Desire - A contract for Madness?

 

Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.” – Naval Ravikant

I read this in Alex Hormozi book $100M Offers, and I could not go beyond it before writing this down. If Desire is a contract of Unhappiness, then does this mean that if I am content where I am, then I do not desire change?

What is it that I desire then? What will tbe the contract for which I will sign into a perptual state of madness, till I get what I am aiming for?

A contract to be in a perpetual madness till you find your Alice?

What is it for you?

When I think of it this way then to be honest my family comes to my mind, there is a side of me which says that I can probably give away my life for them.

But, will I give away my comfort for her? Will I give away that 1 hour of sleep? That twice a week gym promise? That promise to keep creating something ?

Will I take this contract up? Do I desire it enough, to change?

Fullmetal Alchemist is an amazing anime - and the entire plot revolves around the concept of Touka Koukan - "Equivalent Exchange" – the idea that to obtain something, you must sacrifice something of equal worth.

So then, desire will be a promise to offer something equivalent , something as intense, as our want.

Hatter offers his sanity for Alice.

What am I offering ? What do I even desire?

And why do we then sometimes get more than what we desire?

Is there a terrible loss I have incurred already , from the past or from the future - which gets me these unexpected surprises which are way more than I desired? Is this what we call “Luck?”

But desire is a conscious act isn’t it, and then what has to be sacrificed has to be conscious too.

Time to think clearly about what I really desire, and what is it for which I will sign up a contract of unhappiness and discomfort for.

July 2024

 Eva celebrated her 5th birthday. I am having problems which a usual 39 year old dad is expected to have. I am having a career crisis, I want to do better as a dad. 

A new place to write

 Just because it feels a bit new to write there. 
https://kunalmathur.substack.com/

2024 Entry, after three years

 Literally 3 years have passed since I made last entry here and probably a decade since I actively wrote here. I am glad Google has kept this platform alive. In a way this blog has the best version of me locked in it. 
Today , when I wanted to write about my day, I felt overwhelmed about where can I really post. So many options and yet its just not enough to build the trust I need. So I came back here, seems like this is my writing home. 

I am in process of trying to improve from the version I am now, and in that sense I am tracking what I do. Just wanted to write down what I have been doing and review. 

PS : I am 39 now, I have a daughter : Eva 

14th May , 2024

7-8 am : Waking up Eva

8-1030 : Telegram, some reels, drive to office

12:00 : Went for a walk , sun right on the head, came back 

12-3 : Lunch , finished routine office work

3-330 Writing this blog

Overall, half a day and like Half of this year is gone. I was listening to a youtube video yesterday and it spoke about art of doing nothing. 

What really matters is not the thing you didnt do, but the fucking shit you have been doing. If you are not me and reading this, then this might look like a series of disconnected entries, but thats because I have the context and I am not writing it for anyone else. I want to publish it out there though, I am sure no one reads this blog. 

So yeah, will focus on what I have been doing instead of what I didnt do, or what I should have been doing. I dont know if I can keep up with writing these daily rants, given my patterns maybe I will stop in like three entries max. But if I can continue, itll be nice. 

Maybe this is a downgrade to this blog, from giving out best version of my writing here, I am making it my personal scrapbook. But thats the thing , you can do what you want at your home. This was never a shop. 

Withdrawn Woes of Wandering Kind

I came back to my blog today evening, read the first blog I wrote here in 2007. Its a feeling which might have more ingredients but is pretty much a cotton ball dipped in the syrup of guilt. { I know, not nice} 

I cannot come to terms with the fact that last entry in this blog was in 2018, and last long form entry was perhaps several years before it. 

I was 22 when I started this blog, I am 36 now. One big thing is that I do not beat myself up for shit I didn't do. This is actually a constant, I have always been this way. In fact, there is a part of me which believes I was too involved and comfortable with things I was doing, and sort of never lost my sleep over what I could do. ( I know, not nice} 

Lot happened since 2018, and virtually entire life happened since 2007. I am not going to write out that I am going to write out more often etc. For all I know, this is truly an outdated platform anyway, and people may not care about the long form babbles. 

