Funny Ponders

I got the news late and its bad. The news is that the professor “Randy Pausch” passed away on July 25th. You might be knowing well about this strong man, if you dont know he is the person who is fighting for death since 1.5 years and passed away 3 days back. The irony is that there is no proper treatments or surgeries to cure pancreatic cancer what he was suffering from around 2 years. He inspired the whole world with his “The Last Lecture” which can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo , Please make time to watch. It was a 70 minutes video which talks about many things which are inspiring. He knows that he is going to die when he has delivering this lecture. The speech was entertaining and enlightening also. The video has become so popular in the world and it got millions of visits. It was made in to a book also. Only way the pancreatic cancer is cured by raising funds thereby increasing scope for research. If you go to his home page, he gave daily updates of his health condition. Finally the last two updates out of them one is regarding his death was updated by somebody who is close to him. He strongly fought his death but could not win over it.

Coming to technical side, his so many students who are working in google now and he is the consultant for google’s GUI design. He is the working in carnegie mellon university and founder of alice.org which teaches computer thru animation. The world has lost a genius, strong man at age of 48 years. May his soul rest in peace and I pray god to give strength to his wife and cute three little kids.

I have collected few inspiring words from his lecture. Here are they:

His first sentence in his speech was “If you had one last lecture to give before you die, what would it be? “

1. We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.
2 . when you’re screwing up and nobody’s saying anything to you anymore, that means they gave up.
3. when you’re pissed off at somebody and you’re angry at them, you just haven’t given them enough time.
4. Luck is truly where preparation meets opportunity.
5. Find the best in everybody. you might have to wait a long time, sometimes years, but people will show

you their good side. No one is all evil.

When he ask his football coach how are they going to practice without football. “Coach Graham said, right, how many men are on a football field at a time? Eleven on a team, twenty-two. Coach Graham said, all right,
and how many people are touching the football at any given time? One of them. And he said, right,
so we’re going to work on what those other twenty-one guys are doing.”

while I was talking over dinner with my friend, he was explaining a few problems his friend is facing these days.  One of them goes like this…One couple got married very recently and started settling slowly and happily. Suddenly due to some issue in office the guy was thrown out of job. He is trying to find the job and  could not get till now. He is feeling very bad . I just imagined this situation, felt very very unhappy for that guy and reminded that life is a bitch.  My little mind trying to put its philosophy about the life and its trajectory.  Life is all about getting up and falling again, getting up and falling again…..it goes. There will be dawn after dark night and also dont forget that there will be night again after day. Just as your body prepares to the nature’s cycle everyday i.e it prepares to sleep in the night and prepares to wake up in the morning, your mind should also be prepared to face the events in once life cycle.  Mind should  be prepared to wake up in  difficulties and  prepared to me normal during hay days.  Life is a infinite sine curve which falls for some angles and rises for some angles.

The greatest of lies on the earth is our life. You tell me that how many times you  have felt that the things are  successful most number of times  when you lie than when you dont lie.  I feel lie is the powerful weapon on the earth. But the fact is that it may not hurt anybody because you are the lier and its only known to you that its the lie. It reminds of me of a famous line from a song which says that Birth and death are only truths in this world and rest of the life is drama (full of lies). If you try to be genuine and keep away from lies, you soon realize that lies are the shortest way to finish anything effortlessly. In a day you will definitely lie at least once for some or the other reason. The reason for writing this blog is from my own personal observation because I am forced to lie to manage some things. For instance, I went to doctor to show my  father reports and I was asked to wait 4 days as I dont have appointment. I lied some blah blah and waited for one hour to get the appointment on the same day. These days lies have become part and parcel of our lives and it has been so embedded that we are not in a position to recognize that we are lying. When I was thinking about this it reminded me that  we have to lie in all kind of situations. Starting from making your girl friend happy, flirting, asking parents to agree upon what you interested in , etc..etc..etc. Different factors of your life make you forced to lie. Its love or marriage when age lies.  Its job when your intelligence lies. Its more money when money lies. Its pride when your ego lies. Its destruction when mind lies. Ultimately its appearing to me that life is a lie.

Waiting for so many days, finally I have received my appraisal letter. When my manager called me to announce the hike, I entered the room and searching the place in front of him in curiosity to find out the figures. He took out a small slip and showed the figures written in very small font. I rubbed my eyes and looked at it again taking in to my hands. Absolutely no difference between my old and new package. I could not react as I am not in a position to react. I was neither happy nor happy and I am just neutral.  I can say newtons law failed here first time  in my case as for every case usually reaction time is order for few milli seconds. One of the reasons is that I am carrying so much of mental tension since few days  and other reason  philosophically putting it , worrying about materialistic things seeming non sense to me these days after seeing reality.  Forget about that side, primarily I want to convey this to my parents.  When my mom en quired about my hike last time, she told me that ur father already got hike its around 2k per month (my father earns 1/4th of my salary).  When this time she asks me how can I tell that its even less that what my father got. How to convey her the real essence of it. So I decided better not to tell and did not update anybody except a few best friends.