Lessons from an exercise session (or two)

       Yesterday, after over eight years without any serious exercise and having gained over 20 kilos (44 lbs.) of body weight, I somehow challenged myself to complete 50 push-ups in a go. I am amazed that I, somehow, did it. I am actually amazed that I could do a push up at all, but fifty- that was just awesome!

       Today, I tried to repeat that feat. I managed all of twelve push-ups before I collapsed, unable to do any more. Maybe I had burned out all my energy yesterday. Maybe my muscles had been damaged by yesterday's effort. Maybe the earth's gravitational pull was much lower yesterday. Maybe God (probably fuelled by my lack of belief in His/Her/Its existence or relevance) was trying to freak me out trying to figure out what happened. Maybe the clothes I wore yesterday were much more comfortable.

       Whatever the reason, I did something yesterday and I could not repeat it today. Perhaps, yesterday was just my day. Just like a footballer (I am not American, so when I say football, it means a sport in which you actually kick the ball around) who scores a hat-trick one day but can't get a single shot on target until the seventieth minute, when he gets red-carded for a reckless challenge. And suspended for a month for that not-so-nice word he shared with the ref.

       While my second outing wasn't as bad as the unfortunate footballer's, it was pathetic compared to my first. But, there is one major factor I have overlooked, thus far. My first attempt was a challenge. I looked at myself, thought I couldn’t do it, then went ahead and proved myself wrong. The second outing was just an attempt to copy the first. It wasn't a real challenge. I knew, given the right situations, I could pull it off. I had done it twenty four hours before.

       While my first attempt was fairly impromptu and more or less unconscious, the second time involved a lot of thinking. Did I plan on a daily exercise regimen? Did I want to equal what I did the day before or go further? Did I find yesterday's effort rewarding? Would it be as rewarding if I repeated it today? All these thoughts must have been playing in my mind as I positioned my hands and began the session.

       Perhaps the knowledge that you can do something is detrimental to sudden success. Because, then, you start to envision the things that follow instead of focusing on the task at hand. Perhaps, some amount of self-doubt is necessary, in order to keep your crosshairs on the bull's-eye. If you go into a situation where you know you can do it just because you have done it before, perhaps your knowledge can lead to your undoing.

       I agree that the knowledge you can do something can be more useful in the long term. It builds confidence that is based on real experience, which comprises both successes and failures. But being confident based on a single success or two can stop a mission in its seedling phase. I am unlikely to start a real exercise regimen soon. Perhaps if I had started with 10-15 push-ups and continued that for a week then increased it steadily, I might have continued with it. But, knowing that I can do 50 after years of not exercising at all makes me complacent. And, the fact that I could barely cross ten today makes me unwilling to try again tomorrow.

       Here's my conclusion based on two mornings of physical effort- If you want to complete a challenge, such as getting 50 push-ups at a go was for me, tackle it head on. It makes the process less rational and much easier to tackle. However, if you want to take on a long term objective such as exercising daily, starting low and building up is the better approach. Of course, if you have run both a 100 yard dash and a marathon in your life, you will know what I am getting at.

Deception: The Most Human Of All Arts

Everyone is told as a child- “Do not tell a lie.” Yet, human nature dictates that almost everyone, sooner or later, decides that it is not in their best interests to follow such a moral code. Despite George Washington and Mohandas Gandhi, founding fathers of two great nations, being revered in their respective countries for not breaking this code (Whether or not they did not tell lies at all is not relevant to my rant), their successors have been among the many blatant violators of the borders between truth an falsehood.

       But I am not making moral judgments here, as I am not qualified to do so. If anyone is to stone the liars, it should be someone who has never lied themselves. To the best of my knowledge, both Washington and Gandhi are dead. (And even if they are alive, they have to finish stoning their fellow countrymen- who add up to over one and a half billion- before they can even think of reaching out to me.)

       Why do we lie? While people in various fields might give various answers (e.g. Our developed cerebral cortices, The development of language, Greed, Lack of adequate moral upbringing, To protect oneself from the results of one’s actions, Cynicism, Satan), I think the real reason is simpler. We lie because we can.

