Relationships and heartbreaks

Heartbreak is not just about romance - it’s about how we handle expectations and change. And not all heartbreak comes from lost love - sometimes it’s the weight of expectations and the reality of change.

Care because it feels right, not because you expect the same back.
Hold on to yourself first, because everything else will shift with time.

 

Two simple rules can save you a lot of pain:

1. Care without expecting the same in return.

2. Remember that nothing external lasts forever, so build your strength within.

These apply not only to relationships, but to many areas of life in general.

1. Do not expect things back.
It is natural to put effort into something, but the recipient (whether a person or even a situation) may not return the same in response. This can cause disappointment. Care for someone because you genuinely care, not because you expect them to return the same feelings. Every person is an independent individual, and it is natural that they may or may not feel the same way.

2. Even if you do get the same care back, remember that nothing materialistic or external is permanent.
It may fade with time, whether slowly or suddenly. The only constant in life is yourself, so self-care and self-respect are essential. Give time to yourself first. If, at some point, giving time to another person feels as natural and beneficial as giving time to yourself, and they feel the same way, then it might be worth having deeper conversations about the relationship. Until then, it is best to keep things in a space of healthy friendship, without letting infatuation cloud your judgment.

Additional thought:
It is best not to take romantic movies as a perfect guide for real life. Films often end at the high point of a relationship, showing love as a victory, but rarely reveal the challenges and adjustments that come afterward. Real life is more complex. It is like watching a cooking show: the recipe looks perfect on screen, but in your own kitchen, results can vary. Keep your expectations natural and aligned with who you are, and you will be more open to discovering the real magic life has to offer.

Chakra of life

Imagine our life as a chakra or a spinning wheel with a pointing arrow rotating freely, but your will has the control its rotation. Imagine for each of our life's situation there is this chakra and for a decision made the chakra then linearly moves along that direction to the next question or decision problem based on your selection. Since its freely moving anyways, if you let it freely move (without putting your will into the wheel), naturally it will select the best decision and then move accordingly, is what I think at this moment.
There is no right or wrong. Sometimes the optimum we feel might align with the global optimum the nature has found for us at that moment, sometimes it may not. And it is not guaranteed also that the chakra will flow on its own forever. Sometimes mild push or input might also work well. But pushing it further might overshoot/overlook the things which were actually best for you at that moment.

So, in a nutshell out life decisions can be modelled as a chakra with combined rotary and linear motion.

Memories

For people may come and people may go, but I stay on forever - for I am the memories that make this magical life worthy.


Who are your friends? Are your childhood friends still with you? If so, why are they still with you? How much effort is needed? Who is making the effort? You might see the friends you have right now will be from people near you- physically or mentally. But dear friend, remember that life is uncertain, and nothing materialistic will live forever.

Jacob, a good friend of mine, once told me: Don't be sad for it ended, but be happy for that it happened.

Once, I was depressed and sitting alone in mess. Manohar, a good friend of mine, came near me and sat beside me. He was observing me for some time and noticed that I needed some help. I questioned him about the very basic purpose of our lives, the very basic question that sprouts our existential crisis, to which he gave me a very important life lesson- It cannot be found that what our purpose is but what story we create out of our life will be seen as our purpose. This life of  ours is like a movie we direct and we are the primary stakeholder. All others in our life are mere characters that come and act and go back to their very own stories.

Questioning our purpose is like opening a pandora box of questions. I am not sure about the answer and not sure about the integrity of the answers claimed by others. All the philosophies we see around us are possible explanations to these questions faced by some person who lived before us or with us right now, but those all are possible theories, I believe. People might show some proofs supporting the claims but it could be falsified also. 

Risks? Big question

 When it feels scary to jump in, that is exactly when you should jump. Otherwise, you end up staying in the same place your whole life. This is a dialogue by Oscar Isaac from the movie "A most violent year".

Well, I have a different opinion. I'd rather advise taking calculated risks rather than a naive intuition-based random walk. Maybe, like a Gradient descent where you take each calculated risk to minimize your distance from your target.

What would be an ideal surname?

Surnames have become essential due to the mandates imposed by our society. I do not prefer the idea of a surname, but sadly, that is very much required nowadays to distinguish people by name. But the saddest part is people still bring up their inherent racism to compare and classify people, especially if the surname refers to a particular community, family or profession.
Another common finding in India is when kids are given surnames by their father's name. Why not the name of the mother or both parents? I asked my parents why my surname was only my father's name and not any other name. The answer was just because it was a practice then, and the nurse/attendant who wrote my name wrote it as M. Aravind because the surname was mandatory, and later on, it got expanded in my passport. I am considering changing my name to Aravind Geethamurali to honour my parents for what I am today. 
Waiting for that day when the process of renaming people's names will be very easy, and we can name whatever we want, including numbers. May sound weird to some, but yes, it is indeed a restriction to our other degree of freedom.

I was working till 2 AM today i lab, and then a security bhaiyya peeped outside through the side door and saluted me from there! I also saluted back, reminds me of their dedication., all night, they were checking all labs i everything was okay

IIT life is so privileged

and here I am writing this at 3.25 AM listening to Linkin Park heavy metal

Got into Purdue!

On February 13 2024, I got a mail from ECE dept Purdue, about being selected for TA funding and PhD admission to Purdue! {13-02-2024 3:37 AM}
I also remember the day when I got the mail from IIT Kanpur telling I got admitted to the MS program!
{July 12, 2021, 5:24 PM}
For TKM and KV Pattom, no mails were there however.
TKM was through KEAM portal, I remember we would login with roll number and they'd show the college allotted. School KV Pattom I'm not sure how my father got to know, from my memory I think, the results were put up in front of school notice board

Reminds me of my school front gate, where its written "Go out to serve your country and countrymen" 

Other Blogs

 Hello world!
I am back with lot of news to share! Decided to start it all again!

These are my blogging attempts spread across the years:
(Some of which I created in 2007 are no longer available like in ning.com)

Share Gorilla... (share-gorilla.blogspot.com)
Amnetronix
The Noob's Guide to Everything (thenoobsguide.blogspot.com)
aravindalokam.com
hakcat.github.io
Aravindalokam
https://logicvampire.wordpress.com/ 

and many more which I am not able to recollect and find now ;(

Miss those days of Oracle Thinkquest, Orkut, Picassa, Windows Media player visualizations, Winamp, Windows XP, Blackberry and Nokia Qwerty phones, walkmans, CD Players etc etc and lot more