My Theory of Life
Everyone needs a theory, a guiding principle to take them through the toughest of their times. It’s during those times, we start questioning everything. We feel that there is great injustice done to us when everyone around us are so happy.
During such times, our mind keeps looking for some explanation, some answer to all the bigger unanswerable questions we face in our lives. We know they cannot be answered, but our human intelligence is adamant. As usual.
Back then, when I formed this theory (mainly to convince, console and silence myself) I was studying in the first year of my engineering degree. There was a call-in telephonic show in the AIR and a guy called Neeladhri was the host. I used to listen to this program not for those English songs that were played, but just for the interesting/intelligent conversations he holds with people. One day, I decided to call-in.
Call it luck (or bad luck?), I got the line.
Neeladhri: Ok, what do you want to say?
Me: I have devised a philosophy about life. Shall I speak about that?
Neeladhri: Wow (Thinking – That should be sure shot entertainment) Go ahead.
Me: I think that life is the same for everybody, irrespective of their race, religion, caste, financial status, location, education and any other factor created by humans. Taken over an entire lifetime, people experience equal levels of happiness and grief (50% – 50%).
Neeladhri: (He, and perhaps the whole of Chennai was speechless for 3 seconds) On what basis did you come to this conclusion?
Me: My own observation and thinking. In fact, we can extend the same theory to animals as well….
Neeladhri: (Interrupting me and speaking in a sad tone) I got it. There — are — certain — things that are — beyond — our — understanding. Anyway, let’s go to the next song….
Now I have decided to reach a bigger audience through the Internet 🙂 I know this theory is unscientific, illogical and silly. It can neither be proved right, nor proved wrong.
I hope it can be discredited immediately, as it is against the basic human pretense that things can be improved through advances in technology, processes and human intelligence/innovation.
But my theory is about fairness and justice. For example, nature seems to have an automatic balancing system using which it seems to automatically balance the amount of happiness/grief (and other such ying/yang factors) that one experiences in their life. And of course, there is Karma.
There is something called as relativity and nature checkmate’s us using this concept. Nothing we experience in life is absolute. Everything, is relative to something else. Having a hundred rupee note might look absolute. But what we can do with it and how much happiness it can give us, depends on various factors. That’s relativity.
Let me know your views on it.
Destination Infinity
PS: I never thought I will publish this ever in my blog 🙂
We definitely do need a theory, a guideline or principle or whatever one may call it! For a dumb brain like mine, it took extra minutes to understand this..Are you talking about theory of relativity?? If I understood it right…Yes..everything is interlinked and are related to each other. The outcome, result, action, reaction – be it anything.
Actually the theory is so hopeless that it may not be evident with a single read 🙂
“Taken over an entire lifetime, people experience equal levels of happiness and grief 50% – 50%”, &
Life is the same for everyone without any qualitative differences between different people.
– That’s the theory.
Forget the relativity thing for now, that’s there because I am expecting certain types of questions.
Destination Infinity
Bang on Rajesh. You have kind of hit the nail right on the head. I completely agree with the balancing out part. However, I would like to add, that the interpretation of events leading to happiness and sadness would be subject to an Individual. A positive person will count more happy than sad events while it will be vice versa for a negative one. In the Grand scheme of things, it all balances out. And it so relative.
And as far as Science is concerned, it cannot have all the answers. Science is a means to an end, the end being Truth. One tool cannot do all your work for you. Science trying to prove or disprove this theory would be like a dog chasing its tail. 😀
That’s what I think – “In the grand scheme of things, it all balances out”. But how can you or I be sure of it?
This theory is baseless anyway, so this post is not the place to fight against science. I will do a separate post on it 🙂
Destination Infinity
I need to come to Chennai as I am looking forward to see a pair of foot. Yes, a pair of foot of a person called . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Destination Infinity.
But unfortunately I do not have his photo !! And Rajesh is such a common name.
Maybe you can come over to Delhi and fall at mine.
Is there a similarity in the way we feel? You bet, yes.
Let us resolve and promise God that we shall not trouble our body, mind and soul too much. May God bless me, at least !!
These days I don’t think so much. But back then I was a chronic serial thinker 😀
Destination Infinity
as we live in a group that is society everything is related
Relativity (unscientific) is an excellent subject to explore. I will try to do a separate post on it.
Destination Infinity
Wah wah… your theory is just too good 😛
Hello, you read the same theory in Axinia’s Blog comments (before a couple of years) and gave the same comment. How can you forget such an all important theory so soon?
Destination Infinity
Really???!!! O_O I really have forgotten it re! Age might be catching up!! 😆 😆
Very interesting 🙂
Haha this seems almost like a continuation of my comment in ur last post. 🙂 Did that prod you to explore this post?
Actually… could you tell me how nature balances this out with the theory of ‘whatever good u do comes back to you’, or ‘as u sow, so shall u reap’….. 🙂 I’ve seen that, that works out in all fairness too!