Good stuff happened too. I mentored bunch of startups in a session and they loved it. I am in UN and have completed 6 months, getting one year down in September.

If I think about it, the ritual of creating a blog required hours of work. I was not hungry for likes or shared about the blogs I wrote. It was a masterpiece I would create and share with like three or four people who loved my blog. 

I could perhaps write more here, and for that read more. Lockdown times are overwhelming and maybe trying to revive Quixotic Knight is a good fun project to go about. I wonder if I can get the same level of intensity and research which I would bring before? It scares me but then I wonder for what?

So lets make this about new starts and change... Time to probably create this small space in the day where I try to resurrect the knight. It wont come easy, but it will come. I need to read and write, both. 

                                            

Cepheid variable stars

Cepheid variable stars are intrinsic variables which pulsate in a predicatable way. In addition, a Cepheid star's period (how often it pulsates) is directly related to its luminosity or brightness. Cepheid variables are extremely luminous and very distant ones can be observed and measured.

When it comes to dependability, the ones which truly help are the ones who give an exact indication of their ability and an indissoluble promise about their efforts. 

Ceoheid Star's pulsating frequency is directly proportional to its luminosity. My pulsating frequency should match mine. Its not a bad idea to be the star which is the most dependable of them all . 

Homesick

Voices from outside the elevator were asking me to stay calm. I was as calm as the winter lake. I know what it's like to get stuck. It's a helpless situation where the mind does its best to rescue you. It transports your thoughts to more pleasant places which you associate with happiness. Sometimes it takes to you to a future spot which you have been waiting for, sometimes it takes you to the unresolved conflicts of the past.

None of this works though, when one's stuck. Reality of the situation is that your being is stuck in a spot where you are "helpless". The thoughts do nothing to work out the situation, they do calm you down a bit though.

The minimum acceptable size of an existing elevator cab, allowing for a single wheelchair passenger, is 0.95 m x 1.25 m. I am calm because my being got stuck already a while back. 16 years ago, to be precise.

Firefighters have this device called the PASS device, which is a safety device attached to them and it starts beeping if there is no movement from the firefighter for 30s. On that day at ground zero, September 11, 2001, I stood there listening to deafening sounds of 343 PASS devices. None of the fallen fighters would move anymore under the debris. The beeps went on till the batteries died too the next day. I was there.

That's where I am stuck. Every single moment I have lived has been like the thoughts I get when I am stuck in this elevator. These moments do not matter because by being is stuck. To be stuck helpless at a spot is an unfortunate happening, but I am not alone.

I was in a bus in Jordan when I met a soldier who had served in the Shatila Massacre.There was this traffic jam and we were stuck at a spot for four hours. Two of us sat side by side and were the only ones perfectly calm in the blistering heat. I could see it, I could see this man's calm was not ordinary, it comes when your being is stuck somewhere. I started talking to him.

He arrived at the slum after a few hours of the shooting, and the entire place had deafening shrill cries of the widows and the mothers. He says he stood there for what seemed like an hour. He got stuck at that spot.

The other day, I met an aged musician who spoke about his performance at an unnamed Rock and Roll festival where he performed his solo in front of 20,000 people. He says he sort of died there. He will never leave that spot, he can still hear the silence of the crowd for a few seconds and then the uproar

There's got to be some relation between the sounds and the phenomena of getting stuck. It's like all these sounds form a hound who sucks away and traps your soul through your ears. You can never leave the spot then

I am stuck in this elevator for an hour and a half now, and no matter how hard your mind tries to transport you away to different surreal places when you're stuck in an elevator, You have this extreme calling which gets you back to where you actually are. You keep getting back to this elevator and its sort of reassuring, because you feel alive and in the moment.

Not me. I need to get back to those deafening beeps to feel alive. In a strange way I felt envious of the soldier who lived a similar moment and got stuck there. I want to be at a spot where I find my true self. I want to be in my trap again.

Last birthday, I filled a basement parking of the mall with fireworks and set them off. All the cars started beeping together. I think they were less that 343, but then I felt at home standing there in that deafening parking lot.

They are saying it will be another 20 mins before they can open up the elevator, I am calm. I just need to think about what to do next. What to do next to get home, to be where I am stuck.