My son, my one

On April 7, 2016 By Swarn GillIn Parenting, Prose and Poetry, Uncategorized4 Comments

Only now do I know what purity is,
Free from the dilution of life,
And yet I’ve never seen anyone so full of life either,
With you I am at a mountain lake,
Where “civilization” is not in its vocabulary,
With you I am at an amusement park,
Teeming with joy, fun and smiles,
Lost in a moment, in a day that we hope never ends

I dreamed last night I was crying,
From a love that made each cell in my body,
Vibrate to the point I was changing phase,
And the liquid poured out of me,
Just as your sweet little kisses poured over me,
Your smile and laughter bathed me,
Like particles of light in the morning sun,
Dancing on my skin to a timeless symphony.

You remind me that I am mammal,
Not animal in the way that people usually mean it,
Not primitive or violently struggling to survive,
But natural, wild, inseparable from this world,
Your head nestles under the curve of my neck,
I can feel the warmth of your blood, pulsating,
Flowing with mine, in tune with the beat of Earth’s heart,
The ebb and flow of life enveloping us both.

There is a closeness that no force can destroy,
It may stretch, it may tear, it may hurt,
It persists even through the veil of death,
No matter the physical distance I know,
There will be moments where we look for each other,
And in those moments we will find each other
For I am responsible for you, and though you don’t know it,
You are responsible for me too.

The world is wonderful to you right now,
I know it’s not going stay that way,
The pain in life percolates through the bliss,
But that does not mean that bliss disappears,
Above those clouds there is always the sun, the stars,
The weather changes, but that does not,
I promise to never fail in reminding you of this,
For it’s because of you, I will always know beauty.

Life, the Universe, and Everything

On February 16, 2016August 3, 2016 By Swarn GillIn Humor, Love, Musings, Philosophy, Stories15 Comments

“And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.”

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

It is today my 42^nd birthday and I decided this would be a good year to reflect. Why 42, why not 40 like any other normal person with a penchant for round numbers? According Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series a supercomputer was asked to come up with the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything and 42 was that answer. So I am at the age which is the answer, but of course if you read the series you know that while the answer was determined a more powerful supercomputer had to be created to determine the question (which turned out to be the planet Earth). So 42 seems like a great age to think about answers and questions.

This is also the year that I often joked would be when I started my own cult. This was supposed to be easy as I was going to have a good portion of Twitter followers, find myself a good compound with fertile soil and enjoy the good life. Extra wives would have been optional. It’s weird how as I get older there seems to be more of a drive to keep life simple and surround yourself by like minded people. Anyway, Twitter really doesn’t suit me, for as you can see, I don’t say many things in 140 words or less so my followers are few, and I think life is better that way, and also I’m not a very proficient gardener, so I’m probably better off living close to the farmer’s market. So here I am, nobody famous and nobody to follow, and a mini essay of reflection is probably more suited to greater personalities, but hey, it’s the age of information and I have a blog, so why not write? 🙂

Life

I think what makes being a teenager so difficult is that this is the time in your life when you start to self-actualize a lot more and really think about the future. It’s a terrible thing really, because you are also still young enough where you really don’t know shit. I remember thinking a lot about the type of person I wanted to be. My dad was (and still is) an alcoholic and as a teenager I knew that I didn’t want to be like my dad. Kids respond to those who are consistently there for them, and my mom was that person. Of course I’ve come to realize many positives about my dad as well, but as a kid I knew that whatever way my dad was, wasn’t working. My mom was loving, supporting, nurturing, and always there. At the time I never really looked at my mom and dad’s personalities as related gender, but more as what are the behaviors that lead to increased happiness and that bring increased happiness to others. I am sure it did in many ways shape why I’ve always felt more free to be myself more in front of women than men, and why I look beyond arbitrary categorizations of people and simply try to stick to values that bring happiness.

I also remember thinking that I was not the person I wanted to be. I felt like I was this amazing person who was trapped inside myself. Inside a shell that I needed to break out of. I know now that there is a certain element of being a child of an alcoholic that makes us more fearful of self-expression because of how we internalize our parents’ addiction, but I think teenagers can simply be apprehensive about inserting themselves in the world no matter how much they want to. I know I am a person who leans toward safety over risk, and that was one of the things I wanted to get better at as I got older which was to be bold. It’s still the quality I struggle with the most, but I’m proud to say that the vision I had for myself at around the age of 16 isn’t far off the mark. The compliment that I have received several times and means the most to me is when people tell me that they can tell immediately the type of person that I am because I am so open and. It is the part I like about myself the most especially because I think life is too short to pretend with people. I am proud that I have reached a point in life where I am comfortable in my own skin, and it is something that has always seemed like a necessary way to be, but I in no way want to imply that I have go there solely on my own.

Another thing I worried about when I was young was that I wasn’t original. I felt like everything I was, was copied from somebody else. I didn’t have any original ideas, I wasn’t creative. As I was thinking about what to write in this post yesterday I was wondering if I should say that the meaning of life is “theft”. We are born as absolutely blanks and while genetics may texture our canvas to a certain respect we are painted on by the many people we come to know in life, our culture and society also paints broad brushes over us too. Of course theft isn’t really the right word. People and society paint things upon us and we have little say in that. And in most other cases it is people who in my life who have given, and I have taken, and I would like to believe that with time I have been better about showing my gratitude. It would not be until a certain Star Trek: The Next Generation Episode that I felt better about my lack of originality. Here Captain Picard comments on the emotionless android Data’s violin playing.

