उसका तो पूछ मत.… And what do you think of others?

How we think of others tells us a lot about us as well. For one, we most likely expect others to behave as we do when faced by the same problems. Unless of course, the other is our employee, junior or someone we think less capable. Then most of the time we are in for surprises.

Deep down we all know this is not the case, but it is our human nature that compels us to think otherwise. We try and put other’s action in our notions of right and wrong and pass judgements.

Though I haven’t been around for quite long, but whatever I have seen has provided me rich experiences to draw generalisations from. See that tells you something about me. Not only I don’t know much, I don’t stop showing off most of the times.

What we think of others goes a long way in shaping our own destiny as well, it determines our actions as well as our reactions to different situations. I am no saint, but there have been lessons that I learnt the hard way at times, more often than not based on what I thought of others around me.

For example, lets take an athlete. Lets say you are an athlete. You would practice day and night, before a competition. You train yourself to strengthen your strong points. You study your opponents, to find out their weaknesses, you try to remove them from your armour. They may be doing the same at that very moment. Its good and healthy competition.

You being the smarter one, decide to pay off an assassin, to take care of the one you are afraid of most, before the competition. Eventually you win. You think this is a good way and make sure this happens every odd race or so. What is going to happen in the long run? One, people, commentators, sport fans, even your fellow athletes, may wisen up to your tricks and expose you. Legal hassles and what not. Two, sooner or later, there is going to crop up a fear inside you, whether your immediate competitor is planning the same fate for you as well or not. You will start getting everyone taken care of, infact even throw in their trainers and coach too for the good measure, just because they help them get better.

Ok maybe the example is a bit far fetched but we do get the point.

Something closer from my own life, I can use to illustrate the same. A very close friend of mine, had the a habit of doubting everyone’s intentions even for the smallest of the good they did. It was all a facade to earn brownie points, for whom, to what end, she may not know, but fake all of them were. I could see where this bias stemmed from, but to bring that up meant going to war with Athena. Just incase you don’t know who Athena is, search it up under Greek Goddess of strategic war.

Eventually, what happened, since she assumed everyone to be lying to her, she would lie to them, all the time, compulsively. This was as usual justified since everyone is already lying, and you don't speak truth to liars. This taught me a valuable lesson.

By far in the long run, I started becoming optimistic about everyone I came in contact with. Believing  that people are inherently good and have good intentions about you, it becomes slightly difficult to shoot them at first sight. I am able to give them at least a 5 min head start, before I start hunting them down and shoot them to hell.

I believe, there are only two kinds of people. Those who agree with you and those who don’t. Keep the ones who agree with you far from you. Let them spread your words of wisdom in distant lands. Ever wondered why kings sent off their messengers about anything new they wanted to promote?

Now about the ones who disagree with you, keep them close. It’s never a good idea to eliminate many targets over long distances, sniper rifles are expensive, they take a long time to reload and shotguns are so much fun. I sure hope you agree with me when I say so.

Being agreeable brings me to another variety of people we know of. Friends.

When it comes to friends again there are only two varieties available. The ones which last and the ones which disagreed with you at some point of time. The ones which did not last, may they rest in peace or pieces, depending on how you disposed of them. (For better learning about disposing not so close ones, see “Snatch”, particularly the “As greedy as a pig explanation”).

How you think of your friends, sets the tone of your friendship with them.

Category: Selfish Bastards - Good Friends

Category: How do I get to him before he does - Best Friends

Category: Shoot them on sight together - everyone else

For better Friendship examples, watch Sholay, Dil Chahta hai, Zindagi na milegi dobara, Go Goa Gone…etc. etc. in that order. That will teach you a thing or two on what to think of friends.

On another note. A slightly serious one. Day in and Day out we keep thinking about others. This may be happening to you as well, but just subconsciously.

Say you are a salesman, in your daily work, you tend to think so much about your customers. The way you think about them, analyse their purchasing trends, categorise them, you plan your sales pitch accordingly. That is how thinking about other affects you in day to day life as well. We may or may not pay attention to it. Eventually what we think of others, start reflecting in ourselves as well.

When we were kids, elders, usually grandparents, would warn us with a common adage.

You become what you hate.

Its not some illogical, threat, warning lest we end up growing hating everyone all along. I now start realising this was a very scientific statement. There is still a lot of logic behind it.

Science for me has always been what I could not easily understand. What begged me to question something. For example, Alchemy is science. Similarly, anything with more than 4 colours on it is science for me. I know it has something to do with optics, about light falling on objects and coming back into the eye at a certain wavelength, but somehow I could not understand it all.

I know it to be a proven fact thus. We become what we hate, I used to hate people who would talk using round about sentences, mix topics, take time getting to a point straight forward. Look at my writing now.

Just so you actually get the point, and to what extent I now believe it, I started hating everyone wiser than me, since quite sometime now.

Jokes apart, compassion is what is needed at the hour. There is already a lot of mistrust flying around in every direction. Better to look for compassionate fools and plan to rip them off their inheritance with false money making ventures.

Better yet, think of others as you would want them to think of you. This was one of the original truths we were meant to keep in mind. A lot many forgot about it, a lot further just didn't care about it much. Personally, I don’t care what people think of me.

I just wonder if the downfall of morals we see today, is a cause or an affect of our getting away with being not so thoughtful in our past?