A balanced personality

In grade six, we had a punjabi teacher by the name of Ajit Singh. In my report card, he had not given a tick either in extrovert or introvert, but had written in his cursive writing 'Balanced'. My dad had been highly impressed, I had not understood its significance then. This post is not about my balanced personality, I highly doubt it is so now.

My concern or rather my mood at the moment is to think about balance in the intellectual and the practical side of the personality. I have increasingly found that those who are of an intellectual bent of mind, who can do maths in their head, think non-linear, be stark creative are usually not practical. These people shy away from bargaining for a few thousand rupees while they did be stuck with the pride of not paying for parking. Penny wise, pound foolish. The practical aspects of life and living, earning and feeding, sustaining and surviving simply don't enter their periphery of thought, and while forced into this family life practicality, they try to think of models around each chore.

The 'other' kind of people are the practical hard bargainers, multi-taskers. This bunch knows where to get a good bargain for a cheap and fast laptop, buy a lasting pair of shoes and that no.7 paint brush you have been looking for all over town. They know where to spend their bucks, how to hold a conversation and talk, basically.

My question however is, is introvert and extrovert related to these personality types? No. I have seen introvert people who are extremely practical. Does the left side and the right side brain got anything to do with it, leaving aside the debate that the left and the right side is just a myth? Maybe Type A and Type B personality types that is studied in B-schools? I don't know.

But god! a little bit mix of both practicality and hard core idealistic intellectualism would really help the world albeit an inclination to one type of personality can't be helped.

Alive

Does one hold more power over people on being dead?
Well, its a philosophical one, and a psychological one, well, its also an ontological one, perhaps? Or perhaps, there is one subject dealing just with it of which I am blissfully ignorant.

You somehow feel that your dead aunt knows more about you and your situation and your thoughts than when she was alive, don't you?
You somehow feel your grandma knows how much you loved her or how you felt about her now that she is up their floating in the pink clouds.
What is the funda really in being dead? And its answer lies in being so, quelle chance!

Death has been vilified and horrified, it has been humored and joked about. But whatever, its significance and imminence looms just as large. Its like the balloon that pops out for you to crash on, the only difference is, the balloon of death has been popped out along with your birth and waiting for you all along. Its just sooner or later that you bounce into it head long.

Modern medicine avert death of many people to a large extent - we live longer today than a decade back, than two decades back. Modern medicine save lives at birth - less of us die during child birth than a decade back, two decades back. Modern medicine has made life more congested on the planet thus misuse of resources, thus global warming?

Death brings vacuum - in families, in relations. For some, we only think of a particular relative when they are dead. Its like the sentence, don't think of a lady in red dress. The moment you say that you visualize a lady in red dress, although the sentence forbids you to do so. Death makes the relative you lost more alive.

In the last two decades, I met my uncle a few times, we avoided each other at common dinner parties, hardly nodded our heads to each other, and I did not think about him. But his sudden death a few months back brought back floods of memory and he is constantly alive in my  mind. His absence made his presence in my mind prominent. I had never been introduced to his two daughters and I had never visited the house where he lived but once in the last two decades. His absence made entry into his life easier, the relations around him became more alive and I was surprised by this fact - surprised to silence. Indeed, I have not been able to register it until this moment - how death can be so alive and how absence can be so fulfilling.