ON STRESS...

Stress is a funny thing.
It is what you feel when you’re doing something you don’t want to do, and you can’t not do it. That is why cleaning your room and breaking up with you boy/girl friends is always stressful. And honestly, that’s about all there is to stress.
But then again, as you grow up, Adulthood comes into the picture, and messes up this otherwise relatively simple equation. Adulthood and Stress are something like Mentos and Diet Coke- they just don’t get along and usually result in some sort of nervous explosion inside.
Bu at this point, I think I must mention that it is surprisingly easy to identify a stressed adult, basically on two counts. The eminent scholar on human tendencies Hushval Shatska has made the “Observation of Effects of Stress in Adults” the subject of his study for almost a year now, and he has clearly identified these two fronts as the best and easiest ways of identifying a stressed adult: Entropy and Extensions.
Shatska has defined these two fronts and their types in elaborate, extensive details, but I’ll take the liberty of explaining it in brief.

1. Entropy: This is a measure of randomness, and makes people more random and less predictable. It is of the following types.
a. Entropy of Temperament: The Subject’s mood becomes less predictable.
b. Entropy of Habit: The Subject’s habits become less predictable, and old habits die while new ones are noticed.

2. Extensions: This is an addition to any measurable entity that the Subject may be associated with. It is of the following types:
a. Extensions in Deadline: The time taken by the Subject to accomplish tasks increases.
b. Extensions in Waistline: Self Explanatory, sue to excessive eating (see Entropy of Habit)
c. Extensions in Excuses: The Subject needs to excuse his behaviour on more instances. Shatska has identified the most common Excuse to be “the Boss”, referring to the universal entity one level on the hierarchical chain, who is akin to a stress sink.

Using these two effective tools of identification, a stressed adult can be noticed, and either helped or stayed away from, as the situation may dictate.
Though, at the end of his 675 page thesis on the “Observation of Effects of Stress in Adults”, Hushval Shatska has made a small footnote. This says that since adulthood and stress don’t mix at all, it is recommended that adults stay away from stress. This can be done again in two ways, by not taking on stress (implying that one must do only what one wants to) and by not remaining adults (implying that one inculcate childlike values and moralities).
With life today becoming what it is, the idea of stress itself has become a cause of stress. It is therefore in the interests of all those who are threatened by being stressed out to understand the simple equation that links stress with life, and follow Shatska’s two point approach to avoiding it.

ON INSPIRATION...

Have you ever been in a situation where you feel genuinely inspired do something? And by saying ‘doing something’, one does not mean engaging oneself in another random activity that defines one’s mundane daily rut, but in some act that is removed from the ordinary, which has definite positive consequences on one’s level of conscious awareness, and stirs the insides of one’s creative instinct to create something better than what has already been created, in the true spirit of service to one’s inner soul?
No?
Well, then one must say that a great feeling of internal rejoice and intellectual celebration has been missed. Although, one must comment, that this is not entirely surprising. For you see, it is indeed extremely hard to come capture that spirit of the mind, and energy of soul that is conducive to the performance of that act which is removed from the ordinary, and has a definite positive consequence on one’s level of conscious awareness, and stirs the insides of one’s creative instinct of productivity, and if captured, that spirit and energy is extremely hard to harness for the purpose of serving truly one’s inner soul in the pursuit of creating something better than what has already been created.
Extensive research on this topic (or, the myriad of the above topics) has been conducted by the renowned researcher Hushval Shatska, who delves deeply into quantifying the immaterial. His research has produced observations that are highly representative of the situation, but before we explore them, we must get clear some terms of reference.
1. Subject: The person in question, experiencing the spirit and energy.
2. Think Centre: The place which is most suitable to harnessing the aforementioned spirit and energy.
3. Task: The glorious activity which is a serenade to creativity.
4. Distractions: Any object or phenomenon that impairs the Subject’s ability to harness the spirit and energy, and the most common examples of these are: mosquitoes buzzing around the ear, mosquitoes or any other bug biting the arm, babies that cry, barking dogs, leaking taps, etc.


Hushval Shatska’s observations were as follows:
1. The spirit of the mind and energy of the soul conducive for the performance of the Task are to be tapped invariably after dark, and the further away from light the Subject is, the more powerful is the Tapping. The inference to this is that great ideas come only late at night.
2. The ability to harness the spirit of the mind and the energy of the soul occur only in the Think Centre, and that Think Centre is fluid enough to become any place readily available.
3. The grander the Task, as a result of extremely skilful and efficient harnessing of the spirit of the mind and energy of the soul, the more difficult it becomes to create a Think Centre, because the grandest Tasks are only conceived when an irritating aunt/ unpleasant grandparent/ bratty cousin/ odious uncle/ crying babies have occupied any area surrounding a decent possible-Think-Centre and cannot be disturbed.
4. The Think Centre finally chosen, will have Distractions that are directly proportional to the grandness of the Task.
On the basis of these observations, Professor Hushval Shatska finally concluded that the grander the Task, the more impossible it is to accomplish, and using the principals of backward projections, he further concluded that the universe conspires against the Subject when embarking on a task, so that the only tasks that can be possible, are those which require almost negligible levels of spirit and energy, and are constituted by the random activities that define one’s daily mundane rut.

*Author’s note: Hushval Shatska is an odious pessimist, and gives me the heeby-jeebies.

ON REPITITION...

