Reality & Feelings

Life is about feelings
Whereas reality is about facts
And the two are in a constant tug of war.
12.31.12

Passions & Age

Age tempers passions
And youth inflames them.
12.30.12

Pain & Joy

Forgetting pain is a blessing;
Forgetting joy is a curse.
12.30.12

Urges & Callings

When urges become callings
We become their slaves.
12.29.12

Fashions & Hesitation

Fashions
No matter how grotesque
Are seriously espoused
Without hesitation.
12.28.12

Superstition & Imagination

None of us is free form superstition
Because imagination furnishes explanations
When reason is unable to.
12.27.12

Friends & Truth

Ask friends
What do they think
About what’s dear to you
And they will only tell you
What you are ready to hear.
12.26.12

Joy & Happiness

Joy comes
When we think of others;
Happiness comes
When we think of ourselves.
12.25.12

Christmas & Meaning

Christmas means doing something nice
For someone who has mistreated you
And doing it with joyful sincerity.
12.24.12

Worlds & Imagination

All the complex worlds we live in
Pale when they are compared
To the worlds of imagination.
12.13.12

Societies & Fears

What societies fear i.e. societal fears
Are more dangerous than personal fears
Because societies support the frightened
Admonish those that remain un-frightened
And eliminate all checks against irrationality.
12.22.12

Pets & Elderly

We often treat our pets
Far better than we treat our elderly.
12.21.12

Quick & Slow 12.20.12

Quick victories have bad side effects;
Slow victories have good side effects.
12.20.12

Society & Best

What does society do with those
Whose best is never good enough?
It blames them instead of blaming itself
For producing them.
12.19.12

Dog & Human

If we can understand, forgive, and love
The dog that bites us
We should be able to do the same
For the human who does the same.
12.18.12

No & Life

If we say no to life
Our souls will be exiled
And we will be incarcerated
Behind the jail bars of our fears. 
12.17.12

Love & Thought

Love does not understand or think;
It merely feels and yearns.
12.16.12

Death & Life

Death is life’s noble refuge;
Think of the crowded suffering
That would ensue, were there no death.
12.15.12

Technonogy & Destruction

Advanced technology
Invites advanced corruption
Encourages creative violence
And amplifies destruction.
12.14.12

Listen & Talk

To seem wise
One must listen;
To seem foolish
One must talk;
To become wise
One must understand.
12.13.12

Honest & Crook

It may be easier to make money as a crook
Than as an honest person
But it’s much harder to have peace and joy
As a crook than as an honest person.
12.12.12

Loyalty & Reality

Loyalty often lags behind reality;
So many of us remain staunchly loyal
To what has already become obsolete. 
12.11.12

Desire & Yearning

To have desire
Is more important than to fulfill desire;
For unfulfilled desire sustains yearning
Whereas desire fulfilled, kills yearning.
12.10.12

An Open Mind

An open mind is such a rare event:
To bear - the brunt of changing truths, unbent
Upheld beliefs till disillusionment
Foul acts repeating on the human stage
And fate’s surprises and exiles of age - 
Nor lose direction, judge, or lash with rage
And pay the price of freedom, oft unfair
Accept us as we are, not who, nor where;
Indeed an open mind is something rare.
12.09.12

Primitiveness & Enlightenment

Primitiveness
Is a formidable enemy
That no power can ever defeat
Without deploying its special forces
Of dedicated, long term enlightenment.
12.09.12

Evolution & Survival

Evolution
Does not always require millennia
Nor has to favor survival of the fittest;
Make life easy and lazy generations prosper
Make life hard and pioneer generations dominate.
12.08.12

Waiting & Gratitude

Do not wait for gratitude
If it arrives, it is obsequious
And if it does not, it is ugly.
12.07.12

Love & Sex

When sex gets old
It is replaced by nostalgia;
When love gets old
It is replaced by loneliness.
12.06.12

Wisdom & Peaching

Wisdom preached
Is wisdom squandered;
Like an honest living
Wisdom must be earned.
12.05.12

Predictable & Unpredictable

Nothing complex
Proceeds as planned;
It is predictable
That the unpredictable
Shall always happen.
12.04.12

Power & Poverty

Abject poverty and extreme power
Make it easier to compromise ethics;
In most societies, it is the middle class
That is the most righteous and honorable.
12.03.12

Time & Beliefs

To make up one’s mind
Is an exercise in transience;
If one allows enough time to pass
One’s mind will invariably change beliefs.
12.02.12

Nation & Nature

No country can ever defend itself
Against what human nature
Will ultimately do to it.
12.01.12

