What are boundaries? Just imagine, in all our lives what we have tried to do is to define boundaries. When we first started to talk, we said mother and father, to some figure, which has a boundary to it. A tree is a concept with a boundary around it. Same is it's leaves and roots. A stream has a boundary. A drop of water has a boundary. A bottle of water has a boundary. A country has a boundary. Earth. Solar system, Milky way visible universe All these have boundaries. We have defined them and documented them. Some seems really natural. Such as boundary of a tree, ends where it deepest roots go to the end of the farthermost leaf. Glass bottles with boundaries Now we can go back in the physical scale to really investigate our boundaries. Consider an atom. The distant most atom of the distant most leaf of the previous tree. What is the real boundary of this? Previously scientists considered the atom to be with a precise boundary with outer electrons and a nucleus. Nowadays this notion of atom is no longer enough. As electron can be described as a cloud and nucleus with some further subatomic "Particles". Furthermore, the boundary of the electron is constantly fluctuating. Just like a cloud. And all the attractions and repulsions of atoms are possible because of these fluctuations. Hence if we put this electronic microscope to view everything from our eyes, we would see a different world. Markedly different from what we see in day to day. We would see boundaries are constantly fluctuating, like an unsettled soap bubble and the margins of these fluctuations are not even fixed. They just blend with the space rather unclear way. So, really speaking we cannot specifically point out to a boundary of a tree, or for that matter, any matter. You can call this jiggling of atoms, just like physicist Richard Fynman would describe. So what magical? What is your point? make it fast I am in a hurry to collect some things which has boundaries in it. It is not that these facts have any practical value in the material collecting regular world that we live in. I can be a laughingstock if I tried to explain these to my friends in a party. However, it is when I am alone, I see I have been seeing a world which is markedly different from what reality is. Such as in this case, in reality there are no boundaries. But my eyes see them and my mind agrees with them. Once I demarcate a world with boundaries, I try to keep them as they are. I try to keep a tree as it is, a door as it is, a house as it is. Yet I do not see the boundaries I made around these things were not there in the first place. Hence, there had been no problem. It is futile to try to keep something which is not there at all. All problems I created for myself because of these boundaries are my own creation. In a world without boundaries everything is interconnected. The broken bottle I was clumsy. I just dropped my glass bottle today and broke it into pieces. Instead of one "continuous" boundary, now each glass piece has its own boundary. One day in the future all those artificial boundaries will get lost, and glasses will go back to atoms to reaccumulate into another form. Maybe a rock, maybe a chip in someone's laptop, maybe it will be carried away by an asteroid to an Alean world and travel across the universe. It is liberating to think it is not at all the end of the bottle, and I have just nothing to cry about. If there were no boundries, I would not be able to tell you the story of the bottle anyway. Have you touched anything with a boundary lately? That might break its own artificial barrier to teach you a lesson?

Mastery is the way? Mastery is the way to achieve higher standard in anything you do, in performing anything. Mastery does apply to anything, from laying bricks to building rockets. However, such achievement of mastery would eat up significant amount of time and resources of a person. The opportunity cost of this can come up resurfaced in the Middle Ages of a person as depression or existential nihilism (personal experience). 10000 hours spent on mastery can either, make you happy or sad, no guarantee. How can one commit to such an endeavor with limited information gathered around teenage years. We only have things said by our parents and teachers tell us to guide us. Lucky if they did not push us into a route that is not the passion of ours we might end up mastering the correct craft. (Read philosophical story on Drawing circles of life) Local Maximum Getting stuck in local maximums Now consider a life to a function. A continuous mathematical function. And imagine this function is utterly unpredictable. And you chose to ride along the curve and it feels your growth is rapid and you accumulate enough to feel mastery in the local timescale. Maybe you become the boss of a local boutique run by multinational co-operation. Owning a happy family. Content. But how exactly do you know that you are at the global maximum of your function? (In mathematics, local maximum is a point like a peak in your county. But a global maximum is the highest point of the curve for inputs of negative to positive infinity, like Mount Everest, there is no other high point than this) The problem is on either side, you will feel you lose altitude if you try to climb down and start another journey on a next mountain. Climbing down a mountain is as hard as climbing up. But, as I can see, lot of individuals, just do the same. They all have the highest point in their lives. Which only can be seen at the time of their death. It may feel different in value, like some might not consider monetary or material success as their highest point. But the problem is as they haven't explored all the pathways they could have taken in life, the potential of each individual is not reached most of the time. I would say it is rare someone hit absolute maximum in their lifetime. Maybe Jesus, Buddha and Tom Cruize did. Even they may have not reached full potential. This argument is clearly explained in the Sci-fi fiction movie (Lucy 2014) How to break beyond Local Maximums. There is no guaranteed way to do this. As you can understand mastery helps. But more importantly looking out to what to master is an important question in early life, before you commit your 10000 hours. Mastering wrong thing is the guaranteed way to be stuck in a local maximum. You can be a nice piano player and play inside the Town hotel rest of your life while you would never become next Beethoven. Or you might follow local tradition to become the best Bull rider in your town and end up paralyzed at 23 while you could have developed next Uber if you chose to become a programmer. As there are a zillion career choices finding your perfect match is even more difficult than finding a partner. One way we can attempt to do it, is by using randomness as part of any process we are doing. Mix it up. Explore some possibilities. Ask around some questions and be creative your own way. All the limits in life are created by us. There are no natural boundaries.

