Red Pill or the Blue Pill

 Arun Kumar

This year, it felt like that the spring passing by will be one less spring l will hold. It is slowly dawning on me that beyond the horizon of my grasp, there is another countdown taking place. Slowly, an awareness that somewhere out there, in the silence of the night, a different kind of clock ticks, has taken root.

Gradually, a realization is starting to dawn that the week that just went by is not another page added into my ledger, but a page torn away. Passing of days, weeks, or years are no longer inconsequential happenings. Their passage starts to hold different shades of gray.

And the shade that slowly emerges from the undulating fog of daily consciousness is the realization that I am, after all, a mortal being.

Until now, I was cognizant of years passing by, but cognizance did not have much personal implications. Although I saw the impermanence all around, its meaning was no more than nodding and saying “morning” to strangers on the trail when our glances met.

But now, when I walk along the wooded trail, I see dead trees all along. They are the mentors who helped me; colleagues who shared the ride; the friend on WhatsApp, who one day, stopped posting.

Those trees are now reminders of people who were in my life but are no more. Some roads continue. Others stopped.

Dead End – the road sign was always there, but its implication, lost. Not anymore. “Dead End” on the side of the road means “Dead End.”

Being aware that I am mortal, what happens next?

How would I live with the realization? Mortality is not something I can fight back and win against. There is no Prozac to take each morning and suppress what I now know. The awareness is there, I know it is there, I know it will be there.

And so, what next? How will the new realization of mortality change how I live?

The road ahead bifurcates, and I need to choose to turn right or turn left. Based on my choice, I need to relearn to live in a different way.

I am at the moment when Morpheus opens his palms and gives Neo the option - take the Red or the Blue pill.

The red pill takes me down the path on which I am cognizant of my mortality, and yet, I live in peace with it.

The blue pill takes me down the path on which I can try to numb myself. With the effort of constantly chasing distractions or telling myself that it is five o’clock somewhere, I may succeed in drowning the realization of mortality. But…

…is the path of life lived consciously better than the path of wandering aimlessly?

Which pill will I take? I know the one Neo took.

As I write these words, I already know which pill I will take. Or that I am writing these words, unbeknownst to me, I have already taken the pill I intend to take.

Computers Are Like Children

 Arun Kumar

 

We live in the era of computers. There is an entire generation of children and young adults that have not seen a world without them. They also cannot comprehend brick and mortar video rental stores. I know, they existed.

World evolves.

15-years back, I used to own a desktop and a laptop. Between them, they constantly sought attention. Various aspects of needing to manage, and to make them function properly, sometimes made me think about the experience of raising children.

The journey of owning a computer started with bringing a new one home. After unpacking, I would place it on the table, step back and admire its shape and fresh out of box "baby" smell. After a few moments of admiration and reveling in the warmth of having a new companion, the journey of raising, teaching, and managing emergencies began.

Everything plugged, and when the index finger reached forward and hit the start button, a low humming of the hard drive spinning up followed. The first breath and we looked forward to many many years of being together.

After a few minutes of hiccuping and steadying the breath, words started popping up on the blue screen. Welcome to Windows. Your eyes to the world beyond, it seemed to whisper.

I was asked to choose a language it will speak; pick a time zone that it will live in.

Getting initiated next required giving it a name. What should I call it? Something mundane like Home-Laptop? Or should I name it after some forgotten love? Or invent something mysterious or esoteric?

Picking up a name required some thought. After all, down the road, we will be on the first name basis. I picked BlueSky.

Few days of saying hellos and getting introduced, exploring through various software that BlueSky came preinstalled, the process of expanding BlueSky's brain and capabilities began. First and foremost, I got BlueSky inoculated with a virus protection. Gave BlueSky a password so strangers cannot intrude on our privacy. I got BlueSky connected with the external world via the wireless.

To BlueSky's whirring and curious brain, I introduced Firefox, Thunderbird, a pdf reader and continued to expand its horizon and capabilities and bring it to a point where we could have creative conversations.

 And slowly time passed, and we started to develop a level of comfort with each other, learn each others quirks. Once a while, BlueSky will throw a tantrum, become forlorn and stop responding. In those moments, I had to reach out to make sure all elements were healthy, let it sleep for a while, and later, wake it up from its well-deserved rest.

