I have been a big fan of sniper movies. It started with video game playing . But its fascinating to watch a bullet travelling in slow motion as often shown in movies like Wanted 2008. I can tell you hundreds of best sniper scenes from the tip of my tongue. Latest being the series "The day of the Jackal" where I learned how to sympathise with a killer. Yet one important thing that every sniper is capable of is predicting the future. And it is all about perception and perspective. The sniper: https://unsplash.com/@visualsbyroyalz What is perception and perspective ?  Perception is what you feel about the world through your senses. Five senses and thoughts let you create your own reflections about the world and interpret. And this is the subjectivity. Perspective on the other hand is to think from someone else's point of view. In healthcare we call it empathy. And just like singing and dancing some people are inherently good at picking up perspectives. And definitely philosophers and snipers. As if you want to become a good sniper you have to master the perspective. Imagine a sniper scene, where a duo of snipers are on a mission. They wait observing their enemies. And when they observe their target, they are going to be in the perspective mode. As far as distance matters, from the time they shoot a bullet to the hit there is about a few seconds gap. Essentially they are shooting into the future, and they have to predict where their enemy is going to be in a few seconds. To do this they have to think like the enemy. Hence perspectives are important in becoming a better sniper. Perspective is essential in understanding human nature. And it is an inherent part of philosophy. It's the famous bus example. When a pretty looking girl boards a bus everyone will look at her. That is human nature and perception. But if you are a sniper or a philosopher you would look at others' faces when it happens. And that is because you are inherently curious about their perspective. And this will give you an advantage, as now you posses someone's perspective you can try predicting the future. Often someone who is more aware of perspectives is hard to fool. Perspectives: https://unsplash.com/@visualsbyroyalz Why you should learn others' perspectives. If you are inherently not curious about someone else's perspective still I suggest you learn and train about it. As a motivation I would say it's cashable. Some would say it's cunning. But I would label it as an evolutionary advantage over others. Obviously not only snipers and philosophers, but teachers, doctors, even cops use it in interrogation rooms. You might lure someone into your agenda even without them knowing when you know their perspective. It seems unethical, but it happens all the time, in every human encounter. Even with your partner. And I am sure you will use this weapon only for "peaceful purposes". 😅 Generally, I do not want to limit myself in imagination. So I would say, just imagine for the fun of it. Imagine the perspective of a Jew, in autzwichtz . Think about the perspective of Larry Holmes when he was beaten by Mike Tyson. Feel what it means to be the person sitting next to you in the bus. And do not stop there. Think about the world from the point of view of a crow . An earthworm . Or a jellyfish . What it is like to be a crab in the clutches of a kingfisher.  Think some more. Think like a wave . Think like a tree . I can see there are much more interesting things if you consider the possibilities. Write a poem from the perspective of an Alien, or feel what if death is a friend. And most importantly write them down before you forget. Maybe you should comment.

The Penguin Island. I have no doubt in this. It looks like we are clothed monkeys. For this matter I would like to point you to the novel by Anatole France the French author "The penguin Island". It was a confusing novel as I was very young when I had my hands on this. I can specifically remember how these naked humans, freshly baptized, in a faraway island first started to wear cloths. One of the less attractive women in the Island started to cover herself up and suddenly she became the most attractive women to the men. As now, the beauty is in cloths, not in the naked female form. Obviously soon everyone started to wear cloths and, the things start to evolve like a normal human society. And it makes me wonder are we really naked monkeys? Or just we are a higher human form? Penguin Island: https://unsplash.com/@tamwarnerminton Human behavior in groups. There are fascinating facts about how human behavior changes in a group set up. Different from individual encounters. Rather than explaining it, I can give you an example. I participated in a protest once when I was a university student. And these protests were common during that time, against government about money allocation for education, privatization etc. were the main issues. I considered myself an obedient citizen for most of the time. Yet I can remember on this particular day, I felt alien. We were marching down the road shouting slogans, and it started really slow but as time went on it escalated. I felt myself even bit of angry, adrenalin pumping all around. There were heated encounters with the police, in front parts of the march, I was somewhere in the middle. Fortunately, police did not raise their weapons against us that day. And if they did, I am sure I would have involved. I would have thrown a stone or two and I might have injured myself in the process. And I did feel like I was marching for a great cause and, my involvement was small when I consider what was happening with the group. Protest: