How truly mediocre we are

Are you kidding me? Yet another post on mediocrity?

Anyways.

As I was thinking that day, how truly mediocre we are that we fear virtually every effing body. Like, if someday, a beggar in a traffic light (no offense, beggar serves as a placeholder here) comes and threatens us, we will spend the next couple of days in the fear of the unknown.

I think the reason is the cultural conditioning we all had since childhood. People around constantly taught me to always fear retaliation. Fear the teacher, fear your friends, fear the government and police, fear the local leader.

Even the media and movies always portray that the world will always be unfair to the common man. And we must need a hero or very unusual out of system maneuvers to get things done. Police? So bad that they won’t even talk to you. Or worse, would harass you for their advantage. Neighbor? He has so big connections that he will ruin you to the dust. Boy dancing in the middle of the busy road during a festival, he can punch you if you honk twice and nobody would care.

How long?

Find your sweet spot

I have found this while I was driving. That I can not go too slow (read: at the speed limit). Else, other drivers in every other direction would start trying to overtake me and some of the maneuvers they use would be quite risky; for me. 

I can not go too fast either. Else the fast drivers would get intimidated. And they would start doing whatever it takes to stop me to overtake them. Either they would increase their speed, or they would start driving in the middle of the road so that I cannot pass or they will again overtake me with a crazy maneuver immediately after I have overtaken them.

The trick is to find your sweet spot. Faster than the slow drivers but not too fast to intimidate the fast drivers.

Same with life too. 

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Here are some humorous takes on Indian driving

• Rules of the Road
• Indian Driving Rules (was More Boston Driving Rules)
• Driving in India A Hilarious Account by Coen Jukens

Groundhog Day

Just after watching Primer, quite a complex film on time loops, I decided to watch Groundhog Day, a romantic comedy.

This movie also features time loop where the protagonist “Phil” gets stuck in a tight time loop where he wakes up, again and again on 2nd Feb, the Groundhog day. Whatever he does on that day, goes away the next morning where he starts afresh. Only he has the memory and awareness of this loop. For everything and everyone else, this is a fresh start. For example, if he breaks a clock, the next morning it will be renewed, same with breaking somebody else’s nose. Only he would have the memory of breaking the stuff. When he realizes this, as expected, he tries to get the max out of this situation in a hedonistic way. As none of his actions would lead to any consequences, he can now do whatever he wants. He also uses his ability to have multiple passes to the same events, gather larger world knowledge and use it to his advantage (securing a date for example). While doing so, he realizes his actual love for Rita, his co-worker. But however he might want to impress her, things just does not work out. 

He then contemplates suicide. And does it. But however he tries, he wakes up just the same at 6 am on Groundhog day. There is just no tomorrow for him.

Once he is completely bored with suicides, he tries to build up skills. He learns, ice sculptures, piano, car mechanic’s job and many different things. With multiple repetitions, he also has much more knowledge about the stuffs that happen on the small town. He uses these two knowledge to help many people around him. And finally, with all these, he manages to win the heart of Rita. Once he does that, tomorrow comes back to his life. He wakes up on 3rd February.

That being the story, there are many philosophical, spiritual and metaphorical undertones in this movie.

First, the repeat of 2nd Feb in Phil’s life, in some way is a metaphor to our own materialistic, repetitive, absurd and boring days. And unless we do something significant, like learning piano like a pro, or helping out someone from choking, or finally getting our dream date, there is just no tomorrow for us. What we see as tomorrow is just the repeat of yesterday. As it comes out from this conversation between Phil and Ralph whom he meets at the cafe. 

Phil: What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?
Ralph: That about sums it up for me.

Each day, learn something new, feel something new, do something new. Make sure today you do something different from yesterday.

It also touches life in another philosophical sense. Like Phil’s 2nd Feb, our own life may very well be as pointless and may lack purpose, that does not mean we won’t do our work or would not try to be a better person. Our life may be as pointless as the life of Sisyphus; but that does not mean we need to be unhappy about it. “This story of a man doomed to relive the same day over and over again is not concerned about tomorrow. A true absurdist triumph, it cares not what the destination might be, for it knows that the pursuit of meaning is itself meaningful whether or not that pursuit is eventually rewarded.[1]” Just like it is told in Karma yoga.

It also has a spiritual and philosophical undertone. Each 2nd Feb in Phil’s life seems to be corresponding to the life. And just like Phil, we are stuck in endless cycle of birth and death, bound to the wheel of time until we get the promotion to next level [2].


Overall it’s a great movie. A simple take on a complex subject such as time loop. Go watch it.

References:
[1] Imagining Sisyphus Happy: A Groundhog DayRetrospective.
http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2009/02/imagining-sisyphus-happy-a-groundhog-day-retrospective 
[2] Groundhog Day Movie Review & Film Summary (1993) | Roger Ebert
 http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-groundhog-day-1993

Mediocrity

Of all things, it’s the mediocrity that bothers me most. But as the time rolls, I am getting strangled by more and more of the same thing. Just like everybody else, I wake up in the morning, have breakfast, commute to office, face traffic, slog for 10-12 hours, come back home - mentally tired, waste some time in social networking websites and descend into a sleepless night. Same thing repeats the next day. Sometimes I go to the movies to catch some mostly mediocre movie and eat at some mediocre restaurant. 

With each passing day, I am more and more becoming the common man, आम आदमी। A life with mediocre happiness, mediocre sorrow, mediocre problems and their mediocre solutions, mediocre pains, mediocre reliefs, mediocre achievements, mediocre disappointments.

आज कुछ तुफ़ानी करते हैं  - Let’s do something extraordinary today.

I say that dailly. But do nothing about it. But some simple things can be done to increase the odds of getting out of this mediocrity.

• Write something..
• Learn to play some musical instrument.
• Learn a new language.
• Capture some awesome moments from day to day lives.
• Read an awesome book.

Let’s start doing that; shall we?