You know you have some really amazing friends when:

A friend can tell you all the things that are wrong with you. (and be wrong about some of them. thank god!)

A friend can do a personality test on your behalf and get the result you had gotten. MAJOR!

Both those things, two days in a row.

I has amazing friends. <3>

What does studying enlightenment teach me?

Pay attention/learn well so that you can trust your gut/instincts/information processing schemas.

I just want my blog to express this feeling:

La vie en rose - Edith Piaf

Lol, so I realized that I have never wondered if I believe in the achievability of enlightenment.

I would say I have no real evidence either way. Only arguments.

But there is also no way to prove it either way if there is no way to define/operationalize it.

Luckily, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, artificial intelligence and philosophy are working together to try to understand 'consciousness'. At least we have some work being done on it using scientific principles.

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I want to keep my head buried in big issues that make you look at every perspective and evaluate them to try to understand that big huge problem - one you will never find a final solution to, but keeps you excited. And at the same time, some smaller applicable issues that can be understood with relatively little effort - applicability of which would be an issue. I also want to be involved with the process of efficiently applying new insights and bringing about changes.

How is anyone supposed to do all of that with the living of life? :(

So, bored last night, I flipped through TPL's online book collection and stumbled upon a readily available book, that also didn't seem to require a lot of brain. Perfect for the evening.

The book is titled I Only Want To Get Married Once.

I don't know how many pages the book is, I am too lazy to count because each chapter starts with page 1 and there are 11 chapters. I read through it in about 2 and a half hours. Downright commonsense. Recommending it to all my single friends and people I date.

Was I glad, or was I glad for having stumbled upon that book! Every single difficult emotion I have felt (ok, many of them) that made me scare away from rishtas and people was described in the book as a real issue. It was either that I didn't think I could trust the person to be actually kind and straightened out, or we had very different life philosophies.

Every single time the well-meaning people in my life questioned my "feeling" to try to understand it and to try to see if it was actually important, most times, they concluded it wasn't a big deal and encouraged me to continue.

Like when I knew 100% that I could not be myself with someone, that I would have to cut out the most favourite aspects of myself to make life work... well-meaning people kept saying my expectations are too high and that everything appears to be perfect with the person in question (and the person was perfectly fine. just really, really, really not for me).

It is the fucking "compromise" ideal. It puts no limits on how much is too much to compromise. No wait, yeah, the limit exists only when abuse and cheating come in the picture. Often times even those are encouraged to be ignored. You are married to the person even before marrying them. You have to make it work even before saying yes. wtf?

Imagine my relief when I realized how many correct decisions I have actually made by saying no! That too when super important people thought I was wrong? PHEW!!!

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With all the 21 year olds getting married, I can feel the gaze right upon me. But honestly, I am not marrying anyone until it feels right. (i just really hope it happens in time for at least one baby to me made, and young enough to actually care for it.)

Failures do make for better stories...