Sometimes a door closes
The lights fade and finally vanish
And the iron grip of dust settles
On articles and memories alike
And we forget what did live
And strive to create another

For what we hide we forget
And what we forget we repeat
Till all we are left with
Are incomplete words
And deeds unfinished
Over and over again

And so we must move back
To wipe away the dust and reopen lives
To relive that what we forgot
And to remember that which we hid away
The airs of memory that are murky and dank
Must be shown to light shining again

So let the doors shut be opened
Let the drapes drawn be pulled apart
Let the flames of thought be rekindled
Let the memories sing to us again
For that which had died once must be reborn
Lest we give birth to another death

ON WEIGHT...

There are these times when you feel unnecessarily weighed down by everything around you. Sometimes it might be work, sometimes relationships, or sometimes (more times than some times actually) an expanding belly.
And in all honesty, it’s not a very nice feeling. I mean, a part of you knows it’s really not necessary, and that you are perfectly capable of getting rid of it, but you don’t (you know, if you go to analyze this previous statement, you’ll notice, dear reader, that ‘a part’ of you will always want that thing which you’re not really getting. I don’t know why, but ‘most’ of you will never want it, and the ‘other part’ is always victorious. Maybe because ‘a part’ is symbolic of an unsuccessful minority, or maybe because if ‘most’ of you had wanted it, you would probably have got it by now, or maybe just that the grass is greener on the other side. But I am digressing.)
So yes, coming back to the matter at hand, my idol and mentor Professor Hushval Shatska identified the process of accumulating this unnecessary weight:
1. One enjoys a particular stimulant (an activity, a person, or a delicacy, depending on one’s concern).
2. One carries on enjoying it, responding to that stimulus in a proportion that is 3.14 times (or greater than such) one’s normal response to a routine stimulus.
3. Eventually, there is a negative feedback reaction, wherein the response function is reversed in polarity, and the original stimulus now becomes a response to an overblown sense of enjoyment, which was originally a response.
4. Once this response-stimulus polarity is reversed, it leads to a reduction in the value addition that was previously an essential feature of the exchange, and becomes a cause for the creation of dead weight.
Shatska’s observations have dramatically simplified the problem that people face when they wonder what it was the actually led to the weighed feelings even though they think they did everything right. According to the professor, the essence of the matter is simple- enjoyment is not a problem creator, lack of moderation is. Thus, the addition of extreme weight in one’s life is merely an expression of that very lack of moderation.
And the unwillingness of an individual to change is a further addendum to that problem. This feature of one’s character is the reason that a part of one knows that the weight is unnecessary, but one is still unable to anything, simply because one is too comfortable existing in the enjoyment of the stimulus, and is unsure of whether he will benefit by changing.
You carry on working, you continue to put up with frustrating people, and you just eat away. Sometimes, the toughest thing in life becomes a decision about taking a break, or about standing up and being truthful with another person, and about actually hitting a gym (the third is generally considered tougher than the others).
But that decision is for the good.

ON PROBLEMS OF HUMANITY...

The whole of the human race has problems of some kind- in the sense that there are very few people in this world who can boast that they do not have problems (candidates for the first prize in this award category happen to be forgotten ascetics in the Himalayas, and others who do not classify as people in the complete sense- me not included, for I myself happen to have a healthy collection of problems myself. But I digress. I think I love digressing, since I do it so often, but now I’m digressing again, which reiterates my earlier statement, which confirms the next, which further strengthens the first, and this is proving to be a horrible vicious cycle. In short I digress).
Anyways, coming back to the topic at hand, I did a little bit of research in the field of human problems, and discovered that, all in all there was one fundamental problem that plagues humanity, and plagues it to such an extent that it forms the cause of every other problem in the world. That one problem was that of how one had to disentangle one’s earphone wires when one pulled the earphones out of their pocket to use them.
I’m sure that regular earphone users will know exactly what I’m talking about, but I think I will take this opportunity to explain the concept to the poor uneducated masses (and digress a little bit). You see dear children, what happens is that you use your earphones when you are listening to music on a portable player, or having a conversation on your cell phones. And when you are done with your earphone-occupying activity, you extract them from you’re ears and fold them neatly and put them in your pocket for future use. But (surprise, surprise), when you remove the earphones from your pocket the second time when the opportunity for future use does arise, you find that they are all tangled up again!
Now here are the facts: you kept them inside in as orderly a fashion as you could; you didn’t disturb the arrangement for as long as it was inside that pocket; but when you pulled it out, it was as tangled as a Medusan wig!
The first question that arises is how in the world did that happen? Or rather, how in the pocket did that happen? But it is futile to try and answer this question, as for that I would have to take you into the mysterious realms of the pocket world, and I do not wish to digress so much also (although this field has received much pondering by Professor Hushval Shatska, just casually mentioning). So, the next question is: how do we get rid of it?
And the answer to this is, sadly, that we almost cannot get rid of it. For you see, we cannot do anything about when it is inside, and not keeping them inside the pocket to avoid the situation is hardly an option because they’re already a part of that system. It’s like terrorism- you cannot fight it the conventional way, for it exists because of conventional fighting, and you cannot isolate it, as it has become part of the system.
Perhaps what can work is that all of us either achieve that state of perfection and balance and harmony within ourselves, so that the realms of our pockets may be stabilized and the earphones do not get tangled in the first place. Or we could just go on living the way we do, and keep dealing with the entangled earphones every time need them, and have to lose time, effort and energy in disentangling the situation. It’s really a lot like terrorism isn’t it?