Yesterday writing about desires and responsibility, talked about having a balance for both. It was clear the blog was written by acting mature trying to explain the need to balance by being innocent. But it did ended up rationalizing desire to a feeling to be organized.

Desires are our most native and humane feelings, core of core, what makes us the person we are. Can we truly organize them? or are we fooling ourselves in trying to organize them and balancing them with our responsibilities?

Yesterday, while watching “Into the Wild” I realized, what I had missed out on. He had issues to sort out, parents who lied to him, making him question his own existence. Hitchhiking and running to the wild was intended to find himself among the truest of surroundings, the nature. He did all of it, and then while reading a book, rekindled the desire to return. Sadly he could not, and he ended by dying in the wild. Sad, very sad, but not what you will think that where desires and urges will take you. Or is it? Wikipedia tells us that it is a true story of Christopher McCandleless. He is criticized for not being practical enough to carry a map or compass equivalent to committing suicide. But that’s the point, he was being innocent, letting is desires explore the realms of his capabilities and he was not exercising his responsibility to himself. All the rules of common sense demand adhering to principles of outdoor survival but a guy driven by his desire to find himself cannot be made responsible.

That’s the point at the end, is that where we have to be always, explore desires but stay responsible. Does that even satisfy the desire in the first place, or create a mirage of satisfaction? I have no answer to this question, but I do ask myself this.

But there is a new challenge, which comes I guess with age, that may have lead to the answer. It is the realization and then a trigger to visualize your life at a certain age, further down at age of 35, 40, 50. Those years are not far as they seem to be considering how far one has come from 20. This visualization forces one to reconsider about regrets that may happen at that age. Those regrets will never be reconciled with or will be too hard to. What one may have done till one reaches a certain age, what are the desires for one’s life and its potential? Such a visualization on one side can renew one’s vigor to fulfill desires, but it definitely re-enforces the responsibilities to oneself, to loved ones and to society. I am not sure at that age, having fulfilled the desires will be what I will personally feel comfortable about. What about the responsibilities to myself and those unrealized potential.

Rationalizing desires sounds self-defeating in first place, but at the end life is a journey, a marathon not a 100 meter sprint and you want to be happy and satisfied when you reach the finish line. So go on, fulfill your desires but focus and work hard on your responsibilities to one’s self, loved ones and society. You may know everything yet know nothing, live with a frame of responsibilities while indulging in desires and make traveling through life worthwhile.

It is a strange combination but one’s life resolves around the two so much that it needs to be given a thought on. Sometimes they in unison and sometimes they are conflict. But what are these desires and responsibilities and why is it that life can resolve just around them.

Lets see what responsibilities are, yes I know desires are great to talk about but life is about accepting both, so starting with the harder part first. Responsibilities are what life expects from you. Your responsibility to one’s own self, making sure you are healthy physically and mentally, learning, growing while striving towards ones own potential. This is may seem like a desire but no, this is a responsibility where one has to take care of one’s own self with one’s own actions. Any action that requires some one else to act on it, is a desire not a responsibility. Then responsibility towards one’s loved ones, people who are in the circle of myself around you namely your life partner, child, parents with few chosen relatives and friends.The key to this responsibility is to help them in fulfilling their own responsibilities to themselves. Love, spending time, taking care and all that is fine, but the key is to help them, let them know you are there and they are not alone in facing the life responsibilities. Lastly the responsibilities towards the external world, managing finances, bills, office, school, university everything that makes one’s life an active contributor to society one is living in. This is routine and regime of life, one has to stay responsible and not to fall off the cliff.

Oh, that sounds a lot, where does that leave any room for desires. Dictionary meaning of Desire are A wish or longing; The object of longing; Sexual appetite; passion. Desires is essential on ones own well being and do not follow the circles of life. Desires are personal and your own, indulgences you want, guilt free satisfaction you need, all of it. Desires evoke passion and longing and once fulfilled a satisfaction and achievement. They aim for a similar result as one’s responsibilities to oneself, but reasons are different. You may go to gym because you have to be responsible for your health or you may go to gym because you desire to look good. Different reasons, similar result.

That brings out the paradox of life, when desires and responsibilities are striving for your time and effort, the limiting factor. Through out your life, I believe you will sway between these constantly, in fact the phases in life, in a life year, in a month, in a week, in a day and in fact in an hour also, when one is focused on responsibilities and when one is indulging in the desires. Yes, I know even within an hour, I call that swaying between being Innocent and acting Mature.

Innocence is great, one can live the world being at peace of not knowing, desiring and then fulfilling. Children are like that mostly, though parents strive for them to become responsible. But even adults are like, why do you think, we have so much addiction of all kinds, simply desires let loose and shell of innocence never opened. Maturity requires recognizing the responsibilities, understanding the need to focus and work towards them. By acting mature, you can focus on reaching your own personal potential, acting towards responsibilities to your own self, love and care for the people dearest to you and fulfilling the duties of being a social animal. Adults are like that mostly, though children want their parents to become innocent and discover the wonders of the world with them. But then there are those Adults who get too engrossed in to these responsibilities and duties, that innocence is lost and never regained. Going through live as if living in a box. (Hrithik said that to Katrina in ZNMD). ZNMD is in essence is about this paradox of being innocent and having the wonderment towards life in contrast to acting mature and fulfilling the obligations of society.