PICARD: The good doctor was kind enough to provide me with a recording of your concert. Your performance shows feeling.
DATA: As I have recently reminded others, sir, I have no feeling.
PICARD: It’s hard to believe. Your playing is quite beautiful.
DATA: Strictly speaking, sir, it is not my playing. It is a precise imitation of the techniques of Jascha Heifetz and Trenka Bronken.
PICARD: Is there nothing of Data in what I’m hearing? You see, you chose the violinists. Heifetz and Bronken have radically different styles, different techniques, yet you combined them successfully.
DATA: I suppose I have learned to be creative, sir, when necessary.
PICARD: Mister Data, I look forward to your next concert.

So yes, I now feel original, thanks to lines written by somebody else. Star Trek has actually taught me quite a bit now that I think about it. 🙂 Life is also full of irony and paradoxes enough to make you scratch your head for a lifetime. In the end though, isn’t this what we really are…a product of others, both biologically and environmentally with a unique level of proportions such that we are originals? What I really mean to say about all this is that I feel really grateful to all those who have given and for what I have taken. I have taken the best of you to the very heart of me and a result carry you everywhere. Some I’ve not seen or talked to in some time, some it may have only been a brief time in which we knew each other, or perhaps were not even very close friends, but I saw what was good in you, I smiled at it, and celebrated it and let it course through my arteries. I am thankful for all the love, the friendship, the inspiration, the memories, the lessons taught, and yes even the criticism and in some cases hurt. I am unique and original because of all of you and there is no other way I’d rather be.

The Universe

Growing older also means growing more aware as you continue to experience and learn in life. As someone who is strongly committed to learning as awareness grows so does the burden of that knowledge. It is only in the most recent years that I have truly understood the expression ignorance is bliss. However, it is also important to remember that your own bliss is of little value to anybody else but yourself, and we are a social species. As I’ve learned I continued to have more awe for this amazing universe we live in, uncovering the darkness that shrouds knowledge also means discovering the horrors, the malice, the pain, and the suffering. It is all the worse when you are one of the lucky ones to have things far better than so many. It makes you question the very right to feel happy. And when it comes down to it, it makes me feel bad just complain about how heavy the thoughts are sometimes, because I am so fortunate to just have to think about it and not actually experience the hardships so many bear. I am fortunate that I can put those thoughts to the side at times. However, I also know there is no denying it either. And I know that just feeling sad and depressed all the time would be debilitating so there is nothing for it but to do something about it. I am not helpless under this weight although sometimes it can feel that way. So I try, and I let myself feel happiness for all the beauty that exists as well. There is much to fight against in this world, but I feel if we forget what we’re fighting for, it’s easy to get lost in the darkness.

I believe that it is this mixture of awe-inspiring beauty and soul-draining horror that drives us. I think we can’t help but feel small in the face of it. Some try to conquer it by building belief systems that explain it all, some try to chip away at the answer slowly through careful investigation, and some just turn to vices to distract themselves and to numb themselves. However, from what I’ve seen, the true winners in this world are always the ones who accept how small they are in the face of it all. It’s bigger than any one individual and it’s the one thing we all have in common. It is enough to make you just sit there and think “Why can’t we just all get along? It really does seem so simple to just be nice to each other. Nobody has to get nailed to anything.

As I look forward the things on the horizon are amazing. Just as there are things in my young life I never thought possible but exist now, I know there are many unknown wonders that await me for the rest of my life. I like being this age and knowing all the things that I know. Wisdom comes to you without even knowing it, and I like it. I admit that I am not a big fan of leaving this existence. I see us getting closer to things like unlocking the mysteries of aging, replacing organs, interfacing the computer to the brain and I wonder if in the not too distant future we might have a choice to live far longer than we do to do. I am jealous quite frankly. As someone who embraces change and has seen how changes occur over time spans far greater than our human lives I would like to experience it. I want to choose when I want to leave this existence and have a shot at deepening that well of wisdom beyond this short time on Earth. When I think of all the change that has occurred over 1000 years, 10,000 years and so on…I wonder what it would be like to see it…what perspective that would give you…how you would look at the universe differently. I suppose such a chance will not happen, but I keep the dream alive only because it is at times helpful to remember that we are not only small in terms of the vastness of space, but also the vastness of time. I can’t be expected to figure it all out, and that’s okay.

And Everything

There isn’t much more to say here. Of course there is more to life I suppose, but it’s amazing how important some people become so that even the other things seem to tendril out from it. I know that there are no guarantees in life, but that’s why living in the moment is so important. I am lucky that I have a life where I can take care of them just as much as they take care of me. The fact that our love can put some things at the center of our life, at the center of our universe, is amazing What more could I want? I do have everything.

To Dhyan: Year 2

On December 26, 2015March 28, 2019 By Swarn GillIn Love, Parenting6 Comments

Dear Dhyan,

As I sat down to write this letter I’ll admit it was harder to really think about where last year left off and a new one began. From the day you were born to your first birthday was literally a lifetime ago, and yet this second year feels more like a lifetime ago. You are no longer a baby, you are little boy. In my letter to you last year much of what I was feeling was based on a profound change of you not even existing to a sudden filling of my heart and my life. As I look back on this past year the changes in what you mean to me seem equally profound, and it surprises me that love can grow so much.