Life & Equality

We are equalized at three life stations:
At birth, at death, and at voting.
11.30.12

Sublime & Reality

When I fall in love with a sublime idea
I also know that it is a fantasy;
There is nothing sublime about reality.
11.29.12

Faults & Others

To acknowledge one’s own faults takes courage;
To judge the faults of others takes hubris.
11.28.12

Politics & Country

A politician must choose between pleasing the masses
Or serving his country’s present and future interests.
11.27.12

Politics & Ethics

There is no idealism in politics
And no politics in idealism;
For ethics allows not negotiations
Whereas in politics, everything is negotiable.
11.25.12

Belief & Evidnece

Belief is more emotional than rational
And thus most of us believe
What we want to believe
Regardless of evidence;
This defect in our mental wiring
Often begets disastrous consequences.
11.24.12

Surprised & Rational

We are most surprised whenever we presume
That most people are rational.
11.23.12

Memories & Pain

The memory for pain exceeds the memory for joy;
We remember injustices, losses, insults, abuses
Forget favors, grants, and God’s fortunes
And once we see someone’s bad side
We forget his good sides.
11.22.12

Enlightenment & Disenlightenment

Great nations
Rise with enlightenment
And decline with dis-enlightenment.
11.21.12

Writing & Instinct

The yearning to write is instinctive;
There is a writer in everyone of us.
11.20.12

Life & Struggle

Life is a struggle
A struggle against life
Not against death.
11.19.12

Urges & World

As individuals and as a race
If we could only control our urges
The world would become a better place.
11.18.12

Great & Grave

Great men
Are the progeny
Of grave times.
11.17.12

Stories & Data

Stories hover on high clouds
Until they are shot down
By facts.
11.16.12

Ideas & Birth

All new ideas
Come from the wombs
Of older ones.
11.15.12

Observation & Details

Our powers of observation
Miss many significant details
Regardless of effort or training.
11.14.12

Age & Death

To manage age
Ignore it and go on
As if there is no death.
11.13.12

Violence & Primitiveness

Violence is primitive and is mainly utilized
By those spiritually & intellectually bankrupt.
11.12.12

Freedom & Sloth

The six diseases
Of unfettered freedom
Affluence, and security are:
Family breakdown, damaged childhood
Sloth, entitlement, addiction, and obesity.
11.11.12

Opinions & Vows

Opinions are vows
And we have to live
With their consequences.
11.10.12

Killing & Justice

We tend to forgive and forget
When we kill each other
During our civil wars;
But we don’t forget or forgive
When we’re unjustly killed by others.
11.09.12

Opportunities & Time

Many opportunities
Perceived as ephemeral
Are lost in the waiting
For better opportunities
That never materialize.
11.08.12

Beauty & Notice

Beauty unnoticed
Withers without impact.
11.07.12

Inside & Outside

Concentrating on our inside world
Instead of on the outside world
Is the shortest means to joy.
11.06.12

Wisdom & Future

Wisdom is skeptical;
It peers into the future
Before making up its mind.
11.05.12

Greatness & Power

In earthly matters
Greatness and power
Tend to be mutually exclusive;
What is powerful cannot also be great
And what is great cannot also be powerful.
Thus Alexander cannot also be Homer
Churchill cannot also be Shakespeare
And Caesar cannot also be Dante.
11.04.12

Interaction & Seclusion

Good ideas
Come with interaction
And diminish with seclusion.
11.03.12

Time & Wasting

Wasting time is doubly harmful;
It robs both the present and the future
Of life’s infinite potentials.
11.02.12

Applause & Regrets

Those who hold their applause
Don’t live to regret it.
11.01.12

Stories & Statistics

The human mind
Prefers stories to facts
And dreams to statistics.
10.31.12

Patience & Impatience

Patience is a divine gift
Impatience, a plebeian attribute.
10.30.12

Mind & Key

Waste no time on an interlocutor
Who has lost the key
To his mind.
10.29.12

Age & Youth

Old eyes gaze at and envy youth
Young eyes gaze at and covet youth
But no eyes envy or covet age.
10.28.12

Mire & Passion

Mired in mental fatigue? 
Find a new passion.
10.26.12

Criticism & Praise

Those who reject criticism
Repudiate truth
And invite false praise
10.25.12

Said & Seen

In politics
What is unsaid and unseen
Is more important than what is said and seen.
10.24.12

Animate & Inanimate

With few exceptions
The animate ages quickly
And becomes less valuable with time
While the inanimate ages slowly
And becomes more valuable with time.
10.23.12

Intimacy & Simplicity

Intimacy
Is the sharing
Of simple pleasures.
10.22.10

Incompetence & Excuses

The incompetent
Blind to their own shortcomings
Can always find excuses.
10.21.12

Enemies & Love

If we cannot love our enemies
We should at least pity them.
10.20.12

Secrets & Shame

Unvoiced, secret thoughts
Are universal and invariably shameful.
10.19.12

Military & Demography

Military power
Is demographically impotent
And temporally ephemeral.
10.18.12.

