We think we are living, and then we meet LIFE.

Psychological Convenience

In the previous post, i had mentioned about sharing my experiences. Experiences, as we all know stem from the attitude with which we approach a situation and then build an impression in our minds about that situation. Its not that the situation is bad or good, its basically our attitude.
Now coming to the point straight away. I decided to write my new post on Psychological Convenience. I had a notion in mind that Human beings are, more often than not, driven by Psychological Convenience (PC). The trigger of this thought was an incident which happened with me a few days back:

Nat west Series Penultimate match - India was chasing a crazy target of 314. I was in my office at that time and was glancing on the score on internet. As fate would have had it, i got a badge with Indian tri-colours lying unclaimed. From the moment I sported it on my shirt, till the time i left for home; it attracted attention of 5 people. As the saying goes - Great minds think alike (read as Fools seldom Differ), all of those 5 remarked - "Independence Day is long gone. why you sporting this badge, now?"

I was thrown into the world of my thoughts and pondered:
Why people are expected to show certain emotions only on an expected date and time, these emotions should be imbibed in us and should be reflected in our actions on a continuous basis? right?

India is free since 60 years. does that mean that we should celebrate Independence only 60 times. We should be celebrating each and every second of it, but that requires effort.

To quote another example, we all go to our 'Place of Worship' to thank God.

Do we actually need an external medium or an Idol to thank God for our existence. Why cant we just close our eyes and say a hearty thanks. But that also requires control on our minds, that requires a thought-less mind. Its not, that when we visit a temple, we are thought less, but it certainly gives us a sense of 'Doing Effort'. We fool ourselves that yes, I have taken the physical pain of visiting a temple, so I can be relieved from my Psychological Effort. a sheer case of Psychological Convenience.

The outcome was a Swirling mind which reached a conclusion that people believe in PC and their every action is governed by this simple logic.

Now the other side of the coin (God is in the Details)

While i was still planning to write my new post and abolish, defame and ridicule this concept of PC, I realized PC is not that bad a thing.

I was watching 'Scent of a Woman' - I heard the Dialogue "The day you stop dreaming Charlie, the day yo Die". i was hearing this dialogue, immortalized by Al Pacino for the nth time. this time round it sounded different. it struck somewhere.

We all are born as mortals and Aspirations keep us alive. These aspirations motivate us to perform various tasks in a single day. We all are in a race against time and we are not capable of doing all the things at the same time but we Aspire to beat time, hence we require crutches. These crutches support us when we are off-balance in life. But what is important is the knowledge about what a crutch is serving, what it is meant for. Why we are leaning on to PC in a situation when ideally we should not. We cannot do away without these crutches. we cannot be Perfect.
Though we should be very careful in what we are choosing, if we choose to lean on to PC in a situation, it better have a low opportunity cost.

Conclusion: Perfection is a trap - if we strive to achieve perfection in everything we do, we would end up spending substantial time in doing that, we just need to make sure that we have that much time to invest or not.

Message: Analyze every second you exist.

i may be the last of the entrants in the world of bloggers, and in MBA they tell us, such people are known as laggards. however i will still try to carve out a niche for myself. through this blog i will try to 'key-down' my day to day experiences and the pschology behind those experiences. most of the times it happens that we live experiences but avoid pondering over it. if its a bad experience we try to engrave it ASAP, and if it is a good one, we just enjoy the outcomes. very few people sit back and think about the factors that contribute to such an experience.

the inspiration:

i was conducting a quiz in my college, a general quiz which covered multiple subjects like Sports, Trivia, History, Invention etc.

at a particular point i asked a question to a participating team - "what is considered as the greatest/most useful invention of all times?"
reply came - electricity (passed on to next team)
next reply - computer (same fate - passed on to next team)
next reply - taj mahal (this personally devastated me, coming from a graduation student)

the answer was the WHEEL. but all these replies got me thinking - if these people just thought about for one minute or so they could have realized that Electricity is generated throgh Dynamo (majorly), which involves a turbine (circular motion to say simply).

computers dont generally work without elecricity or charge.

taj mahal (not worth discussing - but laterally if you think, it must have involved movig big boulders from one place to another - best done by wheels)

Conclusion - we dont think of what we are doing, what we are speaking, what we are thinking. we just carry on with our lives, the way it comes and we keep on living. so where is the practice of learning from experience.

this is when i particulary understood the phrase "God is in the details". if one sees the above answers they are majorly biased towards the usage and things that surround us, presently. but few spare a moment in realizing the fact that how much time has gone into the development of such things and how many minds have actually paid attention to the details of whatever that surrounded them.

examples are many - Newton, Archimedes et al. they all drew inspiration from the things/events that were surrounding them. they just pondered over it and invested there time to seek answers, seek explainations.


coming back to present - this is why i have created this blog, to contribute some "Food for Thought" to the readers.