Klexos: The Art of Dwelling on the Past

This is not an original anything.

I just wanted to share something beautiful.

Please play the below clip, and if you like, read the subtitles below it.

It is poetry.

"Your life is written in indelible ink. There's no going back to erase the past, tweak your mistakes, or fill in missed opportunities. When the moment's over, your fate is sealed. But if you look closer, you notice that the ink never really dries on any of our experiences. They can change their meaning, the longer you look at them. Klexos. There are ways of thinking about the past that aren't just nostalgia or regret, a kind of questioning that enriches the experience after the fact. To dwell on the past is to allow fresh context to dribble in on the years, and fill out the picture. And keep the memory alive. And not just as a caricature of itself. So you can look fairly at a painful experience, and call it by its name.
Time is the most powerful force in the universe. It can turn a giant into someone utterly human, just trying to make their way through. Or tell you how you really felt about someone, even if you couldn't at the time. It can put your childhood dreams in context with adult burdens or turn a universal consensus into an embarrassing fad. It can expose cracks in a relationship that once seemed perfect. Or keep a friendship going by thoughts alone, even if you'll never see them again.
It can flip your greatest shame into the source of our greatest power. Or turn a jolt of pride into something petty, done for the wrong reasons. Or make what felt like the end of the world look like a natural part of life.
The past is still mostly a blank page, so you may be doomed to repeat it. But it is still worth looking into, if it brings you closer to the truth.
Maybe it's not so bad to dwell on the past. And muddle in the memories. To...stem the simplification of time, and put some craft back into it. Maybe we should think of memory itself as an art form, in which the real work begins as soon as the paint hits the canvas.

And remember that a work of art is never finished, it is simply abandoned."

There are good times, and bad. And then there are the getting-better times.

This post is about football.

No, this post is about Manchester United. It won't interest anyone who doesn't have an interest in football. So there.

I often see stats thrown up by television pundits and rival fans alike, about how we seem to be doing as bad, or sometimes even worse, than last season. This seems to be a great example of how stats never really show the full story.

The season David Moyes joined us, we had just won the premier league by an unexpectedly huge margin, been robbed of a great champions league run by an unfair red card, and had just lost to retirement, the greatest manager to have ever lived.

We were on a high. And then suddenly it seemed as if a part of us died. We were un-creative, toothless in attack, spineless in defense. But most of all, after one of the most successful periods ever, we were, as a club, in a place where few of us had ever seen ourselves - desperately clawing for a direction, a vision; we seemed to be lacking our basic identity - an identity which SAF had instilled in all of our minds (not only the players, but the supporter base as a whole).

It was a downward slope. Starting from a bad transfer window, going towards a bad pre-Christmas half, and ending with one of the worst ever spells our club has ever seen.
It was, to put it mildly, heart-breaking.

So why is this season better? Why, seemingly, are we more supportive of LVG than we were of Moyes?
Well, simply it's because even though we may have roughly the same results and points as last time, there seems to be a definite uplift in the direction our club is heading. It is - a record-breaking transfer window with some really good signings, a manager who speaks his mind rather than simply acknowledging the greatness of the club he inherits, and (dare I quote him) a philosophy (hopefully).

We had a good run, the last few matches; before Southampton exposed our undoubtedly important weaknesses. LVG seems like a good, nay, great manager, but he still has to earn my respect, as I'm sure SAF had to, back in the day, when I wasn't even born. But atleast to me, things seem to be going in the right direction, overall.

We are in a bad time, yes.

But we are moving towards the good times, slowly but surely.

God I love this club.

Suddenly, 'Grown Up!'

All my life, I've had this misconception about adulthood. When you're younger, adults seem so alien. A different class of people as it were; people who seem to know what they're doing!
I half expected a switch in my brain to flick on when I turned 18, that would suddenly make me an adult.

But of course, no such thing happened. 18 years is just an arbitrary temporal achievement that most countries in the world have decided makes a person worthy of driving certain vehicles, looking at naked people online, having the judgement to vote for one's leaders and consuming mind-altering substances.

No such switch flicked on, and life continued, much as it had ever done. I still liked playing video games, I still disliked exams, I still had no idea what I wanted to do in the future and I still watched copious amounts of pornography, much as I had ever done.

Relevant Ice Cream Comic #1

Oh, and college is a strange place. You are technically an adult, but you are still treated mostly like a wild adolescent teenager. There are still abstract constructs and rules to keep you feeling like a just-grew-hair-down-there, clumsy, stupid kid. There is a curfew, there are meal times, there's fucking home-work. Of course, it would be highly impractical to not have these things, it is an educational institution after all, and not a four year long party...
Who am I kidding, it is a four year long party, with intermittent breaks for exams to keep you from going too crazy. But that's not the point of this post.

The point is, you never really get to feel grown up those first four years of 'adulthood'. I went from wanting to just play video games all day and hating exams to wanting to just play video games, hating exams and hanging out with a bunch of awesome people who felt the same way.
That's it! I just went from doing all these things by myself to being in a group of people who did all these things. It was simply an incredible feeling of validation. A feeling of 'Oh fuck yeah, I'm not alone in this shit!'

What being an adult gives you is not sudden wisdom and insight about the realities of the world, what it gives you is an excuse. A ticket, to do all the things you ever did, without feeling the slightest bit guilty or having to worry about authority. It feels like a permission slip that goes - 'By reason of this arbitrary amount of time that has passed since Angad was pulled from the womb, he is now allowed to feel like he can do whatever the fuck he wants. Signed, Society.'

