If at all ..

If at all, from the basket

Need I, to choose a 'Thing'

Wouldn't pluck even one

Rub no stain, I swear

Nor would I change a 'Thing'

Hulkier Storm

Ecstatic Rain

For the Canvas, 

A 360 degree, they string

If at all, from the basket

Need I, to choose a 'Thing'
I snow, 
Deep down ,

I know,

I wouldn't change a 'Thing'

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 ?

Place Value vs Face Value

I have been thinking about writing this one for a while now and surely could not come up with a better or more apt title for this post.

Place Value vs Face Value, the meaning is pretty much the same whether it's barely numbers or people..

While most people like to be only around people with a higher place value, I respect people who weigh higher on side of face value, reason being pretty simple, their value is independent of place, situation, time or context, come whatever it may be.

I get an impression (not enough data points to generalize) that a change of position, sometimes
--> make people douchebag
--> people tend to not see obvious things
--> they get wings (borrowed from one of the conversations with my school principal), are no longer grounded
--> forget/override the basic rules/courtesy

A Rough Day..!!

Sometimes we start our day with full enthusiasm and then observe ourselves doing things differently, not in a pleasantly different way. And you know deep down within you:

This is not your style of working,
This is not how you do things usually,
This is not how you respond to things,
This is not how you perceive things,
This is not how you have ever done anything,
Suddenly you have lost your quick-wittedness,
Your presence of mind is blown away.

 

And this is certainly not the way you have ever spent your day and you would even ever wish to. This day and most moments in that day are a little different, different in some way, different in the way than all of your days passed by so far, there is something that makes you worried. You want your thoughts and mind to run in a different direction, to leverage something positive out of anything you think, anything you do, anything you sense around, the way you perceive things, comprehend and respond to external stimuli and  just be back to your normale. But your thoughts are just stuck somewhere, that too unknowingly, around something unknown, around something you do not want to waste your time on and you are still there, thinking of a way to get out of it. You find yourself very ineffective and inefficient compared to what you have always been and then you realize this is not you.

I don't know if anyone among the people out there, who would ever open this link and read this post, have felt this way.

I think there is something which is troubling my mind at this moment, at this very day. I realized this as the day passed by and now I think that I need a break, I need a brisk walk out on the road and inhale some fresh, soothing & relaxing breeze, to let it seep in, rejuvenate me & my soul and make everything else seep out.

Most of the times, an evening walk or a morning one, is more than a medicine to get rid of anything and everything, to unoccupy your mind and make a fresh start again! Atleast it works that way for me, just find out something that works for you.

Choosing Right & Realistic Baselines is Critical!

If you don't set a baseline standard for what you'll accept in life, you'll find it's easy to slip into behaviors and attitudes or a quality of life that's far below what you deserve

-- Anthony Robbins

Excellent quotation and applicable to all walks of life I believe!

A pretty disappointing fact which I have observed is whenever people discuss about improving anything, may be the things around, people or our own self, either under our direct or indirect control, whenever there is something which requires an effort from their side, it usually ends up in selecting a benchmark of lower quality and say ‘See, we are better than X, Y, Z and so on..!”  Surprisingly, people often take pride in saying/mentioning this.

Why don’t we look up at say A, B and C which are better, refer to them as a baseline, analyze & find out the difference and work towards improving the things around for the sake of better. Constantly refining the baseline and getting inspired by better things around is certainly one of the best and most challenging things to do!

Contrarily, when there is a similar situation but involves something which requires just a critical edge/opinion from person X and there is an effort required from a person/group Y, or something which affects us but there is nothing we may do about it, then we would always set up a baseline, much higher than the initial point, too higher than the point where the things currently are. Of course, it’s good to look for things which are much better but it would be a much better idea to constantly revamp the baseline and encourage someone of achieving the previous perceived level of improvement. This would not only increase the level of motivation but also a sense of achievement in someone who is trying hard to do something good. Small victories are equally important as winning a great big battle as they say to let one keep up the spirit!