Proof reading

This is something i wrote after a break-up.. so it shows that :D but that was long ago.. and Ladies, i'm a good guy :D

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Proofreading

Compatibility vs Incompatibility is a long standing case in human history, at least so long as civilized humans learnt of relationships. And perhaps no one is experienced enough to postulate rules or hypothesize on what works and what not. This is therefore just an account of experience; the essence of hardships, mostly misunderstood as ideal with any relationship and lessons hence learnt. Due to my limited view of the world and biased judgment owing to self-love, I disclaim that I may not always be right. And to quote the great philosopher Bertrand Russell here, I shall not die for my beliefs; for I might be wrong.

By relationship, I do not restrict myself to the one between one and his spouse, or between lovers or friends. All kinds of long standing interpersonal interactions are included in 'relationship' except those with family. Family is circumstantial for good or bad that is. Where as any other relation is a choice we make and needs extra work and attention to keep it running.

To start with, the most crucial mistake and a harbinger to many 'break ups' is lenience. In the bloom of a relationship, love is all around. Many times in this bloom, differences are overlooked. Some of them, in reality are of considerable gravity. Such overlooking puts the grease in the wheels and relationship running. But sooner or later, the bloom withers and these qualities of a person seem not so easy to forgive. So, instead of going through this viscous circle, it’s better to be non-lenient, if not strict in the incipient stages.

Secondly, accepting compromise as a part of life. Though easy to say, its quite difficult to really accept that compromise is a part of life. And then again, the degree to which compromise can be acceptable varies from person to person. Every relationship is based on selfish motives. Although selfishness might seem an unwanted quality, it is so ingrained in human nature that it is omnipresent and omnipotent in every action and relation. To accept that selfishness is inevitable is to stop expecting people to react the way we expect them to, paradoxically, accepting selfishness means accepting that we shall expect others to react in a way that is favorable to us. So perhaps one should categorize expectations into ‘necessities’, ‘comforts’ and ‘luxuries’.

To expect your spouse to understand your every mood and emotion is perhaps a ‘luxury’. To expect a soothing reaction in adverse situations, a ‘necessity’. To expect that he/she receives you the same way as you do may be a ‘comfort’. And so on..

Perhaps categorization of expectations would allow a person to compromise logically. And terms of compromise foreseen are generally easy to accept compared to unforeseen ones. It also allows you to draw the line and say, well such a thing is unacceptable so you have to change or go fishing.

Thirdly, to overcome inertia is a major challenge in any relationship. Inertia to start up and inertia to end a relation are both worse in their own ways. After all, any relationship is to keep you happy. Once you are clear that there is no happiness with a relation, it is useless to expend energy and time on it. Remember, every relation is out of selfish motives; to keep you happy. Of course, in a constructive fashion. To quote Bertrand Russell again, to lead a happy life is to be happy every day.

So, timely decisions are necessary in order to avoid unnecessary pain and discomfort. And the famous ‘better late than never’ works here too! One should also understand that relations are not always time and distance problems. Rarely does the intimacy intensify with time if the people are incompatible in the first place. I agree time will accumulate memories, times spent together but on a careful observation, many of them would be disappointing and things that were wished to never happen. Also, to carry a relationship for the sake of society is a sin. Unfortunately, fear of society is culture. Let us not let this fear consume happiness.

An ideal relationship should be one in which the two involved should have equal say. Freedom is a property they should share equally. On a difference of opinion, they should have a healthy conversation or if necessary, tuition to let the other understand one’s viewpoint. There should be no reservations on the content of sharing. A relationship is really fruitful if you can be just yourself before the other, but sanely so! And when there is true love, this would be a very easy task. In such case, there wouldn’t be dishonesty, lies or things to hide. This is the fourth, but a high priority ingredient of a successful relationship; honesty. Although old, the saying still holds good, honesty is the best policy.

