My non reality

you are not real....

I whisper to myself

you are the fantasy

concieved by me

born of my dreams

far away

from the winds of the real world

that makes them

cold

stone

real

you are the warmth

that fills my heart

in times of strife

the light

at the end of the dark tunnel

how can you be real

donot be

cold

stone

real

Moments

Cant sleep......... someone is playing a song. I cant hear the words clearly but I like the music. Somehow a serenity is enveloping my being. Its ok, if I cant sleep....I do not want to. At his point of time .... its like the time is standing still. There is a pleasant emptiness in the head and I do not want to decipher it.....just let it be the way it is...vague....timeless.....calm.

Is this the end or the beginning of something?

Well, it is Saturday night!

if it wasn't for............

if it wasn't for the rain

I would have been satisfied
with the scorching heat
that burnt my back

if it wasn't for spring
i would have been indifferent
to the long dreary winter
that froze the heart

if it wasn't for flowers
I would have cherished
the thorns in my garden
that bled my fingers

if it wasn't for love
I would have been content
with the emptiness in my soul
that echoed no questions

if it wasn't for you
I would have been humble
in the lonliness of my soul
or my soulless self

if it wasnt for life
the death would have held
no promise of salvation
the hope for a new life

The Law of Inertia

One of my seniors once told me, that I should not expect myself to be able to help, let alone cure every patient. There will be some who will not respond at all and then there will be some who will respond only that much. I have tried to keep it in my mind ever since but every time a patient comes who I feel just needs a change of perspective to respond and then does not, it becomes difficult to accept. Its not like pulling the plug for a brain dead individual, because for the quintessential optimist, there is always hope; he can't give up and he can't accept others giving up. If a parent asks me whether their son or daughter is going to be fine, I say,"I can't say"; of course I would like to extend all help that I can, except perhaps the positive confirmation. But when a patient asks me I always say,"yes, you can". But I should say ,"I can't make you fine but you can". You can say,"very Diplomatic!", well that was not the intention.

I can recall so many young girls and boys who I have seen over past 2 to 3 years, whose problems were more psychological than biological but no amount of counselling or therapy could change their perspective. I am not a behaviorist so I do not expect to change people by modifying their behaviors. I believe in insight oriented approaches and thus believe that awareness can bring change in perspectives and hence the behavior. Still there are so many who would close their eyes to the half full glass while focusing on the empty half. That implies I am failing in my job of changing people's perspective. But 'change' is the word that causes discomfiture. Can you really change a perspective? A woman is obsessed about her food, she is afraid of having physical discomfort if she takes wrong kind of food. I have been seeing her for 4 months now. Her depression has lifted but her obsession has stayed. She recognizes her symptoms to be the result of shifting her preoccupation from her children onto herself but somehow she cant shift this preoccupation over to her husband who is obese and diabetic and perhaps needs as much attention as her children. Why? Well, he never gave her that, so how can she! I am happy that I was able to bring insight - but change - no, that did not happen. Could Freud have done that - restructured a personality through psychoanalysis!
In hindsight, don't we all resent change, even while seeking it. As objects bound by the Newton's first law of Inertia- we do not want to change unless change hits us with a force.; even if we are in poorest of situations, we go on; well most of us do if not all.
So, what do I do with these children, the girl who would go back to slashing her wrist because she can't get a job that will fulfill her ambitions, or the boy who has multiple backlogs in first year of professional degree course and still would postpone the formulation of a study routine to tomorrow while the examinations await at the end of the month or the person who would not let go of the fear that he might become mentally disturbed tomorrow due to a partially heritable defect so he is just wasting away today.
May be the solution lies in that force that finally moves the object from its state of inertia. Can we learn to find that force or that force comes to us in time, lets wait and watch.

What is it about Love?

I read this article about Love in the Sunday times some time back which made me plunge into the age old debate as to what is love. A long time back, when the mind was more pholosophical, I did discuss with my would be husband about my take on love. I thought it as a positive emotion on a scale with centre marked as 0 i.e. no emotion; to the right where positive feelings exist and left where the negative feelings exist. Human being is a pendulum, in equilibrium its stable at 0, and then a force pulls him/her to its side. The analogy is obviously too simple and cannot explain all aspects of this complex phenomenon, except that the more you get pulled to one side the more likely you are to swing back to the opposite.