https://unsplash.com/@heathermount Normalization of behaviors - real life examples of deindividuation. What I did not realize at that time was its deindividuation that I was feeling. It's a feeling that we feel less responsible for our actions when we are in a group. We might even commit a crime and even enjoy it. I could have broken a window of a building and felt less responsible when consider what's going on all around. Later when I contemplated my behavior that day, I understood I am just a monkey in cloths. At least that there is evidence that we are truly different when circumstances change. I would have been Tarson in the jungle if was stranded with monkeys. With this view we can explain some of the things happen around the world. You can be watching CNN, in the comfort of your couch and think how stupid, people in Gaza strip fighting for a bag of rice. They seem rude and unethical. But fact is it happened to toilet rolls in supermarkets when the first wave of covid hit few years ago. It may seem like a joke to imagine the extreme. But it's good to challenge ourselves after all if we are aiming for a more ethical world, we must accept our true origins and nature. Earlier we do that longer and sooner we will be connected with universal peace. Its lucky we are not born in a cannibalistic group. A group that worship money. Even the era of WW11 is a good example of these complex human behaviors. Let's not forget but forgive ourselves. And learn how to look at a criminal with even kind heart. Some might call this Stockholm syndrome. But that is just a discussion for another day. https://unsplash.com/@ripey__ Now you can go back to your mirror and fully appreciate the monkey in you and forgive. As you are the only one who see your own reflection every day.

Life - a weird dream. It happened one day, for about 3.5 decades ago. I was born to this thing called self. It's a weird dream. I was hopeless as a person. Hanging on my mother, dependent on everything. Just three kilos of flesh and bones, and a consciousness with no memory. I am not sure why this, why here and why now. It took years and years for me to learn everything. From A to Z of drop of everything humans have gained over the years. And I was hopeless. I had to believe in everything they say. About the skies, trees, gods, ancestors and science, mathematics. There are libraries of accumulated knowledge of human consciousness. Stories, as were interpreted by some observers in the past, written down in books. And here I am writing down my own observations about the world. But why? Life in the fast lane: https://unsplash.com/@dnevozhai I know the answer to why. And I know what is wrong with that too. Because I have been travelling in the information highway until I met my own crossroads in life. Where the true life If at all present, begins. Then only you would realize all you have been doing is pressing the gas harder and harder, in life, to travel faster and faster towards your own doom. Crossroads are blessings from our own past. For us to stop and think seriously about life. Even better if you do not know where to ride next. Why I create knowledge? The reason I am writing is to preserve these thoughts. As I now learn value is not in these papers called money . Values are in human minds. Values are created exactly when you think about something. A car, a boat, a dollar bill or even this article. You are the evaluator of your own Values. Hence, I have learned my lesson of human values hard way. And I am making it easier for you to understand, so you do not have to waste years and years of your life wasting not knowing what to do. Path to create Values is by preserving your consciousness by creating something or collecting something . So, start it today. Trust me you will be a happier person doing it. And that leaves me with my next claim. I have to explain the fault in this thought too. To do that I have to drag you into some little bit of philosophy. If you already know, there is a thing called subjectivity about our consciousness. We are prisoners of our own bodies. Our consciousness cannot magically float and see the world in another perspective. Not even after death likely. So, whatever the Values you try to preserve may not be valuable to others. It even won't be valuable until you die. Like Schmidt tunnel for that matter. But I can guarantee that it will be valuable for you always. Isn't it amazing to know. The value you feel looking at a little ant climbing a grass is much more than a hundred-dollar bill. And this is the nature of Values. If you believe in it, it's true. I think you get the problem now. Problem is its all imaginary. To savor a movie, even a piece of mango you have to imagine. You have to evaluate your own experience against your own past and give it a value. And without these snippets of thoughts, we are nothing. Welcome to life, if you do not know the roads. Welcome to life: https://unsplash.com/@hngstrm If you feel nihilistic by now. I can say welcome to life. As my objective is complete as I have created crossroads in your life. From here onwards it's up to you to question your all life and observe what's happening in your brain. The experiment of life already started when you were born, and you are just the creator of your own reality. If you let your mindfulness to watch this every day, you may ask the questions like "what is the meaning of all this?" Isn't it absurd to give Values to things I see and believe in them and cry over them in the next second? Let's discuss some of the things bothering you about your life. And try to find out whether there is truly a knot. Or just a no knot .