What is thinking in decades? This is not at all new. In eastern philosophy there is a method which you divide a 100-year human life into decades. First -> childhood. second -> play hood, third -> Beauty, youth, fourth -> power etc etc. However, I recently came across similar concept, where why we should think in decades. If you have read my previous article about next hour, I emphasize that why we should think about next hour and next hour only. But as you can see thinking about a decade ahead is paradoxical to that? Not at all. I will explain why it is not paradoxical and even contrarily wise to do that with 3 reasons. Bob Marley Why we should think in decades? I call this a new way of prioritizing your life. Imagine the important stuff in your life you are planning to do today. If it doesn't matter in 10 years, why does it matter now? Maybe you should start doing things which matters to your position in 10 years time. It may be time at the university, a commitment to a relationship, a decision you have been postponing to peruse a passion to become a piano player. Imagine you have excelled that new skill 10 years. 10000 hours. (approx 3 hours per day) Where you would be when that happen. Unless you are in the last decade of life, you would be in a happy place. Did you know this is exactly what is meant to prioritize important tasks above urgent tasks in Eisenhower prioritization principle? Do the thing which matters in 10 years. And do it every day. What happens when you think in decades? Thinking in decades is not only a prioritization principle. It is also a tool for lessen the anxiety if you started to think in days or weeks. Just like thinking in an hour doesn't allow you to think about consequences thinking in decades deviate your target so far, that you cannot see a meaningful progress in your current task. For someone who is practicing a creative skill or a task, this reduces the performance anxiety. And you are free to experiment and not have a progression at all. Can fully engage in the task without thinking about the outcome. Only thing which matters in that case is the persistent repetitive action. Like a muscle which slowly accumulate strength and form, your skill will develop after some time. It is inevitable that happen, as you're executing a tiny step of a long-term plan. Be careful what you wish for! This also leads to the third point I want to discuss in this article. Which is if and when you are thinking in decades, you just have to be well aware of your current choices. Whatever you are choosing to do, you are going to do it for decades. Will you be happy being in your current job for a decade? will you be happy somewhere else in your relationship? Will you feel fulfilled if you built a house? Or you could travel the countryside in a Mobile. I do not know what that is you're choosing to do. But make sure you are feeling fresh and powerful when you are doing it today. Then only you will be able to do it for a decade. And nobody will be able to stop you. Even if it is yourself. Imagine bob Marley, Bill gates, and George W bush. Will these guys quit music, being entrepreneurs or being politician, if you ask them to do? No, they loved what they were doing. That is the key. Find that thing you would do for a decade and make yourself a little bit happy every day.