Elegance & Dignity

Elegance
Has everything to do with dignity
The dignity of behavior, speech, and form
Than it has to do with style, fashion, and beauty.
10.16.12

Inculcation & Truth

It is much easier to spin our intelligence
Defending our childhood inculcations
And denying their falsehoods
Rather than jettisoning them
In favor of truth.
10.15.12

Mind & Convicing

It is futile
To try to convince
A closed, made-up mind.
10.14.12

Power & Greatness

Silence between lovers
Is unvoiced conversation
Between apprehensive souls.
10.13.11

Thinking & Career

Thinking
Like any complex career
Requires much study and learning
And many years of experience
Before it can be trusted.
10.11.12

Writing & Humanity

Writing
In spite of technology
Is the greatest invention
Of humanity.
10.11.12

Soul & Others

Life is a chance
To elevate one’s soul
Through helping others
Not at the expense of others.
10.10.12

Trained & Untrained

An untrained mind
Like an untrained athlete
Loses all its races.
10.09.12

Politeness & Impoliteness

Politeness is a learned courtesy
Taught by the consequences of impoliteness.
10.08.12

Crowds & Discourtesy

The busier the crowd
The greater the discourtesy.
10.07.12

Complainers & Effects

Habitual complainers
Underestimate how often they complain
And how tiresome complaining is to listeners
And how counter productive it becomes with time.
10.06.12

Delay & Hope

Sometimes a bad delay
Begets a good outcome;
The unforeseen is hope.
10.05.12

Nations & Chess

Nations are not good chess players;
They can think one or two moves ahead
But they are blind to what lies beyond their myopia.
10.04.12

Desires & Worth

Resisting certain desires

Makes a person better 

Whereas losing desires 

Makes a person worse.

10.03.12

Superiority & Infiriority

Whenever we feel superior
We need to be reminded that
Superiority is always ephemeral
While inferiority is eventually certain.
10.02.12

Primitiveness & Reason

Primitiveness
The diametric pole of enlightenment
Resists evidence and reason
With brains pre-programmed
With unreasonable beliefs.
10.01.12

Marriage & Fear

After love and passions die
Marriages are held together by fear;
Fear of adversity, insecurity, shame, change
Fear of the tyranny of obligations and beliefs
And fear of facing the unknown all alone.
09.30.12

Politeness & Humility

Politeness is the epitome of courtesy
Courtesy, the epitome of respect
Respect, the epitome of humility
Humility, the epitome of self-knowledge.
09.29.12

Noise & Disruption

Loud people have no notion
How offensive and disruptive they are
To those listeners trapped within their corral.
09.28.12

Enlightenment & Peace

Enlightening the primitive
Promotes world peace;
Suppressing the primitive
Invites terrorism.
09.27.12

Efficiency & Dictatorship

Democracies
Given enough life
Engender dictatorships
In order to rescue efficiency.
09.26.12

Democracy & Primitiveness

One cannot democratize
Primitive peoples.
09.25.12

Disease & Death

Disease and death
Are the two ambushers
Of unsuspecting humanity.
09.24.12

Sides & Loves

Side loves
Like tree suckers
Should be clipped when young
Lest they become burdensome branches.
09.23.12

Sickness & Nations

A sick population
Breaks its nation.
09.22.12

Memory & Gratitude

How quietly we forget
Those who have paved our way.
09.21.12

External & Internal

People and nations fall
When they have been vanquished
By internal decay rather than by external forces.
09.20.12

Power & Loyalty

Double standards are the norms of human societies;
Corporations are disloyal to their employees
Insurance companies, to their clients
Governments, to their citizens
Patients, to their doctors
And the greater the power
The more egregious the disloyalty.
09.19.12

Morality & Ethics

While morality is dictated by human communities
Ethics are dictated by the human conscience,
Which is God-given, not man-made;
One may circumvent morality by changing communities
But one cannot circumvent the conscience
By relocating or changing alliances.
09.18.12

Decisions & Vision

Most of our decisions would change

If we could foresee the future.