...to be continued

On satisfaction in research

The following ‘muses’ are my view point based on my limited experience with research through a little more than a yearin a corporate research center and about a couple of years of research that resulted in my graduation. This is a personal opinion and therefore is ill-formed, biased and limited in its perspective. And I’m sharing it purely out of interest in sharing, with no ideas or thoughts on improving or judging current day research.

I do not know if Newton was known as researcher by the time he was working out calculus or if Galileo or Kepler was known as one. But to my opinion, what they did was research. They investigated physical phenomena or explored space and invented necessary language to express it. In case of Newton it was gravity, calculus and in case of Keppler, the laws of motion. And many more like that. As I said before, I’m stunted by my knowledge in finding better examples.

Research changed its form, capabilities and scope over time. In those days, research was out of curiosity and it resulted in pleasure. As Feynman puts it, it was the pleasure of finding things out. The intentions, aspirations and foresight were limited to the point of finding it out and hence the focus. The results were marvellous and carried a kind of beauty and generality and were open to change if attacked by counter arguments of sufficient potential.

The founders of science had a pleasure trip. They did not care about the monetary and societal implications of their work. One might argue that it was easy in those days to make a breakthrough discovery in science because many of the fundamentals were not yet formed. But even so, it required clear and original thinking to come up with rules based on observations all by themselves. So did Mechanics, Electricity, Magnetism, Thermodynamics happened.

The science was entirely mathematical; and mathematics, simple. For that matter, a majority of fundamental properties are but constants defined to satisfy equations. Otherwise, how can one define mass? Mass is but a constant that satisfies the equation ‘F=ma’ as defined by Newton. Its just a constant, a notion, as ‘m’ is in ‘y=mx’. Or so was entropy in Thermodynamics. As Stephen Hawking puts it, entropy is just a matter of notion. Reasonably consequently, the notion of unidirectional arrow of time is also a justification to support the asymmetry in human perception of past and future.

Perhaps in the 18^th Century, the notion of engineering has swept in. To my understanding, engineering is application of physics or rather physical laws to make life better. Engineering in many ways set or limited the scope of growth of research. Research was all focused towards making better automobiles, electricity and so on.

The liberty in thinking and exploring new avenues or ideas turned even limited with the advent of corporate research. Here, the researchers are but a part of a manufacturing chain where all they concentrate is on minute incremental work to the existing product or technology. I agree that one need not undermine the effects of these minor increments. What is really bothersome in this chain is that the researcher has no liberty to focus his effort or drive with passion an idea to reality. Because he is just one in the chain, his ideas need not necessarily fructify even though they might be good. A good example would be the invention of GUI by a researcher in Xerox, which would have never turned out to be an ingredient of a product if Steve Jobs were not to pick it up.

The point I’m trying to make here is, as soon as engineering swept in, research was forced to justify itself on the grounds of whether or not it is useful to the society; and in case of corporate research, the justification is in terms of the business impact and profit for the company. The capacity and capability of scientific experiments was more or less aligned towards delivering an important and relevant goal and hence stunted growth in all of its possibilities.

Now, an immediate question can be as to what are those fields where science is terribly restricted. And I will be just as stumped as a theistic, when asked to show God. Being a part of the system, the current day, I cannot make out what would be outside. What I cannot understand, I obviously cannot explain. But still, the argument is simple and logical; as long as you are focusing on one thing, perhaps very justly so, you are missing on the liberty to explore the rest.

I’m not saying that the liberty depleted in entirety or that free explorers of science or nature do not exist anymore. Those who do so, unfortunately form a minority despite the humungous increase the percentage of population that are acquainted to science in the modern day.

So in this present scenario, on what basis should a ‘researcher’ derive satisfaction from his work? Because it is all hazy as to what ‘end goal’ is he working towards? Should he come up with evasive counter –logical statements like those that support existence of God as made by intelligent God-men or should he accept his limitations and be termed as a ‘resentful employee’, thoroughly disappointed with his current status and work scope?

.. to be continued