Be good at what you're good at

Another cricket article - you don't have to know cricket, you don't have to know about Yuvraj - but this can motivate you whenever you feel you were let down. I'm not posting this to opine about Yuvraj, but just storing it because I'm sure this will be useful at some point in everyone's life - no one can be at the top all the time after all. Self-pity, anger, emotional support - none of these will take you to where you are supposed to reach. There's no substitute for hard work, no better motivator than passion and no better teacher than introspection.

It takes two to tango

I was having an interesting conversation with someone and she was telling me about why she feels guys are strong in rational intelligence and girls are strong in emotional intelligence. We spoke a little bit about conflicts, we talked about why someone thinks he or she is right in an argument, etc. After we got bored scoring our goals, we decided to score some self-goals. One of her self-goals impressed me. I'm writing it here with her permission.

She said "I can tell you why I keep thinking I'm always right and my husband is always wrong. It's because he mostly doesn't tell me when I'm wrong. For example, before we got married, I once made him wait for very long on a chat. When I pinged him back, he was just cool. But a couple of months later, when he made me wait on a chat, I just blasted him. He just told he was sorry. But it was only after our marriage that I recollected both the incidents and apologized. But had we broken up, not necessarily because of such a small incident, but because of accumulated such small incidents, we would've both lost each other. You know, problems can just blow up in a relation."

This reminded me of something I heard on TV a while ago. A couple seeking separation goes to an elderly man in the town for advice. The man picks up a piece of string and says "I will hold one end, you both pull from the other end. If the string snaps, you both can break up". Evidently surprised, the couple agreed to the experiment. The moment the couple started pulling the string, the man moved towards them. The more they pulled, the more the man moved. The string obviously didn't snap. The lesson was obvious. The couple just thanked the man and went away.

"Never regret anything that once made you smile" - how true! Yes, any relationship, love or friendship, is about two people and I don't think there's anything as the right or wrong thing. Good or bad - both of them will have to take equal responsibilities. There are not many in this world who wish good for us, why shrink that even further? Now, why did I write this? Just to keep reminding myself for the rest of my life that it indeed takes two to tango.

Survival vs Morality

I was reading this article about cricket laws that need changing - http://bit.ly/aRrSNR.

Ban overthrows for direct hits

A pet peeve of Sunil Gavaskar's. Why should a fielder pay for a direct hit, a show of excellence?

Also, rewrite the laws so a batsman can't take an overthrow when the ball ricochets off his bat while he is trying to slide it into the crease. Why appeal to his spirit of sportsmanship and hope he doesn't take the run? As of today, some do, some don't, and it sometimes leads to conflicts among players. Would the batsman who refuses to take the extra run in most situations do the same if he requires that run off the last ball to win a World Cup final?

I saw Tendulkar not walk off by himself when he nicked one to the keeper during the IPL - I know he usually does walk off. For a moment I felt betrayed but I was able to realize that he has to compensate for some of the harsh umpiring decisions that have gone against him too. Either follow your conscience or follow the law - if you follow both, you're overly giving yourself a tough time. Saraswat Brahmins started eating fish after a severe famine hit their region. If they didn't do that, probably there might not be any Saraswat living today. If Saraswats were not wrong, I don't think Tendulkar was wrong either.

I think it's just a reason of survival, and survival is not necessarily about just life and death - there are so many spells between life and death and we need to survive each one of those. Even otherwise I don't think we've any right to talk about someone else when it comes to subjective decision making. On a number of occasions we ourselves don't stand for what we should stand for. We go against our principles to make either ourselves happy or someone else happy. Interestingly, most of the times we successfully manage to convince ourselves that we in fact did the right thing. Many of those could be trivial, but I don't think that's a valid excuse.

If we think someone's bad, maybe we'll find no worse person than ourself? If we think someone's a hypocrite, maybe we'll not find a sorrier hypocrite than ourself? If we think someone's selfish, maybe we'll tag ourself the most selfish? I would think so, because each one of us needs to survive - and no one else knows our own survival instincts more than we do. I think all it requires is just some introspection and some honesty.

I typed till the line above and went back to read it all over again - I think I should just stop here and let each of us continue with our own ways of legitimate survival. I'm sure the legal systems of our consciences are much stricter than any other legal system documented.