What does "getting older" mean?

As another year threatens to pass by, leaving a trail of monotonous and not-so-special days behind,  there is the unavoidable realization that I am getting closer to adding yet another year to my age. I can't help but ask the same question I have asked for the past couple of years: "What does 'getting older' mean?". I hope I'm not the only one asking this question, but nevertheless here are some ramblings as usual.

Does getting old mean looking back at things you thought you would do and realizing how many compromises you made when you didn't mean to? Does getting old mean weighing your accomplishments against things you have invariably failed to achieve? Does it mean that you think about the choices you made and the ones you didn't make and wonder if things were done differently would life turn out to be different and, if so, would it be for better or for worse?

I used to tell myself that the key to being successful is to be always be discontent, always striving to get more, get further ahead. But the problem with this philosophy is that you always have to go through times when all hope seems to be lost, when you doubt your decisions.  During such times, it feels that the discontent of earlier years weighs down on you and it only grows as time passes. Because the way it works is that, one is not satisfied with what one has, tries to achieve a lofty goal, unavoidably fails one or more times, makes a compromise and moves on. But the further ahead you move, the more you are aware of this compromises you made and they come back to haunt you.

So what does one do in such a situation? Do you give up on the promises you made yourself and let the weight of the past carry you through the motions of life? Or do you ignore the compromises you had to make and the ones that you'll invariably have to make and keep fighting? If its the latter, where do you get the inspiration from? ...

Excédent de l'Amour - Excess of Love

The other day I was watching the movie "Lord Of the Rings - The Return of the King", for probably the nth time. As usual I couldn't help but marvel at the character of "Gollum" and the transformation of Smeagol to Gollum. The story kept lingering at the back of my mind and then suddenly I realized the reason why it kept coming back. The thing was, that I was surprised by the fact that how a virtous and consummate feeling like love can cause irrepairable damage when the boundaries are crossed!

In the case of Smeagol it was the unrestricted love for the ring that transformed him into the evil Gollum and finally took his life. It was the this love which made him take the life of his dearest friend, and it was this love that outcast him and made his life hell. Albeit he never realized this , staying, as he did, behind the blinds of the overpowering love for the ring. One might argue that the connivance of the ring, with its evil and ineluctable charms, was also responsible for the plight of Smeagol. But come to think of it, the ring could conjure its charms only because Smeagol's attraction to it, actually provided it with a proliferating medium to cast its powers and bind Smeagol. Otherwise what harm does an inanimate object do to a strong human psyche? In fact the character of Sam Gamgee depicted this very fact; he was the only character in the movie who was not once affected by the ring even thought he stayed in its vicinity as much as Frodo.

Coming back to the point of discussion, at this juncture its worth quoting the popular adage that goes as "Anything beyond is poison"; how veritable! Yes, how many times in our lives have we seen access of the purest and most serene human feelings go wild and cause irreparable damage to the people who manifest it and to others connected to these unfortunate souls by the web of human society. May be it be the love for one's child, love for one's religion, love for one's country; we have all witnessed the fallout of the inordinate. There are more crimes that are caused by passion then actually reported by the newspapers under cheeky headlines and spiced up stories. What is more dangerous is that one is so overwhelmed by this flow of excess emotion that one never realizes that he is carving the path of ignominy for himself. In fact one tends to find palatable justifications for one's actions under such and influence, however unacceptable they might seem in the light of unbiased reason.

The question that still remains is that how we, who are indulging in these emotions themselves, check our own selves from crossing the limits? How do we demarcate the boundaries when our own vision is obscured?

Mosquitos, Moths and MATRIX

First of all people in dissension with the title please excuse it. I am unable to provide a concession to my temptation of getting poetic at any expense. Well, the train of thoughts that I shall proceed to list here was generated during my casual discussion with a venerable (and highly philosophical) friend of mine. He happened to be (frustrated as usual and ) under siege from the lesser organisms called houseflies and (again as usual !) poured out his frustration on these creatures questioning the very purpose of their existence. I was more than happy (and in a sense obliged to reciprocate and) to purport the following theory as an answer:

Let us start with an assumption (and a pretty fair one at that) that we all are living in a MATRIX (yeah !) controlled and managed by some super organisms (Who these creatures are and whether they have developed this MATRIX as "Business Solution" to some super client in out of the purview !) With this assumption we can say that we - the population of this MATRIX, and especially us humans, produce a lot of entropy every day as a part of our daily activities. And as all MATRIX fans know, this entropy needs to be nullified by some function of the MATRIX for it to perform properly. Since there is an absence of the summation variable of this entropy (yes, THE ONE), the entropy should be manifested by distributing it over other functions that are less conspicuous. Here is where our lesser organisms (the mosquitoes, the moths, the flies and the roaches and whatever annoying organism you want here) come into picture. And I present the following arguments in the support of this suggestion:

• arg[0]: The class of organisms (if they can be called that in the MATRIX) that I target here have a very small size. This is to serve the purpose of remaining inconspicuous.
• arg[1]: The size constraint in turn causes very less amount of entropy being nullified by individuals. So in the face of so huge an amount of entropy churned everyday these organisms have to be present in large numbers. This explains their higher productivity in terms of producing off springs (and producing anywhere and everywhere).
• arg[2]: They have no other purpose once they have nullified the entropy. This explains their pretty short lifespans (Man! They churn out generations by the time you just learn to say "Mama"). And perhaps they also need to make way for the newcomers.
• arg[3]: As a side effect they might being put to use as omnipresent MATRIX entities to induce termination of other entities (entities causing more trouble than their fair share) within MATRIX . (Smiths all over!)
  
• arg[4]: Designed to cause irritation (unanimous over the entire globe), these things can easily avert strong attention onto them and thus shield their purpose.
• arg[5]: These creatures are maintained as cross-cutting aspect to the MATRIX, their productivity control defined by the amount of entropy to be neutralized at any given time.
  

Phew........! That's fantastic. I'll stop at that from my side for now. Let the discussions and suggestions and ramblings pour in.

Just Rambling,
Cheers,
Nishant.