09.17.12

Good & Bad

Some of us are always good
And fewer still are always bad
But most of us are good and bad
Good when they can or should be
Bad when they want or need to be.
09.16.12

Love & Passion

Those who fall in love with so many things
Who are easily excited and surprised
Who dream with younger minds
And feel with frailer hearts
Are the fountains of joy
For the mass of humanity.
09.15.12

Happiness & Recognition

Most of us
Don’t know how happy we are
Until our happiness is taken away from us.
09.14.12

Ball & Damage

In ballgames, teams compete for the one ball
Which is then signed and given away by the winner;
In life we all compete for the one planet
Which is torn and damaged by all.
09.13.12

Passions & Actions

We do not choose our passions
Nor do we choose how to channel them;
Actions and outcomes depend on the balance between
The power of passion and the strength of character
Both of which are given, not chosen.
09.12.12

Good & Bad

The bad are three and the good are three:
The born bad, the reared bad, and the turned bad-
The born good, the reared good, and the turned good-
And to what ever group we end up belonging
Depends more on chance than on effort.
09.11.12

Roses & Thorns

Love has two arms
One holds a bouquet of roses
The other, a bunch of thorny stems;
To the lover, love at times presents the one
At times the other, and at times the two together.
09.10.12

Love & Youth

When one falls in love
One feels new and young
Regardless of how old one is;
Something about love is rejuvenating.
09.09.12

Nature & Prediction

Human nature
In spite of infinite variety
Remains infinitely predictable.
09.08.12

Age & Disgust

Whenever you feel repulsed
By something or someone old
Imagine them vibrant and young
And you’ll find beautiful dignity
In their implacable infirmity.
09.07.12

Know & See

It takes one extra step to see beyond the top;
Decisions based on what we think we know and see
Change when one more question is asked and answered.
09.06.12

Peace & Survival

The survival of species is peace-dependent;
Species that cannot share a peaceful coexistence
Will be replaced by ones that live in natural harmony.
09.05.12

Myths & Beliefs

As myths were once
Yesterday’s deeply held beliefs
So will today’s deeply held beliefs
Become tomorrow’s myths.
09.03.12

Memories & Being

We are only what we remember
And we are reduced to nothing
When we can remember nothing.
09.02.12

Passions & Pursuits

Passions
Our prime movers
Lurk within our genetic codes
Define who we are and what we pursue;
We can obey them or fight them
But we cannot chose them.
09.01.12

Joy & Death

Joy and death
Are great equalizers;
We stand equal before them
As we compete in acquiring one
And avoiding the other.
08.31.12

Love & Like

We feel closest
To those whom we love and like
Closer to those we like but do not love
Most distant from those we love but dislike
And indifferent to those we neither love nor like.
08.30.12

Credit & Achievement

Those who take credit for their achievements
Forget that their bodies and brains
Were but gifts vouchsafed
That they may be used
To better humanity.
08.29.12

Approval & Truthfulness

Those who require
Approval of the masses
Cannot be genuine.
08.28.12

Love & Distance

Love is not blind
It is myopic;
It can see near
But can not see far.
08.27.12

Friends & Time

Most of those whom we call friends
Are merely temporary friends
Who would abandon us
If we were to burden
Or disillusion them.
08.26.12

Decay & Death

The central question of aging is:
Whether to decay then die
Or die then decay.
08.25.12

Goodwill & Suspicions

When goodwill is lost
Suspicions abound.
08.24.12

Promises & Quakes

Promises are brittle;
They break at first quake.
08.23.12

Effete & Trivia

Effete societies
Ebb and tide on trivia.
08.22.12

Love & Death

When love died it left a living will:
Do not resuscitate;
Go forth, never look back
And quickly find yourself another love
Before your heart’s chambers fill up with ashes.
08.21.12

Meaning & Life

Living a meaningful life
Is everybody’s challenge.
08.20.12

Sense & Meaning

When things don’t make sense to us
Must mean that we don’t know enough.
08.19.12

Ownership & Illusion

Ownership is an illusion;
Everyone, ultimately
Loses everything.
08.1812

Unknown & Known

Believing in the unknown
Is as much a gamble
As believing in the known;
The unknown may not appear
And the known may disappear.
08.17.12

Life & Hardships

Preparing children for life
Is preparing them for hardships;
Ensuring their smooth sailing
Sets them up to shipwreck
Come first storm.
08.16.12

Unknown & Superstition

Fighting for or against the unknown
Can only be done with superstition.  
08.15.12