Equatorial Musings

For some reasons, I've always liked Einstein. But then who doesn't. Although a genius, he was not one to take himself seriously. One only needs to look at the way he styled his hair to know he had a great sense of humour. And he wasn't just smart too. He was wise beyond his time. And there's a difference between the two. Smarts may give you a good living, but its wisdom that makes a life. If you don't believe that Einstein's wise, check out his quotes . I especially like his quote on insanity, which is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. You'd think that this should be obvious to all of us. Yet, if you look around, you'll realise that things are quite the contrary. In fact, we ourselves are often to blame for this. We wonder why we're stuck in life when we keep doing the same things day in day out. To move ahead or out of the place that we're in, we need to change. And it starts with our mind before we can p...

Bibliophiles of the world, unite! I've always wanted to do that, so please indulge me. Anyway, for the uninitiated, I was borrowing a phrase from the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. It just seemed fitting to do so since the manifesto, like a book, comes under the category of reading material, and bibliophiles just love to read. But of course, this manifesto had an immense impact on human history, as it was the ideological undergird of every communist wannabe state from Cuba to China, not to mention Russia of the iron curtain era. Anyway, this excuse of a blog entry is about books. I've always loved books, and not just for their ability to transport you to seemingly parallel universes or to another world that you'll never know if not for our glorious writers. I'm also very much taken by how a new book smells, how it feels to the touch and how it promises to deliver a good read. There's so much anticipation wrapped up between the covers of a book, and I suspe...

For those into philosophy, "Heraclitus" should be a familiar name to most. After all, he's probably one of the first to say that character is fate. But I first came upon this notion during my junior college days. As part of my class' English Literature syllabus, we had read Thomas Hardy's "The Mayor of Casterbridge ". And of course we debated at length if Henchard's character caused his rise and downfall. For a long time, I've always thought that we were destined for greatness or ignominy based on our character, and there was nothing we could do about it. I'm talking about those of us who aren't born great and who aren't likely to have greatness thrust upon us. But I was wrong, and I suspect I'm not the only one. Of course our life is an outcome of the choices we make. And our choices are grounded in our character. But we're not victims of our character because we can decide to change our character, and this is what differen...