Dusthāna

Anything that hurts, challenges or limits is bad - this is what we have come to believe. Avoid risks, don’t fight, don’t question, stay secure is what our good-intended parents (especially of the developing nations) taught us.

Unfortunately we are not only defined by what is our exterior, our formal-education, our successes or our good-parentage or the company we keep - these are all the known, which we see in the light. We are also what we are not and that includes:

1.    What we know that we are not, and
2.    What we don’t know we are not!

To complete the picture we the inclusion of one’s fears, resistance, conflicts, weaknesses – that is the ugly dark side is essential. And there is a bright side to the dark side J it’s also part of our foundations

·         Fears define behaviors … very early in life
·         Traumas temper character
·         Enemies build strength

Sportspeople will relate to this quicker, a win is more celebrated if its over a ‘worthy opponent’. In fact the stronger the opponent, epic the victory.

·         Fear of the failure -> change strategy
·         Opponent strength -> harder they train
·         Trauma of the past failure -> recognize one’s weaknesses and become humbler

Unlike the light side, the dark contours can only be identified by persistent (and sometimes prodding) introspection. There would not be a human without an inherent fear. One need not have an enemy in real life, but he/she will definitely dislike some times of characters. We are all susceptible to certain kinds of ailments and/or face similar impediments recurring in life.

“Your weirdness will make you stronger
Your dark side will keep you whole
Your vulnerability will connect you to the rest of our suffering world
Your creativity will set you free
There’s nothing wrong with you” -Andrea Balt

The Tool Makers

One of my favorite beats CD has a cover of an obese man with a T-Shirt that says "I'm No. 1 so why try harder". The name of the album is: You've Come a Long Way, Baby. The first song in that album is tied to a cool video that depicts, in a funny way, our evolution from amphibians to this obese man.

The transformation is unbelievable when the very-slow changes are scaled to such very-short duration. From what to what have we become! From where to where have we arrived!

And if the physical transformation is not enough, in the last few millennia sapiens seems to have turned even magical – almost godly. They seem to have conquered it all – earth, wind, fire and space. Long abandoned the ant-hole poking stick of their ancestors, now they are on the light (moon) that dot the dark curtain (sky) of the night!

If somebody from the dark ages could observe the present us (plausible if we ever learn to warp time too) they would run back to tell their folks that the future people have it easy and many of them labor throughout the day by punching or scraping a luminous surface (tablets/laptops/smartphones);

And that they have unlimited supply of meat from (broiler) chickens that do not run away;

And that luxury is available to all (Consumerism) … and not just the Queen;

And that they have machines (Photo-camera) that can hold us still in strange leaves and others that can even store the past (Video-Camera);


And that they can fly like the birds (airplanes);

And that they can conjure a spell that will enthrall you for hours (Movie);

And that they can stop the goddess from havoc (medicines for infectious diseases);

And that they can talk to anybody, even at the world’s end, by just speaking into the air (Mobile phones);

Even simpler insignificant stuff we use now is amazing to a time-traveler relative from a distant past say 200,000 B.C. Then they would say that we know to carve sound (pen) J Even a button would then be an immensely delightful finding.

A tool making animal is an animal who is self-conscious and wants to improve its current living situation. It’s probably this faculty, as a function of some accidental circuits in the brain that identifies humans from the rest of the earthlings.

Yeah, guess we can all pat our own backs in gratitude for ‘those who walked before us’.