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

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.

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!