Aal Izz Well- Hello 2010!

I usually don't do resolutions at the beginning of a new year, but I thought it was high time that I brushed off the cobwebs accumulating on this blog. The focus might go from the intellectual and thought provoking to the more mundane, but then, what is life without the everyday, mundane happenings?

I went with my parents today to the Indian equivalent of the jungle watering hole in the US (i.e. Edison, NJ) and we watched a movie called 3 Idiots, starring Aamir Khan, Madhavan, and Sharman Joshi. I won't bore you with the details, but if you are curious, there's always good ol' Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_Idiots

Any movie with Aamir Khan always makes me super happy because a) I adore Aamir Khan and b) the movies that he does are almost always meaningful in some way-- not the typical Bollywood formula where boy meets girl, girl hates boy (and/or vice versa) initially, but then they become friends and then fall in love. Look at the movies he's done fairly recently: Lagaan was a historical movie with a very interesting theme of local reaction to British rule (fine it was fictitious but the undercurrents are very very real). Taare Zameen Par was about a child socially/emotionally/mentally suffering from being dyslexic and how a little bit of time and encouragement can do wonders.

So anyway, 3 Idiots, apart from the sheer hilarity and good acting and all that jazz (and making my dad sorta nostalgic of his college days because it was shot at one of his alma mater's sister (or cousin might be more accurate haha) schools, had some really good points about the education system in India and of college life in general-- both of which I found pertinent to college life here in "Amreeka".

1) College is where you make the few, select best friends of your life. While you have a lot of friends, the best ones are few in number.

Well, I won't belabor the point, because I'm sure people reading this have heard this from 4128946124 people already, but it's true. While I am an extremely sociable person and am always willing to strike up a conversation with virtually anyone, the deep down me isn't seen very often. However at college I've been lucky to find the one or two people that I'd trust with those "deep-down" things, and I consider that to be one of the greatest things about college. The people that know me the best apart from my parents and a couple extended family members are these people-- they know my weaknesses and fortes, the positives and the negatives, the giddy and the sober parts, and it's always nice knowing people have got your back.

2) Learn to learn about the world, not to worry about your GPA.

I admit, at a high achieving, pressure cooker college, sometimes this is really hard to remember and live by. In fact, it is almost foolish to NOT worry about your GPA. After all, who IS going to admit you into grad school or give you that 6 figure job without that? In spite of my college being relatively good about collaborative learning and helping each other, ultimately, everybody's out to reach for that A in class. Is that a bad thing? No, of course not-- one must make the effort to strive to the best that they can possibly be, within their capabilities. But sometimes, a lot of people forget to grasp the full impact of what they are studying. As a bioengineering major (hahaha 3 Idiots took place in an engineering school), I've seen this happen so much. The labs we do-- people almost mechanically follow the lab protocol and write up the lab report for the sake of getting a good grade and beating the average, without much thought for the impact of said lab on the real world.

Myself included, we've all decried that those labs are useless and don't teach us anything in the frustration of "gah, one more assignment to be accountable for", but if one actually sat there and read it, they could find a dozen useful applications. We all just get wrapped up in grades, and sadly, we kind of have to be if we want to get those good jobs, those admissions into decent grad/professional schools, etc. If we learned for the sake of learning and rekindling the true passion that drew us to that major, we'd be a lot happier, and we'd do a lot better too.

3) When in doubt, all is well.

So, in the movie, Aamir Khan told his friends that when they started to get scared by something, to put a hand on their heart and say "Aal izz well" because it's the heart that gets scared and freaked out before anything else. Cheesiness aside, the man makes a good point! If people thought rationally 100% of the time, they would be less frazzled than they are now. More peaceful, yes, but also, quite boring. Our hearts fuel the emotional aspect of things, which tend to be less irrational and more volatile. However, I think believing with all your might that no matter how sucky your situation, all is well and that there is a glimmer of hope for you is definitely a good outlook to have. Have faith in yourself, and everything else will follow.

Movies like these always make me think-- for yes, everything is fairy tale like and too good or interesting to be true, but at the same time, there are some fundamental truths that, no matter how much they're over-romanticized, are still true.

