Go For It.

We think we are so many things. Fact is we can be all the things we want to be. But the fact also is, there are many things we live in a bubble of thinking we are, only to find out we're not.

Before diving into the world of 'work', the way I saw myself- the passionate, obsessive and compulsive sort, I knew I would be a workaholic when someday my work life would begin. But turns out, I'm not quite what I thought I was. And I found out the hard way. But there's this sweetness in finding out things the hard way...a sense of glory you feel because you found out on your own.

I read somewhere that human beings are the only living beings who have the ability to learn from other's experiences. True. We can be spoken to, told the right and wrong ways of doing things, learn from other's mistakes, learn from other's achievements... But what if some of us want to learn from our own mistakes? What if for some of us learning the hard way IS the only way the lesson sticks? What if for some of us we would rather hurt ourselves finding out the 'bad' way than by plainly seeing and hearing?

Consider this,
X: I made a mistake, and that's why I'm pushing you so hard...because I don't want you to make the same mistake.
Y: There you go. Maybe I'm just like you. I'll only learn if I make the mistake myself.
X: But I didn't know better then and I do now. That's why I'm telling you...
Y: I don't know any better now. But I will if I make the same mistake...let me make it. Let me find out on my own.

And anyway why do people mostly assume that we will make the same mistake they made? Maybe we can do things differently, maybe we will come out successful from something that someone else failed in and maybe, we might learn a completely different lesson from what someone else learned. So isn't it worth a shot?

We will be told the right ways of doing things. We will be told how to do things in ways that would hurt us the least... Let them tell, it's their duty to tell. It's also part of a responsibility of the role they play in our lives. At the end, it's always our choice, what we want to do and how we want to do it. If learning from your own experience is your kind of thing, Go For It.

Classical Conditioning it is!

We all need something to believe in. Something to give us hope, something to pull us up when we are sinking. For some of us its a firm belief in religion. For those of us atheists, its either Mother Nature or just some other force we know exists, but we are not yet sure what to call it. A daring few, believe in the power of demons. Many of us have strong trust in the powers of fate and destiny. Oh and how can we forget the belief in superstitions?

I stepped out of the house to go somewhere. I'm halfway down the stairs when I remembered I forgot my phone. I went running back to the house, only to get a good scolding from my mom. 'You mustn't come back to the house right after you've set out for something. Its a bad omen.' She made sure I sat for a few minutes before I left the house again. This apparently, wards off the bad omen.

There is this other friend who would leave home with a long list of things to do. She would be back having done some of it. It was interesting to listen to how she narrated what a horrible day she just had. One by one she would tell me of all the things that went wrong...at the end of it she would say, 'I know why it was such a bad day, I did not pray in the morning'.

We make associations. Its a human trait. When we've had a bad day, we relate it with all the things we did on the day. We even swear not to do those things again, lest we have another bad day. It is funny though how when we have a bad day and although we have prayed or done all the things that should make it good, we console ourselves saying we did not pray enough or did not do all the good things we ought to have done.

The Behaviourist school of Psychology explains this behaviour of making associations as Classical conditioning. Its perfectly fine to make such associations, we've just got to make sure that they don't become an obsession.

Let us however have more respect for other people's beliefs. If she believes she had a bad day because she did not pray, lets respect her belief. Whatever makes her happy. Lets not try and define other peoples happiness for them. Happiness is subjective. Whatever our belief system is, it really doesn't matter as long as it keeps us happy.