Tag: Personal Essays

  • Why Philosophy? – Part II

    About a decade ago, I had a blog where I wrote articles that fell under the self-help genre. I had no intention of writing a self-help blog but that’s what it ended up becoming. I had posts on topics such as: Why voluntarily accepting suffering is a key character trait for success and happiness in…

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    Why Philosophy? – Part II
  • A Recovering Anhedonic

    This is a tricky question for me because for years I was depressed and couldn’t feel happy at all. I was definitely experiencing anhedonia. I could only get excited about the prospect of doing something, like eating something delicious, but when I actually did that thing, I found it hard to feel anything at all.…

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    A Recovering Anhedonic
  • Good Manners and Propriety

    Dear Reader, When I was a child and we were learning about letter writing in school, they told us to begin each informal letter with some kind of sentence that informs the recipient of how you are and asks them about how they’re doing. One example I’ve never forgotten was, “I’m doing fine, and hope…

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  • The Most Embarrassing Rock Performance In the History of Embarrassement

    I have a couple of stories I could tell about performing on stage with my band. One is of me having a blast and the other is of one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. Let me guess which one you would like to hear; the embarrassing one, right? Fine! So, me and…

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    The Most Embarrassing Rock Performance In the History of Embarrassement
  • Why Philosophy?

    When I told my friend that I wanted to do philosophy, the first question she asked was, “Why!?” The tone had both an exclamation mark and a question mark. I think a lot of people might feel that way. Why would anyone want to pursue philosophy? It’s not a highly promising career track; in fact,…

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    Why Philosophy?
  • Finding Something to be Grateful for

    Dear Reader, How quickly one week flies! It feels like I sat down to write the first ‘Dear Reader,’ letter just yesterday. I had planned to write a blog post every day but it didn’t turn out like that. And that’s fine. I’ve been trying to be more flexible and flow along with life. My…

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  • Expanded Perspective About Humans

    Dear Reader, I sit down to write this letter on a pleasant morning in Ahmedabad. December has officially begun and right now it’s a wonderful 16 degrees centigrade, which my friends in Ahmedabad find chilly but for me, coming from the Himalayas, it’s t-shirt weather. Two pigeons on the windowsill keep staring at me and…

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  • Indian Middle-Class Guilt

    I would like to be an artist. But something within me, stops me from expressing myself freely. I don’t know what I want to express or how I want to express it; but that’s something you learn by doing. It’s not that you think about what you want to express and have a clear picture…

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    Indian Middle-Class Guilt
  • Terrence Howard And My Own Delusions of Grandeur

    A few months ago, the actor Terrence Howard appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience and expounded on his theories about math, physics, chemistry etc. His theories, and I’m being as polite as I can manage, were pure bovid excrement. He talked about how 1 x 1 can’t be 1 and should be 2. He talked…

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    Terrence Howard And My Own Delusions of Grandeur
  • Boredom and Self-Loathing in The Himalayas

    Last month, I went on a holiday. I didn’t want to go but I had to go and that was the first problem. The second problem was that I decided, foolishly, to not take my laptop with me. I wanted to try going without too much internet access for a week, or maximum 10 days,…

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    Boredom and Self-Loathing in The Himalayas