If your first year was the story of achievements in basic motor skills, your second year of life is about achievements in social skills and the development of more complex thought patterns. Not to say that your physical achievements still aren’t plentiful. I have especially loved the development of facial expressions and hand gestures. Our favorite by far is when you developed the hand gesture for “I don’t know” by throwing your hands up above your shoulders and saying “uhh?” In this year you have also mastered stairs, started running, climbed a little plastic rock wall at the playground, and danced like a maniac.

Your mother is documenting many of your achievements, but I thought I would reiterate to you for future shame, that your first word was not mommy or daddy, but kitty. A word you said often for about a month and then almost never uttered again as you began referring to all animals by the sound that they make. I would also like to throw in there for purposes of future praise and absolute pride that you started saying “daddy” several months before you started saying “mama”. As this year ends you aren’t speaking as much as I expected but your comprehension in two languages is amazing, and you are picking up words almost daily. I expect that for my next letter I will be recounting many conversations. I am not disappointed that you aren’t saying more already, but rather just anxious to talk with you, and hear what you have to say. It’s going to be an exciting coming year.

Another thing I love about this year is the growth of your imagination. You have started interacting with your stuffed animals and feeding them or having your Duplo animals kiss. You clearly have started creating scenarios for their actions, and while I don’t understand these scenarios in the slightest, clearly you do and that’s all that matters.

It excites and worries me how much more clever you are becoming. It’s something I am sure every child starts to do, when they try to deceive their parents. Recently you tried to fake sleep thinking I would walk away so you could leave your room. Of course I was waiting right outside your door and as you peaked out you saw me standing there and gave a little devious smile and went back to bed. I’m here to tell you that your fake sleeping is absolutely adorable, and also completely obvious. The fact that you don’t get how obvious it is, makes it even more adorable. I am sure we will be pitting wits against each other for a good portion of your life under our roof, and I just want you to know, challenge accepted. And truthfully, I’m actually really proud of you for beginning the game already. It shows you have courage, and I know you will only get cleverer for making the effort.

There are a number of things that really stick out for me this year. One is your enjoyment in music, and especially percussion. I don’t know if that will last a life time, but I have been impressed how you have liked to experience different sounds using chopsticks as drumsticks and beating different size drums, different sized bowls and pots, and just other objects that provide a unique sound when struck. The musical moment that I will never forget though happened in Poland. Out on the street there were two girls playing a flute and violin and you were enthralled. You danced while they played, and you clapped when they finished. I think being lost in music is one of the more beautiful sights in this world and it gave me so much joy to see music touch you in that way. It is those kinds of gifts that I hope to be able to provide you with more than anything. Whether you ever play an instrument or not is not as important to me as music being an important part of your life as it is mine. Through music there are stories, images, emotions, depth of thought, and fun to be had.

There are so many things that I love about you this year that I am just going to list some of my favorites:

I love the fact that you want your “owies” kissed by one of us, or if needed by yourself. I’ve never seen a kid kiss themselves better. I also love that you want to kiss our “owies” better too.
I love how silly you are. When you do something that entertains us, you really ham it up.
I love that you don’t just walk, you walk a little more silly. Not that you can’t walk normally, you just like to bop around and walk.
I love that you try to clean up your messes (even if I don’t like you making misses) and that you throw things in the trash.
I love that you try so hard to be grown up already which just seems extra adorable since you are so young, and often even though it often ends in disaster I think it’s awesome that you try.
I love all your quirks, like there is a specific spot in the house where we can only peel oranges, or specific ways we have to use or play things, like when I’m not holding the drumstick to play the drums properly, or not sitting in the right spot while you play.
I love hearing you say daddy.

The thing that I love most, is how you understand love in a much more tangible way, which is to say you are starting to understand love as much as any of us do. I was struck once again with that unique feeling of happiness and sorrow this year when we were leaving Poland. Your family was waving goodbye to you in the balcony above the waiting area and you were smiling. It was clear you bonded with your family during our stay in Poland and as I watched you smile it struck me that you were at the beginning of understanding this powerful feeling called love, and then I started to cry, because I knew you were also saying goodbye, and so you would also begin to understand missing, longing, and loss. Such emotions will be very painful to you at times, but I just want you know that these emotions are just a reaction, and the harder the hit you, the more love you had, and that is always something to be grateful for.

As far as who I am now because of you, I would have to say it’s hard to tell how I’ve changed. I certainly worry more. I’ve been feeling the weight of the world more this year, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of that increased weight is because I want you to have as many opportunities as I had, and I worry sometimes that won’t be the case. I know though, that to give you the best possible chance at a good life is to make you strong, and that means conquering my own fears and worries. Because you are watching, and if I can’t do it, how will you learn? Just like missing, longing, and loss, will always find you, so will worries and fears, but they too are a reaction when you feel you have something very beautiful in your life to lose. I promise you to always explore the positive with you first, and when pain finds you as it does us all, then we will explore that too. As I wrote last year, that is hard to not let fear overtake you some times, when you love somebody so much, but the one thing I do know is that when you let fear win, you never truly get to enjoy love. And it is central to my philosophy that love is always to be enjoyed.