This blog is full of speculation. It is not scientific at all. Most of the time, the speculations themselves are silly. Some might call even foolish. But it suddenly occurred to me, all this time these silly speculations, were indeed serving a great purpose. They work as placeholders for the truth, otherwise which could have just been an empty void. Imagine life about 2000 years ago in the greatest emperor on earth. In ancient Rome. With great monuments and victorious streets full of people. Yet, if you compared a commoner from that era to the one from today, we could see who has more speculations. We have free information, accessible to everyone about even the latest advancements of science. We can go back in reasoning, most of the things until we reach to the edge of the modern science. Even philosophically we have a vast sea of knowledge accumulated from thousands of thinkers over millennia. So, we can see chances of speculation are less in the mind of the modern man as we are fed with facts most of the time. There is no time or place for speculation But this accumulation of information sphere did not happen overnight. If that ancient Greek philosopher, did not ask foolish questions and try to answer them foolishly, nobody would have made a movement of thinking about making better and better answers. So, the idea of everything is made out of water, in that era, is as important as idea of everything is made out of elements and subatomic particles. As the former, acted as a placeholder for someone to question it and speculate more and gave rise to the latter after an experiment and research. Modern science works in a similar way. It all starts with a hypothesis and speculation In scientific method we start with a hypothesis. Hypothesis by definition is a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation. As you can see it is almost a speculation, except it uses limited evidence available. Now imagine the man in Rome. He does not have limited evidence. So, his life was full of speculation. But they served the function of holding a question, until evidence accumulated for over centuries to properly answer his question. I can speculate, that even subatomic particles are indefinitely divisible. And there is no future. I can speculate that there is no good or evil in the nature, that it is entirely a human made concept. I can speculate Everything disappears when I am dead. They are not truths themselves. True. But, until I replace them with better hypothesis and better arguments, they will let me keep questioning the assumptions. So, next time when someone comes up with a foolish answer in a meeting, just respect, that they filled a void otherwise would prevail in human knowledge. Act of speculation itself will create the opportunity.

Background - self help I have been busy studying self help and positive thinking all my teenage years. And I made good use of them to excell in my career. However, as you already know, I missed the whole point. By limiting myself to one subject and one path, and commiting to that I made a mistake. Opportunity cost of not making correct choices in life are huge. And the sad part of it is I have no idea of this alternate route. But, indirectly that made me a wise person. Here I am faced with yet another challenge. It feels like a mountaineer struggling to climb an eight thousander. I can see the summit, yet there is a blizzard and I am asked to go down and back to my home country. So then the question, what all those self help books taught me wrong. I am tough, I am punctual, I am manifesting like they asked me to do. Yet things do not happen the way I want them to happen. What is the wrong thing I am doing in life? Next hour Philosophical routes So I turned into philosophy. All my middle life I am a devotee to aged wisdom of generations of philosophers. I do it out of necessity than by random choice. I do not byheart phrases of socates wisdom to appear wise in front of friends. Yet I read so I can solve the problem of life once and for all. And I was amazed how much all these Eastern and western thinkers knew about themselves. I was humbled, tossed up like a trashcan blown away by a great vortex of wisdom. At the end I felt empty. I couldn't find a time and a place where anyone exist. Like a leaf, a feather, a droplet I drifted. One might call it a cessation of existence, or depression. Yet, here I am writing about the philosophical experience in crude terms. It must be paradoxical. As writing a blog article is not something done by someone who do not wish to have aspiration. How can I convert, or make a connection with ageless wisdom of ancient philosophers and self help gurus. That was my problem. As an example, when I examine concept of time philosophically I see there is no evidence for past or future. Which I have explained in detail in this blog. Yet when I look at self help publications, half of them are about time management and manifestation about future. Which doesn't even exist! Aren't these all bunch of lies? I asked myself. What I can do about future. This is where I decided to introduce the next hour principle. Next hour principle Next hour principle. As for the daily living I decided I am going to pretend there is next hour. It is short. It is tangible, unlike tomorrow or next week. And it is important as well. A day is made up of 24 next hours. If I was able to tackle the next hour well, there will be another next hour after that. At the moment I do not have to worry what is there. I only have to focus on this hour. The hour next to that do not exist. I do not want to argue myself into anything less than an hour. I have done it in the past, and that will inevitably lead to unpleasant nihilistic philosophical realms. Which have little practical value, but great objective and philosophical value. Hence, for the next hour I will focus on work. Writing few scentences adding to this article. Wash my cloths. Take a little walk. Something I can partially complete in an hour. Even if it is productive or non productive it doesn't matter. Even if its paid non paid it doesn't matter. I would not be worried about this afternoon or tomorrow while doing that. What do you think? Will it work for you? Would you try that?

