Four eyes

Every night as I crawl under my blanket, I take off my glasses and tuck them under my pillow. My sister, my father and my grandfather all followed the same ritual. Perhaps this is an old habit that I inherited. Or it is just another one of those small things that was meant to teach me a bigger lesson.

I never gave much thought to my eye glasses or the way I treated them until they broke one night. They were kept under my pillow for convenience and in the middle of the night, I rolled over them. The next morning, I woke up blind. My glasses were shattered and my world was blurry. I had to wear contact lenses for a whole week until I got a new pair. Unlike my old Prada beauties, the new maroon pair was Chesterfield Seventh Street 4. Not only was it not designer, it was cheap, funny-looking and I hated it. Nonetheless, my dad paid for it and restored my vision.

Last night, I noticed a crack on the frame. I spent over a year making these glasses a part of me. I tuck them under my pillow every night and for some odd reason, I now love them. However, I recognized two key things with this incident. First, I was forced to recognize the innate objective of eye-glasses to provide new sight and how they symbolize clarity and perspective. Secondly, it made me realize how easily we get attached.

Gaining new perspective on situations is the most proven way to be successful. It becomes even more important when you understand how it correlates with the desire for victory. Any incident can be viewed as a win as long as you approach it with the right "perspective". I spent several years chasing a dream that was neither a part of my fate, nor an honest ambition of mine. Now, I am doing what part of this world will consider pointless, another part will deem overly-ambitious and yet another part will be ignorant of how happy it really makes me. But it really does make me happy and therefore I am a winner for finding what I love.

I hope the US government can find some perspective on the issues our nation is facing. I am sure blame is not part of gaining perspective. Nor is shutting down completely. Perhaps, it would be "perspective" to learn from other countries that are actually doing it right and implement it on our government to pull out of this mess. Maybe, it would be "perspective" to recognize the mistakes of the past not as an excuse, but as an opportunity to improve upon a system that was created hundreds of years ago and is definitely due for an upgrade. It would be "perspective" to accept that you're NOT the supreme and just this once, you can opt to focus on problems on the home-front instead of judging, meddling, and "helping" the world.

Attachment has been described as the inevitable evil. Personally, I think my attachment has transcended the basic. I may even refer to myself as a generally possessive person. I am attached to my family, my friends, Chicago, my blanket, my memories, pretty much everything. Sometimes, I can't differentiate whether my feelings towards something are a result of my attachment or my stubborn-ness. I guess this is where I'll need "perspective"!

I believe America's attachment to power has grown to an addiction. However, like me, America is stubborn and divided. Each individual is attached with a group. Each group is attached to its principles. And each principle is attached to our downfall. This is where perspective isn't just an option, but a necessity.

America needs a pair of glasses. The brand should be honesty. The objective must be to recognize their attachments and find perspective on how to undo this mess. And the result will be a clearer and happier world for all us. I hope!

"The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. "

Pseudo Reality

"Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry." ~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Human behavior has always fascinated me, but recently, I've had the opportunity of analyzing it with a novel perspective. Being a biomedical engineer comes with its perks, and one of them is the ability to break apart every aspect of human and represent it in terms of models and equations. While this ability has advanced us greatly in the field of technology and medicine, it brings me back to a very commonly asked question. Who are we?

None of the proposed mechanisms have been able to holistically represent the human. Even when taken apart into components of mind and body, not one definition justifies the numerous theories and observations that account for what we call human behavior.

However, this is not an attempt to analyze human behavior, but instead it is an effort to take a characteristic displayed by the majority and discuss its pros and cons. As represented by the urge to converge to a solution, ironically, one distinct human characteristic is the need to categorize. This is quite obvious in both history and science. We built societies, religions, and generalized equations to group similar subjects(people, phenomena, animals, etc). One may argue that this innate need is actually to develop an organized view of the world and function more efficiently in that model.

First of all, like any model, our personal human model of the world is also not honest. It is biased, tainted, and sometimes just absurd. Secondly, categories establish differences and in order to attain efficiency, these differences need to contribute to the easier accomplishment of something. But often, these differences aren't a medium for ease. They are instead obstacles that provide for worthless basis on which to separate ourselves. They are products of fear and insecurity. This brings me to my third point, that categories don't make us efficient, but they make us comfortable. They accommodate for our vulnerability.

So maybe they do have a functional role in our evolution, but is this need to group still necessary? Or better yet, would the human race be better off without self-proclaimed differences?

I recall an incident that occurred when I was just a naive freshmen, thrown into the world of engineering. As I aimlessly struggled with the post-processing of some very noisy data, my mentor intervened. "Adjust the cutoff frequency to eliminate your garbage data, leaving you with a clean signal." I wonder if we are modulating our cutoff frequencies in order to conveniently alienate certain groups. I also speculate whether the threshold could be lowered enough to include everyone in the entire human race as one giant group. Simplify each being's existence. Alternatively, the threshold could be set so high, that the group reduces to one person and each person becomes a group. The quality of individuality is what we refer to as "unique."

So, I leave you with some questions. Should we abandon this urge to group and find a belonging within that group? Is the nature of characterization hindering human progress? While we know that the recognition of differences may be the root cause of many evil conflicts, will embracing those differences make room for peace? Or will that in turn just seed a new way for human evil to emerge? How can society value conformity, but also uniqueness? Paradoxically, how can a person who claims to be unique(a quality highly prized by the community) conform to society's expectations of being unique?

I certainly hope you all will be rather creative and individualistic in your answers and conform to my high expectations! :)