       Lies come in various shapes and sizes. The ubiquitous “white lie” is a phenomenon that has entrenched itself in the human mind so deep that it becomes natural, even when it is unnecessary. Lies said to hide someone’s mistakes are almost as prevalent. Then, there are lies that are told solely for profit, usually at the expense of somebody else.

       We usually expect to be lied to in our lives. Yet we make a big fuss when we find out we’ve been lied to. We get angry at the person that lied. But, we usually get angrier at ourselves for not having spotted the lie sooner. Often, we would also have lied had we been on the other side of the same situation. Perhaps our lies wouldn’t have been as good or as deep. Perhaps we couldn’t have pulled it off so skillfully. Perhaps that is why we are angry in the first place.

       The art of telling a good lie is an integral part of various facets of human life. Whether it be political propaganda, a placebo your physician prescribes you, the elaborate stunts in a blockbuster movie or the trick of a stage magician, deception is an important thing. Each of these is trying to make you feel better, despite knowing that what they are doing is essentially telling a lie. And, it works.

       Lies work best in the short term, when an immediate result is needed. A politician or party that keeps on deceiving people will end up on the wrong side of history. However, in a crisis, they may need to tell a few lies to keep people calm, even when they have no real answers. The same is the case with placebo medications. They can be very useful in certain conditions, but if continued for a prolonged period, the patient will continue with the same response.

       The actor and the conjurer are a different story. We go to the theater (or rent/download a movie) or a magic show expecting something that we do not see in our daily lives. We ask for deception. And, that is what they give us. We know the lead actor is not fighting with three bullets lodged somewhere in his chest. We know magicians (unlike pigs) can’t fly.  Yet, we suspend our disbelief. And we get entertained.

       Practicing the art of deception is a real balancing act. You have to sell the lie just right- like the porridge in the tale of Goldilocks. If your lie is too cold, it will be caught. If it is too hot, people will smell something fishy. The expert artists of the trade of deception spend years sharpening their act.

       Any introductory book on the art of conjuring will discuss the palming of an object. The real secret is not in any particular configuration of the hand, but in moving the hand equally smoothly with or without the palmed object. This involves practice. While practicing, you are not trying to deceive anyone but yourself. You are trying to live your lie, to make it natural. Only when it feels natural will it look natural.

       Confidence artists take this to another level. They really know how to live their lie. These are the people who can sell ice to an Eskimo and sand to a Bedouin. They have to do it in order to keep themselves safe from both the suspicion of their marks and the eyes of the law. And, since they know they have a lot to lose and even more to gain, they spend every resource and every unit of time trying to better their “artistic skills”.

       Not all of us are confidence artists. Most of us only tell white lies most of the time. But even a white lie has to be convincing to be believed in. And unless you are lying to a child (I won’t judge you nor ask why), you had better believe in your lie before you try to sell it.
     


The best lies are those that make you feel good even when you find out that you were being lied to.

1152

[ This is a work of fiction. All characters and places in this work are fictional. The stunts performed were done in a controlled environment under strict supervision. No living animals were harmed in the writing of this work. The author does not condone acting out this work, in whole or in part, in real life: Any reader/non-reader that does so, is doing so at his/her/its own risk and the author shall not be responsible/accountable for any untoward occurrence arising from such a misconceived endeavor. ]

Counting the seconds since he had taken his last breath, he looked up through the hole in the ceiling, at the sun. 323, 324, 325… It would be visible for exactly 827 more seconds. 826, 825, 824, 823… The exercise served no purpose, but he had done it daily for years. Excluding those days when there was no sun, of course. He wondered why he did it, of all the possible reasons. But the wondering interfered with his counting, so he focused again. 788, 787, 786…

       

       A little more than thirteen minutes later, he exhaled. It seemed pointless. Yet, at times, it seemed the only thing that made any sense. For 19 minutes and 12 seconds every 24 hours, he sat still, holding his breath, watching the sun for the only time it was available to him. Everything else could wait. Including the teardrop he had so carefully stopped in its tracks as it prepared to roll off his left eye. He didn’t want the drop to interfere with his time in the sun.

