Who is the real Optimist?

There seems to be some confusion on how to define an optimist and a pessimist. With "Adi the Great" commenting (check the second comment for this post) that this post is not contemporary, I believe it necessary to state the traditional meanings this post is based on. According to Answers.com,

Pessimist - a person who expects the worst

Optimist - a person with a positive outlook on life.

Now, read the following conversation between a Pessimist and an Optimist. Hope the conversation makes more sense now.

Pessimist: Dude, I'm so depressed. Yesterday everything seemed so perfect and today everything seemed to go against me. I was hit by a car while I was still waiting for the traffic lights to go green. How sad is that?

Optimist: No dude, look at the positive side of life. It could have so much worse. You should be happy it wasn't that bad afterall. It was just a little bad.

P: You mean it could have been worse?

O: Yes, ofcourse. Who knows? Maybe the car could have run over you. Maybe you just survived an accident that could have possibly killed you.

P: Dude, you are scaring me.

O: Oh, I'm sorry. That was not my intention. All I'm saying is look at all the worse things that could have happened but didn't happen.

P: Hmm.

O: Hmmmmm.

.

.

.

P: But dude, I AM the Pessimist. Why are YOU being so negative about things? Shouldn't I be the one who is expecting the worst?

O: Hmm.

P: Hmmmmm.

.

.

.

O: I guess, Pessimism is all there is in this world :(

I love this ending so much simply because this is the only logical ending. If you had wanted to give it a fairy tale ending, where optimism rules finally, it wouldn't be logical. Imagine this,

P: I guess, Optimism is all there is in this world :(

Do you get the paradox??

Bachelors Vs Slaves

After Bachelors, you go on to do Masters... But sadly, men who decide not to be bachelors end up as slaves.

My Life... sucks??

It's a weird feeling I'm having now - It's not exactly hatred but its definitely not love... I'm talking of my life. Oh no, I don't mean to say, I'm in love with someone but it's more basic - I'm talking about loving my life...

It all started with one decision I had to make while still a student :(. The choice I had was, should I study further and continue enjoying the student's life, or should I take up a job (which, going by the only job I had on hand meant I would have to stay at home) and forego all my freedoms - everything from staying up late nights to getting drunk and watching movies. Honestly, it wasn't a difficult decision to make and as they say, rest is history.

But that's where the problem starts - My history isn't being written the way I would have loved it to be. Infact, it's not even being written in the way that would let me proudly hold my head high up in the air while telling my friends, "I'm working." Because I don't even come half as close to that. :(

Granted, my salary is credited to my account every month and so, theoretically, I'm an employee and working. But what work am I doing? Nothing, if you don't count going to and coming back from office as "work" (which infact is what I'm beginning to feel these days.) Apart from this very important "work", I also sometimes get to run errands (quite literally) for my colleagues. The errands can vary from anything between copy-pasting text into a .ppt file to googling questions for a quiz. Recently, I also completed the very important task of data entrying which, non-technically put, means typing out a sheet of hand-written matter.

I'm not saying I don't like such work. Actually, I will say it. I DON'T LIKE SUCH WORK. But I'm ready to abide by the age-old saying "Everything's part of the life" and continue helping people and not treat it as being demeaning to my dignity. But I would still have loved my life, if only I too had some "real work". Till then, I will continue going to the office, do whatever lowest-level (hierarchially, not meanial) work comes my way and do it so well that I become an integral part of the very activity I was asked help with (- so that anytime in the future, they should come back to me and only me.) But all this while still begging -

Tu hai sab kuch jaanne waala

Main hoon tera maanne waala

Mujhko bhi to staff kara de

Thodi si to staff kara de 

Project Utilization dila de

Ek nahin do chaar dila de

Kaise kaison ko diya hai

Aise vaison ko diya hai

Mujhko bhi to staff kara de

Thodi si to staff kara de

Guest Blog

This is a new and completely original idea I came up with, Guest Blogs. But as with all my original ideas, the moment I shared this idea with a friend, he told me it has been tried before. But that's fine, I will still go ahead with it.

The basic idea is YOUR posts shall exist in MY blog, under YOUR name. If you blog elsewhere and would love to share one of your best posts, you are more than welcome to use my space. But if you don't blog at all, then you are the one I'm precisely looking out for. Many, I realised, are not interested in maintaining a blog just for that reason, you need to maintain it, and not because they are not interested in writing.

So next time if you feel like writing something do write and you can post it here. You can write about anything or anyone, even (especially?) if its about me. As my blog title goes, its A Beautiful Mind and not My Beautiful Mind. So, as long as you are expressing your Beautiful Mind (without getting too vulgar), everything is allowed. And needless to say, your post shall be copy-pasted as-it-is without even removing an extra comma. No censoring at all, trust me.

Btw, this offer is open only to my friends, I'm not here to do samaj-seva. :)

Insights you get after visiting your native place

If you want to know how much you have, look at the guy who doesn't... And I would say, inversely, if you want to know how much you don't have, look at the guy who does...

After a trip to my native place, I was confused who I was looking at... I'm talking about the "developed" cities and the "undeveloped, cheap" everywhere-else...

Developed - YES, our cities are... We have developed so much, so fast, that we have out-performed every statistical prediction about our own growth... that's why our roads are so congested coz nobody believed we would be selling so many cars, our malls are so crowded coz nobody believed we would spend so much time out of home, and damn, we are so costly, coz no one believed we would have so much money to spend (and even if we did, we wouldn't)... the idea of spending even what you didn't have (better known as Credit) only "developed" us further...

On the contrary, YES, the towns and villages are "cheap"... a plate of 4 idlies for Rs. 7, a glass of milk for Rs. 3 (and not unhygienic either - I'm still alive and doing well after eating out 3 days continuously) , a balcony ticket in the costliest A/C theatre for Rs. 25 (yes, they do have A/C theatres in the villages and towns these days, in case you didn't know.) It was such a relief to know there were still places in this country where money had some value left...

But the real reason why this trip was special for me was, I got to meet all my cousins again, at one place after some countless years (definitely more than 7)... This trip reminded about those years when every summer vacation would be spent travelling across the State meeting relatives with a grand finale at my grandmother's place where everyone would come and spend atleast a week together... Compared to the life of any city's citizen today, those definitely were better days... In my family's case, my grandmother would be the unifying force, pulling everyone together and tying the bonds strongly, which however had slowly begun to wear away over the last few years... Funny, how we all finally met again this year, but the reason being the absence of THAT VERY FORCE...