Contemplation about life

Have been thinking about life? What is it for us? Is it supposed to be having goals and trying to achieve them? Or is it just enjoying the moment for the time we have on the earth? Or maybe it is a combination of both.

Life with goals:
It seems that we always tend to fail at most of the things we do. Some people more, some people less. Every time I have some small goals in life. And every time I work towards them. Enthusiastic in the beginning but as time passes, it starts to decrease. Like I am trying to learn Norwegian, but since the last week I haven't read much of it. Maybe it is because the goals are not clear. Or maybe because I do not have enough discipline. Same case goes for my blogging. I started blogging because I wanted to write stuff that comes in my mind. But sometimes the mind just goes blank. So maybe it is human nature to fail. Maybe life is not about achieving success. Maybe life is to fail and struggle to get back on the road to success. This may be even more important than success. So that when success is achieved, the journey counts more than it.

All the people I have met, some time or the other have said that their life sucks because they fail. Even I say that my life sucks because I have failed in more things than I may have succeeded in. But maybe it is supposed to suck. Life is supposed to be good when it sucks and we try to make it better. Not only our life but that of our loved ones. When they feel their life is dull, maybe it is our duty to brighten it. So that indirectly, our life gets brightened too.

Hmm, so what to do when things don't turn out the way we want them to. I guess just realize that it is going to be that way. Life sucks and we got to live with it. Guess the answer is somewhat related to a positive attitude. Whatever happens in life, there is always something to learn. So that we don't make the same mistakes again. So that possibly the next time life doesn't suck because of that. And that learning from our failures we can succeed. That we have the discipline to get up if we fall in life instead of lying on the ground and sulking.

Enjoying life's moments:
I feel this is one of the most important things which we humans have been gifted with. We can savor a lot of moments in our lives. Everything is so beautiful. Nature, animals, family, friends, work. But then again we start taking everything for granted. We assume everything is just for us and start worrying about things we want. One day just have a walk in the park and look at the trees, the birds, the people. We need to see the beauty in it. Every moment of our life is a gift. I know we all have our worries and problems. But how much of that worry is necessary. I have seen people worry about success, money, happiness, etc. Yeah, to an extent we should be thinking about these things but never worry about them. As I said we have goals and we might fail but it just means that we have to try again and not stop. So why not enjoy the journey to our goals. Maybe some of us might find that the journey is our goal. That enjoying life's moments brings us more joy than what we supposed we wanted. So just realise that everything has beauty. We just don't notice how many wonderful things happen in our life. Taking everything for granted.

Love, rejection and acceptance

No I'm not a love guru or anything. But I intend to give my 2 cents about this topic. Because it has always been at the back of my mind and maybe it will do good to you as well.

We think of love as this wonderful magic that suddenly happens. We meet a guy/girl who seems to match our required characteristics. This is the so called "Love at first sight". For others, it is just a process of gradually falling in love.

OK, then everything is wonderful and we are in love. So that is great until something we forgot about. We do not know if that other person shares the same feelings as we do. So what do we do? We try to indirectly convince the other person to fall in love with us. By several ways such as trying to impress the other person. If the other person falls in love with us, everything is fine, everything is beautiful.

But what if it doesn't happen? What if the other person doesn't share the same feelings as we do? What if the other person doesn't love us in return? It becomes difficult to accept it, right? Somehow, somewhere there is always hope that maybe, just maybe, there is a way of convincing the other person that we are the perfect match for him/her. We as humans are emotional and the heart has been given too much hope in such situations. Now it is good to have hope especially in case of love. But what if it is not working out. What if the other person is least interested in you? Then it starts to get dangerous, doesn't it? Everyday, every time we remember the moments, we get distracted from whatever we set out to do. The hope within us tries to find a way. We react like a drowning man who will try to grab everything, even a straw if he get's one.

Well, my friend, that is where comes the part of acceptance. Now I don't know how to draw the line between trying to convince the other person and acceptance of his/her disinterest, I really don't. Perhaps, somehow it just comes in our mind and we will know when we have to accept things as they are. But once we know that we have to accept the situation, it is better to accept it rather than causing pain to ourselves. Maybe we have trouble accepting it. But we can take help from our friends who will always be there for support.