Value of truth From early life in my life, I was told not to lie. By teachers, by parents by tutors' mentors and numerous adults. And with great respect I believed them. And I try to adhere to the protocol of the society, as far as I can and knew I was doing a wrong thing when and if I told a lie to my six-year-old friend at school. Then you may question me why I asked you to lie. Not to others not for any gain. And strangely why you should lie to yourself? I can explain, with good intentions. Unavoidable lies hmmmmm... As the life unraveled, I realized not everything I was told by all those who told me not to lie were truth, not all the time. And mostly because they did not know they were wrong. As an example, my teachers often told me to get good education and once you put your effort now, you can have a relaxed life when you're an adult. You will get a nice job and nice car and set for the rest of the life with a stable income. They didn't tell me the school system is built for the cooperate system, and majority of the kids would merely land on the ladder with a salary. And I will have to pay with time for the rest of my life to get that paycheck month after month to cash out for the stack of bills I have to pay for all the "luxurious" expenses of daily living. My parents and my teachers didn't know about the society machines as much as I know now. For that I can thank them for making me literate, so I can read and think for my own like a philosopher. A subject we were never taught in the school. Maybe cooperate machine would run out of labor if everyone became a philosopher and thought about themselves. Do not get me wrong. I am as human as anyone. I greed over a billion dollars to fuel my unending tastes the modern world has to offer. Including a luxurious ride in a cruise ship on my retirement. But when the wisdom is ripe, I can totally step down from the stupid game and see my way into the peace and happiness admis chaos and the noise of the greedy world. Now I pity politicians, murderers and robbers. They took the easy way to ascend to the same objectives I tried to accomplish following rules, without realizing they were the rules made by humans. Not gods. Maybe Kings and fellow humans like politicians' dictators and robbers. But clearly in jungles there are no rules, and everything flows naturally, with fear survival and greed. Ethics? Is that even a thing? Why should you lie to yourself? I apologies for deviating from the topic. But the fact is we all lie to ourselves all day every day. Philosophically speaking, tomorrow is a lie. As there is no evidence for it. Nobody knows what is going to happen, that is not created. But with past experience we can predict that the sun will rise, it might rain. If its winter, there will be snow. And if its spring there will be blossoms. But as for the stock market and trump news we can be markedly wrong with our predictions. But think about it for a moment, if tomorrow does not yet arrive, anything said and done now about tomorrow is technically a lie. And in this sense, and in this sense only, that I asked you to lie to yourself about tomorrow. Instead of predicting you will die of your cancer, you can lie to yourself you will live one more day. It doesn't matter there is a less chance. Instead of thinking you will lose your hockey game you can lie to yourself you will win. You will win, or you will lose are both lies until the match is played and it's a thing of the past. Only when we are at the other side of the game that we will surely know what it was. So, there is no harm lying about it in a positive way as there is no way of knowing the truth. Why suffer today for a tomorrow which never occurred? If you're a robber you can lie to yourself you will never get caught, and if you're a policeman you can lie that you will catch the thief in the act tomorrow. Same is true for the Judge. So, what are you going to lie to yourself about tonight?

Wabi-Sabi is a Japanese concept, of finding beauty in the imperfect, incomplete and impermanence world. The roots of the concept travel deep into Buddhist traditions and philosophy. Anyone who is in search of meaning of life would have understood that the nature by default is an ever-changing impermanent flux of energy and matter. It is really not necessary to chase behind what "matter" is and what "energy" is. We can call it even a universal soup, if you do not like the name matter or energy. Whatever, you name it, it would just be a name, and the thing you point, is going to change from one form to another with the passage of time so you can never exactly point to anything before it disappear, and same is applied to yourself too. I would call this philosophers' nightmare. Some may call it a "crisis in existence". Once, one really understands the true nature of the things, there is the question of meaning of life. The validity of all the big questions of life disappears. Any question, any problem would disappear when we consider universal time scale. As, these are just local phenomena in a specific time in a specific consciousness. Imperfect So, how can someone make sense of the world? Otherwise, which has no meaning? Beauty of the impermanence / imperfectness -> Wabi Sabi This is where wabi-Sabi comes in as a philosophy. Instead of looking for perfection and permanence, this invites us to see the beauty in the imperfection. Instead of keeping perfectly square tidy house, happiness can be found in untidy, ragged edged places. If you take a walk in the nature often you would see that, naturally forests, trees and bushes are chaotic. They tend not to make patterns often. They might make "apparent" patterns to the human eye. Like fractal patterns which found in nature. Yet even these patterns do not repeat themselves infinitely. Except in mathematical concepts, infinity is not found in nature as patterns. But we can call infinity is found as a "change". So, these smart Japanese people have found ways to find happiness in their imperfect gardens, by embracing the Wabi-Sabi nature. Even in Japanese Poetry Like Hiku and Tanka, they use uneven numbers of words, to represent the uneven nature of it. Kintsugi is a Japanese technique of repairing broken ceramic bowls with an artistic twist. Once repaired, with the markings of imperfections they see. Often, I am confronted by perfectionists when I do not care about the wrinkles in my shirts, curls on my hair and broken English I use in my posts. Sometimes, they criticize loopholes in my arguments, the imperfect nature of my philosophy and paradoxical effects of the big picture of what I write. Do, I care about these comments and views? Absolutely not. I enjoy making art from words, like Jean-Michel Basquiat. What fun is there to life if everything is a perfect square and everyone walks in a line according to the rules of the society? So, what is imperfect in your world. Or are you worried about taking action due to perfectionism?