       

       It had been so long, he didn’t even remember why he was here. Had he been brought here forcefully, or was he a volunteer? It didn’t even matter anymore. The only face he ever saw was his own, that too on a puddle of water that formed when it rained through the hole in the ceiling. And that face looked nothing like the sun that he missed when it rained liked that. The sun was warm, bright and vibrant. It did not have bloodshot eyes and a nose even a prizefighter would be ashamed of. And, most of all, it lacked a hideous grin that could never be fixed.

       

       But, now, the sun was gone. It would only come back tomorrow. The twenty three hours and forty minutes until then had to be spent. Much as he would have liked to, he couldn’t just sleep till then. He might wake up too early and be too anxious by the time it came back to hold his breath. Or he might wake up too late and miss the sun altogether. And while there was a genuine possibility that he might never wake up at all, that was not something he could bank on.

       

       He looked at the wall behind him. At the seven bricks he had marked. Five of them had 453 dots on them, the other two had 452. If he cared, it was a Sunday. But, the sun had already ended on his day. He picked up a piece of burnt bread that remained from his last meal and marked a dot on the sixth brick. Then, he flung the piece of bread upwards. It went through the hole in the ceiling and moved towards the left, then out of sight. The north wind. It meant a chance of rain.

       

       Too bad, he thought. Although, it might finish raining before the twenty three and a half hours was over. But, he would still have to see that hideous face. And each time he saw it, he realized that the face had looked more ready to fall off the bone that it clung to. How he wished it would fall off once and for all, so he could look at something better. His broken bones and rotting flesh would probably be much better to stare at.

       

       As soon as the thought struck him, it went away. It had been 900 seconds since the sun left. A quarter of an hour; but he rarely counted in hours. An hour was too long to count the time the sun appeared and too short to count when the sun would reappear. He counted time in seconds and days. At first, he had tried to count weeks, which had led to his brick calendar. It was awful, because counting in weeks led to counting in months, seasons and years.

       

       Months meant remembering birthdays and holidays. He wished he had never been born. Holidays didn’t exist in his life. Seasons made him wonder about the migrating birds. If that raven had not built its nest on the hole in his ceiling 643 days ago, he would not even know that birds still existed. He would also not know that raw raven tasted better than burnt bread, but that was another matter. Years were the most terrible. Every time 52 weeks and one day- or occasionally fifty two weeks and two days- went by, it would mean that he had gone around the sun, his only friend and ally, in a complete circle. And yet, his friend only visited him for 1152 seconds a day, if at all.

       

       His friend had visited him and gone. It would not come back for at least another twenty three hours, possibly forty seven or even seventy one. That would be waiting too long. And maybe he would have to see that hideous face again; over and over again while he waited for his friend. What if he tore that face off? No, it would be even more visible when he held it in his hand than when it was reflected in a pool of water. How could he get away from that monstrosity?

       

       With a sudden rage, he smashed the hideous face on the wall. Something warm trickled down the left side of the face, along the eye that had been trying to drop a tear. He had forgotten to let the drop fall. He did not normally forget. Well, it did not forget to drop now.

       

       The transparent drop fell, accompanied by hundreds of other drops. These drops were probably red, but there wasn’t enough light to be sure. In fact, there might not be enough light to be sure for two days, maybe even three or four.

       

       Another bout of rage. This time, he smashed not the face, but the skull that held it in place. Then, he smashed a hand that had placed itself on the part of the skull that had been smashed on the wall. A brick fell off.

       

       Suddenly, he saw his friend. It was outside, waiting. He pushed with all his might. A few more bricks fell off, enabling a hideous face, a head and a neck that was attached to see daylight. Real daylight, not the type that appeared through a hole in the ceiling. It was pure, it was bright, it was warm. And it had been 3170 days.

       

       936, 937, 938… His friend was getting better by the second. It was majestic. The light and colors took over his eyes. The warmth took over his body. Then, he saw the drops of red fall off his face and onto the green grass below. Green and grass, words he had forgotten the meaning of, until now. He pushed through the wall one last time. Freedom!

