the exact same things for them in a heartbeat. I guess that's what real friendship is after all. It's not the huge birthday bash or the expensive gifts it's the shoulder to cry on when your dream comes crashing down. It's the person who forces you to give yourself a chance when you really don't want to. It's the sharing of fee stuff, the late night phone calls because you r bored, the lame jokes, the private jokes, the constant leg pulling, the experience of doing something stupid together that you know you will regret later on, the feeling of wanting to shoot someone for their stupidity and the knowledge that you probably will very soon, the fighting over something refusing to speak to each other ever again and waking up the next morning to do the same thing all over again.

Life throws various challenges your way. They say it's hard for someone to make it in this big bad world. They say you have to be ruthless, ready to kill if the occasion calls for it. But I have learnt that as long as you have friends like mine life just falls into place on it's own. My friends may not seem like much to a casual observer but it takes a special kind of luck to find people ready to put their lives on hold if it means they make your journey a little easier even if it's just for a little while.

the search for the perfect teacher

I’ve always wondered if the perfect teacher really did exist or if he/she were nothing more than a myth. Someone to see the possibilities that lay inside you, someone who understood you better than you understood yourself. That special person who took a student and saw the person he/she could one day become. The small time visionary, inventor and dreamer. All of his makes me wonder if this perfect entity is anything more than a random myth. My past experiences don’t leave me with much hope. As I look back I realize there are a handful of teachers who, I can honestly say I had the ‘pleasure’ of knowing. However who among them inspired in me to change myself from the placid person I was into a force to be reckoned with? Who was it, who drove me to get up and conquer the world by believing in me and in the process making me believe in myself? The answer dear reader, as anyone who knows me will testify is no one. Sure there have been some teachers pretending to have all the answers, unfortunately none of them have put on a very convincing show. This may appear to you as nothing more than the disgruntled ramblings of a disgruntled young woman, but the question remains. Have we in our search for that super child prodigy failed our duty to those little gems left behind?

To answer this let’s first look at what, we as a society value above all else. The answer is perfection! Anything sells as long as it is perfect. A perfect body, a perfect story even a perfect disaster or a perfect tragedy is hailed by all those who subscribe to it. The human race, after all is nothing more than a system comprising of innumerable sub systems and as a system we continue to seek that perfect mix of elements which will eventually lead to our own garbled version of Utopia. We plan to achieve this by filling our system with the perfect elements (something to do with our inner sense of Natural Selection perhaps). And so as this obsession continues to consume us, we continue to search for and select the best among us. And so the onus falls on every teacher to find the most obviously talented child and help it develop its skills while the others are gently nudged along until they find their calling through...other means. Can a teacher be blamed for this? Of course not! We dump over a 100 children on a teacher and expect them to patiently coax every child into finding their calling. Isn’t that a little unfair? We fantasize about the all knowing teacher the one who watches a child without judgement and leads it to its real path. But do we realize that it is we who have wiped out this guru. With our need for a faster solution we have managed to ruin the one thing that ensured we reach near self-actualization namely the Guru shishya relationship.

It is depressing that all we can do today is look back at what was once an almost holy relationship and a process through which many ordinary people were successful in enriching the lives of the future generation and getting a little bit closer to self actualization themselves.

Anxiety

It's so strange, I'm doing nothing!This is not good not good at all!I'm losing my touch with the english language. I mean sure I can converse through the written word but when it comes to talking..especially expressing my anger words fail me!Is that wierd? My grammar seems to be going to d dogs and life as I have known it seems to be changing..for the worse! I guess I'm just searching for answers..I really don't know..d confusion consumes me..when I think about it I know there is nothing to worry about. Two years and life will hopefully turn around I will find my calling blah blah but I'm so afraid of what I'm losing out on..All I can do is pray to god that I somehow get out of this the same as I was when I came here...I'm so sure I'm losing my mind..HELP!