I don’t quite recall when it was but somewhere along the way I came to the realization that there is no human being that I can idolize. Or forget human being, I doubt I could idolize anything. That realization was really part of a bigger picture of realizing that you can do anything. And some people do something better than others, but you do somehing better than any of those people. Everyone has flaws. Everyone has their virtues.

So that said, I’m amazed by how people do not think and let their minds succumb to idolizing celebrities and essentially go overboard with their expression of interest in someone or something. The Superbowl is a prime example. After nearly a decade of not understanding American Football at all I finally decided to make the attempt to atleast understand the game. And I think I get the basic idea. But I doubt I could ever be as rabid a fan as you come across for Football because to me Football, like everything else is just another game. Some people play better than others. But that’s not the be all and end all of it. At the end of the day it is entertainment. And I like my entertainment to be just that – entertainment, not a source of anxiety or stress.

Now, “celebrities” is a hole other thing which I don’t get. I can respect someone because of their achievements in their field, but they are all unltimately people like you and me. The great than thou thing just doesn’t work for me. Yes, Russel Crowe, Nicholas Cage and Kevin Spacey are great actors. But that’s all they are to me great actors. And yes, Meg Ryan, Sandra Bullock and Gweneth Paltrow and the vast aray of other beautiful women that adorn the silver screen are gorgeous, but that’s about it.

I guess my point here is about drawing the subtle line between respecting someone for who they are and what they are done as opposed to idolizing someone to make them something they’re not.

About four and a half years ago (note to self: yes, it’s been that long) I remember having a conversation, in which I use the analogy of an onion. At the time, I was referring to a specic person. Saying that that person is like an onion, because there were just so many protective layers built-up around the inner-self that it made it hard to even get to the real person inside, until one slowly and carefully peeled back each layer to finally establish a personal connection and a level of initmacy and trust. (I used the analogy of the onion since peeling back the layers may often have the same affect of cutting an onion — producing tears)

Recently, I’ve been thinking about how that analogy of the onion may not just be specific to a person but applicable to people in general, Because every single one of us seems to develop a new protective layer, a shell, a shield as we mature. A shield which protects us from things that we feel can hurt us. We build a wall around ourselves based on the fear of getting hurt. For some that wall develops faster, stronger and taller than for others. But for each person, our life experiences cause us to immunize ourselves in a way to protet ourselves from hurt. Whether it is by feigning indifference, apathy, anger, or worse yet, just but shutting off when faced with certain situations. And again as I write this, I think of myself as a hypovrit since though I can analyze it and write about it, I am probably a victim of the same.

To bolster the analogy — each of us adds a new layer to our own personal onion as we grow older. A new shield for every year? I guess I’ll also use the term rigor ante-mortis. Rigor mortis is defined as per Merriam Webster as a temporary rigidity of muscles occurring after death (okay, I have to ask — what is so temporary about it??). I coined the term rigor ante-mortis to mean the rigidity of character that develops before death — as we age and mature, we become more and more rigid in our views and opinions. The naivety atrophies and it replaces by a cynicism and a skepticism — and a new layer of the onion takes form.

Words are at best a poor means of communication and the layers of the onion just make is harder to know (as one of my mentors who I respect a lot says) the real reason. Our words, and actions may send one message, when internally the motivation for those may be very different. And the words and our actions may not reflect that what we would have really done if we weren’t responding to the layers of the onion forcing us to protect our selves from harm. Protect our ego, protect our image and protect the perception of who we are for the outside world.

Small Talk (for the geeks out here, notice that the space between the words and the capitalized T; for the non-geeks, please pardon the parenthetical tangent) and I have never been good friends. We never got comfortable with each other. There is always this awkwardness between Small Talk and I that just never seems to disperse. I guess it may be partially my fault, since I never practiced dancing with Small Talk often enough. So we never seemed to get the right rythm and are constant stepping on each others feet.

I’ve tried several times to re-acqaint Small Talk and I, but we never seem to get be able to get past the small talk. Alas, it’s a lost cause it seems. A vicious circle. We just weren’t meant to be.

Jest aside, I seriously find small talk to be quite cumbersome. I understand that it is just another tool to help people get to know each other, but for me it becomes more of a hurdle in getting to know someone since I never seem to know when to transition from small talk to something more substantive and really more meaningful. At one point I heard a quote (yeah another one, quotes seem to be a big thing with me don’t they?) Words are at best a poor means of communication. How true. Because in the intricacies of language and more so of socially acceptable language, etiquette and behavior, the real meaning, the directness and the initmacy of communication gets shrouded with a veil or words. Word which often don’t mean anything.

The worst question which hardly ever gets a candid answer in the English language is How are you?. How often has someone ever replied to that with anything more than the cliched Fine, thank you or an even worse okay? Everyone, including myself says how are you, but we don’t really even expect an answer any more. It’s more like saying hello and less like asking a question. So then my question is, how do you ask someone how they really are?

