I am back !!!

It's been long since I last posted here. I have been acting a bit lazy to post anything here. And then was a bit busy with a couple of other things. But now I am free and have all the time in this world to update my blog.

Offlate I have been reading a lot of books. Started this year reading "Virtue of Selfishness" - Ayn Rand. On a serious note, don't go the book shop and buy this after reading this post of mine, coz this book is serious stuff and you may or may not like it. This is pure philosophy at its best - an extension of the principle of objectivism, the one that Ayn Rand corroborated in her other books "Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged". The book is a collection of essays that Ayn Rand wrote on Objectivism. As the book says people are apprehensive about picking a book with such a provoking title, but then once you read the book you understand the true meaning of "Being Selfish".

Being Selfish is not hurting someone, or making profits on the expense of others, but it is understanding and respecting your moral values and then acting in order to make sure you do not surrender your moral values or principles in order to make people feel good. Altruism or self-sacrifice is seen as an opposite to being selfish and people practice it to make others feel happy. When you sacrifice your desires one thing is for sure you will not be happy coz you will desire for only those things that make you feel happy. Going further into this, once you have surrendered your desires you surrender your knowledge about the object you desired or put it the other way you surrender what value that object had for you. You surrender your instincts that led you to that knowledge about that object. And to an extreme you surrender your mind or your brain which led you to all this knowledge. The surrender of ones brain is heinous of all crimes and such a person has no moral values.

One of the tests that touched me to a great extend was an instance where you see a person drowning in a river. What do you do ? In case you know swimming it is prudent to jump into the river and save the drowning man, but in case you do not know swimming what do you do. Do you still jump into the river to save that man ? If your answer is yes, then it's a disrespect to your own life. You are putting your life on stake not respecting your life when you are not sure whether you will be able to save that person or not. To make things worse lets place your wife in the place of the person who is drowning(I can see some guys smile here). What do you do now ? If you don't try to save her life jumping in the river you live all your life hearing that selfish tag put against your name. People will not miss a chance to disparage you. But if you do then its a treason. A treason to ones own life. The call is yours and I it is difficult to make.

All this is just a brief of what those 200 odd pages are all filled with. You remember some, you forget rest, but then if you are serious about giving a go at the book read at your own pace and try to understand what the book is all about.

I know how people react to books like these, coz I am one among you. We tend to pick all the provocative things from a book. Things that are obnoxious to others. Read it and maybe you will love it.