       

       And as his body fell through the wall, he looked at the sun. No more waiting. His body fell onto a puddle of red on a floor of green. Then, it went cold, as a pair of eyes on a hideous face looked upon a friend for the last time. 1153.

Behavior: Why do I do the things I do?

I think it is time I put myself on the proverbial "hot seat" and ask myself the tough question- "Why do I do the things I do?" Of course, this question is tough to answer, not least because a "Why" question often leads to multiple interpretations of the questions itself. For example, "Why does the sun rise in the east?" can be a scientific question meaning "What makes it appear that the sun moves upwards from the eastern horizon when it first appears at the beginning of a day?" but it can also be a linguistic statement that means "That is just the way things are." or a theological statement meaning "The invisible hand of an omnipotent deity moves the universe in various ways."

And, since I am not going into a deep discourse on theology (which invariably finds its way into many of the things I write), astronomy, semantics and am trying to adress my personal behavioral traits and actions, I should rephrase my tough question to "What are the factors that directly influence my actions in an observable way on a regular basis?", something that has more well defined limits.

It would be reasonable to assume that human actions are the external representations of human thought, especially when there is a logical choice between two or more somewhat acceptable possible actions. So, the factors that effect my choice, compared to another person's, are:

A. My range of acceptable behavior

B. My active choice and the mechanism by which I make it

Now, the range of acceptable behavior is something that varies between people and cultures. In fact, it also varies between two different circumstances for the same person. I may consider physical violence to be unacceptable in most situations, but if there is a reasonable threat of violence against myself, I might find it acceptable to be the first to the punch. Now, whether I fling my fist or not (and whether it is a hook or an uppercut) is a matter of choice.

That example might have seemingly blurred the line between acceptability and choice. Isn't what is acceptable to me simply a choice that I myself make? Perhaps. [It might be useful for me to acknowledge that I took a coffee break to ponder this point.] The thing is, while choice is the instantaneous and somewhat more conscious decision, acceptability is something whose lines have been created and molded over the years as a result of knowledge (individual and socio-cultural), experience and previous choices (especially when the latter have retrospectively been proved to be stupid decisions).

Now, as I realize that going deeper into the topic of acceptability will be a more profound discourse than I am prepared for at the moment, I have to tackle the question of personal choice. Why are my choices, given the same situation and a similar range of acceptable behavior, often different from another individual's? What makes my preferences different from yours?

Neurologically, it might be because we have different synapses in our central nervous system. Psychologically it might be because of differences in our personalities. Behaviorally, it might be because of our past experiences when given similar choices and how they turned out. Economically, it might be because we have different incentives that drive us. Theologically, it might be because one of us (probably me) is a sinner while the other is a saint. Logically, it might be because we are processing the same situation in completely different ways. Statistically, it might be because one of us (again, probably me) is an outlier, while the other is more towards the central tendency. [I wanted to put in a postmodern physics theory that says both of us make all possible choices in multiple different realities, but I resisted that urge, although I still mention it in these brackets.]

I accept that I have not really pin-pointed any specific factors in these few paragraphs. I've merely stated that acceptability and choice affect my behavior(and probably yours as well, although I wouldn't bet on it) and these are again influenced by further factors. But the purpose of writing this was not to reach an instantaneous conclusion, rather to break down a tough question into simpler parts. Perhaps I might think (and write) more on this topic on a further date. Until then, this write-up is just a reminder that the question is still alive.

Art of a different kind?

Art has been defined as that which has no purpose but itself. If I subscribed to a religious ideology, I would probably conclude that God is an artist. While I do not believe in an omnipotent creator that has humanlike personal attributes, such a creator would have to be an artist in creating a universe that has no real purpose. Even more profoundly, creating Man, a creature that exists for no real purpose than sustaining itself, could only be an artistic endavour.


Now, I am not religious. So, I am not writing to praise the virtues of a creator I do not subscribe to. Although, "Omni-artfulness" might be added to omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience as qualities of a divine being, such an addition is not mine to make. If any of my scanty readers has a decision-making power in any religious body, I would recommend they consider such an addition.