Falling in love is a wonderful thing. I have fallen in love too. And there seems no greater suffering than rejection. That too I have undergone. So here is advice from one who has suffered a broken heart to another, some advice from experience of my own and other wise people before me. Falling in love is beautiful, being loved is even more beautiful, but letting a loved one have his own free will is spiritual. Time, my friend, will heal everything. It always does. Maybe, such things leave a scar or two on the heart. But maybe there is some lessons we learn from such events. Perhaps, it is to make us wiser so that in the future, our love gets what it deserves. Maybe, it happened so that we can appreciate true love when we will get it.

Where there is a will, there is a way

We always here the words "Will power".

What do we mean by will power? Will power is the inner strength to try to reach your goal even if the road to that goal is full of difficulties.

We hear a lot of stories about how people achieve success by sheer will power. All of the people who have been successful in any field, whether business or sports or education are people who have tremendous will power. Actually we haven't to look that far our in the world. Everyone including us as humans have great potential of using our will power.

Will power can and should be used by us for achieving what we want to. We all have goals in our lives. Some of us want success, some want fame, some want money, some love, etc. Whatever be our goal, we can and should use will power to achieve it. When we set out to achieve goals, there are going to be obstacles. It's like a football match. The goal post is right in front of us. But there is no direct way to get there. There are obstacles at many places. The path to the goal is not straight forward and every time we have to change our way. If we keep on worrying that we cannot achieve that goal, then it is not possible. Without will power, we fail even before we begin. But when we use will power, if we believe that whatever the difficulties, we will succeed then success becomes possible.

Can non practical things be achieved with will power? Well, things are unachievable unless they are achieved. If we look through history, a lot many things would not exist if it were not for sheer will power. The electricity that we get, the cars that we travel in, the technology that we use, nothing would exist if it were not the will power of the people to create them. Before these things existed, they were supposed to be unachievable. But it was because people believed that they could do those things and even though there were failures and many difficulties, they had tremendous will power and managed to reach their goals. Maybe, we might not want to achieve such things and change the world's history. But each of us has our goals to achieve which are big for us. So we need to keep using our will power to reach them whatever be the distractions.

My friend asks if will power can get you a promotion. Well, yes, if that is what you want to achieve. I can tell my views if that would be my goal. I would try and find out what it takes to get a promotion. This I would do by asking the people who provide promotions as to what they expect of people to give them a promotion. I would tell them that I will be working to achieve that. I would also look at people who have been successful at work. If possible try and talk to them, analyse how they learn, how they work. Learn from their life. And use my will power to try and reach that position.

Life can be boring sometimes, but...

One of my friends tells me that she is bored from life. Now I am not going to give some advice saying that life is not boring or anything because I can't preach even to save my own life. But it is true when it is said that life is what we make of it. Yes life can get boring because of the monotony in it. Doing the same things day after day can cause boredom. So what to do when such days come biting at you.

Now these are not solutions I suggest but those that have been given by wise people over the generations. One suggestion is to do something new and different everyday. Now by new I don't mean going on top of a mountain and doing a bungee jump. Anything simple is good enough. Trying a new way to reach home. Reading something different you were never interested in. Doing something you would rather dislike are some of the things that might be suggested.

At times we also feel that life sucks. Well, maybe it does. But it only does because we see it that way. We want a lot of things from life. Some want money, some want happiness, some want love, etc, etc. Believe me if we really want something, humans have a great capacity to achieve it. But there is a catch. Most of the times, we will not get it at the first try. And it's not that we f.ail. Every failure is a milestone to teach us somethings. It's like trying to find a destination. And we reach a dead end. We don't just sit and cry at that end. We go back some distance and then try a different way which may lead us to our destination.

Seems like I preached a lot of stuff and you may consider me an optimist guru. But on the contrary, I am more of a realist. Whenever I try doing anything in life, I expect that failures can be a part of it rather than always expecting that I will succeed. But then when I fail at something, it doesn't seem so bad because I knew the possibility was always there. So I accept it and try to rectify the situation as much as I can and get back to try and reach ny goal.

So the bottom line my friend is that life can be boring sometimes, but you have a beautiful mind to come out of that boredom.

Lazy Programmer

They say a lazy programmer is a good programmer. Because such programmers use their minds to minimize their work that to just do rigorous hard work. Most of the software problems can be solved by either of two methods. One is to try a lot of permutations and combinations. The other is to first sit down and analyse the different possible solutions and then go for the most optimal one. Each has it's own positive and negative traits. The good and lazy programmers know exactly what to choose or rather what combinations to choose depending on the time and technical constraints.