My travelling history - and how I remember the road. Oh.. amount of travelling I have done. Four hours on the road for eight years in a row. From home to school, from school to home. It deserves a blog article, or two, as it is just the tip of the ice burg when it comes to my time on the road. Even in UK I took the bus most of the time, out of convenience and met the nicest bust driver ever. Yet, this article is about the memory. Buses: https://unsplash.com/@kingtographer I used to travel in the front seat of the local bus. Unlike UK Buses these Indian built TATA and Layland Buses were worn off ones when fully loaded they even tilt a bit to the side, giving me anxiety of impending tipping over feeling every bend. Yet never once it happened. And I survived to tell you the story of how I remember the roads. As you can understand the travelling by bus is a boring affair. There is no novelty in it. Same roads, same bends, same boring routines day after day, I was kind of hoping it would end. But did not and would not. Often, I would remember the road. I can go back to my memory and access every junction in the 18 km ride from my school to home. Every bend, every major landmark, but here is an interesting fact, I can do it in five minutes! Faster than it takes for me to travel by bus. How is it possible? Did you ever think about this? The reason you can memories an entire journey even faster than you travel is because the way we store memories. We just keep the snapshots of the past in our memory. If you go back to all the junctions of the way to your work and try to remember, you will only recall just a couple of snapshots. On either direction. And more you will remember in places where vehicle slow down, like bus stops or junctions. As it allows your mind more time to process information. (In mindfulness slow is new fast ) So, you are not reliving the entire journey, just skipping from junction to junction Like a myelinated A type neuron and no wonder it is faster than the bus, which is a C type slow neuron. London underground and graph Theory. Maps: https://unsplash.com/@stalebg This is not a new wisdom. I had my hands on the London underground the other day and guess what all the railway lines were shown in a half a page map. As they only wanted to show the pivot points and the connections. even it did not need to represent the bends accurately as, nobody would know the tunnels, only the stations make sense. This easy representation of a mental map of places, just like the one in my and your head, is expanded to form the modern graph theory. Graph theory is the mathematical model used to represent maps, in a mathematical way. It is just simple to memories of the road from home to school. But it is entire new thing to find out the best and shortest route between two points in united states, from west cost California to New York. And trying to figure this out by hand is impossible. Hence mathematicians invented graph theory and there are many applications from google bot crawlers to efficient Scheduling of London Subway. But I am more interested in mindfulness aspect of it. As I see even though I thought, I kind of "know" the road to school. I just know few nodes of the entire journey just a simple "Map". It's even worse than Google street view. But is accurate enough for me to find the way back if I broke down the bus and my phone is out of battery. But, If I chose to walk a couple of bus stops, and observed, I would make an entirely different representation of things which I thought I "Knew". I would see the roofing of the houses, shelter homes, nurseries and closed church gates on Sundays. No wonder the tourists who walk on the bridges of London enjoy it more than the Londoners. Try next time to be a tourist in your own city if you want to know this firsthand. Just a tower: https://unsplash.com/@norbuw I can conclude by saying, no matter how much I try, the past, would just be just an approximated "map" of the present. I wonder this even exists outside those snapshots. What do you think?

