Food for thought

Every morning a man wakes up to the nuisance of his alarm only to switch it off and go back to his sweet sleep for another few minutes dreading the inevitability of going to work to make ends meet. He suddenly imagines starts questioning the purpose of life and meaning of everything around himself hoping to miraculously solve quintessential questions of life that’s been nagging human kind for centuries. Obviously, he does not succeed and finally gets up at some point of time to carry on with his daily routine. There is another man who is busy, gets involved in his work, and loves to take on new challenges in his work and a real social person who is always chirpier and cheerful around his colleagues. He gets on with his gruesome work looking forward to complete it as best as he can and getting back to his home and family to spend his evening with them leisurely.

End of story.

 I know it is bland and missing excitement or any kind of purpose a story usually have but   unfortunately the story I described is usually the story of most of our lives. To those who have not guessed by now both men are the same man described at different times of his day with their thoughts to themselves and leading a normal life. I am not going to psychoanalyse or provide some kind of proof (Though I did read few articles just to be sure I am not nuts) to support both those actions. Typically, normal humans live most of their lives in automatic mode based on lifelong acquired skills and values taught to them, which would vary depending upon their socio-economic status, environment and other factors.  That man who wakes up in the morning unwilling to work and just want to live his life peacefully without having to work or taking any responsibilities is all of us at some point of time. It is neither right nor wrong, but that is altogether different philosophical debate for another time. What is interesting though is the sequence of actions that follows to get him off the comfort of his bed to the bustling life of his office. Man has not transformed miraculously nor has he forgotten his earlier thoughts completely because next morning he repeats the same cycle of events until he gets to the weekend only for the routine to change. It begs a very important question every one of us ought to have secretly asked ourselves without realising. Do we control our thoughts or does our thoughts control us? Answer is not binary because there is a big hole in the logic of the question as we assume that we are responsible for our thoughts or at the very least architect of it. I wish that was the case, because it would solve lot of our problems and bring some sort of comfort to this world of chaos. 

I can realise that patience is wearing thin and this seem to be going nowhere and starts to feel lot more like a sermon. I hear you, but bear with me as I am trying to choose my next words carefully so as not to sound stupid or crazy. Thoughts do not count for much and for all the wonders of science; no one really knows what they are or how they come to be. There is no point of origin nor reasoning for most of the thoughts that manifest within us. It does not mean thoughts are worthless or we should start doing exactly the opposite of what we think to outsmart this devious virtual opponent. 

I know that over the course of history there were brilliant inventors, philosophers, astronomers and other great men who made their mark on this earth and gave us lot of wonderful things and whatnot. Were their thoughts seemingly random, incoherent and ever changing? We do not know and honestly, I could not say anything otherwise because we have not been in their shoes nor or are we privy to their point of view. We cannot ignore the fact that environment and past memories have a bigger influence on our thoughts than we care to admit. Most of world’s problems tend to lie within the intersection of race, politics and religion with one singular thought or idea at the heart of their ideology. Influencing of the said thoughts without any comprehension or understanding tends to wreak havoc in the form of terrorism, chauvinism, aristocracy and other awful things. There could be many references in mythology, religion and pseudo-science as to what thought is or is not but all I know is they are unpredictable and if it were a person I wouldn’t trust a single word coming out of its mouth without questioning his motives and neither should you. Do not heed too much attention to your thoughts unless you are ready to invest time and energy to understand them. Treat them in the same breath as you would treat a stranger before letting them into your home. Actions speak louder than thoughts and no change has ever made possible without them.