Me, myself and my ramblings

·        For the first 25 of my life the world had exclusive rights to programming my brain.

·        For the next 25 years, I rented it out to the society and various corporates for money.

·        For the next 25 years of my life… I want exclusive rights to my brain.

o   Why? To do only what I think is right and enjoyable. All I want to do is to think, read and write. To travel and work for my own pleasure, to be free…

What do I really want?	Happiness.
Where does happiness lie?	It lies in good health, good thoughts and emotions.
What is the way to good health?	Cleanliness, regularity, good food, exercise, sufficient rest, good posture and good habits go a long way to keeping us healthy.
What is the way to good emotions?	Good health contributes to good emotions. Unhappy and restless people add to bad emotions. Exploiters, Offenders and crooks lead to bad emotions. Desire beyond our ability to satisfy it and people who try to sell such desire to you, the “marketers of desires” lead to bad emotions. Peaceful, contented people and enlightened people lead to good emotions. People who make unreasonable demands on you, beyond your ability to deliver lead to bad emotions.
What are good and bad emotions?	1.   A desire to live is a good emotion. 2.   Love and generosity are good emotions. 3.   People and events that create in you a desire to live, to love and to give are good for your emotions.	1.   A desire to die is a bad emotion. Living in fear of death is a bad emotion. 2.   Hatred and pettiness are bad emotions that eat at your core. 3.   People who incite you to hatred, pettiness and a desire to die are bad for your emotions.
Can people you are close to and love, cause bad emotions?	Yes, they can. Sometimes strangers can cause you peace and family can cause you misery. Sometimes families can demand that you are sufficiently miserable to show that you care about what they care about. Sometimes families bail you out of miserable situations caused by strangers and foes. You need family.
Can temporary separation help?	It can help at times and with some people. With some people, that is the only way!
Is it safe to have expectations of others?	It is generally safe to have only such expectations of others that are in line with their nature. For example, my family loves activity. So I can expect them to always be doing or wanting activity. If I want them to meditate they will fail my expectations.
What if the world has expectations of you that you cannot deliver or do not want to deliver and simply won’t let up?	Comply, fight or flee. If you cannot comply or fight and you have nowhere to go, you can try inner detachment and keep to yourself. Then you will be nagged at. Like Rip Van Winkle. People believe they have a right to expect stuff from you. If the people close to you are like Cinderalla’s step mother you can also expect to be ill-treated and overworked. Then only God and fairy godmothers can help you.
Then, is it impossible to have good emotions?	It is quite difficult if you are in the category of the exploited whether you are poor or an heiress, it makes no difference. Black Slaves, in America found music and humour. Indians found God and spirituality. Whites found power and dominance.

How do I view my life's achivements? 

Life, for me, is not about commercial success or material gains. For me, it is about small pleasures, rich relationships, happy introspection and the ability to make peace with my soul that I have only added joys to people and never subtracted them.

Intense introspection, arguably is one predictable way to gain wisdom and to spend a few minutes every night meditating and praying about the purpose of life before going to sleep is definitely soothing to the heart.

How do I measure my life?
For the educated few, and certainly those graduating from any professional School, a good measure of a life is the footsteps you leave behind. These could be values in your offsprings or teachings to your colleagues, friends and followers. A well-lived impact is not a legacy of wealth, making enough wealth to pass on to future generations but small measures to meaningfully improving the world. The East looks inward to chart and measure growth of the self; the West measures external impact. But what of average lives that cannot be measured through achievement either in the material sense or any impacting sense of contribution? It is by an achievement fulfilled by cultivation of people and when one can proudly answer the following questions with pride:

·    Who will come to my birthday when I turn 80?

·   Who will I invite to be with you when I have little to gain and nothing to prove? As per me, it will be those people who are part of me; the people I love, the folks I care about..

So, then how would I like to measure the barometer of my life? 
By increasing the surface area of the people I touch with my love. Unlike monuments that can be built; unlike intelligence, which can be faked; I wish to learn to love frail, powerless or helpless friends and dysfunctional families with tolerance and generosity.

Affection is not about what one does but it is about who we inherently are. Worst of all, from a goal-oriented point of view, it cannot be measured, only felt. Building a web of affection is, to my mind, the hardest goal there is; and also one of the few goals worth pursuing to the end so that we can then state happily: A life well lived! 

What must my epitaph read?
Here lies a harmless man who touched lives positively and impacted people with empathy and compassion.