What made me write about philosophy?

Ever wondered what philosophy is? Some say it’s love for wisdom; some say it’s the attitude which supports or acts as administrative ideologies for behaviour. If we look at the bigger picture, we’ll find that philosophy is an art that people practice to know the essential truth about themselves, the world, and their connection to the world and each other.

We come across or even use words like faith, values, ethics, principles, attitude, wisdom, knowledge and a lot more in our day-to-day lives. Did you know that these words come under the banner of philosophy? Every time I come across these words or use these words I tend to think. Think about myself, the world around and my relationship with it. I think about the significance of these words in people’s lives. For say Trust; is it just a word that we use in our ordinary communication? I think not, it’s a fundamental attribute which influences our behaviour and the way we live in society.

You must be thinking as to why am I writing this blog. I don’t want to bore you by explaining philosophy, what I want is to light a spark of curiosity in each one of you about how this world works, how we react to certain situations, and what is our relationship with the universe and the universe at large.

I have always been intrigued by the behaviour of people and what drives this behaviour. The study of behaviour and people come under the head of Anthropology and the same is a part of Psychology which again comes under the banner of Philosophy. What made me think and write about philosophy is my tendency to ask questions with a ‘why’. For instance; Why do we smile? Maybe because we are happy; Why are we happy? Maybe because something favourable has happened; Why would something favourable happen? Maybe because we worked for it or we strongly believed that it will happen. The trail of questions can continue forever and that is what excites me. It’s my love and hunger for knowledge which drives me to write and think about philosophy.

There is a lot of unanswered questions that I carry. To illustrate; Why were we born? What is our life’s purpose? Is the purpose the same for everyone? Is there some supernatural force driving us? Why do we exist? Why is the universe the way it is? Why are we connected with the universe so deeply? When I ask all these questions, I am not actually in denial of what is; I have accepted everything the way it is. There’s just an inbuilt curiosity that drives me to think about topics like these.

If I were to share an incident, that made me question my perception of things around me; I’d tell you about an evening when I was at the terrace of my house looking at the cloudy sky. I was quite mesmerized and my mind and thoughts were at peace. I actively started looking for figurines made by the clouds. I found one looking like a rubber ducky toy, I had one when I was a kid. So, I took a picture of the cloud and sent it to my friends. To my surprise, some of them asked, “How is it looking like a rubber ducky toy?”. I said, “It’s clear, it sure looks like one!”. They didn’t agree.

The incident made me think about the perception each one of us has, it’s like a lens customized for each one of us. Every person has a different way of looking at things, if something is wrong as per my thinking, it doesn’t need to be wrong as per your mindset too. Sometimes there rises a conflict because of the difference of opinions. How can we solve this conflict? It’s not easy but the key has always been ‘Acceptance’, and it will always be.

I intended to make you more aware of these thoughts and to make you feel intrigued and inspired by the world around you. I hope I made you think! Thank you for reading.

-Vaibhav Vijay