What is currency? A currency is anything that is widely accepted as a medium of exchange, allowing people to trade goods and services without the need for direct barter. Whether it is coins, banknotes, or digital money, a currency derives its value not merely from the material it is made of but from the shared trust that others will accept it in exchange for something valuable. In essence, currency is a tool that enables the transfer of value within a society. If you have read my previous article on money, you may have noticed that the currency has only value as long as the people who use it belive that it is valuable. The moment trust is lost, even a bar of gold would be just a piece of shiny metal, can't eat, can't even drink. Paying attention What does currency can do for you? If we stop being philosophical for a while, having a bar of gold inherited from your parents will make you rich. In todays world everyone agrees on its value. Hence you can buy a lot of things if you sell this bar of gold. Let's imagine you inherited 1kg worth bar of gold from your grandmother. If you sell it for spot value today will worth 130000 USD. What will you choose to buy from this? If you lack imagination choose from the following list. • A family home • A luxury sports car • A university education • A small business or franchise • A sailboat or modest yacht • A collection of rare artwork • A round-the-world family holiday • A year's salary for several employees • Hundreds of premium smartphones or laptops • Thousands of books for a personal library • Farmland or agricultural property • A large solar power system for a home • High-end camera and filmmaking equipment • A grand piano • A collection of fine jewellery • Medical treatment or surgery • A lifetime supply of many everyday essentials • A luxury watch collection • A fleet of motorcycles • A substantial investment portfolio What you are actually buying? If you take your time to think about it carefully what you're actually buying is an experience. Yes, you go to the university to get a degree. But university itself is an experience. The experience you gained there will help you to gain more currency for you to gain more experience. Infact, it works just like an investment. Investment itself is postponing the experience, in hope of increasing your capital to gain more experience. A grad piano, agricultural property, collection of books, a yacht. When I think about all of these I can see the value of every one of these comes through experience. Which gains access to my mind, through the sensory door. I can walk through the freshly bought meadows of the Texas farm 🚜 😌 and experience the freedom. And I cannot do that from my shabby room. So the next natural contemplation Or conclusion is that if currency is buying me an experience, then what is valuable for human beings is an experience. The form of these experiences stored or generated in our brains is as thoughts. How we can formulate a thought is by paying attention. Can you see where I am going with this? This is why even at poverty some people are happy and even billioneires commit suicide. Attention- the real currency of life So the true currency of life is nothing but attention. And the thoughts generated by this process. Some people unfortunately never get exposed to this truth and chase material success their entire lives. Some, just forget to keep the quality of their thoughts in mint condition to feel the richness of life. I am not telling that we have a choice in the process of thought generation. But if we agree to the fact we are exisisting and living in a body, then there are means to paying attention to things that would generate quality thoughts anywhere on earth. It could be a jungle, a town, a village, an empty room, a shabby hut or a boat, that you are living. Still there is plenty to look upto. So, what are you paying attention now?