Before I get sidetracked into another unintended discourse on religion or on human psychology, I had better clarify the intent of this block of writing. It is the result of a bout of wandering thoughts, a disease I have been afflicted with for a long time. I have a curiosity complex, an innate desire to wonder how things work and why they are the way they are. Of course, I suspect everyone has a form of this affliction, but usually in a milder form or in one more limited in width.


My curiosity serves no real purpose, as far as I can see. I want to know how things work. But, the moment I work out one thing, I immediately focus on something else. No, I am not attention-deficit. I will usually work the how to a reasonable depth before I move on. It is usually only when the next logical step in the answering of the question is finding a use for the solution that I move on. Curiosity is like an art form for me. The only purpose it serves is to sustain itself.


I read quite a bit. It used to be mainly fiction that I was interested in, until I started writing fiction of my own. Then, I developed a gradual decrement in my taste for fantasy literature as I realized that my daydreams were often wilder than the novels I read. Often, while reading a novel, I would pause and imagine how I might myself have written the remainder. Usually, I would be disappointed in the authors plot and endings. I am not saying that I was more creative than the authors (after all, many of these books were international bestsellers), just that I could imagine plots that were more intriguing to me than the original works.


So, I slowly shifted to non-fiction. Now, I could not daydream the endings to these works. (Actually, I could. Unfortunately, that defeats the purpose of "non-fiction".) What I could do, however, was seek answers. I could read a work on any topic with a few questions I wanted answers to. If I realized that answers were not forthcoming, I would stop reading and change the topic. My topics of interest were not limited to a few fields of knowledge, however. I could (and still can) jump topics as far spaced as ancient Egyptian religion to microeconomic theory to cookbooks to self-help to technical knowledge inside the space of an hour.


But, I struggled to make a complete meal from my random grazings on these various pastures. I was gathering information from varied sources, but was not organizing it into knowledge that could be used for a logical purpose. Occasionally, as I tried to make sense of it all and put things into a semblance of order, I came to multiple loose ends, that were too short to tie up but too connected to be thrown away.


Then, one night, it struck me. I was actively seeking more and more information just to perpetuate my need for more and more information. I was not hoarding the information, however. I have forgotten or misplaced a lot of it and have wilingly given up even more. I was just accumulating it for no purpose other than making sure I always sought more of it. For me, it served no purpose other than itself. It was art.


While I might try to arrange this information into theories, the theories themselves are meant to serve no greater purpose. They too are art forms that have been created for the sole purpose of their own existence. Maybe, someday, some of it might make sense to somebody, somewhere. But for now, it is art, pure and simple. It exists for itself. And, if someday, it ceases to be art, perhaps it will turn into something useful.

Happinomics

I'm no economist. Not even close. But seeing how the world works, it makes sense for me to have an economic theory of my own. Everybody else has one.
The businessman who tries to maximize profits has one. The politician who spends time, effort and money on his campaign in order to garner more votes does too. The religious leader who uses prayers and piety as a bargaining tool between God and his followers does as well. Even the kid who barters his red candy for a blue one because he has too many red ones has his own economic theory.
While there at least are many theories as there are people, most of them are in a subconscious level. (I think there are a lot more theories than people, because many people have different theories for different commodities and for the same commodity under different circumstances. I could go on about this with examples, but that is better left for another time.) We do not think about all the pros and cons of our decisions, nor can we. But we are driven by incentives, and we should realize what our current incentives are.
Which brings me to my current theme. "Happiness Economics" is a fairly new growth in terms of econoic studies. Quantifying happiness is very difficult, because it is a subjective thing. The 0 to 10 scale is a commonly used tool in this field, mainly because we tend to think in the base ten numeric system.
[0-10 scale:: It is also used in quantifying other subjective things, eg. severity of pain and the apparent beauty of a person of the opposite gender. It is easy to assess by telling the people to raise the number of digits(fingers and thumbs) on their hands that they feel quantifies their happiness. The happiest folks will give you two high fives, and the least happy ones will five you two closed fists. But, some people who are extremely not happy may raise two middle digits at this idea. And while it suggests that someone who has lost a finger or two on their hand can never be as happy as someone who has all their digits intact can be (which might be the case, studies have shown unhappiness increases with loss of body parts), it also suggests that people with polydactyly (extra fingers and/or toes) should be on average, happier than their normal conterparts(not yet verified by studies).]


