Tag Casual Psychology
Keep the change
Every Facebook frequenter (at least in India) comes across this post every now and then, which bashes our government for being hostile to the farmers. It goes something like this:
At the vegetable market in the morning:
‘How much is that cabbage?’
‘Twenty rupees a kilo.’
‘That’s too expensive; how about I give you fifteen?’
Why no fairytales?
As kids, we grew up with our share of fables and fairytales; we all do, until we’re eight. But then the telling of these stories persisted in my school until I was ten or eleven—by our beloved Annie ma’am, our librarian. She used to come to our class and tell these stories during proxy hours. While the girls listened to her, widemouthed, we just laughed inside about the stories being boring.
Repolarising the Negative Magnet
“Ah, I’m tired of all the negatives and the argument you posted, Ram. You said a lot of things about the human psyche and the inclination towards the negative, how everyone keeps acting negative these days, and stuff like that. You said that a solution was to record the good in your life every day, or meditate. But then you also promised that you’ll share some insight as to how to make things positive. Now get started with that!”
The Negative Magnets (contd.)
Right off the bat, if you’re having a good day and aren’t so much into human psychology, please skip this post. And please know that I’m happy if you skipped it because you’re having a good day.
While sitting in front of my computer at work and checking some logs yesterday, I found a message from a close bud of mine, with feedback for my last post. It suddenly made me realise how I completely ignored that fact that I had to emphasise on the positive side of life too! (well, not coming up in this post).
The Negative Magnets
We’ve all, at some point in our life or the other, wondered why we humans always focus on the negatives of the world around us. Sometimes we even start thinking that ignorance was bliss indeed, and we shouldn’t have ended the state of ignorance! “Everywhere you turn, there’s negative. Everyone is behaving crappy of late. Everyone around us is being rude to us. Everyone around us is changing in the way we don’t want them to. Everywhere school kids are starting to try alcohol and drugs. Everywhere there’s people who are mean to us. Everyone is trying to get our money. Everyone is trying to overpower us. Everyone is being an as****e by not letting us work or sleep in peace. Everywhere there’s intrusion, robbery, rape, murder. Every politician we see is a liar and is corrupt. I’m living in a practical hell surrounded by devils everywhere! WHY, God, WHY? And why me!”
Impressions
They say that the first impression lasts long, and it is very difficult to change it. And I’ve always wondered, how difficult?
Well, so there’s this girl called… let’s call her Kitten, at work. We have quite a few mutual friends. I bumped into her in the cafeteria in the F3 building, and I said “hi!” to her when I was so close to her that she could probably hear me breathe. I’m known as this crazy guy here and believe me, if you come to my floor and ask for me as “the crazy guy”, anybody could point you to me. I do all crazy stuff like cracking jokes when everyone is damn serious about something, like playing badminton on the floor (yes, at work), and such things. Why, we crack so many jokes that our neighbours, (a couple of depression-maniacs—no offence) raised it to the director of Human Resources (and they almost got jacked). So something like this coming from me isn’t a big deal.
The Dam that Checks
How many of us have answered ‘Will you tell your crush about your feelings if you were told you’d die in another 30 minutes?’ with a ‘Yes, find his/her number!’ Not less than six billion of us would choose a different answer, definitely! If we had one secret to share, no matter if it affected anyone or not, no matter how big or small it is, we’d choose to share it during our last moments, but not now.
The seven seconds…
A nine-year old girl in rags, untidy hair, like she’s not washed them for a couple of months now, dirty face, with all the dust and stuff from the nearby traffic signal – probably one of those totally underprivileged in our terms. She stands and stares at the chat stall near the local mall. What have you got in your mind?
The greatest dilemma…
I just (26 Nov 2011, 7:49 PM) finished talking to one of my besties who just let me know of a major incident that happened in her life about two weeks ago. For those who couldn’t guess, a guy proposed to her, or rather, in actual terms, expressed the feelings he had for her, and this girl fearing what our reaction would be to it, hid it all from us. I could smell some poop somewhere but couldn’t quite tell. After all, asking her directly ‘where’s the poop, Robin?’ would make it look like I never trusted the friendship and wasn’t sure if she’d discuss everything with me; so I didn’t ask her. Today during one of those usual chat sessions, she told me about this incident that took place about a fortnight ago, which really pissed me off, for I’d never expected she’d hide such a major incident from me. You owe me one for this, bud. She’d really gotten tensed when he asked her, and had said ‘how can I say a yes or a no when I hardly know you?’ and put him off for the moment. That’s something she shouldn’t have done.