Resonance & the Vibrator's Dilemma

One of the observations I made long, long time ago, encountered many 100 times in the real world and something I have thought of writing about at least more than a dozen times, if not more. 

While, this title may be somewhat intriguing and is derived from “The Principle of Resonance” from physics which goes as mentioned below:

Resonance is the tendency of a system to oscillate with greater amplitude at some frequencies than at others. Frequencies at which the response amplitude is a relative maximum are known as the system's resonant frequencies, or resonance frequencies. At these frequencies, even small periodic driving forces can produce large amplitude oscillations, because the system stores vibrational energy.

It may seem confusing or misleading but is quite similar to the way humans behave in day to day life towards things/ideas/conversations or just anything in general. At any given point of time, with any topic in consideration, there is a normal human tendency to respond back to certain things with 1000%( yes this is not a typo, it’s 10 * 100%, to indicate the ceiling function) enthusiasm and energy while a lot others simply bite the dust. Those are human response frequencies and the major drivers being one of the below:

1   Things we don't understand

Nobody is Omniscience, so there are no doubt things in the world, we don’t know about or we don’t understand. These are things which might be interesting or worth listening to or may be a total junk with absolute zero worth with respect to the time we spend to converse/reason/discuss about. 

But then, since we are not really sure, we may choose to be open and hear about them to sway the existing boundaries of our wisdom, based on our instincts or any other rationale. Given enough time and energy with considerable interest, I believe no topic in the world is difficult enough to understand even all by yourself, and in the worst case there are always people around whom you may reach out to for help whenever required. So this part as per my conviction can be easily dealt with.

This part is also easier to negotiate with anyone trying to explain something to you, to get your buy in or make you understand where they are coming from, their perceptions or the core ideas which form their very foundation.

2     Things we don't want to understand

While point 1 is easy to deal with, it is extremely difficult to compete against the latter, and these are the things we don’t want to understand. The things that in reality we do understand but whimsically pretend to be unaware of due to one of the various reasons like saving the face, to run away from the discomforting truth, to avoid unnecessary discussions and negative arguments, to save time from something(one) that we think would be of no benefit to us in the long run, things we think don’t matter and would never cross our ways in life ever etc. among some of the possible causes.

It’s next to impossible for anybody to make these things seep in our mind or even spark a conversation around them that would last even a minute or then would remain a healthy discussion after crossing the chasm. On such encounters, we either nod our head just to agree with what the other person has to say or totally avoid listening to those garbled sound waves, further distorted due to the lack of interest.

One liner from one of my earlier poems Anger which also fits pretty well in this context.

Surprisingly we behave, amazing tactics we deploy

Help ..to Paralysis?

Wherever you are and Whatever you're doing, there are always things you could help other people with. And then there are broadly two ways of doing that. 

1. Sit and do it along with them, rather for them. 

You try your best to help build a bridge for them to get out of the mess, and in the process you end up doing it for them, may be somewhere between 50 to 100 percent. This pleases people for you made somebody's life easy. 

Personally, I do not like this way of being helped or helping somebody. If someone keeps solving the problem for me without letting me do it, I will be the paralyzed one in the long run. I would rather like trying it 100 times myself, failing for all those attempts to achieve the goal 101st time, than being successful the first time without using my brains. I believe I would learn much more this way, not only the single precise way to do it but also the other 100 ways I tried, and now I know that it would not work that way. And then I would never forget what I learnt over this course of time. 

2. Explain the very meaning of it, in and out, throw away clues and let them figure it out. 

I love working with people who extend help this way. You know, those epitomes filled with absolute sense of challenge along the way, is what doubles my energy to keep marching forward. And I tend to follow the same path when somebody approaches me for help. I would always like people try it themselves, getting the whole share of their success, by earning it for themselves. I would never want somebody to be my walking stick nor would I want somebody else to be that dependent on me. It's great to be self-reliant. Nothing can be better than that.

What's your way of dealing with situations when you seek out or extend help ?