Tag: relationships

Be still

Stillness is the absence of an external force driving our physical being. It’s a state of quality not everyone possesses.

Though in many ways stillness is a natural trait, we as humans have distanced ourselves from it. In the fast-paced world we call home, we no longer have the time or the energy to sit down in complete stillness and observe what happens around us. We’re working towards achieving big goals and high potentials that we seldom take a break from it all to focus on our inner selves. Our society and work culture has taught us to believe that being still equates being unproductive.

And so, to seek the meaning of our lives, we run along in the rat race. Along with so many others, we search and hope, for the one thing that comes only when we stop and reflect. Ironical.

For when we pause in our race and reflect our actions, everything becomes clear. Our life becomes more transparent, even for ourselves. When we no longer push ourselves forward with a vague goal in mind, we look within us. And then we see our life’s choices, our decisions, and our options—as another person does.

This is the most profound moment of reality: seeing our lives from an external perspective, without judgements, without bias, but with complete curiosity. That’s when we realise our true potential. Looking back at our life from a detached point of view, we identify not only our mistakes and missed opportunities, but we also see the little successes, the triumph that we often walk past without noticing.

We see those things that make our lives more meaningful, like holding a child for the first time, achieving the personal goal of eating well, receiving a word of advice from a wise old family member. It’s the everyday occurrences that complete our existence on earth. And by being still and channelling calmness through the mind, we become more holistic. Profound learnedness doesn’t come from seeing god, it comes from seeing our own selves.

Dilemma

Kevin and Carla wouldn’t even dream of hurting Dorothy. They knew, only too well, that the truth would hurt her beyond consolation—and they couldn’t do that to her. Besides, still young and learning to navigate society as a married couple, they didn’t want to become the inhospitable hosts.

Art didn’t pay as Kevin had hoped and everyone assumed Carla’s poetry was a hobby. Regardless of the meagre potions for themselves, they did their best to cope with Dorothy. After all, she’d raised them when they were orphaned. How would they tell her she was a wrinkle in their lives?

Intent: Creepiness

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We’ve created life in our own image.

— Stephen Hawking

One of my blogger friends shared this as a tribute to the now-late Steven Hawking. And it got me thinking. The truth of those words clenched deep, and I cringed to call myself a part of a community ingrained with such destructive mentalities that it prides itself in creating something as creepy as a computer virus.

Not only are viruses vile creatures that creep through our systems and violate everything we cherish and hold dear, but they exist because of us. I did a little digging about the most evil of viruses and came upon a few chilling names. What’s more startling is their uses.

We’ve created viruses to attack and disable other nations’ systems. (Sure, they were nuclear systems—but still, is a virus the right way to go?) Some of them sneak up on our children while they play innocent games, gaining unauthorised access and control over their lives and computers. They can corrupt unwitting minds and souls, and turn them into abusive, power-hungry youngsters. Pity. We could’ve used the same technology to offer remote customer support, instead.

As for the adults, we’ve tempted them with the promise of beautiful women and sometimes porn only to attempt a convoluted goal. We’ve created worms that go knocking on computers during holidays paralysing our contacts and spirits in the guise of wishing a Merry Christmas.

Some of our programmes have crippled governments and defaced other unassuming nations.

Oh, and just the hell of it, we’ve even created viruses that run through emails, sending itself to our contacts over and over again until the internet once broke with the load. All for no reason.

As if all that isn’t enough, we’ve also peeked into our fellow humans’ deepest desire for love, planting viruses as admiration letters only to break down millions of worth of assets.

The specialty knowledge that it takes to build such malware is so vast that it’s a testament to humanity’s skills. If only we use that for good things, instead.

The hacking culture and the cinema-influenced stereotypepes associated with computer geeks—the nerdy glasses, the shady hoody, the dark corner, the millions of lines of undecodeable scripts—has opened up our brains to wrong ideas and ideals.

We’ve created a culture of sad, pathetic humans driven by malicious desires. For a prideful, educated community such as ourselves, it’s shameful.

Shame that we don’t even realise it.