Randy Pausch – Updated

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.”

 

Sine Curve

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.

 

Wierd Situation

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.

 

Time to Move On….

Yes, its to time to move on when things really dont work for you. At least those things supposed to happen if not the things you desire. If your damn waiting for the thing to happen and if it tests your patience? what to do? . Sometimes I feel it is the stupidity of me in handling the things. What I feel is philosophy is very nice to listen and help us getting up if you are fallen. But the fact is you cannot follow the same philosophy when you are put under test to the same situation. Sometimes I suspect whether philosophy has real meaning to it if it is not implemented properly. Forgetting about the philosophy for a while now, lets discuss about moving on. If you program your mind to something and the input is in such a fashion that it cannot be handled, just imagine what happens to a software program..it simply dumps. Similar thing happens to our mind if programmed. But how to program the mind in such a fashion that every situation is handled in switch case. We should make sure there shuld not be any while or for loops which makes you busy but end up doing nothing. if presence of them is inevitable dont forget to put a break statement till the program moves smoothly to exit. The policy I am following is to divert mind in different directions. Call a friend, chat with a friend…read some article, watch some pics. When I do these things literally I don’t feel that I am frustrated. When I tell my frustration or disappointment to someone..i fell relaxed after sometime. If I keep it to myself it gets more inside and starts hurting. No other way … its time to move.

 

Emotional Attachment

Emotional quotient is little high for Indians. We will get emotionally attached easily to any thing in the world. Personally I feel being emotional to everything causes little damage. My room mate says…Indians gets attached emotionally very quickly  even to their pet dogs, cars.  They feel emotional or sometimes sentimental in selling their old car or when they lose their pet dog. I dont say one should not be emotional but should not be carried away with that.  By emotionally attached to something, You feel sad, disappointed when that ’something’ leaves you. Love anything but dont get too close to something that makes you feel unhappy without it. Basically its just your state of mind that plays this. After all the ultimate goal of everyone’s life is to be happy every moment. Why to accept things that makes you unhappy. We are the only passenger for our life journey. Nobody shares our destination either.  There is no point in being emotionally attached to someone or something. I wont prevent you if you are happy by being emotionally attached. But if not, dont lose single moment by not being happy.

Personally I am very sensitive guy and I used to attach to everyone whoever comes in my life and to things whatever I buy. I used to feel disappointed when they leave me and preventing the situation to happen. But later after so many such things happening in life I became observant and derived that emotional attachment is causing some amount of damage to me.  So why should I have a mindset that is making me unhappy. I decided to change as soon as I observed people who are happy without it. So love but not attach and be inseparable. Ultimately we are our saviors of our very own single life. This is not selfishness but self respect. Still some qualities come by birth and perish by death,  but who knows give it a try!!

 

Insult your intelligence

I became quite observant these days about the basic elements that might make us unhappy and egoist. One of them that I am going to write down now is about misunderstanding. Sometimes we assume that something has happened because of somebody by just blindly and readily listening to our (intelligence) mind’s conclusion. This starts enmity with the other person virtually. We will have that in mind and we act accordingly with that person. This goes on and on ….and makes you unhappy and lead to vulnerable relationships. So before readily listening to your intelligence, if you just confirm that “why that has happened” you can avoid all the conflicts. So before assuming about any thing please confirm why something has happened before jumping in to conclusions. Misunderstanding is a result of your intelligence sometimes.

First time I am facing problem here and I could not able to put flow of my thoughts about this topic in to the blog. I will come back again in a different post to explain why we have to insult our intelligence :-)

 

Secret of Happiness

I have observed a few things from the past few days. Those things gave me real happiness and ultimate satisfaction. You are wrong if you guess its love or *** or money. I have not got the same amount of satisfaction or soul fullfillness even after I have got what I have desired. Dont want to drag ……….the point I am making here is helping an unknown person gave me ultimate satisfaction. The unknown person must be badly in need of some help and if you give ur helping hand , its really great experience. The word unknown I elevated here because for known persons like friends, family, colleagues I have not got that much happiness. Helping known persons might include the expectations in return later. This might be one of the reasons why I could not satisfy.  (Of course this reason does not hold valid for me)
Few days after I bought my pulsar, I was eating sandwich on the road side around late evening. One very old man came pushing his auto and stopped near by my side. It looked like his diesel in auto got over. He is watching here and there not knowing what to do. He asked some persons to drop him to petrol bunk. People rejected because of his weird attire like lengthy beard, torn clothes…etc etc. When I completed my sandwich, he asked me can you get me to petrol bunk? I was skeptical initially but later I agreed as the petrol bunk is few distance away. I dropped him and waited for him till he fill the petrol in his bottle and again I dropped him back at the place where his auto was parked. He is very old men and I am very much pleased with the way he asked me initially and later felt very happy after I helped him to get his job done. I dont know I felt a different amount of happiness which I have not been experienced before.
It might be a small help but I have realized that helping other person will give you ultimate happiness. So buddies…keep helping…..

