Hi folks! It’s been a while.
Hope you all are having fun and not being a self loathing bitch :)
Okay, now that you are here, lemme tell you that this piece has nothing to do with the sex part. It was an experiment to see if this title will get a higher open rate.
Sorry for the aggressive start to this one, but that’s how I have been feeling nowadays, or at least today. It’s March 19, 2024 that I am starting to write this one, let’s see when would I send this out.
Disclaimer: This is not a medical advice, it’s just me writing what I feel.
Therapy
My view on therapy has always been weird and it has been strongly influenced by the stuff I read or that I see happening around me. btw, I went to therapy last year. It was a pretty normal situation tbh, I was confused a lot and needed some help with clearing my mind.
Did therapy help? Yes
Did the therapist help? Well…
But this piece is not just about me, but a general observation about human behaviour. These observations are mine, and the sample space is me + some people I know. So, no medical advice here, if you are looking for one.
Is therapy supposed to heal you? I don’t think so. Many people believe that the right time to go to therapy is when you are already depressed, don’t know what’s happening to you, or something like that. I believe the best time is to go if when you can’t reach a clear answer to your problems.
Another misconception people have about therapy is that it’s supposed to be a solution or it’s supposed to be a way out of things. Obviously that’s wrong. Therapy is more of a map in a journey where you are being told some truth and facts which you have to accept and make a decision - which direction should I go?
Last year, I read a stance on therapy which opened my mind to a new way of thinking. It was something on this line - Modern therapy doesn’t believe in absolute truth but often relies on promoting self acceptance. This is good in many scenarios, but not in all.
Many times, people are in the wrong - their actions are completely wrong and they need to realise that. Now, in such a scenario, if you tell someone that its okay to be yourself and not push them in a self reflective and a corrective direction, that will be completely wrong.
That’s why, I think therapy should be taken as a compass which helps you discover facts about yourself (and accept them hopefully), makes you think, shows you a direction you need to explore and then let you choose if you want to go there or not. And when you don’t, it holds you accountable by stating that instead of saying its okay.
Philosophy
“If you are so smart, why aren’t you happy?”
But, I am. Are you?
Have you heard that famous saying - Happiness is a journey, not a destination.
Have you ever wondered that whenever we think of “philosophy”, we go into this serious mode and start asking questions like “What’s the meaning of life?” or “what is happiness?”
Why does philosophy feel like an an old person with long beard looking into a void all serious?
When it can also be on an old person with long beard looking at you with a smiling and discussing a topic like “tea” with you. If you have seen Avatar - The Last Airbender, this feels like description of General Iroh.
The term "philosophy" means "love of wisdom." Originally it is supposed to be the practice of thought, an act of thinking about questions of why things are the way they are and why we do what we do. That’s why the full form of Ph.D. is Doctor of Philosophy. A free thinker, someone with the capability of understanding the world.
I wish I could study philosophy as a subject. But I know that would have made me hate it, or really bored me. That’s why the best way to study philosophy is to live it.
I am not a student of philosophy. Maybe because I am not that patient. But I love observing people and coming up with my own hypothesis on why things work the way they do.
These hypothesis are wrong many times, for sure. I don’t know a lot of things. But when they are right, it feels good to know that I understand the world around me,
Does that make me a philosopher? I wish.
I haven’t read many books on these topics but I read “The Courage to be Disliked” last year and that changed a lot of things for me. Not in the moment when I was reading the book. But after that.
When I read that book, I felt attacked and felt that most of these things can’t be completely true. This was before I went to therapy.
Going to therapy, being more truthful to myself and more accepting of my own flaws, I started to see how things make sense.
Everything you do is being done by you with a motive or a goal in mind. That can be conscious or subconscious. But there’s a reason.
This took a weird turn. I never wanted to bring these two topics together but its fascinating how therapy opened a door to philosophy for me. I started with understanding myself obviously, and now that I do, I think I am ready to understand the world too.
⛳ Some other life updates
We started the new Product Management Cohort at Crework this month and it’s going really well. The best of all, I am getting to be a teacher, which I absolutely love.
Other than that, the weather in Bangalore is just like Gurgaon. I am not missing home at all. It rained a bit, but not exactly. It’s still the same old garmi.
Also, I haven’t slept for the last 32 hours and the last 5 paragraphs of this issue has been written by me in that state. Soooo…..