Vacation

Have you been feeling sluggish lately? Overwhelmed at work? Easily irritated?

These signs of stress can indicate that you're on the path to burning out, which can lead to depression, anxiety, and weight gain. And they may also mean that you're in serious need of a vacation.

Experts say it's important to take care of yourself at the first hint of burnout to ensure you're not working yourself into the ground.

So, if you're experiencing one or more of these signs, consider giving yourself a break to de-stress and clear your head:

You're always tired.

If you find yourself feeling tired more often than usual, ask yourself if it could be a symptom of a bigger problem. Chronic fatigue, in which you move slowly, take extra time to do daily tasks, and constantly feel drained, is a sign you're burnt out.

You don't take care of yourself.

When you're feeling overly tired or stressed, unhealthy habits begin to take over. If you find yourself constantly craving junk food, drinking more than usual, or relying on coffee to keep you moving, it might be time to take a load off.

You're overwhelmed.

You're always working, but still feel like you should be working more. Or maybe your heavy workload causes you to feel guilty when you don't complete everything you wanted to that day, forcing you to work more. Working yourself to the bone won't help you be more productive, so give yourself a break.

Your phone is a source of stress.

Phones can be helpful, allowing us to make sales, solve problems, and keep in touch with friends and family. However, if the sound of your ringer gives you anxiety or makes you feel overwhelmed, it's a sign you're getting burned out.

You have a negative attitude.

If you find your usually optimistic self constantly frustrated, cynical, or in a bad mood, it might be a sign that you need to recharge. Though everybody has their off days, if you're experiencing them more than normal, you need to take a step back.

You can't concentrate.

When you're mentally exhausted, it becomes difficult to concentrate, focus, and remember important information. If projects start to take twice as long as they should, or you find yourself re-reading things multiple times, it might be time to take a break. Once you recharge, you'll be able to be more productive.

You can't sleep.

If you're constantly thinking about the mountain of work you need to face the next day to the point where you can't sleep, it could be a sign that you're on the path to burning out. Though insomnia may start as trouble sleeping a few nights a week at first, it can turn into a nightly problem preventing you from getting any sleep, no matter how tired you are.

You're always thinking about work.

Even after you've left the office, you find yourself worrying about what might go wrong in tomorrow's meeting or a tiff you got into with a coworker earlier that day. If stress puts you constantly on edge, you'll likely forget the reasons you actually like your job.

You've lost your ambition.

Starting out, you push yourself to be the best at your job, to get promoted, and to help your company grow. But if you've lost your competitive spirit, you're probably stuck in a mental rut, which isn't doing your career any favors. Give yourself a break, and take time to rethink your goals.

If you are feeling any of these, you should probably go out and take a break from the daily routines.

Vacation !
Why we need it? Why is it necessary? What is should be?
People, busy with his cobwebs, entangled in his life, office, personal work. Daily routine reduces our life day by day, months by months. The time we realize this fact, it's too late to amend. In this dog race of competition, success and money, we almost forget the word "Life".
Whenever someone asks, "How's life going on?", we usually reply, "bus kat rhi hai yaar". We forget the fact that this is all we have, these breaths are all we have. A big chunk is wasting their lives indulged in petty things, forgetting that we can achieve higher goals and can serve higher motives.
Sometimes while crossing a busy road, I wonder how busy everybody is. Nobody is concerned about the person standing next to him. We are busy solving our own problems. It's like a monstrous snake engulfing a deer in the jungle. Problems, duties, work, goals, etc., we gave them so much priority that now they are engulfing our very own existence.
This is why we all need a vacation.
A beautiful place, where no worries are there, no tension, no deadlines, no responsibilities, is best for vacation. It is meant to rejuvenate a soul, to relax the 24 X 7 working mind, a tired body and to give yourself sometime to think, to introspect.

