Mental Floss #1

Isn't happiness or to be happy a choice? Just like choosing your favourite flavour of coffee :)

Head vs Heart

Been trying to find the middle ground between rationality vs intuition, head vs heart and reason vs belief for a while now. Think I have it figured for now. For now. I've realised behind every rational thought or action is an emotional driver. Emotional drivers are commitment, independence, satisfaction,security, love, belonging, status, power, exalted sense of self, feeling of accomplishment, feeling of certainty.

You choose the job you choose to make the money you make for bills you pay for? Sense of accomplishment, achievement, provision of a good life to your loved ones, sense of independence et al. You choose a rational action basis the emotional payoff for it. For now am done looking.

Am in love...

…In love with the movie - English Patient. The movie is full of small, well thought out details, easy to miss but difficult not to appreciate. There is a scene when Katherine Clifton’s husband is waiting outside the place where he discovers she has gone to meet her lover, Almasy. You see him fiddling with a paper in his hand, he tears off a part of it and unrolls a chain of hearts torn out from inside the paper. Small moment - ironic and apt. 

Some quotes I love from the movie:

Madox: I have to teach myself not to read too much into everything. It comes from too long having to read so much into hardly anything at all.

Almásy: What do you love most?
Katharine Clifton: Water. Fish in it. Hedgehogs, I love hedgehogs. Marmite. Baths, but not with other people! Islands. I could go on all day.
Almásy: Go on all day.
Katharine Clifton: Your handwriting. My husband.
Almásy: And what do you hate most?
Katharine Clifton: A lie. And you?
Almásy: Ownership. When you leave, forget me.

Almásy: I once traveled with a guide who was taking me to Faya. He didn't speak for nine hours. At the end of it he pointed to the horizon and said, "Faya!" That was a good day.

Almásy: I once heard of a captain who wore a patch over a good eye. The men fought harder for him.

Katharine Clifton: You speak so many bloody languages, and you never want to talk.

Hana: There's a man downstairs. He brought us eggs. He might stay.
Almásy: Why? Can he lay eggs?
Hana: He's Canadian.
Almásy: Why are people so happy when they collide with someone from the same place? What happened in Montreal when you passed a man in the street? Did you invite him to live with you?

Katharine Clifton: Will we be alright?
Almásy: Yes. Yes, absolutly.
Katharine Clifton: "Yes" is a comfort. "Absolutely" is not.

Katharine Clifton: My darling. I'm waiting for you. How long is the day in the dark? Or a week? The fire is gone. And I'm cold, horribly cold. I really want to drag myself outside but then there'd be the sun. I'm afraid I'll waste the light on the paintings, not writing these words. We die. We die, we die rich with lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have... entered and swum up like rivers. Fears we have hidden in - like this wretched cave. I want all this marked on my body. Where the real country is. Not boundaries drawn on maps, names of powerful men. I know you'll come carry me out to the Palace of Winds. That's what I've wanted: to walk in such a place with you. With friends and an earth without maps. The lamp has gone out and I'm writing in the darkness.

Hana: Then I tell myself he spends all day searching, in the night he wants to be found.

John Steinbeck's letter to his son

My best friend passed this on to me and just posting it here, so I can keep coming back to it to access it quickly, and so can anyone else.
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Nobel laureate John Steinbeck (1902-1968) might be best-known as the author of East of Eden, The Grapes of Wrath, and Of Mice and Men, but he was also a prolific letter-writer. Steinbeck: A Life in Letters constructs an alternative biography of the iconic author through some 850 of his most thoughtful, witty, honest, opinionated, vulnerable, and revealing letters to family, friends, his editor, and a circle of equally well-known and influential public figures.

 Among his correspondence is this beautiful response to his eldest son Thom's 1958 letter, in which the teenage boy confesses to have fallen desperately in love with a girl named Susan while at boarding school. Steinbeck's words of wisdom—tender, optimistic, timeless, infinitely sagacious—should be etched onto the heart and mind of every living, breathing human being.

New York

November 10, 1958

Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First -- if you are in love -- that's a good thing -- that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don't let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second -- There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you -- of kindness and consideration and respect -- not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply -- of course it isn't puppy love.

But I don't think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it -- and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone -- there is no possible harm in saying so -- only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another -- but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I'm glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens -- The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love,

Father

Thought of the day

Maybe pain is vital, as a purifying agent for the alchemy of the soul...

Come let's

Come let’s find paths that lead to nowhere,
Crunch our way through dried leaves of ochre.
Come let’s get drenched in the rains,
Traipse and slosh in muddy puddles, soiling our boots.
Come let’s talk about the nothings- in -particular,
And set aside the told-you-so's, what-ifs and never-evers.
Come let’s just be…
Let’s be ourselves a little longer than we need to.

Just another evening

It is just another evening
There is a slight shiver in the breeze
Just a dusting of goosebumps worth
Bright green, gold and red lights embellish the air
Squint your eyes and blur the outer edges
For an instant surreal Dali painting
A sliver of muted light shines on the tarred pavement
My shoes have stopped me at the line of light
I see a cat slinking around the corner
As if swallowed whole by the universe
Maybe if I stood long enough
The streetlight would beam me up too
The sharp aroma of Chinese cooking
Hot, greasy and soul nourishing
Wafts through the cool wind
These evenings, the world stops spinning for a while
Like a still photograph with background music
And in a while, the line of light on the pavement moves