Thursday, February 26, 2015

Dialogues in Solitude


Do you wanna know a part of my dialogues with me in my solitude? 

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You could never see me, you know?!
Do you know why? Because we are from two different worlds.
Do you know why?
Because you chose the world everyone liked and went to and I chose a world where no one was in before.
You touched me, but you never stayed cause you were looking for the ‘perfect match’ --- spoiler alert; there is no perfect match.
It's you who makes the match perfect. 

I always used to make things. I always used to fix things. If my toy ever broke, I would fix it; I wouldn’t go for another toy. I always loved my toys, you know.

Seeing is an art! To become an artist, you need to feel. When you don’t feel, you don’t see, you just look!
Do you know why you can’t feel? Because you don’t go inside of you to see your heart, you think what others think, because you’ve chosen to live in their world. If you don’t think what they think, you’ll be out of their league and dropped out of their world and that’s not what you want.

You know, what I’m saying can’t get to you cause our languages are different – different worlds. You can’t even understand me! But eyes don’t lie! – My eyes never lied to you.
Eyes can't lie, even if they want to. There’s something about them. I know you know that too, don’t you?!
Your people may say I’m lying - that’s true; in your world.

It’s funny, but you can’t do what you want in your world, don’t you think so?! J
-         How you think.
-         How you talk.
-         How you work.
-         How you live.
-         How you love!
In my world, it’s me who says how they have to be done. It becomes sometimes difficult but pleasant at the end of the day.
Why?
I guess the fact that makes it hard to do is what makes it pleasant too.

We’ll die one day for sure, though you’ll die forever and I’ll be eternal.

And now going is like the old friend's saying:  "What you seek is seeking you"

- I do, I know you do too!



Sunday, January 4, 2015

Ideas of Wrong-doing and Right-doing


There’s saying: “You mustn’t lie but you don’t have to always tell the truth”.

This sentence makes sense to me mathematically. If lying and telling the truth are considered bad and good acts respectively, therefore, I can generalize it to all the bad and good acts that I know of; one such could be to love and show affection to one. However, this may seem a bit off-key or unsentimental to many people.

I think, however out of experience, spending our love and affection for someone should be conditional. Conditional to the extent we know them, conditional to the extent they deserve. Differently acted could more often result in a melancholy state.
I also think that love and affection are invaluable and shouldn’t be spent easily. It takes a heart to love someone and if not spent on the right person it can cost a heart and a lifetime of making up for it.

I have always followed the philosophy that we must love people irregardless of the consequences. Now I question myself; is it true after all? Should I?


All said, I’m always drawn toward this line of a poem by Rumi:
“Beyond the ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there’s a field, I’ll meet you there”. 



Cheers!
Iman Ghavam

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Life's like an electrocardiogram !


In everyone's life there are difficult times that unless you live them you can't perceive their depth. On the other hand, there are times that moments are in your favor and it's like you're on cloud nine; everything is in the way that's enjoyable and you can say it's the down-slope of one's life. 
I'm sure we all go through the above in different ways. What's grabbing my attention lately is the way we put these happenings together and understand them as a whole. 
I believe the above ideology resembles an electrocardiogram where high picks are like the tough times and low points are the down-slopes of our lives. As long as there are tough and easy times in our lives, we are alive and breathing. 
'A straight line represents death' !!!
I think sometimes we forget to see what we have rather than don't have. It would be a good habit to write them down on a piece of paper and look at them every now and then. 
It's ironic that things which many people don't think of in this way are so priceless and can be truly considered one's life-time wealth. Examples would be one's health, the fact that one can laugh at a joke whenever he wants, that fact that one can remember a beautiful moment in life and genuinely feel content, the fact that one can speak, see, hear, smell and touch. These are one's most basic possessions in life but the absence of which can be immensely hard to live with. 
- It's always pleasing to rest after a day of hard work. Resting after a day of resting will always be more tiring. 
I believe, we should start thinking a bit differently about our live's moments and enjoy every second, be it a good one or not. 

Cheers!
Iman Ghavam

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Think vs. Observe

         
   I arrived at the following conclusion yesterday:
"Great people are those who see the unseen; greater people are those who show other people the unseen and bring them to them".
            I have been pondering over the above for a couple of months and it became vivid to me when Nima (my very best friend) and I were getting back home last evening from a meeting with Prof. Mohammed Minhaj, also my good friend and consultant.
On the way, Nima told me, "we don't think enough!" and I told him "we don't observe enough either!".
Although they seem to be two different things, they are quite similar in many ways. Observation requires one to get immersed in the surroundings and not isolate themselves from them. On the other hand, thinking is a process that takes place in brain with an input fed by observation in order to arrive at a conclusion which in a way is an isolated process.
Coming back to earth and leaving the philosophy off for a while, I can say, at the end of the day, it's these two things that have helped and led human being to the top of the pyramid and superior among other species.
If you notice, every thing that has created a buzz and attraction, is new in some way! We love new stuff, new things to wear, new places to see, new foods to eat, and new things to experience. The problem is, we need to look for them! They are either hard to find or hard to get. Even if they're found, they are expensive to buy or access.
It is easy to get or create new things but hard at the same time! It's like the famous saying: "Simple is hard"; If you want to explain something to someone in a simple way so they understand it better, you should know it very well which in turn requires you to spend time and energy to learn it.
New ideas, new ways of doing things, new approaches and methods, have something in common to find out: observe the surroundings, think about your observations, connect your thoughts back to your observations and you'll arrive at the bigger picture of what you have observed. With the bigger picture, you can easily see a whole new, different world of the same objects you have previously observed.
A step further to the above is bringing your observations to other people and helping them see the different world.