Though ZNMD may sway a little towards innocence, but the key to happiness is having a balance. Let me give an example, it may sound trivial but that’s what life is about being innocent and acting mature even within an hour. Last night everything was hectic, finally when dinner was done, I could sit and watch a movie to un-wind, “Shall we dance“, sipping wine and enjoying Richard Gere’s predicament of desiring while being responsible. Even with dishes to clean and kitchen to swipe, first 30 minutes of an hour was spent watching the movie, that was my desire to put leg up and unwind. But then movie was paused and last 30 minutes of the hour was spent cleaning as it had to be done before 10:00. Finally ending the night with water in the eye, on seeing the guilt Richard Gere had on indulging in his desire of dancing. He could not face his wife and the fact that he was not happy sometimes with his life and this was his escape. That scene when he admits it, was a tearjerker for me. Then there is DevD, which challenged how far and how long one can stay innocent, and Kalki making Abhay Deol realize the need to get responsible not for others but for yourself.

Two movies made in different points in time talk about not getting to caught up in acting mature and rediscovering the wonder of being innocent to keep the sanity. Another movie showing the depths of indulgence one can get to in letting desires loose and the part of being innocent, and at the end acknowledging the potential of one’s life to start acting mature again to keep the sanity.

Sometimes it may be difficult to judge, what is a responsibility and what is a desire. Is writing my desire or my responsibility to myself to be creative. It may start with a desire, but as I wrote about the Question one has to get responsible and write every day judiciously to see something fruitful. Once you start doing that, does it stay desirable anymore, may be not. Have I figured this all out and balanced my life. No definitely not, I go over a cliff when my desires to create and responsibilities to myself make me forget the duties of everyday life. There is no correct answer, only one’s own method to manage this paradox, after all sanity is definitely NOT statistical. That’s what life is all about and what makes it worth living.

It’s odd to come back to this space after a while, read the state of mind as expressed and yet I strangely feel disconnected from the person who has written them. It is all me after all, but does not feel like it.

It is mid 2011, almost a year since the intelligence is understood and yet not understood enough to stop. Hopefully I have learnt the lesson and focus on being where I want to be. I do not know actually where I am today, makes it harder to imagine the place one could be. But it is now time to come back and re-focus on writing.

There is this inane desire to create, not be idle, let the moment and time not pass by. And then this chatter inside which cannot find a direction or avenue to come out. Oh God! where shall I be if not here, then where. Given a business challenge the direction to the creative angel comes about and the flows and ebbs lead to a good result. The result then needs carving with fine chisel, painstakingly over hours to become a thing of beauty. Ira Glass said it so rightly on having good taste initiates the process of creating and one’s taste stays as the benchmark for over coming mediocrity.

Ira Glass emphasizes on doing it continuously even though it may take a while but one has to fight through it. That hard work at work can happen once in while, leading to intellectual property claiming ownership for the idea while transferring it to the system at the same time. Rest of the work otherwise is simply meanderings of a regime.

Then there are phases of wilderness. No challenge, no direction, emptiness with uneasiness. Emptiness for not knowing where I am heading to and uneasiness on not doing something about it. It can be silenced or dumbed down with information overload, reading, reading and more reading. All this though ends up giving more dots to join and create from. What is it that I want to create? the next big business challenge and the million dollar idea or the satisfaction of having created something appreciable. Validation is necessary energy source for creative genius, what is that one wants the validation for is the question? validation of having successfully created or created at all in the first place?

It is in those moments that people, characters, stories and poetries happen. The disciple to listen to them and give them a space to be expressed is needed. The joy of writing down the thoughts, ideas and stories of people as told to me by my angel. Elizabeth Gilbert in her talk at TED said it so eloquently.

I do not know if I can write as good as she can but the least I can do is to write and nurture the guardian angel who definitely visits me at odd times. I will now try to listen to it going forward and write it down as if passing through me to the words on this blog.

But there is one more thing.

As Jesse Schell points out in the book “art of game design” spot on about keeping the house in order. Otherwise the normal ness of life takes over, shakes you out of limbo, spiraling down the un-controlled catching up on things to be done. It leads to panic and depressions of a different kind, one that comes from realization of ones own limitations due to environment one is living and its responsibilities. It does re-inforce the expectation and other type of validation, that requires one to have a social standing, to provide a life well lived to loved ones and to be among ones peers. But these depressions can shatter and question ones abilities to live a creative life, thus avoiding those becomes more important then those that occur from not being able to create. How far will one go to avoid them all together, too far and one may knowingly numb the urge, the one to create.

One cannot judge what is better or normal in real sense, the routines of life and orderliness led with a things to do or wilderness of seeking challenges and depths of diving in resolutions.

So thats my friend at the end, the question of life, the universe and everything (ode to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). Do you have an answer or shall I create a new world around sun to find it?