People say that the time goes by so quickly with your children, and there is truth to that. But there are also ways to slow it down. Writing this letter has helped me reflect and get lost in this past year with you. You haven’t become who you are in an instant, but through many small incremental changes, and it has just been a pleasure to be at your side through it all. It is your birthday tomorrow, and while there is a part of me that would love for you to stay this age longer, I know that’s not possible and I’m just going to do my best to enjoy each day and each new change it brings.

Love,

Your Father

The Slender Moon

On December 9, 2015August 31, 2020 By Swarn GillIn Prose and Poetry, Science8 Comments

As the night kissed the dawn,
You revealed to me only a thin,
Beaming sliver of shining light,
But from me you could not hide,
You were whole in my reflection,
As I faced you with bright smile,
I introduced you to the day,
But you paled at the rising sun,
I turned away and you were gone,
Wishing there was a way to go back.

But I still remember that light,
I still remember all of you,
I patiently wait for night,
And hope it all begins anew.

What Makes A Good Human?: Final Thoughts

On August 2, 2015 By Swarn GillIn Philosophy, Psychology, Science7 Comments

I will try not to make this too lengthy, but this series has been a journey writing it and I felt a more holistic summation was in order.

One of the things that occurred to me that I was writing it was that was I sounding too much of a person of privilege in my posts. I certainly felt like that at times. If I could say one more thing about what makes a good human might also be luck. The country I was born in, the parents I got, the extended family, that were very loving, and of course my wife and friends all played a role in making me what I am, and for giving me the time and freedom to ruminate, contemplate, learn the right lessons from my experiences for me to even be able to write this. Of course luck isn’t really in our control, and perhaps it is who we are that draw at least some of the people into our life and keep them there. But there are those who are born to parents who stifle their curiosity. When does the parent or parents who work long hours to provide for their children find the time for curiosity themselves or get a chance to play? There are those who spoil their children rotten and make them prideful and without humility. What of those who struggle about even what to put their faith in, fearing a repetition of past mistakes? I was thinking about how would a person who lived in the inner city slums of Mumbai, or Rio find solitude? And then of course what about those who have clinical psychological conditions like narcissism and thus are excessively self-centered? How does the psychopath learn empathy when physically incapable of it? While there may be some solutions to this, early recognition and special nurturing techniques are often necessary and so my words in this series may be nothing more than the words of someone who has, overall, had it pretty good.

One positive thing I have noticed in my life is that none of these qualities however belong to any one specific class, race, culture or region. I have seen the poorest with the least reason to be generous and compassionate be more so than those with the means to bring more good into this world than they do. And I have seen the busiest parents with little time for play themselves, make those sacrifices simply so that their children have that advantage. Life is dynamic, and always changing. Some qualities we may have to put to the side to move past a certain point where we can bring them back. It would be idealistic to say we can have these qualities at all times, and in all places. And while it would be nice if it were so, such utopian fantasies should never occupy our thoughts for too long.

If asked who I wrote this all for, I would say firstly for me. That in itself may sound self-centered, but I desire to become more than I am always, and this journey has helped me greatly in recognize the areas in my life where I might know how I should be in theory, but haven’t been in practice. It has helped me look at areas where I want to grow also. But I think that I also wrote this series for those of you who do such a wonderful job exemplifying these qualities as well. It is those who have been the fortunate in this world who, like rocks striking the surface of the pond can send ripples into the world to try and make it a better place. And when I say fortunate I don’t mean that your life has all been a “walk in the park” (and certainly mine hasn’t always been either) but have overcome great adversity to be where you are now. I also don’t list these qualities to emphasize that we should all be the same. As I have tried to make clear along the way we all exemplify different levels of these qualities, and as I mentioned above, sometimes we may suppress these qualities in ourselves to be able to foster it others, like our children. I think a good human exemplifies these qualities, but our individuality is what decides which of these qualities drives us most strongly. Some people may strive for more balance, others may selflessly always give their time to others, some may love learning and sharing that knowledge, others display great acts of courage that inspire. I do think that all these qualities, should always exist as sparks within ourselves, and we should never let them go out.

I was talking to a friend yesterday and she asked me why I even blog. And I guess central to who I am is that I believe that we are a lot more similar than we are different, and I want to always try to look at things that bring us together rather than those things that drive us apart. So I guess in looking at things that make a good human, I wanted to try to see if I could come up with what I felt was a comprehensive but simple list of things that I’ve seen in my life that make the world a better place for all. I am sure there are other things that might be added, and as I continue to grow and learn perhaps I would add things to this series. But if we can all agree on at least 8 things, that then I think that is a good start. 🙂

Peace.

Swarn

What Makes A Good Human?: Love

On June 11, 2015October 23, 2015 By Swarn GillIn Philosophy, Psychology, Science6 Comments

My second quality for what makes a good human comes as no surprise to anyone. Who doesn’t like love? Who doesn’t want love? Is this a quality I really have to try at? Is this something that I have to be vigilant about? The word love tends to conjure up images romance and being in love. But anybody who has thought about love for any length of time knows that romantic love is really just one aspect of love. In fact I would argue that your ability to romantically love someone has little to do (at least in a direct sense) with your ability to be a good human. We all have the capacity for love and this wonderful human trait gives rise to many of other ideals and qualities that make the world a better place.