Relevant Ice Cream Comic #2

The operative words being 'feel like'. Since, no, you can't very well do whatever the fuck you want all the time. The real world has this weird thing called 'consequences', and this abstract concept called 'the feelings of others.' They're the constraints that keep you from going super-crazy all the time, like you absolutely want to.

No, I realised you don't grow up with the flick of a switch. No, I did not suddenly know what I was doing!

Actually I'm still not sure how you grow up. All I've realised is, that as the clock keeps ticking, life keeps gradually getting more complex. There comes a point when you feel that maybe it's now time you stopped mooching off your parents' pay cheques, and so, as a consequence, it's time you started to look for employment.

But then you also realise that this employment thing will eat into your busy schedule of playing video games, going out with friends and generally being a lazy slob. And it sucks! It sucks so incredibly bad! Because even though it's been six years since you were legally allowed to view obscene images on the internet, you still don't feel any different.

Relevant Calvin & Hobbes

Sure, now you've got a job, people look to you to make important decisions. Decisions that suddenly have large impacts on either large sums of money or other people's lives; as if suddenly you're not still the kid who used to lie to his parents about how many hours he studies a day. As if suddenly you're not the kid who spends hours killing innocent bystanders on the latest Grand Theft Auto. Oh and you are now judged on your ability to make these decisions, and suddenly, your place and worth in the world is decided by this ability to make these decisions.

It is decidedly surreal how the world works.
I feel no different from the boy who couldn't be trusted to decide the number of hours he watches television in a day at age 16. Yet I am now entrusted to drive a vehicle, run an office, or come to think of it, choose the person I want to have kids with (As if bringing a bunch of more idiots like myself into the world is an awesome idea.)
Oh yes, I've certainly come a long way from giggling like a little kid at a fart joke to giggling like a little kid at a fart joke.
And praised be the gods, I still rarely, if ever, know what I'm doing.

Either the whole concept of adulthood is completely wrong, or I swear to God, I am no adult.

I feel no different.

The world we live in, and 'sprituality'... hey SPIRITUALITY!

I am very passionate about this. I am probably way too passionate about this.

There is one thing I believe very strongly in, yet rarely reveal to the elders in my family for fear of sounding inappropriate or 'out of order' or rude - it is this - very bluntly, knowledge is, for me, more useful, necessary and urgent than 'spirituality'. First, spirituality is not reading books by 'spiritual gurus' and trying to live up to their instructions; that is simply being a student. 'Sri Sri' may be a great man, but I promise you he is not repeating someone else's teachings to you. I'm sure he knows what's up, because he's experienced it. He won't tell you, but to be a great man or woman, you need to have made mistakes yourself, you need to experience this shit yourself.
I haven't myself, obviously, but I wish to, and till I do, I won't take anyone's word for it.

I do not presume to know what spirituality is. My personal idea of it is to be at peace with yourself, at peace with everyone around you, at peace and in place with the world, yet that is and will always be own personal, and perhaps stupid opinion.

I gave my parents both, two unbelievably good books - 'Cosmos' and 'Pale Blue Dot', both by Carl Sagan. I ask them about these books everyday, they rarely seem to have read them any further. I feel sad about this.

I am also linking an article for both of them, and for the rest of the people who read this blog, so that you can read it in your free time at work or otherwise during the day.
Here it is - http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html
(Thanks to Alam for that one!)

Now I will rant like usual -

While it's true that, thanks to my parents, I have always had access to the best of the world that has been available, books and the internet, I also realize that generations before mine might not have had it available freely in their years.

I look at people in my own generation who have had access to the same information as I have and see that they do nothing with it and stay ignorant, I feel bad.

When sometimes, in my blog I have said that there is just too much beauty in this world to comprehend, I am not lying. There is. It's depressing that however much I will try, I will not get to it all myself. I will try my hardest but, shit.

For someone as untrained in these things as I am or most of my friends are, there are tons of books to read about the world, the universe and about things that have been and that probably will be. Like the ones I mentioned above that I gave to my parents, there are others - 'A Brief History of Time', 'The Elegant Universe', 'The Selfish Gene', 'The Origin of Species', 'A Short history of almost Everything', oh my god and so many more. Then for the lazy, there are audiobooks, or there are documentaries.

The most common response to when I say something like this, is 'So what? I'm having fun. Life is more than science,'
To them I say, somewhere down the line, when you're old you will feel the need to 'praise god', and 'be thankful' or 'seek forgiveness'. I implore you, before that happens, arm yourself with the knowledge to be precise about what you're 'praising god' for. or 'being thankful' for.

I've been called young and immature when I've expressed these thoughts to older people close to me. Well now, I've grown, and now I call them old and uninformed.

Blink, and realize.

You are an animal. Millions and millions of stupid animals died in order for your ancestors to survive and for you to be born.

You are capable of observing and comprehending unbelievable insights about you and your place in the universe. You are the first of the generations that will have all the knowledge of the world at your fingertips, literally, simply keystrokes away, and only tens of years ago, people would have dreamed of such a situation.
If you are unwilling to pay monetary compensation for such knowledge, you are perhaps the only generation who will be able to get away with stealing this information off the internet without consequences.

You... We... we are special. This is a special time in the world.

There is so much to learn.

Wake up.