Knives out - a surgeon. Have you ever used a knife? If you haven't used a one, better go check it out. You will see it has started to rust since it's last use. In fact common kitchen knives do not rust fast, Yet they do, at a microscopic level at a faster rate. If you do not know, ask a surgeon. He would tell that a surgical knife starts to rust as soon as it is exposed to environment. So, they come in a special package sealed. And once it is in contact with body fluids it starts the process of oxidization within seconds to minutes. Having a tangible effect on its performance, within minutes. Even after few minutes of exposure, the level of precision needed for the surgery may not be there due to this process and he will have to replace the blade entirely. As, these are reusable there is no problem, however we cannot throw away our kitchen Knives every day! So, we have to sharpen them before reuse. Rusty Knife. Story of the Lumberjack Maybe you have experience in cutting some wood. And just like the surgeon's knife after using the axe for a while, the lumberjack will find that it needs a bit of sharpening. At this point he has two choices. Either stop his cutting, and sharpen his axe, or continue to chop wood at an increasingly decreasing rate. Guess what, most of them would do. They will stop, and sharpen their axe, before starting again. This not only gives a rest to the body, but to the mind as well. You can call this a tactical break. But, from the point of view of the employer, you may feel reluctant to pay for the time spent for the "Resting and sharpening of instruments". Like that is not part of the process of cutting wood. And you do not have to be a lumberjack or a surgeon to find these phenomena, in practice. Even a nursing practitioner doing a 12-hour shift, or a driver doing a long journey, a machine operator, or even a bartender would need some rest from time to time. Even during their supposed working hours. And if you are the employer, it is better to understand this fact and ease the schedule for such unless you want to fill the time with less efficient hours from exhausted workers. No matter how many CCTV cameras you establish to monitor the workers, might not help in the long run preventing exhaustion, and burnout. Rusty minds of Student life. If you are a student or someone working most of the day with creative activities or even something boring like mathematics. You would need a rest as minds get rusty just as knives. Which should be pre-determined and scheduled into your busy day. Otherwise, there can be a crash, and the internal machine might break beyond repair. Do not think this is going to reduce your productivity in anyway. Paradoxically it is going to increase your productivity. Like the axe of a lumberjack cuts better and more wood. If you are still not sure Maybe you should learn the diffuse thinking mode, which I gained insight from Barbara Okley. Yes, the famous and slow math professor. So, when you are well rested, just leave a thank you comment. :)

Table manners We were having dinner in a nice beachfront restaurant, and were welcomed with a deep red watermelon juice, which captured the taste of a fully ripe watermelon of tropical kind. Once done the glasses were on the table with, a little bit of manners left in the bottom of each one, a tiny bit of watermelon juice to remind ourselves of the taste just a few seconds ago flooded our tastebuds. Lilly White was looking at them curiously and could not wonder the two cups which were kept few feet apart were containing the same amount of watermelon Juice in them. "Look father, the two glasses are the same." "Well, the glasses look exactly the same, but there are differences as you can see." I was thinking to myself. So, I kept the glasses adjacent to each other to show Lilly White what I meant exactly. "See, although they looked exactly same from a distance, they are not! They have different amount of juice in them." So, no. They are not exactly the same. light bulb Light bulbs Lilly White reluctantly agreed to this temporarily. This time, she looked around with her eyes with a scrutiny look searching every corner of the restaurant with a mind which was constantly distracted by the nearby crashing waves. And few seconds later she had her gleaming eyes on light bulbs, Like she has found a Ruby! her innocent face was decorated with a genuine smile of a miner! "Light bulbs, Look, they are exactly the same!". I glanced over to my back to see, her point, and to prove her point wrong. And figured out this time it is far more difficult. I cannot bring them together. And it is becoming more philosophical deviating from the physical. Maybe, I need a little bit of imagination this time. "Yes, they look the same. Pretty darn good observation." But, I know measured with a scale of enough sensitivity, those two exactly same light bulbs will have different Masses, deviated from each in several micrograms. So, I gave up describing micrograms, nanograms and picograms. "Let's stick to the fact that they are different from each other from some measure". Milky way But, that is not the only things differ from each other. When I took a walk alone on the beach at night, the starry night presented me with thousand stars. From the speck of a rock in 2/3ds of the milky way, I could see them twinkling. For the measure of my eyes, some of them looked similar, except where they appeared in the sky. Yet, with my scientifical brain, I could see how deceiving my eyes were. None of these two stars appeared similar were in-fact similar. Vastly differ from their location, distance and even amount of heat they generate. But for me, they all looked similar as I was not carrying my telescope with me. Just "stars" was good enough for thousand years for thousands of humans, except for the ones who are very curious. Meaning of life For the curious kind, they will see none of the trees are similar. Neither two ants. Not two rocks. No two waves. Not even two sand grains on the beach, although there are millions, billions of them. Constantly exchanging atoms, the matter seems to be in a constant fluctuation from tiny amounts to long distances. Chaotic is to find anything constant. As, the meaning of life demands, and mandates things persist over time. Otherwise, where is the meaning in a flux? But crabs were happy in their borrowed shells from sea snails. Thinking about their tiny fearful exitance than philosophical questions. I walked pass them to the hut in the middle of the night, thinking about how can I answer Lilly white tomorrow when she asked about the meaning of her fluctuating life. God help me with answers if he knows any.