It's been proven that allowing your brain to day-dream allows you to better solve problems and be more creative.
Your brain operates on two levels: One side is task-focused and the other side is focused on letting your mind wander and daydream. As you can imagine, a hard worker like you is pretty much always in the task-focused mode, overworking your brain to stay engaged on something you must finish for work, all the while taking in an overload of information (a 2011 study claims everyday we process 174 newspapers' worth of info!).
Fact: The more (shorter) vacations you take, the happier you'll be.
As far as vacations go, the more the merrier. A study done at Erasmus University in Rotterdam found that among about 1,500 Dutch adults in which 974 of them took a vacation, those who took time off were happier than those who did not, mostly because they were excited in anticipation for their vacation. They also showed signs of slightly increased happiness for two weeks after they returned from vacation. So, the trick for success, says the study's leader, Jeroen Nawijn, seems to be taking two or more short breaks spread out in the year rather than one massive vacation. Spread out that happiness!
In fact, you should try to take a vacation day every single week (if you can). Your performance review this year could be higher if you just go take your vacation. Bosses who take vacations return to work as more focused business leaders.
                                                Work gives me happiness, undoubtedly. I love to learn new things, experimenting new things, after all I am an engineer. But on the vacation spot, I realized what a vacation can do. It relaxes the mind and fills a new energy in one self. It changes one's perspective towards life. Life is meant to be enjoyed.
There are times when I lock myself in my room and work for hours, considering that room as my world. But when I close my books and go for a little vacation, I see things with a different perspective. I appreciate the breeze, the drizzle, the birds chirping and the world drawn before us for us.
Vacation doesn't mean, a month long holiday and a cosy resort with a spa in the basement. Vacation can be of few minutes, sitting on a chair in the balcony. It can be trolling on the road while it's raining. It can be lying in the bed, while the lights are dim and the music is low. It can be sitting with your loved ones and laughing. It just means keeping everything aside and give your mind a little rest. 

क्या है ये?

क्या है ये?क्या है ये?

कैसा आडम्बर है ये?

कैसा धोखा है ये?

या कोई अर्ध-सत्य है?

क्या है ये?क्या है ये?

क्या कोई चक्र-व्युह है रचा गया किसी अभिमन्यु के लिये?

या है कुरुक्षेत्र का युध-स्थल किसी अर्जुन के लिये? 

या है ये कोई लन्का उस राम के लिये?

क्या है ये?क्या है ये?

क्या फिर किसी अभिमन्यु का धोखे से वध किया जाएगा?

या इस बार अर्जुन प्रत्यन्चा चढाएगा?

क्या कोई क्रिष्ण है?क्या कोई द्रोण है?

क्या है ये?क्या है ये?

इस पर्वत का पार नहीं?

इस नदिया का तीर नहीं?

इस प्यास का अन्त नहीं?

क्या है ये?क्या है ये?

विवशता, कपट, छल, यहि है ये!

मैं मेरा और तू तेरा,यही है ये!

जीतने की दौड मे कुचला जाना,यही है ये!

क्या है ये? क्या है ये?

ये दरिद्रता,विलुप्त होती मानवता!

क्षुब्ध चेतना, ज्वलन स्वभाव, उग्र मन,

है पौरुष की पेह्चान?

क्या है ये?क्या है ये?

एक विच्लित मन पूछ रहा है उन कुशाग्र बुद्धिजीवियों से.

जो इसे प्रगति की नयी उचाई कह्ते हैं.

क्या है ये?क्या है ये? 

-- विशाल शर्मा 

Life has a meaning or not !!

A difficult question to answer, people spent their entire lives finding the answers for that. 

Well, answer varies from person to person. 

Let's start with:

1. how people think
2. What makes people smart and alive
3. Then what makes a personality
4. finally answering the question

Really smart people always look at something and think why?  How?  Could that be done differently?  Better?  Cheaper?  What other applications might this fit?  Always asking pertinent questions.  
Another trait one'll find is if you give them an interesting topic, all you need to do is stand back and listen.  Usually, they're off and running.  Get that ball rolling and just stand back and be amazed.
This will make you think how smart people are when they just use 10% of their brain activity and how everybody is specialized in his own field, an engineer in his field, a mason in his own field, etc.

Now let's begin with, "What makes us alive? " or "What if it's like "Matrix"?" (thought itself is so scary)!

Life and death are two most important things which remained undefined by science, but religion has been altogether based on these two concepts only.
A child opens his eyes for first time, and checks this so seems to be infinite world. He slowly grows and starts to adopt the system. His personality starts to take a shape.
Lets get a little mathematical here.
Each and every person is unique and perfect in 'their own world'. It's like a unique point in a grid or matrix. With the course of events, that point follows a given path, making a person(which can be defined by the fitness value) what he/she is today.(people from optimization background can link it well)
So the question asked above "What are we doing?" can be posed as an analogy to "Principle of least action". A point(person's life) moving along a curve(events) based on laws of nature.
Given a course of events, what will happen to a person!
But an interesting fact lies here, as we move along life, we affect things around us and hence our future life. It's like the motion of a celestial body deforming the space cloth.
But what we are going through is the optimal process? or things could have been better?
YES undoubtedly what we are going through and what we are doing, are the most optimal solutions to this life problem. Your personality was shaped by the past events, no matter how big or small they are. Your way of talking, your way of walking, everything was shaped by situations, sometimes created by others and sometimes created by you only.