But most of the time, BlueSky was a happy, and a content companion.

Many years have gone by, and we have developed comfort being around each other. Only occasionally, I need to give BlueSky booster shots of upgrades or enhance its capabilities, but otherwise, BlueSky, from its humble beginnings, developed into a youthful responsible adult.

Getting a computer, and taking a journey together, is not that different from raising a child.

Choosing the Path of Virtue

 Arun Kumar

 

In the last couple of years, I had some issues related to sleep. Initially, there were occasional sleepless nights. They would be like waking up in the middle of the night, or in the early hours of morning and then not being able to go back to sleep again. Slowly, I became aware that this pattern was repeating more frequently.

As the realization of having trouble going to (and staying) asleep dawned, it increased my level of anxiousness about sleep. Before going to bed, I would start to think about sleep and then try to make concerted efforts to fall asleep.

That was when l lost the automaticity associated with sleep that we have. The rule about sleep is that we go sleep without trying but if we try, it does not happen.

Over months, occasional sleepless nights turned into severe insomnia. There would be 3–4 nights straight when I was not able to sleep. The positive feedback loop between obsessively thinking about sleep but then staying awake kept feeding the monster of insomnia. My lack of ability to sleep also started to touch on other aspects of life.

Somewhere along my search to find a key to resolve my insomnia, I learned about the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). CBT is a technique for consciously intervening to prevent negative responses from occurring that can result from various triggers — a thought of not being able to sleep tonight (the trigger) cascading into fears about the quality of day tomorrow (the negative response).

Upon further reading, I also became aware of the specific CBT approach for Insomnia (CBT-I).

CBT-I utilizes various methods aiming to enhance positive association between bed and sleep in contrast to making bed a battleground for a struggle for sleep. The practice of CBT-I includes (i) developing sleep routines that create a positive association between bed and sleep and (ii) encouraging positive interventions between triggers (associated with the possibility of a sleepless night) and catastrophizing its negative consequences on a host of other life related things. The fear of negative consequences pushes us harder to try to go to sleep, which of course, does not work.

CBT-I is proposed as the first line of defense against insomnia and its practice is documented to alleviate two-thirds to three-fourth cases of insomnia. Following the CBT-I practices in their fullness, however, could be daunting task.

For example, one of the requirements of the CBT-I is to get out of the bed when unable to sleep, which, particularly on cold wintery nights, is no piece of cake.

After learning about the CBT-I, I tried to practice CBT-I for more than a year but kept failing again and again. This was even though I kept reminding myself that a few months of grueling CBT-I routine, which had the potential for getting me out of insomnia, would be a far better return on investment then continuing to live with insomnia itself.

But over and over, I kept failing and kept stumbling on my resolve to follow through the CBT-I program.

I am not a person with a weak will by any chance, but in following CBT-I, I fell victim to a choice guided by our natural preference for selecting the path of least resistance.

In a broad sense, given multiple choices that differ in the amount of effort required, we have a natural tendency to select the option that necessitates least amount of effort.

Various phenomena occurring in nature and in human behavior provide examples for the tendency to follow the path of least resistance. When encountering an obstacle, for example, a large rock, the river opts to go around it. To go the other side of a succession of hills, most hikers may select a path along the trough rather than climbing over the hill .

As for many of our behavioral aspects, it is likely that natural selection guided our preference for choosing the path of least resistance. Why spend precious energy reserves by selecting harder path between two options? Save the resources for when times get tougher.

In trying to follow the CBT-I routine, I leaned towards selecting the path of least resistance. To make matters worse, enveloped in the darkness of the night, I told stories and convinced myself that just for one night it is okay not to follow the hard option of CBT-I. One night lying awake in bed turned into two nights, into a week, and before I knew, a month would go by without making any progress in following CBT-I. Over and over, I failed in giving CBT-I an honest try.

It is remarkably easy not to stay disciplined and to psychologically delude ourselves into opting for easier options.

What also helps is our tendency to go for pleasures of immediate gratification vs opting for activities that offer benefits over a longer time horizon (i.e., delayed gratification), a tendency also referred to as the present bias.

Having consciousness is a blessing; however, if not used judiciously, it could be an impediment. Maybe one day, I will be wiser and given two option, I will choose the harder one because unpleasant as it may be, the long-term returns would be better.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.