Lazy programmers really hate to do repetitive stuff. So here's what they will do. Whenever there is a problem, try to find already existing solutions to that problem and solve it. If the solutions do not exist, they break the problem into many smaller problems and try to find if solutions exist for the smaller ones. Lazy programming does not mean not doing work but it means doing smart work and concentrating on stuff which will enable them to learn something new rather than repeat the same work which they already know. This helps them to concentrate on finding solutions to newer problems than going into a monotonous loop of doing that which is already done.

One example can be provided with STL in C++. Suppose we have a task of maintaining a dynamic list of entries of the employees in an organization and processing that list. A programmer who does not know about STL will start writing his own logic, probably linked list implementation. After he spends time in that, he will have to test and debug the errors from that. Still it might contain bugs. A lazy smart programmer will use STL, probably vectors or linked lists. He saves his time of implementation of linked lists by using existing code. And there will be no major bugs in it since it is provided by the ANSI standard and already tested. So he saves additional time. Now he can concentrate on processing that list and complete his work in a fraction of a time than the first programmer. This helps him to finish his work on time with good quality and provides him time to perform the tasks he enjoys.

So be a programmer but be lazy and be smart.

Best friends

Last weekend as some of my friends will have known I had spent time introspecting upon the concept of best friends. The only way to get more information was to ask some friends what best friends means to them. Now you may ask why best friends when we have friends. Well, seems like one best friend is more precious than a 100 friends put together.

Now I will just put a gist of the points that seem to validate this statement.

1)Being there:
Most important thing I found was that best friends are there for each other. By being there I mean physically, mentally, emotionally or all put together. If one wants to share his life whether good or bad, best friends are always available. There is no wait for some time or wait till tomorrow. Best friends seem to have an instinct not to encroach on each other's time but at the same time they seem to know to be there for each other whenever the need for it arises. And that is what makes best friends, always ready to provide a shoulder to lean on to, always ready to listen.

2)In touch:
Best friends are always in touch with each other. Many a times best friends communicate with each other on a daily basis. As I mentioned sharing life seems a priority for them. But then I also found out that best friends might not be constantly in touch whenever boundaries like long physical distances are present. But they seem to make up for it through other means of communication and really make it count whenever they communicate.

3)Have fun:
Best friends have a lot of fun together. There is no disappointment most of the time. As I mentioned best friends seem to have an instinct on what time is favorable for them. Imagine wanting to go to a movie or a picnic and being sure that you best friend will always be ready to go with you anywhere. A best friend sees no better way to spend time than with his friend. That is so very cool :)

4)No boundaries:
This is something I think about. I heard best friends have no boundaries. By boundaries I mean age, gender, religion, etc. While many best friends share a lot of their characteristics and interests, it is also that such things are not necessary and a lot many people are best friends because they be there for each other. Even when their ideas and views differ their hearts do not.

I'm sorry if I left out some points but right now I can recall the above ones. Thanks to friend Heena for kind of encouraging me to write this post about best friends.

I love tea breaks

By tea break, I mean the break that we generally have in offices. It's been almost four and a half years (and three companies) since I started working as a professional. And of the things that I remember about those companies, the first thing that comes to my mind are the tea breaks.

The first company had a hectic schedule of 12 hours per day for 6 days a week, so tea breaks were inevitable. What made it special was that we had to make our own tea using the tea bags and the tea would turn out pathetic thanks to our culinary skills :P So we would end up going to the roadside tapri (roadside tea stall in Mumbai style slang) :) Several times we even managed to take our Japanese bosses to that tapri to have adrak wali chai, at their expense of course :D

The second company was a little different. Tea would be brought twice a day on to our desks :)
But even here we would go and enjoy tea breaks in the canteen in the adjacent building.

The third company (which I am currently working in) has an excellent shelter for tea breaks in an open space which I really enjoy (even though the tea sucks) :) Sharing time with some of my closest friends surely makes going to office a less heavy burden.

Best thing about tea breaks is the bonding that it creates among the co-workers. I have met some of the most wonderful people during my work and I have known a lot about them especially during tea breaks. Whether there is some bug irritating the hell out of you or a cracking joke that cheers your heart, everything has been experienced in tea breaks.

So here's to all you tea break lovers, CHEERS to a cup of tea :)