That will make you realize that we are all here for a reason.
okay, let me put it other way.
If you would have born in the place of Einstein and Einstein would have born in your place. Now from the start, the circumstances which he faced you would have faced and events which shaped him and lighted the splinter in his mind, would have surely made the same changes in you.
And Einstein in your place would have got the same upbringing as you and he would have grown same the way you are now due to all the circumstances which you have faced today.
In that way, you would have devised the theory of relativity instead, but you didn't because you didn't born at his place, you didn't faced what he faced.
The famous scientist born in his place, came across series of events in his life, which led him to come up to the top of the scientific world.
Hence we are all here for a reason, it can be big or small, but We all are here for a reason, Newton for Mechanics, Einstein for Relativity, people don't know you and me, but that doesn't mean we are less than them. 

I refuse to accept that life has no meaning. Now let's dig it a little deeper.
I think that a better answer would be to realize that we cannot attach a word like 'meaning' in its conventional sense to something like life. Life is everywhere and it is everything. Some people prefer to replace life with God in my previous sentence, hence trying to restrict that within the finite limits of the word meaning is difficult, if not impossible.
Consider this, human beings live in between two states of turmoil. One is the commotion that's external to us. all the vehicle honks, terrorist attacks, deforestation, etc. and the other is internal to us, all the insecurity, envy, jealousy and so on. For most people at night when they go to bed, they can block out the external commotion but cannot do anything about the internal ones.
I believe that life is about finding that small space in between all that ruckus where you are at peace with yourself and your world. It is that oasis which is the fountain for all creativity and innovation. From that oasis, you can look at the commotion filled world all around you and capture it through verse, action, paint or film.
This objectiveness and detachment about your surroundings, its pretty much what most religions and gurus talk about, but since I believe in the satirical nature of everything, I personally do not think that we can ever get to that perfect point. Perfect harmony is not possible or maybe we will never know when we get there. but the happiness is in the doing right? That's life.
Continued...

Lucy(2014) ...The average person uses 10% of their brain capacity, imagine what you could do with 100%

From La Femme Nikita and The Professional to The Fifth Element, writer/director Luc Besson has created some of the toughest, most memorable female action heroes in cinematic history. Now, Besson directs Scarlett Johansson in Lucy, an action-thriller that tracks a woman accidentally caught in a dark deal who turns the tables on her captors and transforms into a merciless warrior evolved beyond human logic.
For people who think over the director's attempt to produce a movie, are going to appreciate Luc Besson's effort. Let's get started.
                                 Movie started with a girl named Lucy, character performed by Scarlett Johansson. No background was provided about the character in the movie , so I guess director was pointing to the fact that she was just a normal girl with no interesting background and normal IQ. 
The movie rolled when Lucy entered a drug dealing due to his friend Richard. It was supposed to be a simple job. All Lucy had to do was deliver a mysterious briefcase to Mr. Jang. But immediately Lucy is caught up in a nightmarish deal where she is captured and turned into a drug mule for a new and powerful synthetic drug. The Drug Mafia planted the drug, named as CPH-4, inside her intestine in the plastic packet, so as to deliver the drug to the destination. In parallel, Professor Norman, the leading authority on the human mind, was giving a speech about what are the possibilities in this context. Morgan Freeman played the character well.  

The real movie started when accidentally the packet got torn apart and the drug entered her blood stream. The cinematography and actress's role during the transformation from a normal girl to a highly functional human being, was marvellous. 

From a normal girl surrounded by fear to a highly functional human being, the transformation by Scarlett was amazing. Now I can understand why she was able to capture the role of Natasha Romanoff in Avengers.
With her increased brain capacity, she managed to escape from the local goons, killing them ruthlessly. The scenes like she watching the information or life energy flowing down the trees branches and her friend, are without any dialogues but they are thought provoking.

With enhanced brain functioning, her feeling for pain vanishes. Lying on operation table, talking to her mother while doctor are operating on her without anaesthesia, are worthed. Lucy's dialogues like "I remember everything, I can recall the sound of my bones growing beneath the skin in the womb" indicated the access to the information stored unconsciously in the remote areas of the brain. She starts joining the dots of previously acquired knowledge.

Professor Norman guides her to seek the real aim of life, real aim of existence, which went a little philosophical, after being contacted by her showing her powers of controlling EM waves. She then goes back to Jang, the drug dealer to get more of it. The dialogues by Lucy, I must say worth an applaud, "..pain is an obstacle..."  

In the process she contacts French police captain Pierre Del Rio, who helps her till the end. With increasing brain functioning which was shown in percentage, she was able to see phone network signals and control other humans.