If you’ve tried to define love before, most likely you’ve had difficulty. Music, poetry, art have all had their attempts, and one could argue that through the medium of the arts one might be more successful. Love, like art, is often open to some degree of interpretation and means different things to different people. While neuroscience has made a lot of headway in look at love and attachment as a biological drive, I want to go back to older Socratic definition of love that separates love into four categories.

Eros – Romantic love
Storge – Familial love
Philia – “Brotherly love”, or the love between friends
Agape – Love of humanity

So in terms of having the quality of love, I assert that every one of these is important to both ourselves and others on a variety of scales. Think how much happiness all these types of love can bring, both in loving others and feeling that love towards you. Now from a biological level storge, and philia are shown to both to be important drives in our brain, with eros still up for debate, but at the very least eros is a secondary drive that helps give us the attachment and friendship to a possible mate. And it is our capacity to love that I believe gives us agape as an emergent property that can extend to all humanity. It should also be noted that most of us learn first about love from the familial love. How our parents love each other and love us. This, perhaps, makes storge the most important in giving us a healthy sense of what loving each other is really about. And since loving is learned, it should also be noted that there are those who adopt and raise children that are not their own that do wonderful jobs, so the biological connection of family need not be there for familial love to be shown to children. In fact one of the strongest cross-cultural morals we have is protecting children from harm, so it’s not surprising that love and bonding can occur between adults and children who are not their own.

Love, at least to me, is the best cure we have for suffering, whether it is suffering from sickness, poverty, fear, depression or any other situation that causes harm and pain. When you love you have a desire to stop another’s suffering. Thus love leads us to both compassion and empathy. Ultimately I find that our capacity to love motivates us to do so in the best way we know how. I would also argue that love without feelings of compassion and empathy is pointless. It’s insincere and unhealthy and can sometimes be destructive, because then you are just loving for your own sake and not because you truly care about the other person. Perhaps that really isn’t love at all.

Now love as a verb can be tricky. Above I said “the best way we know how” and this can often lead to honest attempts at love that are ineffective. Sometimes loving someone is staying close, sometimes loving someone means to let them go, sometimes loving someone is being tough and unyielding. At this point I’d rather not get into a discussion about how best to love, because when we talk about all the other qualities that will be discussed in this series, I believe the answers about how best to love someone reveal themselves. So knowing how best to love someone is another part of what makes love so difficult to define. However, I believe that love is love, it’s just that the ways in which we can experience love, show love and give love are far too numerous to list.

Biologically we are a social species that operates on reciprocal altruism. Love is therefore the primary way in which we build attachments to each other for our long term survival, both for reproduction and bonding. Thus the idea that there is no unselfish act is somewhat true as a whole. However, we are not always so shallow that we expect kindness to be repaid right away, In general if we love, and show kindness and caring to others they will hopefully love us and thus want to do the same for us when we are in need. In a broader sense, our ability to love tells us that we survive better when we cooperate, and your motivation for cooperation is increased by the love you feel for those in your group.

The downside of reciprocal altruism is that it makes love mostly beneficial for those in your immediate circle. Loving humanity as a whole becomes a somewhat abstract extension of our ability to love those closest to us. Showing love to humanity may involve acts of charity, but how do we know that we are helping? We are used to having love returned when we show it, so how does humanity give back to us? Trying to better humanity as a whole is also an extremely slow process. The impact you may have may not be felt until beyond your lifetime. The problems of humanity are large and it takes great momentum to affect change that no individual person can do on their own. Even great people like Gandhi And Martin Luther King, Jr. needed the support of the people. In this way acts of kindness and charity for the greater good may be the most unselfish acts other than it give you a sense of well-being and happiness. But just because loving humanity as a whole is more abstract, and can feel like we are just adding a drop to the ocean, it does not excuse us from the fact that it is more moral for us to love humanity. To move from the abstract to the tangible one has to remember that empathy and compassion also have an intellectual side that must be fed. I will address this more in another part of the series, but for now remember the following:

All humans are of the same species.
The biggest factor in why you are what you are has much more to do with where you were born and the circumstances you were born in than any inherent ability you have (or think you have).
Any race or gender put into the same set of circumstances will produce similar outcomes.

Therefore when we feel empathy for those suffering that we can see, feel, hear, etc it takes little imagination to determine that even those beyond our senses suffer in the same way and that doing something to alleviate the suffering of others is the moral thing to do. One of the chief ways to morally justify inflicting pain and suffering on others is to dehumanize them. Getting people to believe that another group of people are not of the same species lessens our empathy, therefore, logically, dehumanizing is immoral.

If love has a darker side it is only perhaps to let it envelop you to the point of not paying attention to anything else. The oft portrayed young couple in TV shows or movies who give no thought to other things claiming they can “live off love” are ridiculed for a reason. We’d like to believe that John Lennon was right and that “love is all you need”, but anybody past about 30 years of age knows that’s a crock. The world can be a shitty place, and love can be hard to muster at times, and so life has to be full of other things as well that are fulfilling and happy. Love can also be unhealthy when we direct it towards inanimate objects. We’ve all met people who love money too much, their car, sports teams, drugs, other material goods, etc. While love shouldn’t be predicated on whether it can be returned, it should at least have the potential to be returned. Pouring love into things that cannot feel your love, or return your love might be okay for a light hobby, but should never take a backseat to the suffering of the living. Perhaps the common theme to the darker side of love is obsession. Obsessions usually don’t serve one well in the long run.

