Monthly Archives: August 2013

Pendulum swings

Posted on by
3

File:Using Kater pendulum in India.png
The pendulum of time swings heavily from bust to boom and back again, and I see my fortunes rise and fall with it. The last financial crisis was an outcome of unfettered greed; as everyone participated in a rising housing market, and the dream of ever bigger McMansions was a seemingly free for all. Banks lent without collateral; or verifying the ability of the borrowers, and brokers sold houses and mortgages to families who could not ever repay the loans. Politicians proclaimed the American dream of home ownership was finally here, and the rating agencies classified AAA ratings; with eyes closed, and fees in their banks. Everyone seemed to run out of money at the same time; and the cycle came crashing down like a house of cards, taking some big banks and a lot of pensions down the drain, with it.
Now we are at the other end with a seemingly inexhaustible flow of money; and corporations and big banks sit on trillions at low interest rates, with no borrowers in sight. Once bitten twice shy people sit on cash; as markets give all the signals of a bull run, that seems to push unknown companies into stardom, and make billionaires out of young people with innovative ideas. My life savings have been whip sawed so many times; that I no longer know what is a rational, or an irrational exuberance. My future seems closer to flipping burgers; than flipping houses, as I eye my sorry life time savings, and wonder how did I let it all come to this. The haves have it and all the others are just grist for the mill; as I taste the sawdust from their plunder, of our ecosystem, and decide to try to drown my sorrows yet again.
Sufficiently fortified I put my toes in the water to test the temperature; and watch in delight as Face Book soars, and Vale looks as solid as the Brazilian iron ore it produces. A few batted run does not win the game, but the inning is suddenly looking exciting again. CVS has a perfect 10 rating for a must buy, and United Health is fast catching up with a 9.8 rating. Happy days are here again; and we are off to the races, as every filly now looks like a winner, and the more adventurous are trading options and more advanced tools that I know nothing about. The pundits talk about puts and straddles, and the new vocabulary makes my head spin. Should I buy gold or silver; as copper soars, or will wheat futures be the thing, or do we short rice with the huge reserves in India and Thailand, that they cannot move. The world is suddenly there for me to buy and sell; but there is no capital here, and I watch on the sidelines as fortunes are made and squandered on the latest Tesla, American cup Yachts, luxury baubles and private jets. Everyday low prices attract the consumers; but the multiheaded hydra of inflation, is slowly creeping up unnoticed as easy money flows.
Abundance seems cheap only to the fools; as I know we all will have to pay a price eventually, for all we want to consume. Rising standards of living will push our capacity to produce; and deliver us into a tail spin, or an ever increasing circle of demand that cannot be met. Will the billions rise to grab their fair share from our mouths; or will we continue to spit out the seeds of contempt, at their wastrel lifestyles. They are not productive; and have no desire to produce, so they will continue to wallow in their well-deserved misery, we say. We have gone to school, worked hard, become ever more productive; at a high cost to our families and friends, and deserve all that we have earned. We deserve better and so we set our sights on that next status symbol, just as if it were our birthright, while others are left in our dust. Social re-engineering schemes leave us cold, political efforts at a more equal state are marked as shenanigans of the ultra-left, and when I try to enter your country club you offer me a bus boy’s job below minimum wage, or leave me to play tennis with your bored wives, as an afternoons entertainment.
The pendulum swings again and now I see that it is the poor who are hanging on to it desperately. They jockey for better positions and opportunities. They study and work hard and make sure their progeny is able to make its way higher, in this new world. The shackles of ignorance will be undone; as MIT courses and scientific knowledge, will flow freely to anyone on the web. Diligence and effort will make them equal; to the one with the privilege to attend an Ivy League, or play in the fields of Eaton or Harrow. Micro loans and the NGOs will bring much needed programs and capital flows, to the lowest strata. Ingenuity and opportunity will no longer be the realm of the few; and each brave new soul will blossom in a new world, with his or her own achievements. The have nots will not be denied; and they will rise on the sheer force of the need for betterment, hope and the pursuit of happiness, which is a fundamental right. We only have to get out of the way and let the pendulum of human endeavor take its course. Time will wait for none of us and we better start reshaping our thinking and our efforts; as in helping them, we will only end up helping ourselves.