I think your comment did influence me to write this post. I was not satisfied with the reply I gave there, maybe!
Nobody can say for sure as to how much nature actually balances it out. We can only speculate.
If there was a device to measure the happiness levels, its possible to attach it to a kid and monitor throughout the life and then prove it/disprove it. Strangely, we have a meter to read everything but not our happiness levels, which is the most important thing every one wants and it might be good to monitor it to get a taste of reality.
Destination Infinity
I don’t know whether thats true or not.. because everything depends on the perception of the person… so I guess if we try to perceive everything as happening for good we can have higher percentage of happiness.. 🙂
But you called up to tell this theory… 🙂 🙂 ha ha ha 🙂 the guy would have been in serious thoughts till that song was completed 🙂
LOL!! 😀 I know! That guy must have been like, 😯 What in the world is this guy talking about!!
He was sadder than usual and I was upset that I had caused it. You know the worst thing? Next day, people at college asked me if I was the person who spoke in the show the previous day!
Perception is different from reality. If one is going through tough times, its better to face the facts straight than to perceive the whole situation in a totally different (favorable) light. Indian team can rejoice after winning WC, but if they party now after the semi-final match fixing allegations have been revealed and think that nothing happened/whole nation is happy and proud of them, it is called wishful thinking. It hurts.
Destination Infinity
Your friends seem to know you well 😀 😀
Yes… Perception is different but we can be happy regardless of what happens if we know that we have done the best we can.
Here is my theory, we on Earth are actually a virtual reality of another parallel world. What we do here, who we are and how we live is the imagination of someone else living in this other parallel world. Much like when we imagine, what happens inside our imagination is our little world, which no one else gets to see, much the same way our life here is exactly that – someone else imagination.
Wow, that’s a different theory. But there is no space for freewill in your theory. Maybe there is no freewill at all?
Destination Infinity
I also believe in the balancing act of the Lord.
Yeah, there are different names one can use – Nature, God, etc.
Destination Infinity
well there is a theory that every action has a equal and opposite reaction.. so you are right when you say 50% grief and 50% happiness and YES everyone goes throught it .. the problem is that grief we tend to remember for a longer time and because of that when it is happy time we waste it thinking of grief .. HENCe the happy time gets shortened…
Bikram’s
It’s similar to Einstein’s explanation for his theory of relativity… Maybe we take happiness for granted and hence are not much concerned about happy events. But since grief is unexpected, it might have a higher mental impact.
Destination Infinity
i somehow agree with your theory Rajesh .. although we still do not have any scientific proofs to back it up with but yes all humans irrespective of religion or money they have…all of them enjoy equal amount of happiness and sadness…
regards
rahul
We depend on facts and logic to be sure about anything. But for certain things, facts and logic are either immeasurable or not applicable. In such cases, it is difficult to come to any conclusion, forget the one mentioned in this post!
Destination Infinity
To some extent I too believe in this balance, and I call it the law of compensation! Once I forgot an important letter while going to work, but the bus was extremely crowded. I got down, went back home, and the next bus was empty! 🙂 I believed in this law of compensation for many years. Today I have another take on it. Happiness is simply perception. Some people are more happy than others even if they lead a similar life. It’s all about expectations and perception.
‘Some people are more happy than others’ – Or they might simply appear to be happier than others?
Destination Infinity
no they make it a point to be happier and some people have all they could ask for and are yet discontent and sad 🙂
I read ur post very interestedly but dont think I agree ie if I have got what u r saying correctly.
I dont everybody experiences the same amount of happiness of sadness[whenever…] if thats wht u r saying.
But I do believe our actions determine our course in life ……ummm there is so much in my mind struggling to get out but to put it ALL down in words is difficult. I’ll tell u what if we ever meet at a Bloggers Meet I’ll remind u and then we all can have a group discussion it 🙂
I too hope my theory is wrong, because it discredits most of the scientific inventions and most of our efforts to be ‘more’ happy. You got the theory right and there is really nothing much to discuss on it – It’s just a hypothesis with a 99% chance of being wrong 🙂
Destination Infinity
I wanted to post a video in relation with your example of 100 rs and relativity but cant find it 🙁
It’s ok. Sometimes, it might be better not to want to understand everything!
Destination Infinity
you have devised a theory of life !!! you must be a philosophy genius of some kind 😉
nice views though
every thing is relative n interlinked……nature has a balance in itself….but its one in totality…..so u cannot take a person, consider his absolute happiness n sadness and give it a percentage value (50-50).your happiness can be balanced by another persons grief considering nature as one system…..let me know what u think 🙂
Well, it could be like how you say as well. Somehow, I seem to take comfort in believing that divine justice is applicable for everyone. Obviously, it’s an assumption. More like ‘wishful thinking’. As is yours 🙂
Destination Infinity
🙂