 

Soul Curry

Dont get bewildered by the title. This is the name of the article which comes every sunday in TOI LIFE. Every week the real happenings in once life are given here. Whoever reads this will definitely be moved by the plight of the narrator. Basically what is given in the soul curry is: a person narrates tough times in his/her life and how did they get on and how well they dealt with the situation to move on. I am sure that if somebody reads this article once, one will feel that their problems are nothing. In last weeks article , one female was explaining that she lost 2/3 part of the body in an accident. She also lost her relatives in the accident. Her husband is the only source to get on with the life. After few years he also expired. Imagine her position where there is nobody to take care of her and she cannot take of herself. After reading all her story to the point how she is living today, my opinion about what I feel as a problem and difficulty has changed. What I would feel as a problem is not a problem at all if I compare mine with the problems that many people in the world are facing. I retrospected myself that my disappointment with the small issues I have at the current moment is nothing and unnecessary. Move On should be everyone’s ultimate philosophy. This reminds me the Zen way of living which says that, like a stream flowing down the mountain that finds its own path is finding your own way. If you try to block the stream or resist it, it just goes around without a pause and it will finds its own way. This way is like a fallen leaf moving along with the stream. If you allow the stream to carry you, its strength become yours, you are one with nature , without clinging, without attachment leaving the past behind, living in this moment.

 

Power of Anticipation

On the other day, I was reading sunday TOI as I do every week end and came across an interesting article in LIFE. Life is a supplement which comes on every sunday. It portrays philosophy in a decent way. If you are really philosophical or spiritual, I suggest you to go through it. Coming to the point…………….The article I was talking about gave a beautiful line which made me write this blog. The line goes like this …”The state of anticipation gives you more happiness than actual realization” Is it not true???

I am very fond of boarding a flight and I want just experience it once. I am more happy dreaming about it before its actually realized. But once I boarded once and was very happy ofcourse. From then onward the thought of it completely vanished and it was not there at all. But compared to the actual realization, anticipating that thing made me more happy. So the anticipation can be anything…..be it a crush on a pretty girl, be it a desire to climb ur job ladder, be you owning a car, getting married………………Another example is that I am very fond of learning and driving car. I would actually enjoy If I see somebody driving a swanky car on the road. I am so happy that I wish that I love to do on some day. But recently I have learned car driving and drove one of my frds car. The happiness which was before has gone. I am just ignoring whatever car I see on the road. In some sense its sometimes good if you are out of something than in it. In fact, the anxiety and curiosity that makes you very happy. When the thing is actually realised, the joy is actually disappeared. So be aware of the things that are making you feel happy. So dont get upset if you dont get what you anticipate. The ultimate happiness is in anticipation. Did you not experience this? I say, the happiness is in actual journey not in reaching or accomplishing goal. I am not contradicting anything here. If you desire for anything, its not wrong at all. But in case if you dont get it, just enjoy the thought of anticipation. Sounding stupid…..ignore it…I was expressing my comments on that article which are factually real. I may not express the real sense due to my poor expressive skills. But readers….you are smart , you might have got the essence.

 

New Year

Another year entered in to its execution on the platform called life. Old year left leaving behind so many bad, good and sweet memories that lasts for ever. What more can we do other than acting according to time. In the same way I have celebrated new year and gave a warm welcome in to this world just as all. Its just a habit to rethink about the old year before entering in to the dawn of another year. The year that passed away gave me a job to survive and to gave an opportunity to apply my knowledge which keeps on updating since childhood. Left IIT which gave me a beautiful life that can remain in my memory for the rest of my life. Though bad memories still chase us its good to remember good ones for once to thrive. Important thing is that every year we have been encountering new friends and departed from old friends. We have been accumulating like this since our birth. It is also an great experience, in this way we tend to meet so many people with different ideas, tastes, interests, opinions and we are exposed to so many unknown things in the world. So many events happen in our life whether good or bad but we should be in a position to accept everything rather preparing mindset to refuse something. The quality of mind which is in a position to accept everything as it is that happens in life is mandatory for every human being. Those events will happen even if you are present or absent in this world. You are just an witness and actor to the happening events. So I discourage people refusing things that happen in life. Hmm…little bit philosophy ……….If you are prepared with this mind set every year which comes and goes will leave you a different experience. Setting mind for some goals is important but preparing mind for anything is equally important. So set your goals, resolutions and rock this new year.

Have a great days ahead. Happy New Year-2008.