Look up and see the wonders

Posted on by
6

Newark-20130806-00169
All my life that I can remember I have always walked with my head down; peering down at the ground before me, as if afraid that I would lose my path. The weight of modern life sits on my shoulders and I am constantly weighed down by chores not done; or duty not preformed, to perfection. It has always been safer to avoid eye contact and keep to yourself; as who knows what psychos may be around, or god forbid by looking up you may invite the wrath of the local bully. The safe path was the one where you went about your business unobserved, and unobserving of everything around you. So I walked away my life looking down; and not bothering to even venture to explore, what may lie on the horizon.

There are many others like me I realize now, who find themselves in the same quandary. They go through life as if it is a narrow band that restricts us; and keep their heads down, and walk the known paths. They are born, go to school, get married have a family and then pass away into the pages of history, like the billions before them. Unknown, unsung and unrealized I walked with them and am afraid, of life itself. I restricted myself to only knowing what came before me; and not bothering to explore, what lay beyond my comfort zone. It is only a matter of time before this life will end and I will pass away, and none will be the wiser for it. My close friends may say he lived a great and upright life; but they know so little because I reveal so little of my emotions, or my aspirations, even to them. I walk alone with my head bowed down; and see the tunnel that my life has entered, and all is well, and I am safe in my ignorance.
I read today that a meteor shower from the Perseus constellation will pass through our atmosphere on Sunday and Monday. It will pass unnoticed by many of us; like so many other stellar phenomena, that have come and gone in our lifetimes. It stirred up some hidden longing in me; that maybe there is more to life than just this downward gaze, I have held on to, for so long. I plan to find an unlit field and lie in it on my back on this summer night, and gaze up to the heavens. I want to see nature paint its streaks of light across the dark horizon, and gather again the wonder that I have lost. Maybe the horizons will open up new vistas; that I have not dared to look at, for so long. Where is my galaxy, this Milky Way that everyone writes about, where are the galaxy clusters that are the largest structures that scientists praise. I want to look again at the miracle of this creation; and with eyes raised to the skies, unravel the mysteries that brought me here. Who am I and why am I here and why now; are questions that I have never bothered to ask, and much less sought answers to.
So now that I have decided to leave my comfort zone; and gaze upwards, maybe I won’t slouch, and drag my feet anymore. Maybe a spring will rise in my step, and an uplifting of my soul will naturally follow. I look back at evolution and realize why Homos Erectus was such a big deal, for our survival. It allowed us to look at the horizon, and see things that others could only jump up to see, occasionally. As we looked we also started to plan the next hunt, survival tactics or travel options. When you can see far; you can also travel farther, and chances for survival improve immensely. It helped our brains to grow connecting neural pathways; that sprang anew, till now we have billions of connections formed and ready to fire at the first opportunity. The mind is now supreme and the simple act of looking up; has led us here, so why do we spend our life in continuing to look down; as if our hidden treasure was below, and not above.
Now I try to look up and admire this strange new world, which I have found. The skies are brilliant at sunrise and sunset, and often in between also. The cities are lovelier as they rise in their glass towers; to heights that would knock your Fedora off, if you looked up. The tall crane above the unfinished building has a flag flying high; and it is a testament to human ingenuity, that we can build upwards with a practiced ease, and only our imagination limits us, as to what we can create. Admire the burning horizon, look up to the ever changing skies, enjoy the meteorites streaking by in the middle of the night; as it is all here only for us. I gaze at the tall tower and the sky above; and see the brilliance of the sun cascade off it in a lights of color, all unique to this moment in time. The wonder is reborn, and my mind is alive to possibilities again. Too long have I been a slave to my fears, and my phobias, and unresolved frustrations, and it has led me to this living hell. This path is no longer my tunnel of life; and I break free from it, and step out to the horizon. I will find new vistas to look at, and new opportunities to conquer. I will reignite that passion and the fire that is mine by my birthright; and will cry out like the infant I was, when the life-force was still strong in me and did not give what it promised. All I have to do is look up and remember that we were unchained by our ancestors; and sloth and acceptance, is not in our genes. We are Homos Erectus and live in complex social structures; and are the only ones who question reality, and develop science, technology, philosophy, art, mythology, literature and religion. I promise myself to once again join the tribe of these tall ones; and look up, and seek that which was never found. In looking up all I am losing are my inhibitions; and new discoveries are just around the corner, and I know that such beauty can only make me one with the creator. We laugh at his wonders and we experience them together, as he needs to also be alive through me, and thus we are both fulfilled.

