An Ode

When I look at you, it is as if I am looking at a collage. You are like a collage with bright and radiant colors. Each color shows an aspect of you. These colors are so mesmerizing that I want to drown in them. Each one of them has a depth. Each one of them has a soul. And each one of them is intoxicating.

I don't know where to start and where to end. It is as if you were timeless. An object of beauty, and an object of endless joy. When I am with you, I savor every moment of this colorful experience. You look to me as you are a world in yourself. A world where you don't need much else. Your presence is a spiritual experience. Your words are engrossing. Your laughter is music.

Being with you is a journey through the lightness of being. Being with you is like an aspect of life never felt before. It is as if life is worth living for. And I still don't know if it is your magical eyes, your all-encompassing smile, or just your beautiful presence.

You are beautiful.

Kinds of Love

Although there are several types of loves, but I am going to talk about three basic ones.

The first one is the love by familiarity. I mean familiarity in a strict psychological sense. It develops when we live and interact with someone on a regular basis. We become highly used to the other persons presence in our lives and integrate them in it. Such love is usually found among siblings, and in parent-child relationships.

The second love is what I call a crush. Actually, it is a very scientific phenomenon. Deep underneath, in our subconscious, mother nature has programmed our brains to reproduce. Just like a search engine searches for the right match, our subconscious searches for the means to reproduce. Has it ever happened to you that you looked at somebody of the opposite sex from behind, became attracted, but as soon as the person turned around, the attraction vanished? It is a very simple case of such crush.

What happens in this case is that our subconscious, which is acting as a search engine, thinks that it found a match. It is looking for the right age and the right biological indicators. Both male and female bodies possess physical features that indicate levels of fertility. Even when the search finds a partial match, it initiates an attention. But as soon as the partial proof is neutralized, the attention goes away.

In essence, the above mentioned love is not love, it is only a subliminal biological drive.

The third love is the soulmate kind of love. This happens when two people meet outside their bodies. By that I mean the meeting of two minds, and thoughts. This is when the thinkings of two minds come together. They create a sense of joy and harmony. The love that comes out of this situation surpasses other loves. It goes beyond the phsyical attraction and finds its home in our thoughts. It has the power to weather good and bad times alike. Given positive reinforcement, this love only grows, and doesn't diminish.

In Defence of Failure

There used to be a guy in my college who dropped out. Not that he wasn't smart, but he wasn't getting the results that he wanted. There was one thing very special about him: he gave the best advice. Why? you'd think. He had already failed in his techniques. So he knew they didn't work. He would always suggest something different from other people.

Failure carries a very negative connotation in our minds. To fail is to lose. And to lose is bad. Is it really so?

I don't agree. While failing leaves a very bad taste, it does leave experiences and lessons. Just like a flood, that destroys everything that stood, but leaves new soil. Just like Ford Motors made their best selling car, Mustang, after their worst failure, Edsel.

And after all, why do we fail in the first try? Because we were not aware of the factors that would cause our failure. What happens right after? Yes, there is misery. There is despair. But then, there is also experience. There is also knowledge. The knowledge we did not have.

Knowledge comes faster by failing than by doing nothing.

Aspects

For a very long time, I was stuck with the debate of what school to go for an MBA. How can I learn the best techniques? What school can teach me those?

It's all about the aspects. Just like a soccer ball, that has a number of aspects, every venture in life has aspects. For example, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you need to know the aspect of scanning a market, the aspect of identifying an opportunity, the aspect of creating a business plan, the aspect of hiring the best resources, etc etc.

The challenge is identifying the aspects. One needs to explore all the aspects that are required by a certain art. Once you identify all the aspects that would lead you to your destination, you put them together in one line. A + B + C + D ...... + Z. There you go. You know the aspects, you know their sequence, now go get them.

The concepts of aspects applies to pretty much all branches of knowledge. If you want to be a writer, learn the aspect of vocabulary, learn the aspect of phrases, learn the aspect of connecting, and so forth.

I wanted to know who can teach me. Who can make me the best? I did get the answer. Who can teach me everything? Myself. The process of learning would flow from inside out, and not the other way around. As they say, it's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog.

Champions are born from within.