Dealing with sorrow around you

How do you deal with sorrow around you? There's just so much terrorism, crime, poverty and misery around. The recent news of crime around the area where I live, and the Mumbai blasts and the economic recession etc. seem too much to bear. They raise questions about why the world is the way it is and whether or not we as a species are evolving and how we can define 'ideal conditions' in the world. Given the laws of nature and human temperament, can too much stability for too long bring happiness either? And hence, are we to take suffering in our stride and just preoccupy ourselves in solving problems? In any case, the antagonism and terror around the world, and the unthinking dependence on the material world for happiness, seem like a sad state of affairs.

My husband and I recently met a homeless guy who got talking to us. He initially danced and fooled around and made us laugh. In a few minutes he told us his whole life story and it was very sad. He was from Alaska, he said, and he and his wife, out of compassion, let a bum live with them. The bum, it turned out, was the villain of their lives. He raped this man's wife. In his rage this man shot the guy and then spent years in prison. The man cried his heart out. Was it all true? Was some of it fabricated? Was all of it fabricated? Was he demented and was this the story his mind had come up with? Who knows... but the sorrow in his being was real. It was genuine. It could not be contained. The guy was looking back at his life, thinking of the road not taken - that's the worst form of remorse, I think. He said he and his wife at some point had refused shelter to a teen aged girl who was homeless, and then when this other villain of a bum came along, they simply had to help him, to rid themselves of their guilt. He was imagining the path his life would have taken had they helped the first bum.

How do we deal with sorrow? How do *you* deal with sorrow around you? One aspect is dealing with it emotionally yourself, the other is, what you can do to alleviate it. Guess we can all focus on one cause and work towards it. There really is no place for feeble heartedness.

Did the Buddha feel the same pang of pain when he saw suffering in the world?

What are your stories? How have others' lives and difficulties affected you? How do you cope with them emotionally? How do you strengthen yourself and help the situtation and the people around you?

Happy Birthday Cyber Diaries!

You're a year old and the powerful baby that's the product of so many neurons spread across the globe! Thanks for keeping my mind alive and my heart open to varied perspectives!

Pray you live long and continue to evolve!

Friendship

This sounds simple and clichéd, but I want to know what people think about friendship. What qualities do you need the most in a friend? We always hear of things like "a friend *is there* for me", "a friend does *not judge* me", "I can *be myself* with a friend" etc. What are your criteria/expectations? Which of them would you be willing to compromise on and to what extent? Does a friend have to be intelligent and interesting only, or a "good" person too (by whatever your definition of "good person" is)? Or is the former not important at all as long as the person is well intentioned? Does the person have to be "good" in general; i.e., towards other people or society at large, or is it enough for them to be good to you? Are intellectual elements such as criticisms and debates important, and do you prefer that they keep you honest always? Or may be there are some here who think friends are just for having a "good time" with and are happy as long as they have fun with friends. What do you think? Or do friends have to be fun in addition to satisfying other things?

Do they need to take interest in you, your passions and what you do? For e.g., would you naturally expect a friend to give you feedback on your tennis strokes or a work of art of yours? Do you think this is reciprocal and if so how do you define the terms of your "transactions" with people? Is it based on the other person's action/inaction? Also, do friends always have to share their goals and dreams and experiences with you?

Further, I have come across people ("friends") who are mostly competitive. Their focus is almost always on how much better (or worse) you do than them in anything. Do things like this seem significant to you at all and would they affect your image of them as a friend?

My final set of questions revolves around how people change with time and circumstances. Does it affect you if a person you were once close to changed in some way that may be considered "superficial"? For e.g., if a friend of yours completely changed the way they look or talk, would you feel comfortable adjusting to the change and still thinking of the person as the same friend?

Maybe there is no specific set of criteria and each friend is different from another and you like different things about different people. But are there any common (least common denominator) set of qualities you want a friend to have or want a friend *not* to have?

The above mentioned are just a few aspects. Please feel free to comment on anything you may think of outside of these questions too.