It could easily be argued that love is the most important of any virtue, and given how much of our lives are spent looking for it, maintaining it, and grieving over it, it’s probably true. Nevertheless I hope to convince you with this series that there is more to life than love and there are many things we can do to be better at love. I encourage you all to celebrate love and show love as often as you can, and keep striving to diversify the ways in which you add love to the world.

To Dhyan: Year 1

On December 26, 2014March 28, 2019 By Swarn GillIn Love, Parenting2 Comments

Dear Dhyan,

I write this letter to you because I know that time changes our memories and feelings about events, and I wanted you to know what I was feeling in the first year of your life. I also wanted to let you know who I am now, and maybe what I’ve become as a result of you being in my life.

I will begin with the day you were born. We were at the hospital already. One of many trips we had taken in the last couple weeks as your mother’s blood was racing in excitement for you being born. Well that’s a nicer way of saying she had abnormally high blood pressure and we need to check her health and yours. We knew that day, which was 3 weeks before your due date, there was a possibility they would want to take you out to make sure she was safe, and that is exactly what ended up happening. I’ll proudly admit that I was rather calm. Perhaps because I had to do none of the hard work, but I also have a lot of faith in statistics. Problems with deliveries in our part of the world are rare, and we were at one of the best hospitals in the area with excellent doctors and nurses. I just knew everything was going to be alright, and I just wanted to make sure that your mother and you were fine and be calm and as in control for her as I could be. Since all the hard work was your mothers, my panicking would have served little purpose anyways. As they induced labor on your mother she got contractions quickly, and they started to impact your heart rate and so they decided that a cesarean section was necessary. They wheeled your mother away and got me suited up so that I was sanitary and when they let me into the operating room they told me to not touch anything covered in blue. The whole room seemed to be covered in blue and it was frightening obstacle course to get to the small stool next to your mother. I held her hand and she smiled at me. There was a large curtain separating the bottom half of your mother from our eyes so I couldn’t tell what they were doing. Apparently they were making a big slice into your mother and taking you out. The nurse handed you to me, all swaddled in apparently the same towel design they use in every hospital in the United States. You were born at 9:59 pm on Dec. 27th, 2014 at 5 pounds 5 ounces, 19 inches long. You were so light and I looked at you and said to myself “So that’s it then?” But your mom was tearing and she was too drugged up to really hold you. You were so light and I brought your face close to hers and she smiled and cried at how beautiful you were. I think it was a different experience for her. She carried you around for almost 9 months and could feel her body change and feel you grow. I would say at first I was more like a curious scientist, observing the whole process. It did not feel like you were my son yet. I hope that this doesn’t make you sad if you read this someday. I was emotional because your mom was, but I have to say I didn’t feel like a father yet.

For the rest of that evening I continued to play the scientist as I watched them put you in a little warmer since you were so tiny, and found it humorous that you were under a heat lamp like a burger at a restaurant. My feeling of being a father wouldn’t come until the next day when you didn’t have to be in the warmer anymore and we had be moved to our post delivery room and you were being fussy and unhappy and I picked you up and you quieted right down and became peaceful in my arms. It was at that moment that my eyes begin to water. I felt like you knew you were safe. And I felt like you knew you were with your daddy and I knew you were my son. And I knew that once someone feels safe with you, that you must be responsible so that they always feel that way. I began to feel this surge within me out of nowhere, wanting you to be healthy and strong, wanting to make sure that I safely guided you to be someone that could handle this world that can be both terrifying and wondrous at the same time. My head began to fill with dreams of what you would look like walking and talking, and questions you might ask, advice that I would give you, nursing tears and sharing joys. That’s when you know you are in love, and that’s when I knew I was in love with you.

But time teaches you patience. Perhaps that’s one advantage of having a 40 year old father. As I process this past year I think about all the amazing moments I’ve been able to see. These moments are small in comparison to what any human is capable of, but they remind me that in the process of growth even the most insignificant things can be great triumph because they happen along the way of great journeys. And you have a great journey ahead of you. I remember your first smile, the first time you opened your hands, your eyes following an object around the room for the first time, your first steps, your first crawl. However, if I were to pick a favorite moment, when I think of your first year, is the first time you made vocalizations. It happened one evening in between the age of 2 and 3 months. It was like for the first time you wanted to greet the world. It’s like you suddenly realized that you were no longer an extension of your mother, but you realized you were a separate individual entity and you wanted to announce your presence. Or perhaps it was that for the first time you realized that the world wasn’t just happening to you, you could happen to the world and you were just glad to be alive. You made the cutest gurgling noises, and were smiling and waving your little arms about. Your mother and I laid at your side on the bed and we just watched you. It was the most entertaining and amazing thing I’ve ever seen and your mother and I were incurably happy next to you. We would look at each other and just knew that as tiring as this might be some times it was also going to be incredibly rewarding and full of joy. We knew what family meant, and we felt an incredible amount of love for you and each other.

