How good is your uncommon common sense?

Puzzled by the title of the post? You might be wondering what the hell this “Uncommon” common sense is? And, if its uncommon then why it would anyway be considered as a common sense?

Well.. I believe, there are two components to the common sense. First is the common component, which is really common in almost all of us. While the second component, the uncommon component is a blessing that very few of us have got.

Actually, I had developed this belief in my high school days because of one very small incident. In my high school days in Navodaya Vidyalaya, we had to stay in the hostel. We would get to watch movies if there was some special occasion or some good movie was out. At that time the movie “Raja Hindustani” was doing quite well and all the students wanted to watch that movie. With our Principal’s permission, we rented the video cassette for this movie and all of us gathered in the community hall to watch the movie. The school’s TV set was out of order and our principal was generous enough to provide us with his TV set. As I was a school captain at that time, it was my responsibility to organize all this. We got the TV in the hall, connected the VCR. As the TV was off, I pushed the TV knob to turn it on. But it did not. I tried different ways like pushing it again, rotating it clockwise and anticlockwise etc. without any help. Everyone around tried his hand at the TV to switch it on and no one could. Finally, I rushed to the Principal’s home and informed him that there is some problem with the TV and its not working. Principal also asked us the very common questions like is the TV cable plugged? is the power on? Did you check the main switch on the TV? When I told him that we have tried almost everything we could think of, he also got worried and rushed to the hall. The first thing he did was, he pulled the TV knob and bingo!! The TV turned on immediately.

After that incident, I realized that even though one can apply his common sense to most of the things, there are some “seemingly normal” things where one has to apply his uncommon common sense. What I mean is, one can still apply the common sense to these things, its just that the way of thinking or the perspective needs to be a bit different. All we had to do to turn on the TV was to just pull the knob. All of us all the things but pulling. I call this as the uncommon common sense. May be few people call it thinking out of the box or lateral thinking or what not..

In the course of time, I seemed to have forgotten this uncommonness of the common sense. But a similar incident happened to me today. And these memories came afresh in my mind…

Today, I was the last person leaving the office. Our office has a burglar alarm that needs to be switched on before locking the main office door. The alarm can not be switched on until all the other doors are closed and locked. As one of the doors was open, I pulled it in and locked it. But somehow it was not locked properly and the alarm was showing the warning that the door is not locked. When I tried to unlock that door, I could not unlock it. I again tried all the possible ways to unlock it that I could think of without any help. Unfortunately, I always locked the doors, never opened any of them. (Never happened to reach first to the office .. ). So finally, I had to call someone from our office downstairs for help. He unlocked and locked the door again. I had to ask that guy, how can I unlock it? He told me that I have to just pull in the lock a bit and then rotate it to unlock. And to my frustration, I once again did not try to pull…

Well.. I am still optimistic about myself as I also believe that this uncommon common sense can be developed. But one really has to keep his eyes (I would say, all senses) open, be a little curious about things and also learn from his mistakes!!

A little hope..

A couple of weeks back, I was feeling very low and hopeless.. And in my effort to get out of that feeling and be optimistic again, I managed to write this small poem.. (Well, at least I believe its a poem.. )

Give me a little hope oh god
Give me a little hope..

A hope that will keep my life flowing
A hope that will always get me going…

A hope that things will never be the same
A hope that things will always change..
A hope to help me weather through the dark night
A hope to live so that I can again see the sunlight..

A little hope is just that oh god I ask for
A little hope in the heart that I would die for..

– Amol

Women are really from Venus!!

Lately, I have been reading the book – "Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus" by John Gray. I think this book really helps one understand the difference in the way men and women think. I am not yet finished with this book, but I generalized the things for myself. From my perspective, Men say what they mean and women say what they do not mean! Well, I know this may invite a few arguments.. but hey this is what I think.

Let me elaborate on my perspective. I think that men usually say things exactly the way they are. To understand what a man is saying, you can almost go by the literal meaning of the words. This is due to the fact that men share information. Whereas to understand what a woman is saying, you have to keep in mind that women usually generalize things. Women share emotions not information. So when a woman is saying something, simply try to apply the generalized emotion to the specific instance.

While reading the book, some of the incidents that had happened to me come afresh in my mind and I realized the blunders I had made at those times.

A couple of months back, one of my friend’s was very upset with me. She was saying that I do not have heart, emotions and everyone out there is a professional. I somehow managed to get the things in control and tried my best to improvise. The reason for her being upset was, when I was supposed to share her emotions, I was sharing my information and offering her solutions in a typical Martian style.. This is while reading the book I realized that what a blunder I had made at that time. And now I wish, I would have read this book before that incident..

Many times my mother (well, we are only 2 in our family right now) tells me that no one loves her.. no one cares for her.. and every time she would say this, I used to wonder and used to offer her explanations, again in the typical Martian style.. She would say this, every time I would not talk to her or would not pay attention to what she was saying. At all those times, I used to be tense and used to go in my cave as a typical Martian does. And she in her Venusian style used to talk to me or ask me questions to help me relieve my stress.. and this used to cause me more stress..

Anyway, after reading this book and understanding the fundamental difference in the way men and women think, I hope to handle the relations better!!