Tomichan Matheikal's blog

We are all neurotics though we convince ourselves that we are normal especially because our society approves of most of the things we do. The society is the benchmark for the sanity of our actions. We can even murder people in large numbers and call it religious fervour or patriotism. We are doing it everyday. We are doing it indirectly perhaps like, for instance, when we glorify the soldiers who kill at the borders or the militants who kill wherever they wish. There is no need to go to the extent of murders in order to be aware of our neurosis. If we analyse our usual thoughts and actions, we will find that quite many of them are plainly absurd if not insane. One of the jokes that I have quoted again and again in my classes is from Albert Camus’s essay, The Myth of Sisyphus . There is a mad man who is fishing in a bathtub. The psychiatrist asks him with a plan to start a session of counselling, “Hey, got any fish?” The mad man frowns at the doc and gives a harsh reply,

Image from Introvert-Inspiration Viktor Frankl spent several months in Hitler’s concentration camps. It is very difficult to nurture hope and not capitulate to despair when you know that your days are numbered.   Frankl was lucky to survive. He wrote the book Man’s Search for Meaning after his release from the camp. The book sold millions of copies. Meaning is what sustains us. That is Frankl’s essential message. It is not at all easy to find meaning in a life that is about to be snuffed out in a torture camp. The first thing you need is hope, says Frankl. You know that there is someone outside there waiting for you, waiting with agonised longing for your safe return. That one person alone is enough to generate hope in your heart. That person may be your spouse, your offspring or even your god. You are very precious for that someone. All of us have someone for whom we are very, very precious. We have to live for that person. We have to win for that person. Hope alone

Othello and Desdemona Image from Wikipedia Love is a complex thing though it ought to be the simplest being the most natural feeling between human beings.   Love makes the world go round.   Love is a feeling that wells up within us almost always.   We love our family members, friends, colleagues and a whole lot of people with whom we establish some sort of relationships. Yet it isn’t a very simple feeling. Othello loved Desdemona arguably more than any man would love a woman. Yet he ended up killing her. He killed her for love. Can anyone kill the person whom he loves so much? Can we call that emotion love? Desdemona was a pure woman who loved Othello as much as he loved her.   Her love was simple.   It was a childlike trust.   She was so innocent that she could not even prove that innocence.   Should love be so innocent, so trustful, so childlike?   Did Othello really love Desdemona?   Or did he love himself more?   He killed her because he thought she had betray

Source: Quotefancy “You understand, and that’s why you’ll never have any peace. If you didn’t understand, you’d be happy.” Zorba the Greek , protagonist of the eponymous novel by Kazantzakis, tells this to the narrator who is a young man of much knowledge. “You’re young,” Zorba goes on, “you have money, health, you’re a good fellow, you lack nothing. Nothing, by thunder! Except just one thing – folly! And when that’s missing, well…” Zorba doesn’t complete the sentence. The sort of folly that Zorba wants his boss to attain is not something that can be explained. It is the product of enlightenment . It dawns on you when you stop depending on your brain for everything. “A man’s head is like a grocer,” as Zorba says, “it keeps accounts. I’ve paid so much and earned so much and that means a profit of this much or a loss of that much! The head’s a careful little shopkeeper; it never risks all it has, always keeps something in reserve. It never breaks the string.” Knowledge i

By Loudon Dodd Janus is a Roman god with two faces that look into opposite directions.   The month of January gets its name from Janus.   Probably the calendar makers thought that the new year should prompt us to look back at the past year as we welcome the new year.   The past is a good teacher.   Those who refuse to learn from their past are condemned to repeat it.   But the past may not always be the ideal teacher.   If you have a tendency to ask yourself why this happened to you, the past is better forgotten.   Most of the time, there are no answers to the question why.   Things go wrong as they often do.   Wrongs outnumber rights in our life.   We often err.   Others err too.   Errors hit us from every side all the time.   We’ve got to accept them as inevitable parts of life, as faithful companions. Learn the lessons from those errors and move ahead.   Like Janus, look back only to remember the lessons.   Forget the hurts and the pains.   Forget the whys.   Ask ho

An integer in mathematics is a whole number; that is, a number without fractions or decimals, a number without fragments.   Integrity is wholeness.   Integrity is the wholesome condition of not carrying fragments within. More often than not, life gifts us a lot of fragments of broken hearts.   Fragments of broken promises, broken aspirations, broken trusts.   We are fragile and life delights in breaking us.   Some people gather the fragments and piece them together into a whole.   Scars may remain on that pieced-together entity, but it is whole once again.   Some people create art out of the fragments: music, painting, poetry, and so on.   Many choose to sigh upon the fragments.   For many, the fragments are a kind of excuse for not trying new ventures.   I have been broken, can’t you see the fragments, so leave me alone , they say.   Some of us enjoy keeping the wounds alive so that we can busy ourselves with nursing them, bandaging them every morning and evening, finding o

Rain, boughs and the earth: holon Holon is what you and I are.   Arthur Koestler coined that word to mean something that is simultaneously a whole and a part.   There are creatures like the ants and the bees which are autonomous individuals but choose to live as integral parts of a community.   They are ideal examples of holon.   The whole cosmos is a huge organism and we are just parts of it.   But we are autonomous too.   We have carried that autonomy too far with our selfishness.   We have exploited the cosmos as best as we possibly could forgetting that it is a living system which has its own biological processes.   We have dumped too much waste into that system which is killing it slowly. If only we understand that we are as much part of that system as a wheel is in a complex clockwork, we may realise the need to respect the cosmos.   Magic will be the result of that realisation.   You are you, but you are also the others.   You are the rock on the mountains a