Me and Adip were studying at our new favorite place on High St. called Buckeye Donuts after eating their delicious gyros. I can't believe that I never went there to eat in the last two years. But now I'm pretty much a regular and try to go there at least twice a week. I really like the atmosphere in there. You can just come in and sit at the window doing whatever you want while hundreds of strangers walk by on High St. So if you happen to walk by while I'm there then don't forget to wave at me! The other reason I like going there is because of the other weird people (like me) that come there. I love being there when two strangers are engaged in a conversation about some of the most intriguing and sometimes even strange topics. The other night when me and Adip were sitting there, this one guy was explaining differential equations to someone else while a bunch of other guys were having a discussion about morality behind being in your underwear at a party. Later, one of the guys who works night shifts there was telling me about the difference between SATA and SATAII hard drives. We also talked a little bit about photography and image editing software. Apparently that guy is really into digital photography and has even studied it. I started wondering what the hell was he doing working at a donut shop. After sitting in there for a couple of hours around such interesting people, I started to have some thought-provoking ideas too. Right at that time, Adip questioned the concept of sleeping. We were both laughing at the fact that all human beings need sleep and everyday at some point a person just lies down with his eyes closed for a few hours and does absolutely nothing! Well...if you don't count breathing and dreaming that is. Similarly, I started thinking about the idea of listening to music. If you think about it, music is just a bunch of different sounds put together in some order. And for some reason, this makes it very appealing to us. Then I realized that we human beings are just naturally attracted to order and symmetry. If you look at our history, all we've tried to do is make some sense out of things around us and try to constantly manipulate our world until it becomes coherent and systematic. Why are we so obsessed with the idea of order? Why does the chaotic state of our nature bother us so much?

Adip pointed out that this is also how we differentiate between the beautiful and the ugly. For example, people with symmetrical faces and bodies and an overall clean appearance are considered to be beautiful over those with not-so-symmetric faces. We've all seen it on magazine covers. Women with straight hair, refined eyebrows, perfectly straight teeth, and a smooth skin texture with no shadows on their face whatsoever because of the ugly diffused lighting. The worst part is that most teens and college students don't even realize that by following this standard template of 'beautiful' they're all ending up looking like each other. And I'm not just talking about people in America either, this is true for all the other modernized countries out there too. Everytime I go to any Indian event on campus where everyone is dressed up, I always find it difficult to distinguish between people that I don't know. Even when I went to Long Street the other night, all the girls looked the same to me on the dance floor.

After having this conversation, I realized a lot of things about myself that I didn't precisely know before. I learned that I, for some reason, am one of the few people who understands and appreciates the beauty that lies in things (as well as in people) in their natural state. I guess now I understand why I'm always the first one to make some comment when someone gets a haircut or gets new glasses or new contacts or adds some kind of unnatural feature to themselves. It bothers me when I notice that a part of a song is synthesized when real instruments would work just fine. This also explains a lot about my lifelong fascination with nature and the chaos that exists within it.

Here's an appropriate quote form a movie called Kinsey that I watched just a couple of days ago. Excellent movie...everyone should see it once at least!

"The problem is that most people want to be the same. They find it easier to simply ignore this fundamental aspect of the human condition. They're so eager to be a part of the group, that they'll betray their own nature to get there."