Thoughts 22

22. Belief is self-hypnosis.

Quo vadis

They say its lonely at the top. As one goes higher up the responsibility chain, lesser are the people left to make decisions. There's not many to share your load then. If we care to analyze this, its true even when one grows spiritually, leaving less and less people to understand you. If ishwara is considered as the highest position in responsibility, He's definitely all alone at the top!

Here's an extract from M*A*S*H season 4; the episode is called "Quo vadis, Captain Chandler". After dropping bombs from a B-29 plane over 50 times for almost 2 years, Captain Arnold Chandler gets some kind of an awakening telling him that he's Jesus Christ and he can no longer kill people. The psychiatrist, Major Sidney Freedman is called in to examine him.

Sidney: You died
Christ: I arose
Sidney: That was a long time back. Where were you all this while?
Christ: I live in all men

... moving on to questions on dropping bombs…

Christ: on people?
Sidney: on the enemy
Christ: I've no enemies.
Sidney: Even the North Koreans?
Christ: (Crying) They're my children

Sidney: Tell me, is it true that God answers all prayers?
Christ: Yes...
Christ: ... sometimes the answer is no!

Self hypnosis

If a person does something for a long time, it becomes a part of life, insomuch that the person may not even remember when that something started. It could be called as a habit, but not factually being so. Another reason for such overdoing is hope of leading to boredom and giving it up. A habit would be called so when it can be identified as a disparate activity, categorized and then dealt with (or not).

Other things that can't be identified apart from the daily chores or as something of an overdoing, can still be one. That something is what one would have gotten into as a part of self-hypnosis: a belief. One such belief is the existence of the world as a part of ourselves, or more appropriately, we as a part of the world. From childhood, all our sense feedings have led us to a self-hypnosis... an abracadabra... God knows when the wakeup alarm is set for, when the pendulum will come to rest!

Finest kind

Scene 1: Yesterday, I planned to order season 10 of MASH, but gave up the idea after seeing it to be 2 GBP over last time's price!

Scene 2: This morning, I finished screening the 3rd season for what maybe more than the 3rd time! The last episode "Abyssinia, Henry" has always been an emotional favorite. The last OR scene, when Radar breaks the sad news about Henry, has been shot without others being informed pre-shoot. The scene brings out the best of everyone's feelings, without a single dialog, and that too from under the OR masks... its just the eyes!

Scene 3: After I walked into office today, I placed the order for season 10!

Abyssinnia, tenth!

Thoughts 21

21. Making money is a time-consuming business.
Corollary: Time being money, its also a money-consuming business!

Sometimes, you hear the bullet

I postponed writing more on war then, but after watching "Sometimes, you hear the bullet" from season one of MASH once again this morning, thinking furthered.

Hawk's writer friend gets enlisted only to write a first hand account instead of a bystander's. The original title he has in mind for his book is "You never hear the bullet". His experience from the ongoing war is that there's no dramatic sound of gunshot or anything like that -- the way its pictured in movies -- when a soldier gets killed; but later, he himself hears the bullet!

Henry: I just know what they teach you at command school. There are rules to war:
Rule #1 is young men die
And rule #2 is doctors can't change rule #1.

A few scenes from Band of Brothers also suggest that there are times, even in war, when a soldier gets hit without even knowing from whence the bullet came and when. A dialog -- nay, a phoneme -- is left half way when the soldier who's talking, drops dead!