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 ?

Story of the Lost Mobile Charger

Yes, it’s nothing less than a story, in fact a quick 3 day saga I would say. I am usually very organized about the way I keep my stuff and where I keep it, so that I get it in time at the need of hour. Life has been too busy since last few weeks with small health hick-ups here and there. Anyways, that’s not really a part of the story, I am just trying to get you a brief background and a short narrative of the pace in general.

I usually don’t lose stuff, lose as in, something which belongs to me and I forget it here & there so that I cannot recollect where have I kept that or what did I do with that or whatever. Three days back, I was at home and I was digging in my laptop bag, I did that more than 2-3 times, checked everywhere in the room. But I had no clue of what did I do with my mobile charger. I have been searching it for last 3 days like anything, searched for number of times again in my laptop bag (for that’s the place where I always keep the charger anyways) like 3-4 times a day, just with the hope that may be I missed some corner of it even though when I have a fixed compartment for it in there L and I searched for it at every possible other place.

I was so not willing to accept that I lost it, but I actually had prepared myself to buy a new charger by ordering online with a thought in some corner of my mind ‘May be I kept it..ah..there…XYZ place, I should go and check once more.’

And guess what! While trying to search for it in office today, at my desk and in the drawer, I thought I should look for other places around my desk. ‘bingo! There it is’ was all I could murmur, just a minutes ago, I finally did spot it under my table, entangled with other cables. I am really curious to know, how did I manage to make it reach there? Don’t know, I guess maybe I left it in office at my desk 4 days ago and somehow it made its way down there.

Never mind, I am happy that I got it back J

An Opportunist's Plight

Yesterday night, after having an awesome dinner, I was walking down the street back home. I was half decided on having a desert, so just walked out of the restaurant without ordering one. 

While I was still halfway to reach back home, I got this sudden urge to have an ice-cream, an irresistible temptation like kids do get on a frequent basis. While it seemed too big an effort to walk back to one of those fancy restaurant's in another direction, I decided to try my luck with the super-market on the way nearby my place. Trying my luck, not in terms of whether I will get an ice-cream over there or not. Instead the thought of standing in a long queue just to buy a pack of ice-cream was discouraging. 

So, I promised myself to buy it only on one condition: if I was lucky enough of not meeting a long queue at the billing counter.

With this thought in mind, I soon entered the super-market to see a long long queue at both the counters on ground floor. I was perplexed whether I should be trying my luck with the counters on the first floor. I went to ice-cream aisle, picked one from the freezer. I knew that the queue on the first floor is not gonna be any shorter. Just to give it a try, I rushed up to the first floor to find a queue much much much longer than what it was on the ground floor. I thought of going back to the ground floor and putting it back in the freezer.

When I reached there, I wanted to buy it since I had invested so much of my time on this one ice-cream already. I stood for half a minute on deciding whether I should quit and walk back home or I should give it a try, to somehow buy it in lesser than anticipated time ;)

While I was still pondering over this, I saw the lady at the billing counter. I walked up to her and asked if she could get it billed along with her stuff and I will pay the money to her. She looked at me with surprise for a moment but then I asked her again and eventually, she agreed. All the other people right after her in the queue appeared to be in disapproval of my behavior. Each of these people had tonnes of food items in their basket.

I know that this way of breaking in the queue is not an ideal shopper's behaviour but then it was already too late. The clock was about to hit 10 and I wanted to get that ice-cream.

But this was just not the end. The lady who did this favor of buying that ice-cream to me, had a coconut to be billed at another counter (Alas, I did not notice that earlier). Since the bill was not with me, I could not have walked out of the store anyway. I went back to her. The queue at vegetable counter was too long.  She was an ideal shopper and she waited for like 10 minutes to get that billed, I had no other option but to stand there waiting for her. 

By the time, I could actually come out of that place after thanking her, the ice-cream thawed :(

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.

Yes, No, Maybe..!!

Sometimes, situations are so sudden, odd and novice that it becomes quite difficult to take a decision. What is even more difficult is to justify later whether what one did was really the apt choice..

Towards the end of the first day of this weekend, I was out for an evening walk, which is an inseparable part of almost all my weekends and sometimes, even weekdays. I was walking down the road, observing the things around, lost in my own thoughts. No sun, no rain and a cool breeze, weather in general was really pleasant. So, it made the experience more enjoyable.

Suddenly, I saw a bunch of 4-5 people coming from the opposite side and now walking towards me, no no no, not to hit me.. :) 

This incident was so sudden that I could notice only three of them, but I believe there were a few more standing behind them. One of them was a male of around 35-40 years of age, a female of around 30-35 years of age and a small kid, may be 7-8 years old. The female walked a little more towards me followed by the male and I could see that they wanted to ask something. The first thing which clicked to my mind, was may be they wanted to ask some directions, may be they were lost. So I just stopped to help them all. 

Both of them asked me the same question with a different set of words, super-imposed to give just one  meaning.."Do you know Hindi? "

I said, " Yes, I do." and I looked at them conveying that I could help you with some directions if you are going to inquire for some. [ I know usually I am not very good at this job, but I know this area quite well now.]

Next statement was, something like this...We came from a village and worked for a guy for a month and he ran away, did not even pay the wages to us..

I was perplexed..I mean I did not know how to react, for I did not know them, I did not know where they were coming from, whether what they were saying was truth or not, why were they telling this to me and of course this was none of my business..I never came across such a situation before this one..I did not say anything for a while and was still thinking about all this..

When I could hear another set of words..which meant.."We have no money to go back to our village and have no money to have food, we have not eaten anything since morning. Could you give us some money?"

I was just out for a walk around my house, so was carrying almost no money first of all. Secondly I did not know them, so how could have I trusted them?

I have always been a believer of the fact that "Beggars (or anyone who asks for money without doing any work) are burden to the society", especially if they are physically fit and capable enough of earning their livelihood. For those who are physically or mentally challenged, this is still acceptable. I was stuck with such thoughts but I managed to convey a "No" to them somehow, by nodding my head in disapproval of their behavior..

I could hear a repeated statement, this time they asked for some money in the name of their kid, for he had not eaten anything since morning.

For a moment I thought of helping them out but then again a logical reasoning occupied my mind. I have been a good observer always and did not get a vibration of any sadness from them, nor did I get the feeling as if they did some hard work for sometime and then the money of their hard labor was not paid to them. It seemed to me like a well rehearsed story, framed perfectly with fake emotions, to captivate the listener and exploit them on the emotional front to get some financial aid. So I denied again, moved forward...

From the moment thereon, I have a little in guilt in some corner of my mind for not helping them.What if they were really hit bad by the circumstances. But then the moment is gone and I have no strong evidences of knowing what is right and what's wrong..

Was my decision wrong ? Yes, No, Maybe

What would have been your take in such a situation..??