Doing the "Right" thing...

As a rule, I’m a person who hates all generalizations. But one thing I will never deny is that every single person in this world has, at least once, come across a point in his/her life when he wondered if the step he was going to take next is the right thing to do. The turmoil in his thoughts at that moment is NOT a debate between good and evil; not even of right or wrong. As confusing as that statement may be, the actual question is what defines an act, a thought, to be right. Completely contrasting considerations could be evaluated to be simultaneously right. And there is no defined process to make the decision making process any easier.

At times it is about debating whether to follow the heart or the head, both being logically adept in their own rights. For a decision pertaining to the self can any man (or woman) think in such a way as to ignore one over the other? While the latter may provide a more factual and aloof assessment, the other is emotional and subjective. Rarely do we see an occasion where the duo combines to give the most reasonable choice. A decision that effectively combines both in the perfect proportion would be the ultimate one. Sadly enough, that perfect combination is highly improbable and maybe even completely hypothetical. An emotional detachment can never be achieved in any of our actions. This would require an amnesic erasure of our thoughts, memories and feelings. In effect it is a wish to deny ourselves what we claim/know makes us, who we are.

A utopian world would be based on the fictional Vulcans, where decisions are analyzed, dissected and made free of errors. Nevertheless, emotional as mankind has always been seen to be, we tend to swerve towards what the heart has to say than the other way round. When we follow signs, have faith or resign decisions to destiny, in effect we are moving into the realm of the heart. A state where right or wrong is decided by the amount of emotional satisfaction you receive. The irony here, being the fact that any sort of comfort that the considered choice may give us is purely dynamic and the same goes for the decision taken. It is based on erratic standards which by themselves are defined by even more fickle variables. And in all we have a perfect recipe for maximum turmoil.

More often than not, there is no right or wrong. The logical choice is what is analytically absolute while the emotional one is satisfyingly complete. Sometimes the head says it just is good to go with the flow. But when there was something you wanted with all your heart, have you ever been able to truly let go.. J

Dreams - A Vent

Like any other piece of art that employs a storyline or even a basic line of thought, dreams in their own way have genres. They might not necessarily be classifiable along the broader lines of action, comedy, romance, “bollywood” style etc. but they can definitely be categorized. The major obstacle that lies in the path of this listing is the fact more than 80% of all dreams are forgotten when you wake up. But then there are the others which stay on, and more importantly are worth staying on. Any sort of categorizations that will be done by me would unluckily be based on personal experiences. It never was worth the trouble to go around asking people about their dreams. Besides such a question would elicit the more “considered” responses of “Doctor”, “ Prime minister”, blah blah..etc etc.. For the record, this is more of a personal vent than a definite analysis.

A very broad classification for dreams is fictional and non-fictional. As per my own dictionary¹ these, respectively, imply those that involve random people whose face you can’t put a name on and those that concern you and familiar faces. The former rarely involves the dreamer and would usually turn out to be amazing “dream stories” . Now ..how shareable these stories are would be governed by their ability to get past the average censor board. The key factor about these dreams is that, on a daily basis they would not affect your real-life; they would mostly be whims, imaginary stories, fantasies, random scenic locations. All thought up and perfected to give your senses a treat. The second kind of dreams – the one which accounts for you as a key character - on the other hand gives more of an emotional bias than a sensory one. There are the weird dreams which you wake up from feeling..wellll..weird.. You wonder why the dream took the direction it did; why the characters were who they were, how that could apply to your activities that day. Have you not had one of those days when you dreamt about a person who might have been a casual acquaintance in a more than casual setting? Imagine the feeling you felt on waking up to realize who it was. That’s the feeling I am talking about! Worse, are the dreams, which make you feel good. You wish you would not have to wake up from them. These non fictional ones don’t just tingle your senses, it gives you an emotional satisfaction which can or cannot be attained in real life. But when they may not, that’s when waking up is going to be a big pain! The story may not linger, the characters may fade away but inevitably the emotion you felt will stay with you, as a haunting tease. What gives it the killer touch is to want the dream all over again knowing completely regarding its authenticity!!

It would not be too much of a generalization to state that every individual has had instances where he has dreamt about something or possibly a part of it before it actually happened. For a fact, I have 6? Ya 6 I believe.. situations where I’ve dreamt and felt it, before or while something happened. Deciphering dreams, Dream interpretations, dream dictionary..there are hundreds of theories flying around about dreams. Most people believe that our dreams are related to our last possible thought before entering deep slumber. But personally, this phenomenon has not been the case. The dreams have proven to be random, erratic, and totally nonsensical at times!

The question is..how much would you trust a dream? Is it a sign or just a passing thought… Would you be able to know what in your memory, was a dream and what was real life? Dream on….

*Author swears inception did not have any influence on his thoughts and the post is purely based on circumstantial situations.

Ref 1 : Lined up in posts to come – “Making my own dictionary”