Learnings & Experiences
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No freedom, only responsibility
The words freedom and responsibility mean different things to different people. When someone says “Sam is free to do xyz“, it could either mean “Sam can choose to do xyz, if he ‘wants’” OR “Sam is not ‘banned’ from doing xyz, so he can potentially do it” OR “Sam can try out xyz ‘for size’…
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Pulling ideas and experiences together to make something new
This is a story of how Advay (my 7 year old) pulled together random experiences from scrubbing coconut shells, to dismantling an old washing machine, to discovering a motor to making an electric coconut scrubber.
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Advay learns to flute
Our family has a lot of music enthusiasts. My sister-in-law (my older brother’s wife) is a trained vocal artist. Their oldest son (Avyay) has taken training in Mrudanga and Advay has sat around him during his practice sessions several times. My cousin brother, Sujith, plays the Guitar. Another one of my cousins, Suhas, plays drums.
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What is “correct spelling”?
Advay (my 7 year old) has developed a fascination for the written form this year. It started with the need to read his favourite story books and then with the need to capture his expression in words. He was doing a good job expressing his ideas & thoughts through drawings. For instance: after he came…
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Advay’s visit to “Open Day at IISc”
Nandini recently found out about “Open Day at IISc”. She was excited to go with Advay (my 7 year old) for that event. On Saturday they both got on the Metro and reached the IISc campus. Through the journey, Nandini explained to Advay what Open Day was and the opportunity that would be available to…
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Anxiety about unlimited freedom
Tight rope walking is scary because there are no rails to hold on to while walking on the tight rope. So, it causes an obvious anxiety about walking on the rope. Anxiety stems from the fact that, without support, one might fall off to the left OR to the right OR forward OR backward OR…
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Insight
Exploring something new feels like taking two steps forward only to take one step back and not necessarily in the same direction.
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On Authenticity
Each and every one of us has at some point in our lives paused to ponder over questions like “Who am I?”, “What is the meaning of life?”, “What is the nature of reality?”, “What does it mean to exist, to be?” and so on. As we pondered over these questions we came up with answers…
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8 habits of highly authentic people
Pardon my cheap shot at free publicity. I couldn’t resist naming this blog post after Stephen Covey’s magnum opus “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People“. It was one of the first “real self help” books I read in my life. Up until then I was mostly reading books on personality development, which taught me…
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being-for-others – a breeding ground for inauthentic relationships
Sartre and others carve a phenomenon called being-for-others, that leaves a human being with an experience of being an object along with other objects in a world of objects, with fixed properties, labels, behaviour etc. Given that people are seldom, if ever, truly alone these days, each person constantly confronts the existence of other people, not simply as…
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Anxiety, Commitment & Healthy Dose of Bad-Faith
Bad-faith, or inauthenticity, is living a lie that we dont have freedom to choose in the face of situations and realities that we encounter in life. Existentialists, Sartre in particular says that as human beings we are condemned to be free. Our fundamental nature, he says, is to be a free transcendence of our facticity, for…
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Projects of Bad Faith – Part #2
According to existentialism, authenticity is living life with willingness that who I am is a free transcendence of my facticity. Therefore, I willingly own-up my facticity and make choices & take action by being fully aware of my freedom to do so. I also take note of the fact that my choices & action lead to consequences that…
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Elephant as bell for the cycle
Jagriti has been an interesting journey so far. Inspiring, eye-opening; but most of all confusing. On the ground, it is opening new kinds of interactions with my son. Couple of weeks ago, we had a session on creativity. Post that session, I started to pull my-creative side in my conversations with Advay. Here I share…
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PropertyBinder class in Qt
In QML we have this super-cool feature that allows us to bind the property value of one object as a function of the property value of another object. For instance Item { width: anotherItem.width * 2 } In the example above, the width of one item is twice the width of another item. If for…
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Projects of Bad Faith
After a long time, I started to re-read books on existentialism from Gary Cox. Like he says, study of existentialism can be a hugely impactful thing. I was reading his book “Existentialist’s Guide to Death, the Universe and Nothingness” and tumbled upon this chapter about “Bad Faith”. I inquired into the kinds of bad-faith projects…