Thursday, November 25, 2010

Philo Sophie

It's been a long time since I left my carbon footprint on the blogosphere (roughly 9 months, whoa!). So I thought, I'll write something on this virtual piece of the space time continuum. And for once, I attempt to write a serious article, a bit philosophical (if I may) in the hope that I'd be back here again, sooner than I think (hope so!)

The past few months have made me go through almost every kind of emotion I could ever experience - joy, anxiety, agony, dejection, schadenfreude, sympathy, exhilaration.. you name it, I bet it'd be there (not sure of Nirvana though :) ). Taught me a few lessons which I thought I must jot down for my own self, in no particular order. Most might seem cliched, but I believe that until I experience something personally, I'll never understand its true worth :

a) Time flies at a constant rate. Relativity accounts for the rest of what humans feel about it. Kipling must have understood this true worth ,when he wrote those immortal words. I wish I can do so myself. Or if dreams did come true, a time machine would do.

b) Life is like a cryptic crossword. Solving the clues one at a time gives more satisfaction than seeing the answers all at once. Maybe it's another way of looking at other cliched statements on the same subject, but I hope I can accept this part and continue ahead, rather than blaming everything on Murphy.

c) Smiling in times of crises is tougher than I thought. I respect those set of few people whom I've seen do so repeatedly, without the usage of psychidelic shit. I'll be quite happy to emulate them in this respect, if not as often (oh no, I dont want a calamity befalling me to try this out, but in general, would hope to do so)

d) The world respects you if you can do/ever did what you ask them to do. Until then it just listens to you until they're fed up of those 'blank' statements and retort back, to make you realize this truth, if one hasnt still. I thank a friend, who made me realize this quite recently and maybe this is one of the biggest lessons this sem (academic courses nothwithstanding).

e.1) You neednt lead the race at any point of time, but can still end up ahead of them all. Thank you Mr. Vettel for reminding me of a lesson which Mr. Raikonnen had already taught, but I seemed to have forgotten.

e.2) Play this innings like a test match. You might not be an SRT but Rahul 'The Wall' Dravid is still worth an option (no offence to Dravid, who along with Stephen Waugh, are my sources of inspiration, but at times, the eternal skeptic in me makes me wonder whether SRT is human at all.. ). Still not experienced the set of moments to fully justify my findings , but felt the same in bits and pieces, and hence decided to put it down to verify in the future.

f) Karma is a bitch. Not really, our actions are what we are. So if we behave like one, then cant blame Karma can we.. This is another big lesson learnt over the course of the last 3-4 months, out of a nightmare, I never thought I'd ever see in my life. Might be one of the most valuable lessons in my stay in this amazing place called IIT Madras. I still admit, it's a tough nut to crack but keeps me wary of the future, every passing moment.

g) Somehow, I've found the allegory of life and, the making of a piece of art, to be appealing. From my personal experience, no art work seems good until finished (and finished well that too :) ) , and uptil then speculations are always arife, internally or externally, as to how it'll come out to be. This is quite similar to what I've found in my experience while handling Sponsorship activities as well, but considering that it's a subset of life as such, might as well be treated as subset to move along.

h) Living in the present might be good, but reflection into the past is a must according to me. I mean it's a simple closed loop system (of which I detailed karma separately), and without a retrospection, somehow I've never had the courage to look into the future. What one looks for in the past is also a questionable issue, but suffice to say, to each his/her own.

Maybe, if I become famous one day, I could increase my revenues by writing a book on the above '8 Lessons of Life' or '8 things one needs to know in life', et al, adding to the already huge pile of these non-fiction stuff, which to my disbelief are at bestsellers!