Monthly Pollen Calendar

Courtesy: http://www.firstmedcenters.com/pictures/pics/illustration/summer-pollen-calendar.gif

Faith and Happiness!!

Ever pondered about the correlation between one having Faith in God and their overall happiness? Well, as I was in my thinking mode, I thought of what does man want? What's the purpose for each of us? If you try to answer these questions from biological/evolutionary standpoint, we can quickly relate our existence to the main purpose, i.e., reproduce and die. However, as intellectual as we humans are, that purpose seems to be too shallow and incomplete. This is where a lot of philosophy takes birth!!  Now, to converge on just the philosophy of Happiness and Faith, I believe there is a strong correlation between these two and to explain my belief on this, I quote "Ignorance is Blissful". I do not intend to call everyone that has faith as being ignorant, but in grand scheme of things, one's mind is at rest if they are oblivious to information that could potentially harm them. For example, while walking in woods if one is aware of all the possible dangers, such person will immediately worry about the dangers that they are exposed to. However, in lack of awareness of the dangers, one is able to enjoy the walk and relax.

Overall, the more information one has, the more stressful their mind can get as their mind is constantly working on what's the likelyhood of all that information (with potential dangers) coming to bear their fruit? Of course, one has the choice to ignore such thoughts, even after knowing the dangers. Nevertheless, for folks who do not know this information, are automatically happy and stress free. Faith instills confidence while lack-of-faith instills constant doubt, which leads to a state of unhappiness. 

Philosophy on personality-types

The Worrier, The Warrior & The Strategist!!!

Each of these have their strengths and weaknesses. Lets summarize the Strengths and Weaknesses of these three personality-types:

The Worrier, one might say, has no strengths. However, its the worrier that usually survives more often than the non-worriers. All mammals have evolved to worry - stress is a nature's way of assuring survival. The worriers just have to be right one out of 1000 times and they still stand a higher chance of survival. The bold ones, non-worriers, may be ignorant and happy and live in the moment but they can get wiped out when that one in thousand fatal event comes along and catches them off guard. What is perceived as a weakness of this personality-type, can actually be a strength. It is good to worry sometimes when there are reasons and need for it. For example, Joe the plumber!!

The Warriors - they possess valor, courage and boldness to venture into unchartered territories. They believe in using their brood power to conquer and oblige their raw ambitions as evident in many instances in the entire history of mankind, across cultures and geographies. Their weakness is usually their own mind. Warriors can seldom leash their ambitions and often have found themselves at crossroads where they didn't plan on being. For example, Spartans!!

The Strategist - Strategy literally means "plan". So, these people are planners. Their strength is their ability to control their mind. They usually look at all of the available information and calmly dwell on it to identify the best possible next steps to achieve success in a given task. They are usually perceived as patient, calm-natured and possess the aura of a wise-man around them. In a nutshell, they are very good problem solvers overall. For example, Sun Tzu (ancient Chinese Military Strategist)

Each human has all three of these personality types hidden in them. These hidden personality types sometimes manifest themselves depending on a given impulse or a situation. When such manifestation of a personality-type occurs in a common man, having witnessed a new side in themselves, they might say, "I didn't know I had that (fill in the blank) in me".

The key is to understand that all of us have these traits in us - its which of these is dominating trait, normally or under a given impulse, leads to the 'normal' or 'resting' nature of the person. In other words, if a person naturally worries a lot, then the Worrier in him/her is dominating personality-type and hence such person is perceived to be timid/shy or weak overall. However, this same person, under provocation, can become a Warrior for a short while and display all Warrior-like traits. Another parallel example in physics is the electrons orbiting around nucleus - ground state vs. excited state. Electrons, with an external perturbation, generally by means of induced energy into the system, move into excited state and this leads to the manifestation of different properties by that system as compared to the properties exuded when the system was in ground state.

Hence, self-awareness, at any given moment and time, is critical. Ensure that the dominating personality-type matches best and is appropriate for any given situation. This optimal match of exuded personality-type and a given situation will yield superior outcome and build that person's image overall.

Night out at CDG airport (Paris)

I have always hated writing those essays growing up on topics such as "an hour at a railway station" and related topics. Ironically, here I am stuck with my wife for the whole night at the Charles De Gaulle airport at Paris trying to kill time. Fortunately for me they have internet connection here, which should make the night go by like a minute. After all, for most internet users, Internet these days is pretty much like Cocaine to the Junkies. If you are not one of those internet users that I am talking about, what the hell are you doing reading this post of mine anyway? ;)

I was on a business trip to visit some of our partner companies here in Paris, France. My Wife decided to join me on this trip given her open schedule after her exams that coincidentally finished on the day before our day of departure - good for her she could really join me on this trip - good for me too as well :). Do you really think that the trip would be fun without the healthy arguments between me and my wife in regards to everything we do during our time together? So, after completing the business part of my visit, we decided to fly to Rome, Italy to spend 2 nights, 3 days and do some sight seeing. Site seeing if you ask, we got plenty of just that. No offense to my Italian American friends, Italy now it seemed is a place for thieves. I mean in just 72 hours that we were there, we witnessed 2 attempts on us to steal stuff. To top it off, one of my friends who had visited Italy before had similar experiences and thank god he had shared his story before we went there.

We arrived at Rome Airport on 23rd and caught a direct metro train to the heart of the city (Republicca region). We stayed at the Best Western (Mondial), which was kinda nice.

First entry...

We are getting ready for the 4th of July weekend.. Satish dada, vahini and kids are coming to visit us this weekend. Here I am at 4PM working on my quarterly workplan document. I need to finish this up today. If not, it will haunt me over the weekend.

More to come this weekend... I'm happy to have a space on web to jot down my personal journal.. Apna funda waise bhi pehle se ek hi hai, "try to be an open book" and hope others around you appreciate you for that or even join you in your mission to be an open book.

Pankaj