A dinner out Yesterday I had a dinner with myself. I sat at an empty table fixed for 8 7 of them were imaginary, and I thought I was real yet Just before the desserts I woke up There were none alive I was talking to the blonde who had a generous smile She shared her Pearls and diamonds on her plate with everyone else who dine Empty dinner table Her friend who was not tall at all giggled all the time Her cat eyes were fixed on a handsome dark friend of mine Who had 3 kids a dog and a fine wife hope she wouldn't mind My boss sat next to the blonde so he could occasionally keep his hand on her thigh In his mid fifties he looked plum and bloated with cooperate cash Which he converts into fat in his liver to deposit secretly in his heart every fortnight Which nobody hoped survived another night Joker sat on the head of the table, he took us by surprise When he cracked jokes at everyone of us occasionally swallowing pieces of swine With sips of fine red wine. Lesbian lovers lingering in the dark corner were never brought under spotlight They were wasting their energy on earth Was the general consensus of all other X and Ys But not a word spoken not once, not twice And I sat and waited as long as I can remember feeling weird without knowing why? Only to wake up this morning to know I was dreaming and everyone was in my mind. Perhaps I was there, because I wanted to witness it all in my own eyes Otherwise, an empty life Epilogue: Dinner out why you should dine alone? It was true I was at the table reserved for 8 people. It was true all of them were imaginary except myself. It was false it was a dream as I was there. So technically 1/8th of it was true. Unfortunately I had not talked with a blonde girl. I just had dinner alone. Instead, I just wrote down what it could have been if I was surrounded by all those lovely happy people. Someone said it is a brave thing to dine alone. Like a lion would do. Like a lone elephant would do. I have done it once or twice. Maybe I just like the company of my own imagination. The greatest asset that anyone could ever have. So, my advice is to dine alone. Just to know how it feels like to treat yourself a royal. You may feel lonely at first but imagine an oak or a redwood, standing tall all their lives battling each and every gale and thunderstorm. There is something surely charming about it.

In top of a hill there lived an old monk. He had an old tea cup, which he used to make a cup of tea in every morning. It was such an antique old porcelain tea cup with decorations. One day a young monk who was travelling to the town, visited the monastery. He stayed overnight and rested. And following morning he was served with a cup of tea. While he was enjoying a cup of tea, he asked the old monk. A broken Tea cup That tea cup looks really old and really valuable. I wonder what it would sell for if I were to sell it in the market in the town. The old monk smiled and replied. "Tea cup is broken. It has no value". The young monk was perplexed, he wanted to know why? He took the cup in his hand and examined. And claimed, "it is not broken, it looks perfectly in good shape. Why did you say it's broken?" No. The tea cup will one day slip and fall either from my shaky hands or from someone else. Or else the earth will shake and it will fall. If not it will wear down over the years beyond repair. So the tea cup is already destined to have one of these endings. So, the teacup is already broken. The mindfulness is not holding onto your thoughts tightly. It is about knowing what changes and accepting or even loving it as it is. There will be no pain when the teacup falls on the ground. The young monk stayed silent for the rest of the morning and left the monastery wiser than he had been.. The broken tea cup. Epilogue: Sometimes mindfulness practise can be tricky. If we do not know what to do. Mindfulness is not merely being aware of the present moment and holding it tight. There must be wisdom at play it to be effective. The wisdom is what identify the changing nature of thoughts and material. It doesn't matter you're a day trader, a writer, an artist or even a president of a country. It doesn't matter where you live currently, in a house, hospital or prison. It doesn't matter you walk with two legs one leg or even wheelchair bound. You can just be aware of whatever which comes to your mind and notice the impermanent nature of it. This thing which comes to our mind was impermanent in the past. In the future. And even the moment we speak it is just there only as long as those factors which govern its existence are helping it. Let this object be fear, anger, sadness, happiness, peace. An animal, a bird, a sensation or a dream you project about future. Even a cancer cannot go beyond your body. Body is the limit for the disease and death. Just like a tea cup it is already broken. What about the mind? Mind can exist only within this impermanent body. It will disintegrate and may or may not readjust itself. Infact these changing nature of mind is so obvious in the living being than in death. Once we focus our attention to this impermanence we will be able to live a fulfilled life without ever having to cry over broken teacups of life.