It is 7:30 am Thump. Thump. I looked out of the window, and I was happy to see some youngsters practicing basketball. Looking at them one floor up, I felt very comfortable absorbing the scene. I had woken up early and was welcomed by all kind of bird songs. (Note to myself: need to make this a habit) Then, as the light came in,gracefully, it dawned on me: The world around us can get so nicely integrated with who we are -- and when it does not, well a lot of darkness can set in. I have spoken earlier about the naked, hairless apes that we are. Unlike other animals, we simply cannot do without an environment around us. Architecture, the subject I am in, is possibly the closest there is for humans. It is even older than the proverbial oldest profession. For if we had to make love, we would surely have to seek out the right environment. Architecture is even a lot more intimate and ingrained into us, than medicine. Humans have always known a lot more and imbibed more and changed more of the world around them, than what they know about the machinations inside them. Changes to our own bodies are either very poor half-attempts Some are even done by desperate people who think they can hold back aging. What happens in our own bodies is not much known. I personally find that medical knowledge is quite peculiar and lopsided as there is so much dependency on empirical information. Where do they have deep abstractions in their subject, I wonder? Anyway, let me not digress. I hazard that even abstract specializations in medicine like psychology that looks into the brain and the mind has seen deep influence due to the way we interact with the world around us. We are pattern seekers and we consciously and even unconsciously take out patterns we experience daily and bring them on to other areas. When the Internet got invented, the first phrases that got invented for the new phenomenon were all architecture based: site, under construction, web space, software architect and so on. If you ask people to draw an analogy for the Internet, many can imagine a huge floating spaceship above us --or one of those floating landscape in Avatar So how do we work with the environment? I believe that we are one of the most loosely ill-defined self that is there in Nature. We have a pendulum just at the boundary of who we are. The self is defined in a blurred manner. Sometimes the pendulum swings into us. Sometimes it has to swing out. Thump. Thump. The basketball players need to have the court out there. And a nice Pune winter morning. Their pendulum is swinging out now. Absorbing what is around them to uplift that particular aspect of their self they are interested in. All of us also need to swing the pendulum inwards -- or Nature swings the pendulum inward. We introspect. We walk into the architecture that is formed inside the mind. Going into cosy nooks and corners of that virtual dwelling, and sigh contentedly with an old, treasured memory. That act rejuvenates us. We then come back from out own mental dwelling, all refreshed, and recharged, looking at the world a lot more kindly Psychologists call the movement inwards as introversion. And the expression and recharging of oneself obtained from the external world is termed as extroversions. I suspect, we are a lot more intricate than just being slotted into binary divisions. What is super-critical, according to me is that each of us need to have our own safe-haven inside our mind. In attachment theory, they talk about the concept of a safe-haven -- a place which a child can feel completely at home. I think that is only half the story. We also need a safe-haven inside us too. In a few cases, that virtual architecture is not present. I have spoken about such people as I have had close encounters with a few. One of the most heartbreaking moments I had experienced in my life was when I saw a teen crying by herself in an empty classroom facing the corner of a room. She had troubles at home, and she was feeling totally neglected and devalued. I suspected that it was a lot more complicated than just that. Such children did not get the time to create a dwelling in their mind, as they were constantly fighting abuse -- and often failing. Over 52% in India has been abused as a child. Fortunately, the family system that we have compensated for some of it. If a parent abused a child, there would be a kindly aunt or uncle who would rebuild the broken walls of the virtual architecture inside the childs mind. But with India seeing more and more nuclear families these days, this issue is going to open up a flood of problems. The creation of the virtual architecture in ones own mind starts from early infancy. I know I have a wonderful mansion inside my mind, with all kind of rooms for all kinds of subjects that interest me. I am ever grateful to my parents for constructing that inside me. I am even more grateful and feel blessed because I was taught deeply that there are many things that one need to be grateful for in life. That keeps me going. A lot of my verbosity, I guess, comes out here (and elsewhere, in front of my students or my sessions at MLU) when I have so much to talk about and can happily jump around from one room inside my own mind, to another I agonize when I see those who do not have this mansion inside them. Some become extremely reserved and withdrawn. But in some cases, the damage is lot more serious. Their self-esteem is so badly destroyed, that they try to rebuild using a fake persona. After all, they are also an organism and all organisms need to preserve oneself. Even if, in this case, is by using a fake persona. Anything is better than completely losing the concept called self Such a fake persona cannot come when they are introspecting. Remember, they simply cannot introspect as they have no virtual architecture in their mind to go to in their privacy. They have absolutely no clue who they are. So they seek out. They absorb personas from the external world, laughing and nodding their heads by those who impress them. But when they come back to their alone time, they sulk, grit their teeth and are in a continual state of anger. It is extremely difficult to deal with such people. They have absolutely no capacity for reflection and correction. They cannot take any form of advice and would hastily jump into considering even the mildest of advice as a harsh blow to their ego. They automatically assume that it is the same kind of abuse they had once experienced as a child. Thump. Thump. Life continues everywhere Now, I have my litte iPhone 6 Plus with an app called Gaana which streams out wonderful old Hindi songs and Simon and Garfunkel. BTW, the sound from the speakers of this iPhone is quite lovely. Almost as good as my JBL bluetooth speakers I again admired my subject and fell in love with it all over again. Architecture completes us in so many ways. It gives us reference points into which we can understand the world and the people in them I realized --- when the thumps interrupted an old Kishore Kumar song -- that just like people, the environment can also be intrusive into our minds. Here I am in my virtual dwelling inside my mind, completely comfortable with who I am there and suddenly my meditation is broken by the thumps from outside. Excellent master architects know this quite deeply. That is why they design certain kinds of architecture which modestly steps back and lets you wander about inside the architecture in your own mind. Such pieces of works automatically calms you down and reassures you. However, the same architect can also create designs that want to intrude into your own mind and extend your self into itself. I believe the epitome of high designing is when a design can do both, as per the introversion and extroversion needs of the human being. Such designing capability is extremely holy and rare. It takes a humongous amount of effort. Architecture is possibly one of the few subjects which takes a lot of time for one to become good at it. Master architects in our fields are old. Really old. Most are known to have produced good works only after they reach sixties. Some even older. To understand the turbulence of the various streams of thought, which form a river which then meets the ocean of life out there is a huge struggle that takes time. There is a wonderful award winning documentary by Nathaniel Kahn, the son of master architect Louis Kahn, named My Architect Do watch it if you want to glimpse into the ethos of an architect There is so much to know. I hope all of you have a wonderful life out there. Nurture your self gracefully, moving outwards and absorbing the world around you and also be in a position to nurture yourself internally too, inside your own respective virtual dwellings
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 02:52:31 +0000
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