What is big I and little I in counselling? In counselling there is a concept called big I and little i. I am not sure how popular this concept is. Yet it is popular enough, as someone explained to me this in a counselling session. It is a very simple and powerful method. As I am interested in anything related to meaning of life and understanding myself, I thought. Hmmm. this should go on my blog. First ask the question. What is your answer when someone asked you " Who you are ?". And this question doesn't have single answer. Infact anything can be chosen from following. Imagine this question is asked from President of the United States. Following are hypothetical answers. (I really would not want FBI to take me down over a philosophical joke :)) The president: https://unsplash.com/@jxb511 I am the 47th president of the United States of Americ a. The most powerful state of the World. I am also 45th president. I am the commander in chief, of the most powerful army in the world. I am a white man. I am a straight/gay man. I am the owner of a billion-dollar business. I have --- children. I might be the first president of United Combined States of America (USA + Canada + Greenland) etc. etc. As you can see, for the president, the big "I" is really big. It is just not the name. Everything he has done ever since his birth plus, memories, plus every possession, relationship. The big I is really big. Similarly, you also have a big I. If you think about this, it is not even expressible. As you could write pages and pages of stories about yourself. Infact, you might make a biography one day to approximate big I. However, we only write good stuff about ourselves in biography. It is also just an edited version of the real big I. I think you get my point. But what is the little i then? The little I? Little i : https://unsplash.com/@pkripperprivate The little i is the little problem you are trying to solve now. How crazy is that. This little paragraph I am trying to write is my little i now. What is your little i? Only you would know. You started to read this article for some reason, right? Maybe you were searching after your Counseller introduced you to the concept and you wanted to know what it is. Maybe you are little claustrophobic , maybe you are an introvert . Whatever negative, anxious little i is not an accurate representation of yourself. Infact, I cannot tell who you are, even after examining myself thoroughly. All the corners of big I, do not point to anything. Yet we are worried about little i's throughout the day. The big I little i is not a new concept. We kind of already know this, in management it is called a SWOT analysis. But the problem is minds tend to behave differently than just blackboards. We tend to negatively biased for anything which comes to our minds. Generally, this is true for everyone, except who are more aware of their Big I's inherently. But having framed the concept and keeping it in back of your mind would help you to win a battle just another day. Maybe it is time you would write down all the strengths of your Big I, so you can just look back when a little i starts to trouble you again.

What do you need to be happy? How about a little mindfulness for a change. Maybe it is raining beyond your window and you are worried that you haven't brought an umbrella. But, you are not yet finished your work. Still two more hours to go. And you cannot predict the future. So, there is no pont in worrying over an umbrella which might even not need. What about the past ? I am sure you have been in the boat of the past, countless times, trying to navigate your own thoughts and tried to make sense. I am talking out of my experience. No matter how much the psychotherapist ask us not to, we cannot. And I have seen Pink puffers and Blue bloaters, trying to drink away their own unpleasent past, in taverns. Their livers pay a heavy toll, as they cannot yet digest these ghosts of the past. Rain : https://unsplash.com/@r_shayesrehpour Can you see where I am heading with this? Its about being present in this moment. So, we can feel how refreshing it is to feel little bit of cold wind through the half open window, watching the mistletoe. If you are in a habit of practicing mindfulness you would notice that everything happiness is related to now (Mostly). Infact, worries are side-effects of the past and the future. How about deleting the past and future forever from your life? Can you do that? Of course we cannot. Have you ever asked why? Because we are believing in time . Which has a past and the future. And we built everything else on this belief. From our language to physics. Hence, past and future is engraved into our lives. But this is not always the case, atleast not for One Amazon (rainforest), human tribe. Happiest tribe in the world, Piraha It seems atleast Piraha tribe, did not made the mistake of mixing up an imaginary past and future into their language . Being one of the most simplest language in the world Piraha tribe language is the most controvertial of them all, for language enthusiast. It is not only, not having the past and future tense, Piraha language is "Closed". Meaning, it cannot be combined with unlimited fasion to make a gigantic never ending sentence. But, imagine what it means? If you were born to Piraha tribe, you would not be able to talk about future. You would not be able to talk about past. Just because you do not have words. I am sure you would have idea about some things, yet, you would not be able to formulate your thoughts. Everything you talk and think would be just about the present. Tribe: https://unsplash.com/@vr2ysl It is impossible for me to imagine such a state of mind. Even after delebarate practise of mindfulness, thoughts about future and past creeep in all the time to disturb the peace. But I would like to imagine a state where I am not able to do that by default! I wonder someone ever meassured the happiness level of these Piraha people, It would be far beyond any other population norm. I am sure more than Finns. I will leave you to judge the Piraha Tribe as the happiest tribe in the world. Even better you can see the how they talk with each other, using just present tense. And feel the happiness of the moment, for yourself.