Tomorrow you will be a year old. You are now eagerly walking around and getting into all sorts of trouble. You are curious and exploring and it reminds me how important the process of movement is to discovery. In human history, the building of boats, cars, rockets, they all have allowed us to discover and learn more. Now that you can move the rate in which you will discover grows exponentially and I find myself continually blown away at how quickly your strength, dexterity, and intelligence grows. As I look back on the day I first fell in love with you I realize that my love was a beautiful house that is empty on the inside, and each day you fill that house with amazing memories. That love is now a home, and we are happy there, and excited for all the new memories that will fill that home. Sometimes I get really scared that something might happen to you, and that being in that home alone without you, with only those memories to look at, would be the saddest thing imaginable. But I would not dishonor your joy by getting lost in those fears. I keep in the back to keep you as safe as possible without taking away from your desire for self-determination and knowing that ultimately what we learn from risk and failure is as important as any other way there is to learn.

My heart is full of love and excitement because as your development continues I can show my love for you in so many new ways and I am anxious for you to experience it. I am also anxious to experience your love in new ways also. Though my appearance may change little, make no mistake that we are growing together. And as I sit here and write this I know one thing for certain. There are no words to express how much of a gift you truly are to my soul. It will take a lifetime together as father and son for those words to manifest and even then it will be in no language that can be spoken, but I guarantee that you will know it.

Love,

Your Father

A Change Will Do You Good

On December 21, 2014 By Swarn GillIn Philosophy11 Comments

A friend of mine asked me a few months ago “What are your weaknesses?” After mulling it over for a couple of minutes, to be honest, I couldn’t think of any. Now don’t start thinking I’m a smug bastard, I know for a fact that I am far from perfect. Then I thought, well I am not quite sure what my strengths are either. I guess the way I have to come to view myself is a work in progress. It seems to me that trying to determine what strengths and weaknesses are is tricky business. I might say that I worry too much, but at some level worry brings about a level of awareness that might help you act or reach a solution. Worrying too much is obviously a problem though as it can be draining and waste time. Not worrying at all, might also be dangerous as it may make you apathetic to important things. I used to be a huge worrier, but I always looked at it as a quality that was part of a spectrum from too much worry, to not worrying at all, and that there was a healthy balance in there. So it wasn’t so much that worrying was a weakness but that I had to find an appropriate way of using that “worry” towards being constructive and not destructive. And I always felt that worrying was better than apathy. To me, all strengths and weakness are not an either, or, but rather qualities that lie on a continuum between two extremes and thus any weakness may have some important qualities that we simply need to foster more.

If I say that my strength is kindness, does it mean I don’t have room to grow? Does it mean that I couldn’t be more kind? I have never been one to simply rest on laurels as I think it is important to strive each day to be more than we are (provided we are lucky enough to live in an environment where we have such an opportunity and are not fighting for basic subsistence needs like so many in this world). Our strengths might manifest themselves in different ways. While I may be kind, how I show that kindness may not be the right way for that particular situation. Sometimes “tough love” is the best way to deal with a particular situation. Some people respond to a stricter approach, drawing definite boundaries. Some people respond better to you when you are sensitive, soft-spoken and supportive. Some people might respond to both depending on the situation. It takes time and experience to gain the wisdom to know how best to be kind to those around you. Should I say it is a fault or a weakness when I show kindness in a way that makes sense to me, but is not received as such to the other person? Or should I simply reflect and say, “I am glad my heart was in the right place, but I need to do better.” And what if the person you are showing kindness to, feels grateful, but isn’t good at showing it? As I’ve mentioned before, one of the amazing parts about life is that we never know how we may impact others. Someone might be angry or frustrated with you in the moment, but only realize the kindness you showed years later.

In the end I would say that my greatest strength is that I feel I value good things like happiness, learning, compassion, self-reflection, equality, a strong work ethic, and humility, and that my weakness is that I am incomplete in demonstrating those qualities to a capacity I am completely comfortable with. And that I may not be aware of the importance of other character traits that might make me and this world a better place. And I accept that not only will this “weakness” never go away, but it might also be the very thing that allows me to become stronger, wiser, and appreciative of life in new ways all the time. And so, in what might be a somewhat ironic way, the parts of me that I will not change, are the various things that allow me to change. After all, why would I want to be the exact same person all my life, as if that were even possible? 🙂

Do you really want to hurt me?

On October 3, 2014October 3, 2014 By Swarn GillIn Musings, Philosophy, Psychology2 Comments

I have always been interested in how the emotions we feel translate into behaviors actions. One of the things I have always wondered about is why feelings of hurt make us want to hurt others. Now I don’t want to over-generalize, but I think all of us, at some point in our lives, have felt hurt to the point that if we didn’t lash out at another person, we have really thought long and hard about it. I am not talking as much about physical pain here, although there certainly is an instinct to obviously fight back at times physically. I am talking more about feelings of hurt at the emotional level. Sometimes we have inflicted pain upon those closest to us and people we love. Such things never lessen the pain, and tend to only make it worse since we are, in general, compassionate beings who know that we’ve inflicted pain upon others. This usually just adds guilt in with the emotional pain we are already experiencing. The question becomes why do we think it, and why do we do it? As usual I don’t really have any answers, but will just explore some possibilities.

While it’s true that perhaps we do end up being strengthened by the hurt we feel, there is a period of time where it doesn’t feel that way.