It was a good timing to watch this movie-- the beginning of a new year (and decade!), a fresh turning of the page, and a great way to be reminded of a good, sound perspective. So to those who read this blog, as well as a reminder for me, when things get really crazy: I want to remind you of this-- no matter how frustrating classes, OCR, graduate school standardized tests, relationship issues, friendship issues, quarter-life crises of what to do with your life, or anything of that ilk is, deep down...

...all is well.

Illusions and Imagination

When making this blog, I stumbled a lot on my username-- what unique combination of 16 alphanumeric characters would capture the essence that is me? I finally decided to recycle my LiveJournal username-- precious_sparks. It's a coinage of two songs that mean(t) a lot to me-- Precious Illusions by Alanis Morissette and Spark by Tori Amos.

Today, I decided to listen to Precious Illusions after a long while, and it got me thinking.

Two things that, even today, saves me at times from being pessimistic, are my imagination and the illusions I hold (I think this is true for most people, even though they might not admit it). Now something I wonder from a semantic point of view-- what really is the difference between an illusion and an imaginary flight. I guess the sensible thing would be to look in a dictionary, right?

Straight out of Mirriam Webster:
Illusion
A misleading image presented to the vision (2): something that deceives or misleads intellectually b (1): perception of something objectively existing in such a way as to cause misinterpretation of its actual nature

Imagination
a creation of the mind ; especially : an idealized or poetic creation b: fanciful or empty assumption

What I take away from this is that an imaginatory flight could, at times, be a compilation and weaving of many illusions. So really, they could be the same thing. Or not. Either way, I think there's a very thin line between the two words. Not that this is completely relevant for where I wanted to take this post.

I'll be very honest here...I let my imagination run amok a lot. I wish for things that I know have a 0.000000000001% chance of happening, but I still think about and brood over what-ifs till they almost seem alive and plausible. Probably not one of the smarter things I do, because the jolt to reality (when it finally makes its way past all the fluff and imagination) is rather rough, but it's almost worth it because I have so much fun creating those highly exaggerated, idealized settings in my head.

Illusions and imaginations are things that people cling to when they are the most defenseless, the most vulnerable to the world around them. In a very dynamic, unpredictable setting like college, they're a particular comfort when you can't even express what's bothering you in words, even if you want to. It's so much easier to ignore it in your little idealized world.

Children are particularly adept at their imagination-- it runs like crazy and the most mundane things become the most enchanting, most riveting thing they've ever seen...it's something I envy a lot in children. To a child, the world around them is limitless in the possibilities it holds-- if you want to make the arrangement of chairs made while your mother vacuums a spaceship, well guess what-- it is now.

I've spent a lot of time lately reflecting on how my imaginatory flights have altered from those fanciful flights to what I do these days. And frankly, my imagination runs in a very boring way. It just glorifies the world around me in a very feasible way, which is kind of boring. I mean, it's realistic, and it's probably good that I don't think like a 5 year old, but at the same time, I miss the excitement of imagining. Now imagining an idealized world is always accompanied by an undercurrent of vague dissatisfaction knowing that even if you have the power to make what you imagine happen, it's going to require a lot of work before you're truly happy with what you have.

I don't mean to sound pessimistic here-- in fact, in general I think I'm optimistic to the point it's kind of bad sometimes. But I digress.

I guess I'm just sad that my imagination and the flights it takes no longer hold the magicalness and realness that it held for me when I was younger, and I miss it.

And who knows, maybe some of the illusions and imaginations I hold might become a reality, and I can, for a little while at least, be that little 5 year old whose imagination made my little corner of the world a much happier place.

A little Intro

I guess my very first disclaimer is...if my writing is not as lyrical or expressive as you would expect...I shirk behind my lame excuse that I am an engineering major (ie writing is not my forte), but I really want to do this because I really want to have my perspective down somewhere for people (including me, haha)to read.

My second disclaimer is that knowing my nature, I will digress a lot from where I start, to the point it probably won't relate with my initial thoughts or topic at all. It's kind of fun though, cuz I never know what's going to come out of these posts.

That being said, I hope anybody that stumbles across this and has the patience to read this and walk away with something new. And if not, thanks for reading anyway and giving me the change.