How can lobsters grow? Lobsters grow through a process called molting. These crustacean giants living in the depths of the sea has a hard exoskeleton. Meaning their soft bodies are covered and protected by the hard shell. Of so how can they grow? They have to crack shed their old skeleton and a new soft skeleton will form which allows them to expand in girth. Overtime which hardens and become a rigid skeleton again. But the most important aspect is not the process, the trigger for them to grow and shed their skeleton is none other than the stress induced by their own bodies against their own skeleton. And we can summarize this as "Its time of stress that provides us to expand and grow, shedding our own exoskeleton of restricted confinements" Lobsters: https://unsplash.com/@danielnorris If you do not know, this is also true for human growth as well. Populations tend to have higher growth rates at times of stress. If you look at the world and growth rates of each country with relative level of development, we can see this. Although development doesn't directly correlate with stress, we can assume they're more stressed to make a living. Nobody wants to be stressed in their lives. It's a negative feeling we tend to avoid. Infact I would do anything to avoid stress. Yet with lobster philosophy we can understand how stress is an essential component in any successful story. Stress is essential trigger for progress and change. Imagine you lost your job. For some reason. Steve Jobs is a good example. He was sacked from his own company by his own board of directors. Imagine this happening to us. What would be your response? I wonder what my response would be. Can I be a lobster and find a cave, until I grow a new exoskeleton? Or would I just avoid the stress instead and lose the opportunity to grow be just a dead lobster? If stress is an opportunity to grow, we can say routines are the killers of growth. But there is some truth and false in this. Routines that provide optimal stress will allow you to grow. But routines that just focus on pleasure will just make you stagnate in your life. I can give you an example. Balancing stress is finding the flow. Lobster philosophy in action. Routines: https://unsplash.com/@heftiba Imagine you play the piano for the first time. There would be more stress at the beginning as there is no previous knowledge or the skill. But as you go on stress levels will reduce once your skills improve. And most of us would just fall into boringness and give up after certain skill level. There is no more stress. No more growth . Unless you push your limits deliberately by creating your own target. Maybe taking an extra class. Maybe teaching someone else. Maybe composing some music. Unless you push a little bit more you will die just an average lobster. So, the stress necessary for growth can be deliberately induced. Just like salt for a tasty soup. Just enough stress can make it tastier. But be careful not to overstress. We all know what will happen to the soup if someone accidently spill all the salt bottle into it. There you might even need professional help. Navigation through life is difficult. As minds do not follow routines of steps not all the time. The paths we take in life are so much different from each other In unique ways. Yours is not similar to mine. So, there is no harm getting help. Falling back and even relaxing or taking a nap. If it means to sleep a couple of weeks maybe you should do that. A good clarity in mind is necessary to reach anywhere. And I hope fog in your life to be clear and have a better day tomorrow. Maybe a little bit more time with nature in mindfulness would do better than a dozen pills to relieve some extra stress.

What is an everything book? That's easy to answer. Everything is a little book that you keep with you all the time. And in this book you keep records of everything. I should be more definite when I say everything, but there is no other way to put it. If you have read my previous article about the world you may have understood everything is represented in our consciousness as thoughts. And these thoughts have a limited half life. Most of them would never come back to your consciousness again. Even important ones. Even novel ones. Even creative ones. So the everything book is the place you can collect all these. It may be a mathematical formula. A diagram or a poem. It may be an interesting idea which you should think about more. One sentence would be enough. And you can do your homework later. Everything Book: https://unsplash.com/@kellysikkema Is everything book a diary? No, everything book is not a diary. Infact a diary is the earlier version of Facebook. Think about it. What we do on Facebook is essentially collecting our memories as pictures and notes. Like a little girl. We post them online instead of writing them down. And we share them instantly without letting others discover them years and years later. So, social media may have the potential to be a diary. But it doesn't capture what you have been thinking when you were at that party. Maybe you were thinking about Charles Babbage and his Difference engine. Or some yellow leaves in the Green Park. The fact is these thoughts are as important as your photographs. And unless you capture them on a paper with words, they will blow away like answers, in the wind. So, everything book is not a diary. It's not Facebook either. But it is just a treasure trove, if you really would want to name it. What does an everything book do? Think about what it means to capture thoughts. The possibilities will be limitless. I wonder this would be done in the future. As human consciousness is an incredible machine, capturing thoughts we would not only be able to replicate oneself but collect these together to make a gigantic database which expand by the minute. Only Mark Zuckerberg or Google would tell what you can do with data. But let's leave the Sci-fi aside for the moment. I can show you what your everything book can do. It's already shown in the movie "Limitless". Eddie Morra who is a struggling writer in NY takes a mysterious pill which enables him to remember everything. Just like our everything book. But he amazes himself just by using unlimited amount of information his own mind stored. I think watching the movie would do better, as always there is twist in the plot. But that Is a damn good example for the potential of your everything book has. limitless pill: https://unsplash.com/@victoriabcphotographer It's not like all the things that we think throughout the day are important and relevant. Sometimes you might spend even days without any significant spark. But just having the book with you might even trigger one. You can be the judge of your own thoughts and when there is a spark, put it in the everything book. There is more meaning to your everything book as it accumulates ideas in the long run. As these important ideas you carry will make connections with each other and you might create new knowledge out of this. It is just a natural process. Nothing fancy. Just keep feeding things from your everything book from time to time to your RAM and the machine will do the rest. How do you think those who came before us invented aeroplanes that fly? Do you think they did it just sitting on a chair by thinking? Without a single diagram? How likely is it that some innovation happens without pen and paper and words? Do you think Einstein used a blackboard? Or just his memory to calculate infinity? Blackboards where miracles happen: https://unsplash.com/@jdent It's just simple. Although minds are good at generating ideas we sometimes need tools our generations used. And everything book is just a handy extension.  I am sure I have written enough to emphasise to you the importance of ideas and capturing them the moment they arise. You would appreciate this more when you know the values (real money) are traceable to a thought in some consciousness. So the everything book will be a valuable asset to your collection of things. Think about it.

