To believe or not to?

Halt! This one is not about God and religion. Its my (arguably confused) take on social networking. See you later.

Shit happens! I mean we all do things and then look back and blame it on the ‘situation’, that God almighty (with all due and undue respects, whoever That is) was not as lenient with us as he was with the others- Most of the times though, it is not true. One is usually in control of the way things get to happen around self. Luck is a part of life, So is ones thinking and it matters more. More it is under control, the better. Treating luck as a separate ‘unknown’ variable will only increase the bliss that we are in (read ignorance -for dummies). Its better to just consider it as a statistical variation in a linear curve. Some old adage on ‘will’ and ‘way’ of people was not unduly based on inexperience, I believe. Most of our miseries are due to, what Munshi Premchand put so neatly in “Godaan” – Paapi pet (Sinner stomach). (There are some books people must read in life, at least once. Godaan is one such).

But wait a minute, not all of them are linked to the misfortunes bestowed by a hungry stomach – We have (in) human rights organizations to make the case up here. What with my excessive dosage of chat and ‘social networking’ these days, I am introduced to a new kind of mental pressure- that of living up to the expectations of someone you have never seen (and may as well, never will). But it is personal again. If you are like me, you would be emotional - but never throw up your emotions, or at least try not to. That doesn’t mean I am a door-mat people walk over – Most of the times I don’t give a damn to stuff. But there’s always so much to learn in life. How could I miss out? Education, of what I have ever had, has mostly been outside of my schools and colleges. The formal one didn’t ruin me- No Mr Twain, I beg to differ. It is only that I had so much off-school that the former seemed less significant.

I have made some very good friends on the internet, perfectly normal for anyone of my age and ablutions. I mean, for me, personally again, Friends are one of the best things to have happened. So I tend to choose friends with care and Passion. So am jittery about friends I make online, and what amount of information I give out to them. What guarantee will someone give me that the person at the other end isn’t faking off all his info and trying to get me all crossed up and emotional. Why? For the heck of it. My question put simply is - Is it alright to believe in someone when you have not even seen the person? Refraining from delving into the mires of right and wrong, I wonder, if belief is really a bad thing to happen to one self, or let take over one self, if that’s how you look at it. The point is, is it worth believing in someone? Obviously I concur with what you apprehended currently – Believe? In whom? The ‘whom’ part is most interesting – You will have to get back to ‘believe’ that what you know about ‘whom’ is really true.

But lets look at the other side of the coin- As long as you don’t actually give away too sensitive an information like your credit card number or the answer to ‘Life, The Universe and Everything’, you might as well not run into serious trouble. Sensitive reminds me of an interesting chat I had with a friend the other day (I shall refrain from the usage of names, relationships and salutations of the aforesaid), about sensitive information. The words truly amazed me – ‘never reveal..u will be hit at vulnerable spot’. The icing on the cake came in the form of the very next sentence – ‘and its applicable unless u know a person’. My point is how do you know you know a person? It is certainly a bad thing to happen, to open up all about your life and happenings and be not treated as honestly. More than any material damage, it affects the social thinking of an individual. Moving ahead in life (or at least pretending to), we may even have the secret swiss knife in our defense hidden in the stockings – you never know the guy next door!

If at all my ravings above seemed to be well against the apparently conservative (and for heavens sake get the hell out of American politics) bunch of individuals, I do see the justifications of the people who are in favor of not opening up ‘easily’. The point is its better to shut up and be thought of as a fool than to open up and clear all doubts. I think I have presented the two ends of the thread – its time to tie them up.

My take- The more you hide something and reveal later, the more it will hit in case of a forgery (wow, the term IS catchy). That means you must not create a public directory for people to hit and run, but give it out when you feel like (I hope the word ‘gut feeling’ as an approach to convey what I mean wouldn’t be misinterpreted as careless). But why feel sorry about what happened? The person if at all is a loony bloke, may not also have the guts to use it in manner that would bring shame. I don’t give a damn about such people. Lets just not make them popular by thinking about them so much. As for people who quote Chanakya in defense, Chanakya was a shrewd politician. He didn’t have the internet back then. If he did, I *believe* he would have blogged on similar lines.