The first thing that comes to mind is that it is sort of a primitive survival mechanism. If you’ve ever felt really hurt by someone’s actions towards you, you know that it takes a toll on you physically. Our emotions are a product of the release of various hormones and other chemicals in our body, and so a certain emotional state can have a strong effect on our physical systems. Thus we can actually feel like we are in a fight for our life and the only way to win is by defeating the threat that has impacted us so strongly at the emotional level. This can also be done on a larger scale. Governments can (and have) play up threats to one’s existence and way of life, and dehumanize the enemy to rile up many people into an emotional state where they want to lash out at the threat. It seems clear that feeling threatened on an emotional level, by making it feel personal, making you feel fear, can incite one to fight back. The simplest answer is very often the right one, so perhaps feeling hurt simply makes us feel threatened so fighting back feels necessary to our survival.

Of course what it doesn’t explain is why we might inflict pain on those that we care about. When unknown

enemy or someone you don’t really care for who has hurt you or who you believe is hurting you, it almost makes sense to want to hurt them back. But if you’ve ever lashed out at your spouse or partner in anger, at your child (either physically or verbally), it almost seems counter-intuitive that this would ever be a solution to alleviating your own feelings of hurt. Sometimes those that we lash out at, aren’t even the ones that have hurt us, and so it seems even more strange that we should have such behavior. On a more personal level, it seems to me that in my life when I experience a lot of hurt I often feel like I’m in the dark. Perhaps that is not necessarily the best analogy, but what I’m getting at is that the solution for making oneself feel better is not clear. So perhaps that’s why I equate it to being in the dark, because when you are in the dark it is difficult to find a way out. Depending on the depth of the pain we may start to panic and fear sets in, so we get desperate. We want the pain to end, and get out of that darkness so bad that we claw, and scramble, and we try to move quickly. But like any fast movement in the dark we don’t know what we are grabbing at, we don’t know what we are reaching for and we hit all sorts of things along the way, hurting others and ourselves. Flailing in the dark is never going to be best solution over keeping calm and thinking our way out of that dark palce.

Delving deeper I wonder if there isn’t something uniquely human about this quality that goes beyond some

sort of animalistic behavior and is perhaps darker, even if it isn’t necessarily malicious. When I’ve felt really hurt by someone, it’s easy feel like you don’t matter to them. Just like I said it is counter-intuitive to hurt people we care about, so when you feel hurt by someone who cares about you, it’s easy to arrive at the conclusion that they don’t care about you anymore; that they are indifferent. I think apathy is one of the toughest emotions to have to deal with. When you feel like nobody is paying attention to you, it’s easy to get depressed, and more often than not we react in a way that tries to get us noticed. Usually in not the most healthy way either. The feelings of hurt may have us thinking that the world is so indifferent to us that our existence does not matter. Many suicide attempts are simply cries for help from people that do not feel “noticed”. In some way I think we’d rather somebody hated us than were indifferent to us. And so it seems sometimes lashing out at someone may simply be a mechanism for being noticed. If someone is angry at you, it means you matter. It means that they can at least feel some emotion for you even if it is a negative one. To reach that point though it is truly sad, because what we usually want is love and compassion, and when we become so desperate that the opposite becomes the next best thing, perhaps then we truly are in the dark.

The real problem is that I don’t know a good way out of this behavior. There are all sorts of clichés and memes, and self-help books that tell us that harming others is never a bona fide way of alleviating our feelings of hurt, but nevertheless we seem to drift towards hurting others who hurt us. Most of the time we just hurt people in a moment and then we quickly realize what we’ve done and apologize. Sometimes we feel justified in hurting others for the short-term satisfaction it brings, even though it doesn’t end our suffering over the long-term. When I look at war torn countries, where so many people have lost loved ones, and you wonder how can they alleviate the hurt that they feel without continuing a cycle of violence and feelings of hatred? I wonder if this just isn’t a darker part of who we are, and the only thing we can really do for ourselves is to be aware of it, and hope that in the moment we can focus on what will eventually lead to true happiness in the long-term instead of just hurting others, especially those we care about, even if they’ve inflicted pain on us. Maybe they are just as in the dark as we are.

Expectations

On August 29, 2014 By Swarn GillIn Love, Musings, Philosophy, Prose and Poetry2 Comments

First you waited, then I waited
I might be waiting a long time,
I hate long waits
But there is something worse
That’s having expectations
Expecting is like having fun,
Without even doing anything,
But what else can you expect with love?
Just be happy in the moment?
It sounds good on paper,
I’m not going to lie to you,
In fact I tried it and it’s true,
Love is so much better,
When you’re focusing on the moment,
You can really…get to know love that way,
In fact it’s so good you want it to stay,
And to never ever go away,
Somewhere deep inside though,
We know. Nothing. Is. Permanent.

But sticky problems have solutions,
Every good heist needs an inside man,
“Our designs are top notch,
You won’t find them anywhere else,
They almost seem made for you”
Says my fortune teller inside me,
Maybe that’s what psychics are,
People who enjoy building dreams so much,
That they want to do it for others,
The drama queen in all of us,
The irony of it all is,
I don’t believe in psychics,
The moment is all that matters,
If you care about the future,
But the right way is so hard,
And the wrong path has better scenery,
There are so many things to look at,
You won’t notice falling off the cliff,
Well at least until you land.

That’s not a good moment,
But then again…what else did you expect?

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Cloak Unfurled

Tag: Love