Looking forward to reading various thoughts!

Roadmap of Evolution

There are different aspects of evolution of a person, such as, intellectual, physical, spiritual, emotional, social, creative, and so on. I wonder how most people mature and evolve, I mean how specifically, and in what order at different stages of their lives.

I have thought that there is a typical order (although my life doesn't conform to the typical order). Physical development + intellectual development happen parallely from infancy to about twenties. And typically after that, there is development of bigger and better material and survival skills- which maps to climbing the career ladder, or buying your own house or car etc., and emotional development, to cope with girlfriends/boyfriends, ex dates, spouses, divorces, broken friendships, family ties and tensions. And then the stage from the mid life (crisis ?) to old age, where life takes a more spiritual turn, with a quest for more and more simplicity through the small yet meaningful things beyond the veil of mundaneness. (Actually this last leg can be quite different depending on the person - I guess there could be senile people who made a lot more sense when they were younger). But anyway, is this how everyone sees it and is this how people see themselves growing?

Personally for me it's been very very different. My spiritual quests and reasoning were at their peak in the teens. In my early twenties bulk of my energy went into physical development, when I worked out a lot and developed strength and stamina and worked my way into getting lean and mean. I also developed a lot of survival skills since I left home and the first couple of years after that were hard. Now most of my energy is spent on intellectual things, both left and right brain oriented, due to my fulltime job + part time degree, and my interest and consequently, time spent in the arts. So when I look at the path of my life since adolesence it's something like: spiritual -> [physical + emotional + social] -> intellectual. Of course all aspects of evolution are present in all stages of life but this map is based on the most *dominant* aspect, or the most significant aspect, at any particular stage.

Do people's life maps typically look quite different from the above? How do you see yourself evolve? What does your roadmap of evolution look like- the past and the future you envision? Would you have liked the roadmap so far to have been different and if so why? If not, why not?

I am really looking forward to reading your thoughts!

Senses and Intellect

What do you rate higher: senses or intellect? Or are they incomparable and both indispensable? Or is one more dependent on the other than the other is on it? Please don't mind that I may have brought up clichéd topics of empiricism and brain in a petri dish theories.

In addition, if you were forced to forgo one of your senses and you could choose which, then which one would it be and why, or is this impossible to answer :-) ? I mean let's say an evil alien leader came to you and said they were going to somehow take away one of your senses but that you could choose which one. Then what would your answer be?

I look forward to reading your views.

Forgiving

What is forgiving according to you? Is it possible for you to forgive? One of the many definitions for 'forgive' in the dictionary is "to cease the feeling of resentment". Is this always possible? And does forgiving mean that you also give up your judgement about a person?

Is it always good to forgive anybody for anything or do you make a decision on a case-by-case basis, some people being more worthy of being forgiven than yet others? And continuing this train of thought, is forgiving yourself usually harder or easier for you than forgiving others?

As per most (or may be all) religions forgiving is a virtue and God always forgives. Going by the definition of God, nothing can adversely affect God so why would He/She/It care either way? Isn't forgiving only applicable when someone is affected in some way? Does forgiving also mean that you don't punish the other person? In that case, why is it that religion talks both about an all-forgiving God and at the same time, going to hell for one's sins?

I would love to hear your take on this subject!

Immortality

We have heard often, on the one hand, the uncomfortable questions of the disillusioned: "What's the point of this life that is going to end one day?", "Why is life such an ephemera that confounds us?", etc., and on the other hand, fairy tales and mythological legends of certain blessed people who by their virtue and some good deed attain immortality.

My question is, would you want to live forever? Let us assume that there is some way for you to stay alive forever. I don't want to say too much here, lest it should bias the reader. The rest of the imagination is upto the reader... [And living forever, by definition means you live forever independent of other things, such as the life of the earth, or the availability of resources]. You can go as far as you want with your imagination. Potentially you could be continuously adapting to your environment as necessary, since without adaptation survival is not possible.

What is the picture you see when you imagine this? Do you like what you see...? Please do share.