I conducted a survey among my friends and family, asking them the question “Name one thing that matters the most to you in a relationship.” And the answers showed a great degree of similarity. This question was asked to a total of 18 people.
Out of these eighteen, 8 people answered ‘Trust’ as the most important thing [44.4%].
And 5 people said ‘Sincerity’ [27.8%]

The rest were individual answers:
Asad Jehangir…………...Straightforwardness
Nabeel…………………..Two people having the same maturity level
Hamza Hashmi………….Loyalty/Faithfulness
Uzair…………………….Respect
Muneeb………………….Understanding and Patience

Most people would believe that ‘Sincerity’ and ‘Trust’ are more or less the same thing, or manifestations of the same feeling. Strictly speaking, I do not agree, but I do admit that they are linked. Sincerity refers to ‘genuine feelings’ and Trust refers to ‘state of reliability’. However, considering their proximity, it would not be unwise to consider them as the same entry. Given this view, the combined ‘Sincerity’ and ‘Trust’ answers make 13 out of 18 [72.2%], which is an over-whelming majority, showing that most people have a somewhat similar sense of what makes a relationship successful.

What I noticed immediately was a sheer lack of words like ‘affection’ and ‘love’. My sister did mention ‘love’ but only as a second option after Trust. This was somewhat a surprise for me, since I was expecting that love would at least appear on the list.

An angel's smile is what you sell
You promise me heaven, then put me through hell
Chains of love got a hold on me
When passions a prison, you can't break free

You're a loaded gun
There's nowhere to run
No one can save me
The damage is done

Shot through the heart
And you're to blame
You give love a bad name
I play my part and you play your game
You give love a bad name
You give love a bad name

[Bon Jovi]

The French philosopher Henri Bergson was one of the leading thinkers of the early 20th century, well-known for his extremely eloquent and beautiful expression, most brilliantly put forth in Creative Evolution, and which ultimately won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927.
Bergson's intial training was in Mathematics, in which he showed great achievements, including his solution of a problem presented by Pascal in 1877. However, when Bergson joined Ecole Normale, he switched to Philosophy from Mathematics. His maths teacher was extremely disappointed at the apparent loss of a brilliant student, and claimed:“you could have been a mathematician; you will be a mere philosopher!”

Today is T.S. Eliot's birthday, the famous and influential American poet, and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948. See the wisdom peeking in his words:

* Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences; he will have different emotions to express.

* No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.

* Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

* Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

* It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.

* The Nobel is a ticket to one's own funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it.

* The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.

* I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.

Analysis beyond a limit becomes destructive in nature... reducing the world to different 'categories', and somehow the original essence is lost in analysis... the spirit of unity cannot be revealed in the division of the constituents. The whole is oft greater than the sum of its constituents.

Tagore once compared pure logic to a knife that is all blade: it makes the very hand bleed which uses. I have realised this having cut my own hands with it. Emotions and irrationality is as much necessary to a balanced life as reason is. It their combined and synergistic usage which we must seek, but which unfortunately very few actually achieve.

To love someone is to isolate him from the world, wipe out every trace of him, dispossess him of his shadow, drag him into a murderous future. It is to circle around the other like a dead star and absorb him into a black light.

"If you say, I love you, then you have already fallen in love with language, which is already a form of break up and infidelity."

Jean Baudrillard

And I know that he knows I'm unfaithful
And it kills him inside
To know that I am happy with some other guy
I can see him dyin'

I don't wanna do this anymore
I don't wanna be the reason why
Everytime I walk out the door
I see him die a little more inside
I don't wanna hurt him anymore
I don't wanna take away his life
I don't wanna be...a murderer

I feel it in the air
As I'm doin' my hair
Preparing for another date
A kiss upon my cheek
As he reluctantly
Asks if I'm gonna be out late
I say I won't be long
Just hangin' with the girls
A lie I DID'NT have to tell
Because we both know
Where I'm about to go
And we know it very well

'Cause I know that he knows I'm unfaithful
And it kills him inside
To know that I am happy with some other guy
I can see him dyin'

[Rihanna - Unfaithful]

I read 'Disgrace' by J.M.Coetzee last night, the winner of 1999 Booker Prize. I won't say it as good as to recommend it for reading. It was plain and painful... little consolation in it, revealing the disgraceful state of man.
There was a professor in it who got involved in an affair with his student, and he was forced to resign when the affair reached the authorities. And later during the novel he and his daughter are discussing abt it, and the daughter asks him why he did it. And he tells the story of a dog his neighbours had. Whenever a bitch came roaming in the area, the dog would get high and excited and his owner used to beat him with Pavlovian regularity in such cases, and eventually it happened that at the smell of a bitch, that dog would wimper and try to hide in the garden, his tail between his legs... he had begun to hate his own nature, his own impulses. Maybe it'd have been better to kill him them.

Ofcourse, i am just describing what was written in the book. But this simple narrative kind of struck my mind, and i was forced to sit back and think for a while over it.

"The gossip-mill, turning day and night, grinding reputations." [J.M. Coetzee]

How very true. People like to gossip so much, its strange to see this passion engulfing every one. Its as if they are more interested in other people's lives than their own. All they are looking for a spicy, juicy incident or an affair to discuss. Sometimes, it makes me shudder with disgust, but at unguarded moments, i find myself indulging in this activity, and then i realise that maybe it is some part of human nature to take delight in the insult and humiliation of others.

All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes,
They're all I can see

[Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars]

This is an excellent song. I fell in love with it when i heard it.