Out of comfort zone

What is a comfort zone?

This is how wikipedia defines it :

Comfort Zone is the term used to denote a type of mental conditioning resulting in artificially created mental boundaries, within which an individual derives a sense of security.

A person tries to cling to the comfort zone and its sense of security, for outside lies the fear of the unknown and the undefined.

As we grow older, we lose our agility and adaptability, we become rigid in our thoughts and deeds. Social prejudices and conditioning, increasing responsibilities and decreasing risk taking force us to continually narrow our comfort zones to the extend that we stop evolving and growing altogether. This because evolution is a process of stretching yourself beyond the known, beyond what is safe, trying out something new, experimenting with life itself. Chaos is to be feared and yet, it is the same turmoil that is the mother of evolution.

Why am I writing all this?
Why? Because I am out of my comfort zone, very far from it. A new job, a new domain, new technology, new house, a new setup, a new team, a new boss, new colleague, friendless in an alien place. There is nothing to cling to. I must either evolve or perish and the way it stand it the latter is more likely. Not a very pleasing thought after the reasonable success that had covered my in its comforting shell for the past few years. It is hard to leave all the warmth of the past and present and look to a possibly cold future.

Do I regret?
No, an emphatic NO. Why? Because this is the only way I an ensure that I am in touch with reality. For all I know the security blanket which was covering me might have worn thin, I need to knit a fresh one that will sustain, even at the cost of spending this winter in the cold, know that I might not even last this winter to enjoy the new blanket that I am knitting, and worst of all, not knowing if I know how to knit :-)

Well, let me know back to knitting ... But .. What if it turns out to be summer rather than winter? And the blanket turns out to be a burden rather than a comfort? What if the old blanket is better than the one I am making.

No point dwelling on these issues, too late for that.
Not waiting for the final outcome, I need to enjoy the journey itself. So au revoir.. Catch up with you at the other end.

So far and no further...

And here I reach the end of my road .. need to travel some explored paths.
I will miss all the familiarly and loved paths and peoples.
A chapter ends and a new one opens up ... Time to change gears, drive right in.

Belonging vs Standing apart

A friend recently read my blog and commented about how one of my very old favorite books was missing my list of all time favorite books. I gave a simple answer that I have outgrown the book and that was the end of the matter. And yet, it wasn't as simple as that. Back of my mind I was still searching as to why such an important book was missing. Was it really outgrowing in the sense that those concepts that moved me at a certain age/time/place no longer have the same effect or is it that they provided a certain need and I have no longer that need.

Once thought that keeps bothering me is that maybe I never did not enjoy the book as much as I 'thought' I did. Perchance, I psyched myself into believing this since it was the 'IN' thing to do. I had a need to belong to an exclusive club and these books were a visa/passport. Over the past decade or more, my needs have changed from belonging to standing apart, differentiating myself and its like a visa to a club that I have knowingly not renewed because I don't care to go there/belong anymore.

I would hate to think of myself a hypocrite. And maybe I am not, maybe I have forgotten the impact of these books from so long ago, I should read and reevaluate my impressions.

Phaedrus Speak : Mirrors

Lila : An Inquiry into Morals:


It's like a hall of mirrors at a carnival where some mirrors distort you one way and some distort you another.

(There could be different mirror reflections at the same time from different people : A moral degenerate, a tedious old nerd, heroic)

Each person you come to is a different mirror. And since you are just another person like them maybe you're just another mirror too, and there's no way of ever knowing whether your own view of yourself is just another distortion. Maybe all you ever see is reflections. Maybe mirrors are all you ever get. First the mirrors of your parents, then friends and teachers, then bosses and officials, priests and ministers and maybe writers and painters too. That's their job too, holding up mirrors.

But what controls all these mirrors is culture: the Giant, the gods; and if you afoul of the culture it will start throwing up reflections that try to destroy you, or it will withdraw the mirrors and try to destroy you that way. Celebrity is like some sort of narcosis of mirrors where you have to more and more supportive reflections just to stay satisfied. The mirrors take control of your life and soon you don't know who you are. The culture controls you and when it takes away your mirrors and the public forgets you the withdrawal symptoms start to appear.

Lila : Nuture vs Nature

For as long as I can remember, I have had heated interesting discussions about Men vs Women and often by extension Nuture vs Nature aka Instinct vs Conditioning.

Each time the discussion is heated, interesting and yields no result. There was a time I could really get worked up on these issues but lately when I get into these discussion I sit, think and observe without overt participation.

Lila : has give my thoughts fodder to think about this phenomenon is a new light. Nature vs Nature is nothing but Biology vs Society. Given the layered hierarchy of :
Inorganic < Biology < Society < Intellect, it is a moral thing to do, not just considering the codes of societal conduct but in an evolutionary sense. Of course, Lila is no Bible but it sure does strike a chord of understanding. Inspite of being a rather dry book with thin storyline, I am loathe to putting it down/

Lila : An inquiry into morals : Robert Pirsig

Just started this book, looks promising. A few experts from the book.

A good analogy from the book :

There's an old analogy to a cup of tea.
If you want to drink new tea, you have to get rid of the old tea that's in your cup, otherwise your cup just overflows and you get a wet mess. Your head is like a cup. IT has limited capacity and if you want to learn something about the world you shuold keep your head empty in order to lear it. It is very easy to spend you whole life swishing old tea around in your cup thinking it's great stuff because you never really tried anything new, because you could never get it in, because the old stuff prevented its enty because, you were so sure the old stuff was so good, because you never really tried anything new ... on and on in a circular pattern.


but the ale was helping. It obliterated the differences. Enough ale and everything got reduced to pure biology where it belonged.

Slotting machines

People are slotting machines of everything and everyone, I as much, if not more than others.
They brand, this is moral - that is evil, such and such is good - flip side bad, so on and so forth, the list is long, I see no end.

And yet when I think of it, is really so easy to give a verdict?

We slot people, places, events and behave as we are conditioned to feel for that slot. There are times when we feel perplexed because our instinctive feelings do not agree with the conditioned feelings.

It is fair to slot? There are people who we think of as friends and yet, we hesitate to share, there are those in the family with whom we do not bond, there are peers and yet we are not equals.

And once in a while comes a stranger who can completely trust, a person who is not a friend but with them you share not just feelings and facts but also instincts, not a family but there is a connection that you cannot trace, there is no reason and yet you stay in touch, you understand completely and yet without trying, someone who is fascinating but not a 'specimen', someone you know, but don't know at all, someone who is your guide except that you don't know where it is leading to, who is your psychologist but no shrink! A normal person, but how normal is that?
How would you slot this?

On a parting note, its hard to trust strangers but easiest to share with strangers who you trust; for with a stranger there is no fear of being judged or slotted or canned and labeled.

When past and present blend

There are times when you desire somethings from the core of your existence. Every pore wishes for that one thing. It seems that your innards will sear with the intensity and they do. Time heals the wounds - the gentle balm, but the scars remain. With years, they either fade or you forget that they are scars rather than an integral part of you. There seems no distinction.

And then it happens, one not-so-fine day you get than one thing that you had hoped and prayed for with your whole being all those years ago. You realize, it doesn't bring joy any more. After all these years, the need it gone and it just reminds you of the opportunities lost, the bitter tears and the pain in all its intensity flows back in once more.