nuggets of wisdom

i occasionally think up stuff that might be quote-worthy. sadly, i tweet them more often than i blog. decided i'll catch up through my list today. feel free to debate/discuss/differ :)

when arguing, we progressively eliminate points of agreement till only differences remain. hence, a solution will require us to agree to disagree. in other words, arguing never changed anyone's mind.

it's easy to laugh at people in love. it's easy to forget that the feeling was so awesome, that you didn't care if everyone laughed.

conversation is overrated. it is silence that we truly require.

darkness

i love darkness. i feel at home in pitch blackness. i can navigate my home, locate a glass, fill it up with water, all by touch. and by touch i don't mean feeling around. i put out my hand, and it is exactly where my glass is. i don't have to touch the water filter to know the glass is under the tap. i know when the glass is full by the sound of water.

anyway, last night, everything went pitch dark at home. i got out of bed, and stepped out onto the terrace. it had never been this dark before. i realized that it was different from regular darkness when i noticed the usually glowing digits and hands on my wristwatch had stopped glowing. some sort of weird indescribable thing was happening in the sky. i'm not sure what i sensed, because it was silent and the air was still, and it was pitch dark to begin with.

two minutes later, the lights at home were back on, but my watch dial was still dark. as i was walking back towards the terrace gate, i passed by a window, and a beam of light fell on my watch. it started glowing again.

that's all i remember from last night's dream.

ps: this dream was strange because i don't remember waking up at the end of it!

belief and believers

i love getting into debates about religion and the fundamental god-question. i'm more of a pragmatic believer myself, but i choose to focus more on peoples' (and my) thought process and reasoning, than their actual beliefs. here are a few thoughts, based on conversations i've had over the last few weeks (sadly, there are many more such thoughts, but i'm already tired of digging through my archives of faved tweets :D)

you can either believe in something or nothing. nothing you believe in can be proven true to someone who doesn't believe in it.

the root of all theistic debate is that we can prove anything and everything to be wrong, but we can't prove anything right.

believing anything will appear irrational to those with different beliefs. but believing nothing collapses your universe into nothingness. hence, i choose to believe something. and to all of you who believe differently, i appear irrational.

anyway, for the record, i believe in god, and i choose to be irrational about my belief. because i feel i'm incapable of reducing my beliefs to rationality, and i'd rather have a name for my inspiration that makes it seem greater than myself. also, i can see that the concept of god has given rise to the concept of religion and the social structures arising from it. and since these social structures have personally done me good, i choose to acknowledge them, and follow them whenever they appeal to my sense of self-preservation and happiness :)

the dreamcatcher

i've been blogging my dreams for years now. dreams are fun to blog, because they aren't constrained by the limits of rationality and possibility. i'm not very good at making up stories myself, so my dreams are far more entertaining than anything usually think up when awake :D

the problem with dreams are, they're usually hard to remember. and that was one problem i had to tackle early on. so i've figured how i can best remember my dreams long enough to blog them:

• the moment i'm aware than i'm awake, before i even open my eyes, i replay the dream in my head.
• once i open my eyes, i lie in bed and replay it again in my head.
• once i'm up and about (usually getting ready for work and whatnot), i replay it again in my head one last time.
• as soon as i have a few free minutes, i make a short note of my dream (because there are so many dreams that i remember, but actually haven't blogged cos my memory isn't searchable that way), and also to make sure i have some way of ensuring i don't mix dreams up. i especially note people from my dreams, because i've found that over time, they disintegrate into faceless, nameless people :)
• twitter seems to work best for this for me, and a lot of my twitter favourites will be notes from my dreams.
• finally, blog them as soon as possible! same day is preferable, but i remember my dreams up to a week, with enough of notes... although i have a tendency to find jumps in the story if i wait too long to blog it.

yep, that's pretty much it! i haven't figured a way to remember multiple dreams in the same night, sadly. i have managed to recall multiple dreams, but not very reliably :)

let me know if you try this technique out and it works/doesn't work for you. and of course, link your dreams here :)