Pattern of life

Posted on by
5
Pattern of life

Pattern of life

Life serves up patterns that we must decipher sometimes, to find out where we are going. Oftentimes I find myself trapped in a Déjà vu situation; where the same patterns keep appearing and I keep making the same mistakes again, and again. We are conditioned by our past to react in certain ways to situations and if it is a situation we have lived through before; oftentimes, our reactions will be the same. That is why they says that old habits, are the most difficult to break. We are offered a drink late in the evening and even though one knows one should walk away; one takes it and downs it, as what will one more matter after all the others.
It is only when we come to know ourselves well; that we can even try to break out of the cycle of bad habits, and not blame the circumstances for our plight. It is easy to say that because so and so did this; or so and so said that, we had to behave in a certain way in return. We have allowed ourselves to become so conditioned by our upbringing; that we do not even question how we react, to the emerging patterns of our lives. We step into them like novices; and repeat the same mistakes again and again, as if our life is a story, that has been foretold by our fate. We are so busy becoming that special something we aspire to be; that we forget, how to just be oneself. Others around can predict our actions and behaviors; and we continue to make a fool of ourselves being predictable, trustworthy and reliable in our actions and reactions, for their benefit.
I step out into a new pattern and look at it differently now. Even the old patterns now offer me something new, as I realize after much introspection that even though it looks the same, it is not inherently equal in all aspects. As the economists often preface their future predictions with the caveat “all other things remaining the same;” I now know that all other things will not remain the same, and it is a fallacy to expect them to even do so. Thus how can my life remain the same no matter how much I want it to be repeatable, and easy to navigate? I have to change and therein, I begin a new adventure. Everything is different now; and nothing I know or hold true, has any value any more. To take each moment and day as a new experience and to gain knowledge and joy from it, is life’s greatest gift to us. We continue to squander this time, at our own great peril.
We step on this earth which is itself hurtling through space at an incredible speed; and call it terra firma, though it is unpredictable and full of fury and life. We look up and recognize the stars that rule our lives; and they themselves are in a constant state of motion, and only our mind perceives them to be like the North Star, as always there for us and predictable. In our search for recognizable patterns; we distort our reality, and in so doing limit our own achievements. We own a home, car, possessions and live with our spouse and rear our children in most predictable ways; reading tomes on how to bring them up, and how to shape their lives for the better. We love predictability and dinner at 8 (or 7 or 9) with the family is repeated abanauseum till our ability to do so withers, but not our resolve. We value the material things; and the spiritual are left to wither in a forgotten heap, and revived on holy occasions, like the dusting of an old favorite book that one looks at nostalgically, when doing our chores. Even tradition and spirituality has been reduced to dogma and duty; and the joy has been drained out of what used to be a celebration, of happy occasions.

I now see an old pattern emerging and know instinctively, that it has been disastrous for me in the past. I have allowed myself to wallow in self-pity and allowed weakness and avoidance to take over, and lead me down an easy path. This time I step back and look at it again with new eyes. It is the same pattern, but I will take it on by the horns and wrestle it to its defeat. I will draw on the strength that has been buried below my habits; and release it to find a new opportunity, out of this failing pattern. I will walk without fear into it; and emerge victorious on the other side as nothing – not even me, will hold me back any more. I will relish the new experience and sing to the joys of its creation. I will be one with it and my life will not be a foreigner to me anymore, which is run by someone else’s remote control. This step I am about to embark on begins my new journey, of enjoying finding the real patterns within patterns. Patterns that I fold up like an origami paper into beautiful creatures, of my own desires. This life will no longer be wasted on the fear of what may or may not happen; but will be fruitful, in what I attempt to make of it. All I can say to my fellow travelers in this life; is that break that old pattern, and learn to live again. You are the pattern that makes the fiber of this universe; and all else is here only for you, and not you for it. Seize it; act on it and make of it what you want it to be, as it is the only pattern that we should live by.