It is time to renovate our kitchen. And we ordered a new set of pantries. Costly as ever. They used granite for the table top. If you do not know granite is just rock. If you own land and dig deep enough it is likely you would tumble upon a big granite. But here is the thing, when cutted with precision with modern machinery and polished. Rough edges smoothed and fitted perfectly on top of the pantry this rock makes a beautiful pattern that you cannot achieve by any other means. State of the art addition to our otherwise boring kitchen. And it had not taken too many years for us to come from cement and wooden pantry to granite tops. More importantly, it reminded me of a little story from Steve Jobs. Granite: https://unsplash.com/@enginakyurt Steve Jobs and Rock Tumbler I read his biography. At a time I did not know who this guy was. So it did not interest me, and I cannot remember anything from it. But later when I had my hands on the new smart phone, I saw this enthusiastic CEO of Apple Inc, one of the greatest companies of our time. I had seen him giving a couple of speeches and in one interview he talked about his childhood experience of a rock tumbler. As it is interesting and relevant I will re-write it here. Once when he was young Steve jobs had met his neighbour who showed him a rock tumbler in his backyard. He put some pretty regular rocks in the machine and some water, and powder, turned on the machine and they kept it running overnight. Following day when Steve Jobs went there he found out that the rocks have become really round polished marbles, with little bit of friction and tumbling the machine provided. And it had made him realise to build something beautiful, sometimes you just need few ingredients yet plenty of patience, refinement and iteration. Rocks : https://unsplash.com/@photolli How to create values You may think this is very common wisdom. Hard work, practise makes you perfect, right? But I would say there is more to it. I also believed in hard work and following the rules. But sometimes this is just not enough. More importantly I would say we need to understand the value system we use. All humans use the same value system and that is perfectly sitting in our consciousness. And when you believe enough about your own values slowly others start to believe in you as well. You do not trust me? Look at the billionaires in the world. Aren't they extraordinary ? Elon musk, Mark suckerburg, Jeff Bezoes, all these guys believe in themselves. If they come to a podium and say that they do not believe in themselves and they are not sure how their companies will do in the next year, you will see their stock prices plummet in the next minute and recovery would be impossible. Essentially they even have to hide their own sicknesses and failures and Act in front of the media just like a blind egotic believer in themselves. Just like Steven Seagal believes in himself and acts like he believes he is the greatest martial arts master. So if you do want to create a value. Maybe you should start believing in something. I am not sure what it is. But here is the truth. Just know that it is a belief, and it has no truth. Imagine you want to give a value to a piece of paper. Can you do that? I can show you ten more ways to give value to a paper. You can make a paper plane. Origami Swan. Make a ball and play with your kid Write a poem Solve an equation Tear it into small pieces and make a collage Draw a cartoon and make a video doing it Use it as a sieve Use it to blot water Dissolve it into a pulp and make a cardboard Creating value from Rocks: https://unsplash.com/@mariahhewines I am sure there are enough granites in your backyard and empty papers on your desk. So, make a wise choice to do something to it and create your own value , so it won't be empty next year. Instead you have a pile of polished marbles or a computer program for selling them.

