Enquire

I am begining to realise that humans are meant to enquire about each other. That's a basic tenet of conversation.

It tells them that you're interested in them. It tells them that you care for them enough by taking the time out to learn more about what they do, who they are, what they like, what they are passionate about and what they are not.

Understanding deeper things. Also understanding things deeper. Starting with simpler things in life. Like their favorite tea, joint, book, their values, picnic spot and such others.

What's more important is to have a conversation. Be willing to converse. At times even when you don't seem to have a common topic.

Its about social objects. As Hugh MacLeod states on gapingvoid.com, social object is any reason why two people are talking to one another, rather than someone else. What really matters is the conversation that happens over a social object. And I believe this is the essence of social media marketing and the whole of digital marketing, the field I belong to. 

When I first learned this concept at gapingvoid.com, I applied it to study and market products. But as I type this, I realise that the concept of "social object" is so important for a reason - it is fundamental to the human nature. And that is why it matters.

I also realise you won't "automatically" know what others are interested in. And that is why you have to enquire. 

It all starts with having a real conversation with the other person based on what you know. You converse a little. You learn and contribute mutually. You gather few more insights. You converse more. Perhaps you gain some fresh perspective on some other facet of that person. You converse deeper. And sooner than you realise, you have developed a meaningful relationship with the other person.

And building meaningful relations is again fundamental to the human nature. We've been doing that since the dawn of civilization.

So which new facet are you going to learn today? 

Start a conversation, today. And it all starts with a simple, genuine enquiry.

Break Free

Why do you have to confirm
to stale ideologies and dogmas?
Break Free

Why do you have to walk
in the footsteps of others?
Break Free

Why do you have to be wary
of what others think of you as?
Break Free

Why do you have to pretend
to what others expect you to be?
Break Free

Why do you have to become
the person you never wanted to be?
Break Free

Mental Peace

There are times at random, when your mental harmony is disturbed for no reason whatsoever. Or that is what it apparently looks like.

Upon closer observation of yourself, you begin to understand the nature of the problem. Once you have identified, you can solve it easily.

The mental harmony cannot be restored by external factors, nor can it be disturbed by external factors. It is something that you need to restore through soul-searching, resolving internal conflicts, introspection etc. All this can happen when you spend some time with your self.

My mental equilibrium was suddenly disturbed yesterday for no apparent reason. Something had happened at the office front, and I was about to go into the same old trap. But after spending some quality time alone, with my self today I could control it.

I will act on things asap - without critically over-analyzing and over-assessing things. I will limit my thinking to things of the present, rather than the past. Future is what I make of present, so I am not worried much about it.

Random Thoughts: Ideas, Awareness and God

6.684 billion minds on earth.

Potential of generating 6.684 billion ideas every second.

India has the potential of generating 1.129 billion ideas every second. WOW!!

How can we harness that? Shouldn't there be an 'idea meter' which just ticks every second, counts the ideas generated and also registers them somewhere so that we can refer to them sometime?

Forgetfulness is a sin. We tend to forget easily than we remember. It just struck me that we have to 'work hard' in remembering something than in forgetting something. That's why we generally 'choose' to forget. Cuz, that's easier. Anyways.

Maharashtra, the state I belong to, has a population of 96 million. Nasik has the population of over 1.4 million. See the potential?

We are in the knowledge economy. Knowledge comes from Awareness. Awareness is the fuel to generate ideas. Or is it? Is is 'chicken first-egg first' thing? Think. What controls what? Do ideas control awareness? or the other way round? or it is a vicious cycle? Ideas generate more awareness which generate more ideas.

Why is memorizing a mental function while forgetting is not? Deleting / Erasing is a special command in computers. Then why not in us?

We don't have an effective Idea Log mechanism. Why doesn't anything that comes to our mind gets registered somewhere, 'naturally'? May be in an inter-dimensional void? This is considering that the storage space will run out on earth!! Even the most high capacity storage devices would run out of space. [Just a parallel thought: There could be a mutant, Ideator, whose superpower is to store other people's ideas without letting his brain run out of memory. He is able to tap and utilize ideas from any part of the universe or even multiverses. Someone like Forge, a genius who can create anything he can imagine. But much more powerful.]

May be that's why we don't have a 'natural' Idea storage house. We save on space. God must have figured that humans would breed and populate the world."It's best left to their own discretion to decide which 'ideas' have a future and which don't". Naturally, if ideas are stored, they would occupy more space than the total humans on the planets. Ideas can cross-pollinate and breed and grow.

But would there be an uneven spread of ideas across humans? That brings to the next question. Is God partial to humans? Why should one human generate more ideas than the other? Why did God not give equal brain 'potential' to humans?

Endless questions. Endless debate. Incessant Ideas.

PS: Since 1850, when the world population has exceeded a billion, we could have potential generated 4.983 x E18 ideas! And this is considering that a single mind generates ideas on its own. We have not even considered cross-pollination. I wonder if the world even had these many problems to solve!

We had to make more problems just to solve them! [Well, that's very humane, so it's possible.]

Thank you for your patient listening to all the gibberish! :)