This time I still think of it as a positive emotion but would explore a little further. As an ardent admirer of Freud's observations, I too believe in the primal instincts of eros and thanatos, and the pleasure principle. Anything we humans do serves one purpose- survival of self and species and we do it for one thing- the pleasure. Love serves the purpose of survival of self and the species. In basic neurochemical science, it shouldnot be such a complex issue. But it is, the more I read about the issue the more confused I became.

According to dictionary.com; Love, affection, devotion all mean a deep and enduring emotional regard, usually for another person.I am fine with 'deep', but 'enduring'?? Further refrences suggest that there are innumerable definitions and types of love; there is the maternal, the paternal, the amorous/romantic, the religious, the platonic and all different varieties of love. Have we ever talked of so many kinds of sadness/happiness/anger/jealousy or in more basic instinctual terms- hunger/pain etc. This makes me reflect that love cannot be one basic emotion or feeling. Invariably, love between adult humans especially unrelated (opposite sex is no more a neccessity) gets associated with sexual felings - after all that is the basic drive that serves the nature's purpose of propagation.In one of the searches it was mentioned that while sex is a biological concept, love is a social concept. I like the statement as it makes sense- we have to have a social concept so that mother can take care of an infant, man can take care of a family, humans can take care of other humans. So, through evolution, those sentiments which could activate the reward centres of brain were prized, moulded into moral codes of conduct, fed through romantic stories/ stories of sacrifices made for the sake of another human/living being in the name of love - leaving us with ideals to follow.

Well one thing is for sure, research suggests that love and sex are mediated by different centres in brain, of course it doesnot mean there is no association. Another study suggests that sex could be a primer for love; so if you have sex you are more likely to fall in love??? (theory behind falling in love after marriage!)

All said and done, the myth of eternal love, the unconditional love, the selfless love- confuses the simple reward centre theory. Then we make associations through learnt and taught experiences of others before we experience them ourselves. We tend to colour our experiences in the colour of our expectations, so we associate feelings with the fairytales; and end up with the sense of something missing!

I am a romantic by nature, somebody who would like to believe in something more than the chemical reaction, but could it be another form of fantasy, nature's way of keeping our species alive; society's way of keeping social system in order, a MATRIX of sorts to keep wayward instincts under control. Whatever it is, it sure is intoxicating (and is associated with release of dopamine in brain, like other intoxicants), but gradually tolerence develops, so I refute the word 'enduring' in its definition.

The discussion can take innumerable twists and turns, there is no mystery here but a craving to get the thrill again and again and because it doesnot happen we keep searching for meanings. What is the question again?

Blues of the Blue

After a really long time I watched a really bad movie. Not that bad movies are not made anymore, but I would follow my instincts and skip it. But this time, after 3 years , my husband asked me out, so I couldnot refuse, and since reliable sources had not recommended "Wake up Sid", we zeroed on "Blue".
Thats the movie all about-'the colour blue', and ofcourse, green, red, orange, yellow......Because that is all it has to offer. It promised a treasure hunt which didnot start till the end, and when it did- it wasn't a hunt; more like picking it off a platter. Rest is all noise which fails to have an impact. The girls may have given some adrenaline rush to the men but for the women- its a beach party in a potbelly! ghosh!!
If there is absolutely nothing to do this weekend, you may enjoy national geographic at the nearest theatre i.e. if you can suffer the sloppy dialogues delivering a totally predictable sequence of events and a huge sense of something missing- a STORY.
At the end of it, my husband was red in face for having suggested Blue.

The fire or The fireworks

What it is about Diwali? Since childhood, I remember associating the crispness in the air to the festive season that brought 10 Dussera holidays and another 20 days of school full of anticipation, for the couple of days when the lights light up the earth and sky. Is it just the anticipation or something more, because if I sit back and think, Diwali always brought along the restrictions of being able to spend only that much amount on crackers/gifts/shopping, rest was looking up at the sky and enjoying the sights while some affluent families displayed the more designer fireworks. Now I can afford all that to a certain extent, still there is the sense of something amiss- the anticipation, the excitement, the dream…………or something else. I am not sure, like most of the other things in life.
May be it is just the easy innocence of childhood, the ability to enjoy small things in life that has made all the difference. IT is always the fire not the fireworks that bring in the excitement, the exhilaration, the fun of the festival. As the fire slows down, the fun seems to be diminishing too. But it is not the chronological age that does it, as always the mental age that defines the fire, the zeal to live and celebrate. Wish there was a way to relearn the old younger way, till the one we will make do with the fireworks alone!