Iman Ghavam

Saturday, April 6, 2013

There are NO accidents!





From the fall every leaf to the birth of every being; there are no accidents!
Every person we meet, every breath we take, and every sip of water we drink are no accidents!
How I wish I could convince everyone to understand this; how I wish I could tell everyone that if they believed, they’d lived a happier life, but it seems that I can’t find out the way. The hard part is that if you even don’t believe, you’ll live a life and breathe as everyone else does!
Albert Einstein once said: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
He was right and will always be!
It’s only the way we view things that has to be changed; the way we think; the way we perceive!
I love these conversations from the movie ‘Kung Fu Panda’:


Oogway: My friend, the panda will never fulfill his destiny, nor you until you let go of the illusion of control. 
Shifu: Illusion? 
Oogway: Yes. 
[points at peach tree] 
Oogway: Look at this tree, Shifu: I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time. 
Shifu: But there are things we ‘can’ control: I can control when the fruit will fall, I can control where to plant the seed: that is no illusion, Master! 
Oogway: Ah, yes. But no matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach. 
Shifu: But a peach cannot defeat Tai Lung! 
Oogway: Maybe it can, if you are willing to guide, to nurture it, to *believe* in it. 
Shifu: But how? How? I need your help, master. 
Oogway: No, you just need to believe. Promise me, Shifu, promise me you will believe. 
.
.
.
.
.
Oogway: [walking towards Po] Ah! I see that you have found the Sacred Peach Tree of Heavenly Wisdom! 
Po: [Po turns around with a lot of peaches stuffed in his mouth] Oh! Is that what this is? I'm so sorry! I just thought it was a regular peach tree! 

Shifu: But who? Who is worthy to be trusted with the secret to limitless power? To become the Dragon Warrior? 
Oogway: I don't know. 

Po: Maybe I should just quit and go back to making noodles. 
Oogway: Quit, don't quit? Noodles, don't noodles? You are too concerned about what was and what will be. There is a saying: yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the "present." 




The ‘present’!!!  The ‘time’!!! … How fast it flies!!!
I guess our time is too short not to believe. It often reminds me of a Persian pop singer named Reza Sadeghi who says: "بعضی وقتها خیلی زود دیر میشه!" which translates: “Sometimes it gets too late too soon!” :) .
I want to think why it is hard for some people to believe. Maybe they think if they believed there would be better ways, better options, better choices that they could lose; but … there are no better choices as long as we don’t believe in them! It’s us who make the option best; it’s us who make the way best; it’s us who make the choice best, and this happens when we believe.
How I wish I could convince them to understand this!
How I wish…







Saturday, March 2, 2013

Oppositeness


Opposite!
I like 'OPPOSITENESS'.
Do you know why?
It's simple; It's everywhere, it's what pushes us forward, it's what we always depend on to keep breathing, it's what we're made of!
This is the fundamental concept of how computers work; zero and one. If we were all good, the first thing that we couldn't really comprehend would be goodness, if  we didn't feel warmth, we couldn't really feel coolness, and if we didn't hate, we couldn't 'love' let alone feeling it.
Yes, it's always the presence of one's opposite that gives life and value to it. That's how the nature works and more importantly that's what it 'is' !
This teaches us to change our perspective about our opposites. This teaches us not to be afraid of them but love them because they help us keep alive, succeed, ................ they complete us.
When we arrive at the above dentition we'll find out that every entity in this world has an opposite corresponding to its own kind. Humans are no exception, men and women, the two kinds that are opposite, depend on each other, one's presence gives warmth to the other,  help the other one grow, succeed, keep alive and ................ complete each other, 'that's the beauty of an opposite'. That's the beauty of a man, that's the beauty of a woman.

I Think we need to thank our opposites, the ones that help us keep going forward, be successful. We should thank them because they complete us

Thank you!


Cheers,

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Rules!



Rules are important .... & .... following them is equally important !


Most people think that rules stop them from living an easy and comfortable life or progress faster, but quite on the contrary, rules do not!
The problem is that it's the human nature to think subjectively and not objectively. Imagine yourself driving your car and have to commute a 10 km distance to get to your work everyday but there are no traffic lights at the city junctions or no speed limits etc. I can't even imagine when you get to work in the first place let alone arriving safely. Therefore, rules are good for us, although most people don't like them.
This might be quite a social life but the same is true for our individual lives too.

It's extremely important to have rules for ourselves too (or what people usually call 'principles'). We may not like them but we MUST have them. They might stop us from doing things that we like, from thing we're comfortable with but we must have them.

A problem in having rules at individual level is that we can not see the effect of not having them instantly; It's not like crossing the red light and having an accident, rather the effect would appear much later in life or maybe even after one is no more. Absence of them has the potential of influencing generations after us and at times we can not even imagine the depth.

A major part of most of the couples' conflicts and eventually separation is that they don't have principles. If they knew that their partners follow a specific line in their relationship, their trust in each other would never fade.

So.... lets have principles for our lives and respect them no matter what people might think about them and follow them at all times.

Cheers!
Iman