Thinking of The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand wrote a book called The Fountainhead. Its so appealing and so readily applicable. Some people hate it, some hate it. But everybody who knows of it, reacts to it. Its very important for any product to be worth discussing. Worth hating. Worth loving. The Fountainhead is one of those.
Perfection is an idea which means different things to different people and keeping it as individualistic it is, Fountainhead presents a view of perfection that is very interesting. The person who loves himself. We all do. That is why we don't want ourselves to die, right? We love ourselves. We protect ourselves from others. We choose ourselves over others. Its only human. And that is all Ayn Rand is really talking about. First and last love - self love.
Some people think that the philosophy of Ayn Rand (Objectivism) is too selfish and thus, unreasonable. But being selfish only about being happy. Not in the sense of hating/hurting others. In fact in many cases she has portrayed that the alternative to hate, ignorance. Ignore what you can hate, its so much better, focus on the good. Is that mutually exclusive form of self love really bad?
"I care about myself. I'll do anything to be happy. Though I wouldn't kill for it. Coz I'm just not crazy."
Sounds perfectly normal to me. And actually, doesn't seem like anything too profound. Its really natural instinct.
Talking of the book, most people find it difficult to read in one go. But anybody who is through with the first 100 or 150 pages, would finish it. Somebody who drops it before those 100-150 pages, is really making a big mistake.
Do read it. And you don't have to be Howard Roark. That's exactly what Ms. Rand is asking you not to do. Be yourself. Enjoy.

Its called destiny, maybe

Sometimes we try and try and fail and then suddenly we stop trying and we get it right. Patience? Nay. We run, the goal starts running too (away from us). We can only chase anything in such a way that it doesn't know its caught, till after it has been. Play it smart.
Chase. Its fun.

Sharing joys of everyday life.

If you love someone, you want them to be there more and more and more. Doesn't make sense, but you want it so. You want to tell them about everything. You want them to tell you everything. And you want to giggle together. And you want to do that all the time with everything.
That is a nice test actually. If you don't think of that certain somebody when they are not around (thinking anything or nothing in particular but about them) then there's something missing. You need to work harder. Work at it together. Or work at something else together. Togetherness brings people together. You may love someone who's very different from you. But sometimes, we just want our loved ones to share the excitement that the too-different people don't relate to. The joys of everyday life. Like couples can cook together. Or evening walks. Paint. Music lessons. The simple things are really most pleasant. And they work. In human relationships, they work.

Keeping the faith

We all have done it. Thinking we're so smart we can fool god. And it just never happens? We really can't fool him, or ourselves.

Well sometimes we can. That is because god is really on our side. But yaa...he doesn't have a voice. He can hint us. By what we can only call instinct or inner voice, maybe. But its there. The thing that lets us know right from wrong. And we just know.
We know if we're in a position to pass a test, before we take the test. Mostly, we just know. Only in sometimes it happens that we're so wrong about judging our preparation level.
We know if we can trust somebody or if we can't.
We know if somebody is going to be there when we need them or if they aren't.

But still we take chances. Hoping for surprises. Hoping for luck. That is our trust in god. That is faith. Faith in god. Faith in our luck. Faith in ourselves.

Omens give up too.

Omens guide you to your destiny. Maybe. But if you keep ignoring them, after some time, they'll stop trying to hint you.

There is nothing called try try till you succeed. Sooner or later, it is the right time to give up. Some things can't happen. Or they just can't happen when you want them to. Its the same thing. Justice delayed is justice denied, right?
Sometimes even if you give your life to save someone, he'll still feel maybe it was your duty or he deserved it or no-big-deal. Its not cruel. Its perspective. Perspective for one and failure for another(to have his affection understood). Still no good and bad. Just perspective.
Happens. Move on. Find the thing that will respond. Where you can succeed. When you want to.
Thats life.

Making own decisions

How good is it to depend on others for making decisions? Suggestions is one thing. Advice is another. And plain dependence is altogether different. There are always pros and cons to everything. Is it ok to let others make our decisions for us? Does it really matter who makes the decisions as long as they're right (if they are)?

Any body who makes his own decisions in life would tell you of the confidence that it gives you. To take the responsibility for your actions. Its important. If you don't feel responsible for anything you do. You won't feel responsible for the bad you do and will skip from guilt of it. Also, you won't feel responsible for the good you do and miss the exaltation of it. No negative. No positive. Blank. Stagnation. Waste. Half way through. Half a life.

Of Estha's Silence (God Of Small Things - Arundhati Roy)

Estha had always been a quiet child, so no one could pinpoint with any degree of accuracy exactly when (the year, if not the month or day) he had stopped talking. Stopped talking altogether, that is. The fact is that there wasn't an 'exactly when'. It had been a gradual winding down and closing shop. A barely noticeable quietening. As though he had simply run out of conversation and had nothing left to say. Yet Estha's silence was never awkward. Never intrusive. Never noisy. It wasn't an accusing, protesting silence as much as a sort of aestivation, a dormancy, the psychological equivalant of what lungfish do to get themselves through the dry season, except that in Estha's case the dry season looked as thought it would last for ever.

Over time he had acquired the ability to blend into the background of wherever he was - into bookshelves, gardens, curtains, doorsways, streets - to appear inanimate, almost invisible to the untrained eye. It usually took strangers a while to notice him even when they were in the same room with him. It took them even longer to notice that he never spoke. Some never noticed him at all.

Estha occupied very little space in the world.

Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and spread in Estha. It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms. It rocked him to the rythm of an ancient, foetal heartbeat. It sent its stealthy, suckered tentacles inching along the insides of his skull, hoovering the knolls and dells of his memory, dislodging old sentences, whisking them off the tip of his tongue. It stripped his thoughts of the words that described them and left them pared and naked. Unspeakable. Numb. And to an observer therefore, perhaps barely there. Slowly, over the years, Estha withdrew from the world. He grew accustomed to the uneasy octopus that lived inside him and squirted its inky tranquilizer on his past. Gradually the reason for his silence was hidden away, entombed somewhere deep in the soothing folds of the fact of it.

(God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, Winner of the 1997 Booker Prize)

Some people plain hate us.

"Hatred" is a very strong emotion. We can only hate what has seriously let us down. Only those things can let us down from which we expected big time. We expect big time from people/things we think are capable of big time. That's definitely not a negative thing. We can't feel strongly about something we don't care about.
We can hate somebody for not being good. That's because we think they are capable of it.
Competition makes us stronger by keeping us alert. On-the-go all-the-time. That, in a way, is a very good thing. So we don't necessarily hate a competitor.
But some people do hate us. Out to destroy whatever is pleasure to us. They're plain jealous. They think we'll have it so they're ignoring their chance to success in life and diverting all their efforts and time into our failure.
There are always people who hate us. For whatever reasons. Mostly its jealously. Sometimes its intimidation. But not a third thing.
Of course there are other similar things people can feel for others - loathing? and disgust maybe...but they are different from hatred.