Since I’m cutting out the small talk for the night, I think I’ll end here and take Small Talk with me to join me in a silent dinner.

Yesterday, I went to see A Beautiful Mind. It’s an amazing movie, though I bet the book is better… and I nam now interested in reading the book as well. But that is not what this entry is about. This entry is about “reality.” The straw the broke the proverbial camel’s back in writing this entry was the movie though. Other things have been, my curiousity about dreams and picking up Freud’s On Dreams, recent movies that I saw (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, A Beautiful Mind) recent readings (Girl, Interrupted) – some of which have touched on the topic of Schizophrenia, reflection of my time spent in the Master of Software Engineering program at Carnegie Mellon working on a software harness to plug in different socio-economic models to predict relapse in Schizophrenic patients and so on.

The Mind is Fragile. Very fragile. It is also powerful. Very powerful. (Those statements are the subject of their own lengthy diatribe at some point in the future once my personal conditions for the statute of limitations on personal information has been met.) But what the movie last nigth and all the other things together have made me think about is just how easy it is for the mind to get confused. Just how easy it is for dreams to become real and reality to become dreams. Of course, all of this leads to the ultimate question of what is reality?

I do not remember my dreams. In fact for a long time I would make a conscious effort to not dream at all (don’t know if that is even possible) since that would mean that my brain is still going and I have a hard enough time getting it to stop thinking that to have to deal with the dreams part of it as well 🙂 But I can see how for some people the line between what they dreamt and what they sense while “awake” can become blurred. Where the conscious and the sub-conscious merge and the worlds collide leading to a state of utter confusion (IMHO).

Schizoprenia and other things which are classified as “mental disorders” (I have a relatively low opinion of the diagnoses in the field of mental disorders as specified in the DSM, since to me (those with more trained minds may be able to tell the difference better than I, this is only a personal opinion… ooh nested parentheses again, don’t you just love those!), some of them seem about as subjective and open ended as a horoscope!) are a scary thought. I’d draw the analogy to a leaky vessel (don’t take this negatively, it is simply an analogy). Stuff literally bleeds over from one world to another, from one reality to another. And I cannot begin to imagine what it is like, since that would be the realization of my worst fear – to not be able to think critically and discren between what is inside your head and simply a figment of an over-active mind/imagination and what manfests itselfs tangibly in the world as we and others around us perceive it.

Needless to say I’ve developed a new found respect for those who suffer from such illnesses and an even deeper respect for those who while suffering from such an illness can overcome the cacophony in their own minds to lead meaningful lives. Nothing striked the chord stronger than the triump of a person over circumstances that are otherwise futile.

One of my favorite quotes from the quotes file is one which I wrote in November of 1995 – Expectation is the mother of disappointment. Easier said than done though. Because every so often we (myself included) want something so eagerly that there are only two possible outcomes, zenith of elation or the nadir of disappoinment. There is no in between.

But is it possible to want something so much that you just screw it up for yourself? I think it is, primarily because I feel I’ve done it often enough. In fact I used to do it a lot more often than I do it now since I now try to hedge my bets if I can. And I guess the reason I’m thinking about this again and writing about it is because I’m made an uncovered bet. I want something and I don’t have a plan for what happens if I don’t get it (well, I do, but I don’t like any of the outcomes there yet). When I was in school I always wanted to do well. And sometimes I wanted it *so* bad, that I would go overboard with it. I would actually know not only the question/problem by heart, but I’d know what page of the text book it’s on and what the solution is. Okay and how is that bad? Well, then in my eagerness to do well, I wouldn’t read the damn question in the test — I’d read half of it and say, “ah! I know this one!” and I’d proceed with the solution which I knew by heart. Of course, I’d miss out the part where the examiner had changed the numbers or put in a subtle twist in the problem (one which generally made is simpler rather than harder) and land up screwing myself in the process. Because I knew the subject, it’s just that I wanted it so bad, that I’d mess it up.

I think the same thing happened with my interview for MIT when I applied there as an undergrad. It was my first interview *ever*. I wanted it really bad. And when I walked out of there, I knew I’d just screwed it up royally. Of course these are probably the more memorable screwups courtesy of just wanting something too much.

But it isn’t that I’m recognizing this problem just now. I did notice it earlier too. And my attempt at alleviating it was two-fold, a) rationalize it away by hedging, b) teach myself to just “wing-it.” So far both have worked great, but every once in a while comes something where you want it so much that you can’t hedge it with something you want equally as much and therefore you don’t feel comfortable winging it either. I guess I’m just in that type of a predicament at the moment and irrational as it may be, it seems that even thinking about it will just screw it all up. Because you can want something *too* much…