Social what?

This blog for me, has become more than what I thought it would be. I store here some of - what I believe so that I am impelled to follow, what I learn so that I don't forget, what I feel right so that I could be proved wrong, and what I don't understand so that I can come back to them. Most of all, I store here the treasure of all your comments, the comments from people who don't cringe to say the truth. How I wish all your mails, calls and chats also get captured here!

I am usually a very slow beginner. I take my own sweet time to come to terms with anything. For example, I might appear as if I am outright dismissive in an argument, but it's actually me fighting with myself. My most peaceful sleeps are when I am proved wrong, for whenever I am proved right, I become skeptical. So you can surely read this and tell me why I'm wrong. You know I am planning for an MBA. I can put it to any short-term use, but I want to use it in the long term to change a social pattern, however small it is. I don't mind even if it's only after my retirement, but by writing down, I want to remind myself constantly.

Charity needs a noble soul, so I am really not talking about social service here. I want to venture into it and assume the risk for it, so you could call it social entrepreneurship. I want to surely make money too, so may be I've to call it social capitalism. But I want to help someone lead a self-sustained life than do something charitable. I'm not saying the former is better, just that I feel the former suits more the person that I'm. Even in a relation I like if it empowers someone to stand alone than be dependent. So may be we should call this social empowerment.

I am not undermining the difficulty of taking care of oneself and family, my earnest appreciation to all those who do that job remarkably well. I don't know how well I can do that, but I want to be useful to at least one person outside my family, not by any complex root-cause cycle but directly, not through charity but through a way of self-sustenance, not out of good will but out of responsibility. I bow to people who can put others before self; I don't know if I can even reach a stage where I can put others equal to myself. But if you're someone who's already doing that and wanting to make a difference, come let us have a chat and work out a business plan.

Social what? This is social hunt!

Be reckless?

Many quotes are embedded, didn't apostrophize for the sake of congruity.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with people who are reckless with yours - I read this some time back. Though I was able to appreciate it emotionally, I wasn't able to agree to it rationally. Blame it on your own growth, sometimes you really can't avoid being reckless with others. When you extrapolate it, people being reckless with you becomes an unavoidable behaviour too.

All of us are engrossed in our own quests to become the person we desire to be. Probably if we don't know where we're going, any road can get us there. But when we want to go somewhere and not just anywhere, we have to keep opening and closing doors, sometimes our own, sometimes of others. The harder we try, the blinder we get. In the complex and dynamic maze we're in, sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open. While we keep staring, we fall prey to parasitic emotions and narcissistic compulsions that end up retarding our own growth. And the lesser the growth, the more the recklessness.

I thought I got the answer to my disagreement when I read - It is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be. I tried customizing the quote in the first line - Don't help someone become the person he desires not to be, don't put up with someone who helps you become the person you don't desire to be. This came close, however was still not entirely agreeable. I decided to stop the self-torture and went to sleep.

Is your eraser wearing ahead?

"To err is human, but if the eraser wears out ahead of the pencil, you're overdoing it." True, but most of the times, we commit a mistake without realizing we're committing one. That's when even if we don't forgive ourselves, others might probably do; or is it the other way around? But when we commit a mistake while we very well know it's a mistake, I think feeling sorry then doesn't mean anything, unless there is a really worthwhile reason. I, for sure, know some instances where my eraser was ahead of my pencil and I don't think I can prevent that in the future either. Yes, life is lived forward but understood backward! I guess we should just move on taking Einstein's consolation that "Anyone who has not made a mistake has never tried anything new".