In simple terms the world is a system of believes which assumed to be true. Well, that really needs more explanation than that. After looking at everything holistically, we can come to above conclusion about the world. It is not easy. It may be even unnecessary to know this to spend a successful life. But as " success " also a thing in this relative world someone wise might appreciate the importance of knowing this. Peanuts: https://unsplash.com/@olianayda What is a peanut? Imagine you went to the market and bought a peanut. Why peanut? Because it's something that you can keep on your palm small enough to know. You can choose anything. Even an onion would do. Keep it on your palm and look at it for a minute. And know what is feel like. Try to think about everything you know about this peanut. It's weight, its smell, its color, it's function. Depending on your knowledge you will spend few seconds or minutes or minutes. But the problem is you cannot know everything. If you turn the peanut around, you will know its backside. But what about the front side? If you feel it's weight, you will not focus on its color. You do not even know how many cells there in this peanut are. Weather this peanut on your hand is capable of creating another peanut. Really speaking you wouldn't even know this is a peanut. It's just a name that everyone agreed upon and put to these kinds of nuts. So, the peanut is a relative truth. Can you see what happens? Whenever you look at your peanut, you would access the database of your past where these relative truths are stored. And apply it to understand the current peanut. This process mind you has a long history. Since you were born to this world you have been storing these memories. And the fact is you do not know about the current peanut in your hand if not for the previous nuts in your memory. Coconuts: https://unsplash.com/@dangcong Danger of knowing what the world is. We can stop here for a moment. As I see the danger of believing this versus knowing in this. If you assume what I said was true about peanut, you will start to believe in a "false" world. A world with no peanuts, no coconuts and no cars or ships. The problem with this approach is it doesn't make you move forward. Making you stuck in an unrealistic world. You might not even get up from your bed. As it has no value in it if everything including money is relative. But instead, it must not be just knowledge but wisdom. But when your mind knows this fact and look at the world with mindfulness, you can experience this as a fact. It is like the nature has cheated us to believing in some kind of matrix, and the wisdom of relative truth is the code to break this matrix. If we are a giant one consciousness a single person breaking the illusion would be enough for the entire living species. Yet we are stuck in our own relative worlds. So individually we must see relativeness of truth for ourselves. The world is this picture: https://unsplash.com/@potapenko Knowing the world in mindfulness. I can remember a while ago, an afternoon in the turtle beach . A mesmerizing wave crashing on the coral reef to break up into thousand bubbles. And watching this in slow motion is even better than the reality. And it makes me happy to think about it. But the mind doesn't allow me to stay there, dwelling in this happiness. Or even sadness. As it was just my interpretation of the world. A fisherman living by the sea might not see what I see. Instead, I drive my mindfulness to the feeling of the cold tiles on my feet in the room. Maybe these pink walls harbor more meaning about life than the waves. The world is just a peanut, waves or walls. Whatever which comes to your mind, is the world.

Who are the April Fools? Its April first yet again. I am not sure how many Aprils first's you have come across so far in your life. Maybe you were fooled last year by your friends. For me I wouldn't mind a prank. As introverted, I am any kind of interaction with so called "General population" would be a win for me. I might even deliberately let myself be the victim of a prank just to see some people smiling faces. Isn't it fun when everyone laugh? Of course, one day the ones who prank would play the fool if they are not aware about what is happening in life. It is not only April first we let others to fool us. How about tomorrow April 2nd? You will wake up and listen to Fox news or CNN and let them fool us with fake news. Same story if you check two different channels at the same time side by side you will really be surprised what to believe. Truth is very rare phenomenon when consider news , just like little bit of water in UAE. It's hard to find and even oil is cheaper! So, if you may altogether quit news nothing would happen. And I would even not start on newspapers. News: https://unsplash.com/@ifoodijourney I am not saying they serve some purpose, maybe when it is a time of hurricane or a wildfire. Still fake is more than the truth. April fools at work How about at work? How about the future. We let ourselves get into a trap, which is called "Living a good life" and let ourselves be fooled by others. This time propaganda is bigger than we expect. As we all are part of a big game where we fool each other. And this happens at different levels. Imagine the co-operation you are working for. This co-operation makes some real money, capitalism at its best, and it keeps growing by using the hard work done by its workers, who are paid by their hours. Hours! that is the most