I keep thinking about all the mistakes I made or what seem like mistakes to me and cringe inwardly. Oh God, oh shit...! What is this stupid mistake going to cost me? What are they going to think? How dumb was that? How weird? I should have kept my mouth shut? I should have opened up a bit more? Maybe not so much? Maybe they'll perceive that the wrong way? Maybe that was too direct? Or intense? Maybe they already have a bad impression? Maybe this and maybe that. And then I have to sort of sit myself down and put things in perspective. I am never going to be the ‘normal’ type. I am never going to say the polite non-committal inane banal nothings because that's what everyone expects you to say. I am never going to straddle the diplomatic fine line. I am never going to please or appease everybody. I am never going to be apologetic about being authentic. I am never going to project what I don't believe or mean. I have to ask myself would I rather be a person who says or does all those things... or I'd rather be me? Would I rather be someone who stands for something, passionately and with all my heart, or someone who lukewarmly flows with everything? Would I rather not be just who I am even with my social bumblings? Isn't it those idiosyncrasies and oddities that make us refreshing and interesting? Why fit into a cookie cutter when you can be your own unique shape? The world will of course punish you the more different you are… it will try to push you into a box, it will try to stifle your voice, it will make you second guess your worth... but you know what, you have to push it right back and claim your rightful place under the sun. Don’t let anyone dim your shine, as they say!

I am conscious at times of being too much at odds with the world, and then I wonder if those who are not at odds are actually not the odder in a way? It's like they do not see or hear or think about what is so deafeningly loud and clear... one could argue that it's good they don't because it makes it possible to live a blissfully ignorant life. The cost of facing reality in the face is not a small one.

As J. Krishnamurti said, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

Aldous Huxley, a close friend of Krishnamurti’s, wrote along the same lines in the Brave New World Revisited (1958):

"The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted."

"Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind, the race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself." ~ Baz Luhrmann

So my dear readers, I published my first paper a week or so ago. Here it is if you'd like to have a read.

I remember telling my PhD supervisor that I wouldn't be so proud on the day of getting my PhD as I would be on the day my first paper is published. And I have to say it is true. It felt like the milestone I was working towards these past years, and in a way, it felt like I had arrived at the beginning of a new book. It's taken me many a volume before I came to this book and only I know what has gone into this coming or becoming of sorts. I feel in a way that it was destined... I was always meant to reach this point. I couldn't help thinking how this blog itself is a testimony to this. My paper revolves around Aristotle's ideas and the quote I chose for this blog when I started it, aeons ago, is by Aristotle. And I also remembered while I was musing about all this that my boss at that time gifted me a book 'The Story of Philosophy' which greatly inspired me, particularly the chapter on Aristotle. I use one of the quotes in that book to lead this article (luckily my co-author is also very fond of this quote).

As you can tell, it feels a bit like a full circle to me. In those days I hadn't the remotest inkling that I would be moving my career in this direction or moving out of the country for that matter or writing about the things I love reading and thinking about. Nothing in my life till then had prepared me for it nor did anything till much later. I guess I have a tendency to look back on my life and trace the hidden patterns. It has always seemed to me that there is a logic or design in it—one only has to look very carefully, closely, and attentively. Or perhaps one acts on the things that unconsciously have a lot of resonance to oneself and a pattern therefore emerges. I don't know which it is but I am not complaining :)