I am not Them

There needs to be a wave of change. A serious campaign sweeping across continents against stereotyping! Well, just joking :D Negative stereotyping hampers the well-being of an individual. The positive version can bring a civilization down. Choose an Engineer for instance, from a premier college in South India or anywhere in the world, to lead a vital infrastructure project as his/her first. This could be a catastrophic decision if it is based on positive stereotyping.

We get into the trap of assuming and labelling people we meet, because it is convenient to do so. Yes, it is a trap of convenience which makes us lazier. Lazier to think and come to a conclusion. Lazier to make a judgement after investigation based on behavior or historical evidence. Even judgements based on past evidences would be naïve but let’s take for now that we can’t help that if we are to behave in a certain way with that person. We are lazy to think at all. I do not want us to play Sherlock Holmes to deduce the personality of the individual. All that needs to be understood is that we are better ignorant than holding false opinion about other people. What we should not take for granted is the projection of group characteristics on to an individual. Yes, it has been researched upon that a person would have cultural, social identities in addition to the individual identity. But is it right to assume so is what we need to ask ourselves.

The human race itself has certain characteristics which are common but when an alien assumes a sample human would think and respond in a particular fashion, he is wrong. He might be dealing with a cannibal or a serial killer. That humans eat one another for breakfast, lunch and dinner and humans are cold at heart certainly would be disastrous conclusions the alien guy might make. Yes, these are aberrations in the species and when aberrations are more and more, it is best to take ourselves one at a time.

It is much easier to take things together, then classify them based on common traits and study. Makes our job easier in studying other species. What about our own? Let’s leave the right and wrong part of it aside for now. We do not deal or communicate with Class Amphibia or Class Pisces so much as we do with Species Homo sapiens. In fact we do not need them for survival as much as we need ourselves. Hence it becomes important to understand each of us specifically than attribute group characteristics to individuals. Because of what is at stake. 

For instance, in communal or political riots, who is the revenge taken on? Thousands of innocent people die because the other thousand thought they could play avengers. Here we do not see the fight of a few people originally involved. It slowly becomes a clash of ideologies. Now, the revenge is no more targeted on individuals. This is a serious mistake. If we do not change, human race could be the price we pay for it. Until we confirm being the sole thinking beings in the Universe, Us would mean mankind and not any race, religion, caste or creed. Let patriotism mean being proud of world citizenship. Whoopsie! it is starting to sound like a peace sermon.  

I do not wish to conclude this piece in a solid style. Even if I did, I do not want to be judged based on what I write. I did not touch upon positive stereotypes much only because it maybe causing lesser harm. Again, this is an assumption! I can be proud. I may feel sad. I am us and not them.

Disclaimer: Just another bunch of words. The deeper you dig, the shallower it might seem :)

The O.B.E Encounters

                    "We are the best suited to fight the Demons we create"

In this section, I would like to share my nights of what we call an OBE - an Out-of-Body Experience. Also known as Sleep Paralysis(SP) by some, this is outright scary. Experts say OBE paralyses you in sleep but not all episodes of SP are OBE. The key difference between the two is the 'something' that happens outside of you when you are sleeping.

Night 2: Living in a house of strangers is an experience in itself for certain. And if one of the strangers is a concoction of alcoholism, craziness and character disorder, it makes living adventurously interesting. Make no mistake, I am not attributing my 'episode' to bad circumstances this man created. All I want to say is that almost every sleep after his entry into the house was disturbed one way or the other. He would talk gibberish loud enough for you to mistake it to be foreign language; bang on his own door for reasons best known to him; and wail once in a while after hitting against the wall. Sometimes this itself was scary, leave the OBE aside.

One night I hear these all over again but I realised later that I was fast asleep. I laughed with a malignant baritone, so loud that it would drive him away or scare him at least. Instead I lay there on my bed staring straight at the ceiling fan, laughing my head off until I fell 'asleep' again. 

Night 1: This was probably the first time I got an OBE but with no knowledge of what it was. Something held me so tight that I wanted to escape it and cry out loud. Cry because I had an accompanying dream which showed scenes of my grandmother's passing and people who came together to mourn the same. You won't believe me. The very next day, I receive a phone call of the news that she breathed her last. And when I went for the funeral, it was like deja vu. A tingling sensation through my body told that I had been there before. In the dream. 

Night 3: This was a characteristic OBE. I am deeper than ever in sleep and suddenly I see a terrifying demon-like figure walking towards me from the open door of the bedroom. Try as I may, I could not get out of the goddamn quilt. I was aiming to hit the demon and get out of the window (5th floor of the building !). But the figure came closer and closer I could see it. I could see everything clearly in the room. It sat on my chest and held my head with my cheek pressed hard against the pillow. I could not turn! After much effort, pain and determination I wake up "physically". 

I woke up in the morning to research about this and came across the term OBE for the first time. What I found would be helpful for others experiencing those horrifying nights as well.

Do not panic! Acknowledge that you cannot move because you are physically asleep. Once you master this awareness, it would be easy. But this is not easy as it sounds. More than half the trouble is because we are so desperate to prove that we can move because our conscious self is scared that we are paralysed! If this is taken care of, then the experience allegedly becomes an enjoyable outing. 

A little effort in analysing shows that all the narrated instances have a cause. I have always wanted to shout at this madman for disturbing everyone asleep. I have always loved my grand mum and was scared of losing her almost everyday after she fell ill. And I was working real hard and sleep deprived during an Internship.

I have tried deliberately to get into an OBE after these incidents but hardly do they happen out of will. And when they happen, I still struggle but at least I don't try to move anymore. Instead,  I allow the unreal 'me' to fight the demon. 

Disclaimer: If you had same/similar experiences, don't blame me for spying on your dreams :) Instead,  please feel free to share your OBEs too.