insane scam of all time. It does mean, no space for individual creativity. No space for life. For what? To fill some family accounts with more zeros. Again, I am not saying the capitalism is bad. In fact, the opposite is truer. Capitalism is the best system so far, as it allows selfish greedy people to keep pushing others until they give out their last bit of consciousness. And things will push Forword more than in a communist society. At work: https://unsplash.com/@jramos10 It is insane. Husbands make their wives fools, while children try to rob their elderly parents. Wealthy countries try to scam out the precious material, from mineral to brains, from poorer countries. Making any chance of recovery impossible. Politicians try to appear saints, while saints wear white cloths, to show that they are clean. What are you expecting? It makes me laugh of our foolishness. Everyone just plays their own role perfectly to fool the other. I can see this will not go anywhere nice. Even mindfulness has become a scam. Mindfulness wisdom Mindfulness is the tool of the wise men and women in the past, against the lies that prevails. The biggest liar of them all is our minds. All the foolishness of fooling others starts by fooling ourselves first. The inability to see the truth is in fact the greatest foolishness. With mindfulness we can question our so-called reality until we understand true nature of the world. But I have seen over the years mindfulness has become a scam. As everyone trying to fool others with a secret pathway to success, mindfulness has become another cheat code for way to success . But still there is hope. I see this as a good thing, as even fake news would create a spark in wise people to seek truth, eventually which they will find within themselves. With nothing but their own Mindfulness. List of things we fool ourselves with. Few years of life expectancy- due to advanced medicine Global peace. Patriotism - until we are hit by a covid Tomorrow - thinking its predictable Love - Ah.. the most abused word in the world Heaven and hell Ethics - we are just crows This is just a start. you can add more. I can add more controversial things (like family) but let's, do that on another day.

Ludwig van Beethoven When I was a kid I heard this marvelous story of Ludwig Van Beethoven, a great musician. From my music teacher. She said, he was a great composer of music, and at some point, he went into a room, behind closed doors he mastered his craft and after five years he came out of that room as the greatest musician of his time. It was a little success story which was in the back of my mind for years, and just the other day I checked the facts. And it seemed true. After initial recognition as a novel musician, He had indeed had a gap in his career where he mastered the craft, alone. Nothing productive has come out of this period. No followers, no recognition, like vanished years. And this pattern is not uncommon. From time to time, we see these surprising comebacks. What happens? Piano player: https://unsplash.com/@akramhuseyn Shooting bamboo hypothesis Bamboo is one of the fastest growing plants in the world. Some fastest growing species have grown 90cm in 24 hours. But the fascinating fact is not its growth. But what you see on the surface is not what happens in the ground. They bamboo shoots spend years and years underground developing new root system, before they show any visible growth above the ground. And this can go on up to five years! So, in fact the rapid growth that we see, in a matter of days is not the full story. It is the outcome of a great foundation which it creates below the ground. This is the famous shooting bamboo hypothesis. We can compare the bamboo growth to the creativity , and many successful stories. Consider Usain Bolt. One of the greatest athletes of the 21st century. The total amount of time he has spent running actual race would be 50seconds. He has raced total only about one minute all his great career. But that is not the true story. I am sure, he has spent countless hours training himself, pushing his own boundaries, before he was able to race against similar hard-working athletes. Bamboo: https://unsplash.com/@velor Overnight success. Overnight success is just hypothetical. Unless you have a wealthy uncle, who is about to die of cancer. Yet often we see some people becoming successful overnight. They might even come in front of a crowd and boast about how they became a hero from zero, within one week. But the truth is far from this. Even the shooting bamboos are evidence of this. Overnight success is just the result of countless hours of experimenting. Maybe even not you, maybe it is generations of enthusiastic human beings. Imagine the Nobel prize. For that matter in any field. Do you think the one who wins the Nobel prize for physics next year would do that if Newton never thought about falling apples and gravity? We build upon our ancestors. Whether we liked it or not. So, the any man's or women's success is not isolated achievement. It should be considered an achievement of the entire human race. So, my advice is playing your part, grow your roots, it doesn't matter even if takes years. Colonel sanders invented KFC when he was at the age of 62. But he had developed better roots. And when you become successful be humble and thankful to the earth, water and air and generations of earthworms who made the ground a fertile soil for us to flourish. Colonel Sanders: https://unsplash.com/@northwoodn