My economic theory, so far, is based mainly on "Happinomics", an idea that a person tries to achieve an economic state that will maximize both profits(monetary/material/social/spiritual- whatever may be relevant to the case) and happiness. If something is profitable but makes you unhappy, you are unlikely to try to achieve it, unless you belive that the profit may lead to happiness later on, that outweighs or at least balances your current unhappiness.

Happiness achieved by any trade-off is dependent on the initial expectations and how the final outcome measures in comparison to it. Let us take a hypothetical example of a character (Since the character is not a real one, it is a phantom. Let us give him a generic name- Jack. We may call him Jack Phantom.) who makes a trade-off of a certain units of currency (Let us assume 100 UCs) in any venture and would be reasonably satisfied (5 on a scale of 10) if he only got his investment back. Let us also assume that 100 UCs is not his life's savings, because Jack would be a real bad investor if he invested all his savings in a venture where he would be happy if he broke even.
Assuming it is a reasonable amount to him but not too high he might be at level 6 if he made 1% profit and at level 4 if he made 1% of loss. But he would not reach a level 10 if he made 5% profit. That is because happiness on returns is more of a logarithmic scale. He would more likely be at level 7 if he made 10% profit and at level 8 if he got back double of what he invested. Also, for the sake of symmetry,  he would be at level 3 at 10% loss and at level 2 at a 100% loss (all his investment down the drain). Bad?
It could be worse. If his investment is deemed illegal and he is fined much more than what he invested, he could go down even lower. The same could be the case if the investment seems to fe failing and he has to "throw in good money after  bad" in order to reclaim his 100UCs but all the money goes down the drain. However, the investment could also make huge profits. If his 100UCs of shares skyrocket to  five thousand UCs in value(50 times), he could easily be at level 9 or higher.

Let us assume another scenario. Perhaps Jack had invested with expectations for profit. If he would be at level 5 with 1% profit, his happiness levels for different levels of returns would be more like the chart below (forgive me if it looks shabby, it was done in haste with a basic image editor). Even if it grows a hundred times to ten thousand UCs, he would be only at level 8 (where he would be at with 100% profit in the above scenario).

Another scenario might see Mr. Phantom investing his money into a failing business venture of a close friend or family member. He is reasonably satisfied (level 5) if he loses 1-2% of his investment as long as the venture is salvaged. Here, kinship and trust mean more to him in terms of happiness than profit. If he breaks even, he will be closer to level 6 and even a loss of more than 10% will only have him at level 4. Even if he loses all 100 UCs, he will be around level 3.5 (again, see the shabby chart below).

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Of course, the examples and the charts above are oversimplifications. But the trends are there, and the message is clear. Before investing resources (time, money, effort, love) on any venture, it is worthwhile to consider future happiness. It is useful to have modest expectations that you would be happy with. If you invest in something you are initially unhappy about, you are far more likely to hope for higher returns, which, even if reached, will not make you any happier. However, if you do not reach these high expectations, you may end up being miserable.

On the other hand, if you invest in something that makes you happy even if you get back a little less than what you put in, you stand to benefit from extreme happiness if the venture succeeds. It pays to put your money (time/effort/resources) where your heart is.

Know thy desire

Humans are creatures of thought. We think in order to formulate a method of getting what we want. And unless you are still struggling to find food, water and shelter (in which case I highly recommend not reading the rest of this article, as it will not add any survival value to your life), you have aspirations that far exceed what other animals would be content with. These desires are what make us all human. There are various fields in which we have these desires. And, these desires are what describe our outlook on life, as well as how happy we percieve ourselves to be.