The plane scene where she was using two laptops simultaneously, her fingers start falling apart and floating around the plane like sand in hurricane. On getting the dose of the drug again, she manages to restore her deterioration. This scene was supported by Norman's quote that "body cell begin to deteriorate in unfavourable conditions". Meanwhile the other drugs mules are apprehended. She wakes up in hospital with immaculate make-up and hair and goes to find the other mules who have had the drugs cut out of their guts and are now dead. In the process of acquiring the drug from police, Lucy makes everybody in the room faint using her powers to control other human beings. Then she goes to find one of the bad Chinese henchman who has the drugs – she turns him into a street mime and makes all the other bad guys float up to the ceiling.

The scene on the plane where she was using 2 laptops at a same time and start burning to ash, was not of any use and can be clipped off. With the French policeman's help she acquires other packets of the drug and approaches Norman to show him that his research was more than just an hypothesis. The action sequence in the mean time and the driving sequence could have been more exciting, I won't consider it as an action movie, it is just a sci-fi movie.

In the laboratory, she then showed them unravelling the powers as her brain functionality approaches 100%. As the brain functionality meter goes up, she starts to control the matter and starts to upload her information in a hard disk and then with more, she manage to do a time travel unwrapping the secrets of human origin and origin of universe by travelling back to Big Bang. What you really see in those scenes are exaggerated version of Hubble Space Telescope photography created by Industrial Light & Magic, with references including X-Rays, underwater imagery and MRIs.

Much of the space imagery was actually derived visually from an interesting and different approach. If you start with some of the designs for the nebulas by taking animated fractal shapes (fractal shapes and mathematical sets that create repeating shapes at every scale) and driving particle simulations through those shapes to create abstract nebulous creations that had a hint of “intelligence” to them. The major 3D fractal particle sequences were ultimately omitted from the film.

In the mean time, Jang manages to come to the lab to kill her. The end was marvellous when Jang tries to shoot her and she just vanishes as the meter touches 100% and when the French policeman asks ,"where is she" and his phone beeps with the message "I am everywhere".

Explanations:

Throughout the progression of her transformation, wherein Lucy steadily gets access to further remote areas of her brain, she is shown to acquire several powers. She travels through the space/time continuum, travelling back through time to reach the ape Lucy. Also, when there is a glimpse of planets, galaxies and universes, It is intended to imply that she gains knowledge of formation of galaxies as well. But at the very end, what exactly does she become?

After all this ends, and especially in light of the text Lucy sends- I am everywhere, would you say that Lucy has become God, or something beyond God, or something else entirely?

The ending kind of seems puzzled. What happens at 100% brain usage can’t anyway be fathomed by us mere 10% souls. 100% goes beyond dimensions and into the meta-physical. Let me try and explain the ending or what I could make of it.

1. Disappearance of Lucy

Lucy already was able to control her body and also matter by that time. Since body is also made of matter, disappearing/disintegrating sounds not that difficult. As she explained earlier maybe she went faster than speed of light which opens all dimensions but invisible to us. As to what happened to her post that is what we will explore ahead.

2. Why make the Super-Computer if all that was left was a pen-drive?

Seems silly on the face of it. Seems like director tried to simplify for the audience and hence the pen drive. Or maybe Lucy thought for current world pen-drive would seem easy to grasp.

What happened was Lucy started merging matter around her as she needed energy. Energy equals mass time speed of light squared. A lot of energy to upload all knowledge she could gather from the starting of time.

Energy was needed not just to create the processing unit for that knowledge but also to convert it into a format understood by normal humans. The pen-drive seems simplistic but it could not have been a simple pen drive. It would need to store huge amount of data maybe TB powers 100 for all we know. All knowledge gathered as she moved through time.

That computer was just for processing data to be able to store into pen drive. Hence computer destroyed itself at the end.

3. If she is so super human and could control time. Why did she die?

Here’s the catch. She did not die. She imbibed herself to all dimensions. She had no need for the body. She can’t feel pain. No happiness. More like a robot. Hence she gave up last piece of vulnerability. Her body. She became omnipresent. Across dimensions, across time, across worlds.

4. Everything she gained was due to her brain. How would she survive now without her brain?

Tricky! She would have what was required. This was answered by the last scene where it was shown that the cells merged with nucleus, the store house of information. The meta-physical, omnipresent form. Can be equated to our understanding of God. Invisible to us.

I would rather point out towards the term we know as Enlightenment or Illumination, which means "awakening" and "understanding". Someone who is awakened has gained insight into the workings of the mind which keeps us imprisoned in craving, suffering and rebirth, and has also gained insight into the way that leads to nirvana, the liberation of oneself from this imprisonment of life.

This phenomena has been shown in other movies as well.  We know this process by the name of Ascension.

In mythologies we describe this as entering the heaven alive.