Someone shut it up!

We have all had the feeling of emptiness in our lives.  That little voice in our head that looks at our daily life and says, 'this is not right; this is not how I want my life to be'.  This is probably why we try to keep ourselves busy, and distracted, so that we don't have to listen to that voice.  Well, I ran out of distractions this weekend.  And you know what, the voice is killing me.

I don't hate my life, no, that's not it.  I like my life; I like the comfort, the secure feeling, good friends, sweet family, normal and simple life.  But lets be honest, comfortable life tends to get monotonous and boring.  There is no adventure, there is no feeling of uncertainty which means there is no surprise.  It doesn't mean that I want to quit my job and go do something exciting and different.  I'm not that desperate, no.  It just means that I want to spend my spare time doing something challenging that I'm passionate about.

A simple example would be my gaming team or my website.  When we started playing as a team, we knew that we weren't going to become paid professional players.  But we wanted to try anyway; we wanted to give it a shot and see how far we can reach.  When we started our website, we knew that we might not be able to turn it into a profitable endeavor.  But we were passionate about it and we wanted to do it.  Both adventures failed, true, but I don't regret either of them.  If I could, I would repeat them all over again.  The fun is always in facing impossible odds, in fighting a battle worth losing.

Sadly, I don't have any battles to fight anymore and also running out of distractions pretty fast.  I did search for my next fix (or addiction) and I kinda found it too.  I'm in love with coding and I wish I could start a little project, a website or application that I can put all my spare time into.  'Well then, why don't I', you ask.

When I started gaming, I had no training but lots of friends to join me in the battle.  When I started the website, I had some training but only a couple of friends to join me in the fight.  Now that I want to start a project, I have a good amount of training but no friend with similar passion.  You see, without a person to join you in the battle, its simply not worth fighting.

Whenever I spent sleepless nights on something, trying to figure something out, it was because the next day I could solve it and show it to the person who wants it as much as I do.  The feeling that someone else wants it and that we are in this together, matters more than everything else.  That is always the biggest motivation.  Without this motivation, we are bound to give up.

Oh well!  I'm probably better off searching for more distractions.  Ordered a book online "Ender's Game".  Hopefully, it'll shut that voice in my head or at least, make me deaf for a while!

Contagion - The Real Test of Humanity?

Watched the movie 'Contagion'.  Even if you haven't seen the movie, you would've probably guessed that its about a contagious disease, an epidemic to be more exact.  We have seen movies like this before, '28 Days Later', 'Resident Evil' etc.  But this movie, is much more realistic.  Its not an action packed adventure like Resident Evil or a thrilling apocalypse like 28 Days Later.  This is more of a drama that tries to portray how people in general react to this danger and what actions individuals take.

It reminded me of something Joker said in 'The Dark Knight', "their morals, their code...it's a bad joke.  Dropped at the first sign of trouble.  When the chips are down, these civilized people, they'll eat each other."  That sounds a little extreme but its not too far from the truth.  When our life is at stake or even in an increased level of risk, we drop our ethics.  Worse than that, we start to doubt our fellow men.  Our fears move us to survival mode and we start suspecting everyone and everything.

Its easy to be law abiding and decent when its all good.  We think that we are the good guys just because we give lift to someone on our way to work.  We think we are civilized just because we gave some money to charity last year or because we paid taxes this year.  But how ethical will our actions be when we are put in tough situations?  What if, one day our financial system completely collapses and we enter an age with no rules, no order?  Will we still be kind and gentle in a chaotic world?

There is no single answer to that question.  Some people will still do their best to be humane and be helpful.  Some, will just switch to survival mode and act as if its 'every man for himself'.  We get a sense of this, in the movie.  We see how some people get scared and turn violent while a few risk more than we ever would to help others.  Those selfless acts are the reason we humans even have a civilization today.  And those individuals who went into survival mode, they are probably today's terrorists and extremists.

So, what will you be, when the chips are down?!!