We are social animals. Yet, as individuals, we are far separated from each other. Aspirations differ for each and every one of us. That is the reason the human world is so diverse, with so many commodities being traded and so many thoughts being shared. We are all consumers of the global commodity market and of the global thinking network. Our ideas are shaped by the things around us and the feelings within us. Yet, we do not often comprehend the core things we want, leading us to wander the market of goods and the market of ideas, looking for another thing that we think we desire.

We all have physical, intellectual, emotional, material and social needs, which are necessary to survive. But, we also have wants in each of these fields, which usually exceed the basic needs. Wants vary from person to person. You might want a well toned bodybuilder physique, while I might be satisfied with being able to walk a few miles at a time. You may intellectually want to always be on the right side of debates or you may be satisfied by the learning experience the discussion provided. You may want to be loved and cared for, or you may just want to be left alone. You may want a bicycle, or you may aspire for a Lamborghini Gallardo or a LearJet. You may want to be socially accepted, to be socially approved, to be socially respected, socially connected or socially famous, each of which are different things.

The problem with many of us is that we do not try to identify our real wants, so we cannot be truly happy. We strive for things that others want us or even themselves to achieve, not really knowing if that is a part of our own desire-system. It is like drinking a coffee when your friend is doing so, but when you yourself would rather have a soda. Or vice versa.

While the occasional forfeiture of one's desires in order to fit in might be beneficial in a group of friends, we extend this to other occasions. Friends usually have overlapping value systems, so a temporary forfeiture here and a reciprocation there actually help us achieve emotional and social objectives. But, we should realize that compromise should be reserved to situations where a more important want is favored in place of a less important want. Compromising your beverage is not a drastic compromise, and you may gain insight into your friend's tastes, which can help in the longer term.

But when you forfeit a more important want, it leads to internal discord. If you hate your job but forfeit a chance at a dream vacation you desired since childhood for a business meeting you didn't necessarily have to be a part of, but which might slightly increase your salary, you are essentially compromising something valuable for something not as important. Of course, if missing the meeting might mean losing your job, you should factor in whether you hate the job more than unemployment.

The problem is, we do a lot of things too mechanically. We do not stop to think about how our plans fit in with our wants. We often do not realize what our real wants are, in the first place. If you want to be socially approved, you have to fit in with all the norms of society. However, if you want to be socially acceptable, you can break the ideals a lot of times and get away with it. If you want to be famous, you may have to break many social norms that come your way and even risk being unacceptable to society.

We also need to weigh each desire against desires from other realms. Does your buying a new car mean you'll lose any exercise you currently get? Can that exercise be replaced by another regimen? Will it mean you can visit friends and family that live farther than you normally travel on a weekend? Will the expenses mean you cannot settle down and start a family or go on vacation? You should consider which of these is your priority desire. Your decision should be based on what will make you most happy, not based on what your family, friends, co-workers, neighbors and society as a whole say you should do(unless it is a major emotional and social desire to do what everyone else tells you to do, which might suggest you have a personality disorder).

It takes time, yes. But the time you spend deciding what you really want pays back dividends, often many times over. It helps you get more of the things you want out of life. Most importantly, when you are in your deathbed, you can say to yourself "I did all those things, not because I had to, but because I wanted to." And what is a life better lived, than one in which the decisions were all wanted, rather than forced?

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The writer does not claim to be an expert in any field. He is just sharing his opinions based on his life, the lives around him, a few books and a lot of questions. This is merely his opinion at the current level of knowledge and experience he has.

All ideas and theories expressed here ar subject to change.

Greetings, Fellow Human Beings!!!

Headless Ideas- What an idiotic name for a blog... But since my initial few choices were unavailable, seems I have to make do with what I got.Not that it is an immensely terrible choice, for these pages are to be run by my ideas, not by me. These ideas, most certainly, will have no head, no direction, no purpose. And it will not be my head that is guiding them, rest assured. For I shall not take time to think and guide these ideas to any direction, I shall let them run their course and die in whatever gruesome manner they may choose.

Disclaimer: I shall bear no responsibility for any ideas expressed here, nor for any usage of the ideas or their derivatives in any shape, manner or form by any person, living or dead, intentionally or otherwise.

Ideas imperaturi factum. Crede!