The Hang Up!

The one thing that I think we all generally take time to master is the art of recognizing the genuineness in a person or rather seeking the true face behind the hidden mask. Everyone wears the mask, some for the fear of getting hurt while most for their own selfish gains from others. How to differentiate in between these two people?

Enter: The theory of "The Hang up". What a weird name? Is it catchy just for the sake of catching some attention? Well, I agree it is catchy, and it did not have a name till like 2 minutes back. But its a real theory, and its my own. Let me explain. It emerges from my observations back in India, where many people are not afraid to show you their true face. No politeness, no courtesy and no care at times. We all have these annoying callers on the phone, trying to sell us new cellphone plans, new internet, new insurance; right? Now towards explaining my theory, let me put forward a simple talk in between a typical seller and well...me.

Conversation #1
Caller: Hello Sir, how are you doing today?
Me: (Hating the small talk) Yes, I am doing good..tell me
Caller: I am calling from ABC Insurance and we have 3 new schemes.....(goes on about the schemes, while I try hard to interrupt), are you interested Sir?
Me: N.. (Yes, I did not finish the "o" of the "No" yet)
Caller: (Hangs up) Click./ Or explains why you should listen to him
Either case, he/she does not get the point or try to understand you. End of story

So what' so great about this so called call? It's simply normal. No, not to me. Let me give you another example of a call.

Conversation #2
Caller: Hello Sir, I am calling from XYZ telephone company, and we have 3 new schemes, do you want to know about them?
Me: Sure, tell me (Not that I am interested, but his courtesy makes me want to listen to it)
Caller: Scheme1.., Scheme2.., Scheme3..Do you like them sir?
Me: Well, actually I am pretty happy with my current plan and I don't think I want to change it.
Caller: Okay Sir, but in the future if you do feel like changing it, we have our service center at xyz road near you.
Me: Sure, thanks
Caller: Thank you sir, have a good day.

Now, most of you might have got my point by now. Every one hangs up in the end, but the way you do it makes a whole lot of difference to you. One leaves you cursing these cold callers and one leaves you kinda happy about a good conversation. Hence the name. The point being, why would I want to buy a product when they would not even spare you a few seconds to say "bye"? In fact, the way they treat me after I say no (if I got to ever finish it) is the way they will treat me when I am with them. To say, the way they hang up tells you what kind of an organization they are. Its such a good and clear way of choosing. I would think about the second caller's company/product some time down the line, but definitely not the first one. They simply cut me off their list. Their happy little greetings suddenly converted into something unpleasant. Why would you choose them, right?

The same extends to people. There are some who will simply abandon you and move on the minute they realize that you are not of use to them anymore, and then there are the ones who will still be nice to you even when they know you are leaving. Both will leave you anyways, but one will simply cut you off their list and they would not want to be nice to you again. The way they leave, makes a difference.

Makes you want to reject everyone who asks something from you just to judge them, isn't it? Though I am not saying that, there are smaller clues in the way people react when you are unable to make them happy. They way they treat you, the way they talk to you and about you to others, which gives out all your clues. And once you have mastered your art of reading these subtle little hints, you know what you have; a person with a heart of gold or a person with a custom gold plated heart. Happy Hang up!

The drive for perfection

Ever realize how we always tend to plan things to live a perfect life "in the future"? Ask yourself. Is your present a plan of the past? Perhaps not. Then why do we still plan for that future, that Utopian life that both you and I somewhere know we are never going to live? Its cause we have this "hope" that "If I start doing things right from now on, I will eventually achieve it down the line". But the reality is that you or me doing things "right" depends on a lot of factors around us, which are usually never perfect.

I thought a great deal about this, and have been doing so since a long time, with absolutely no solutions to convince me. I also talked to a lot of people trying to fix this puzzle. A few gave me answers. And a few gave me solutions. And the one's who gave me solutions never ever gave me any answers. The solution was absolutely simple. There is no point running behind something that we somewhere know is almost impossible to achieve. And no, I am not talking about compromising your dreams or objectives either. I am simply talking about adaptability. Plan, but at the same time, don't live it so much in your mind that you allow reality to break the dream all together. Rather, keep it simple, keep it agile. Keep it open to change. Change the route when reality shatters one. And keep doing this till you reach your goal.

Now that I talked about one factor of flexibility, let me talk about the other factor, i.e. "perfection" or "The final point of conclusion". My professor once narrated us this joke which summed up what engineers are made of. And it made me realize how this same principle can be applied to daily life.

So it goes like this: There are 2 guys who are supposedly "horny as hell". One mathematician and one engineer. And at a considerable distance in front of them are 2 hot sorority girls. Now the rule of the game being, at any given time, a guy can only travel half the distance in between himself and the girl. And then after he reaches that half distance, cover only half the distance in between his new position and the girl. And so on and so forth. When the game starts, the engineer starts running. 1st half distance, 2nd half distance and so on. When the engineer has covered quite some distance, he looks back to see the mathematician leave the game and go back. The reason? The mathematician knows that covering half distances will never exactly get him to the exact point where the girl stands. And the engineer still continues. Why? Cause he knows that he will not reach the exact point, but will still reach close enough for "all practical purposes". After laughing over this sexually suggestive joke, It dawned upon me that the professor actually managed to quantify the spirit of us fellow engineers. The spirit of never giving up, the spirit of aiming for perfection, and continuing even when they know half way down that perfection won't be achieved.

Besides being happy for having saved the face of our profession, this simple joke gave me a whole lot of things to think about recently. What I realized is that life is never perfect. We dream, we act towards our dream and then most of us like the mathematicians, give up half way towards the dream. I understood that I need to be an engineer not just by profession but by character as well. That we may not exactly achieve what we set out for, but sometimes what we end up with when we are around the area of our interest might just be a custom fit for what we are and what we never expected would be so satisfying.

I concluded one thing and one thing alone from all this unceasing thinking: Adaptability and the drive to move forward; with curiosity to know why others stop but to still keep moving at the expense of being called a fool is what makes or breaks your dream.

A well deserved painful life

Somehow today I feel like touching the topic of pain and joy. Something that we want to avoid and keep to ourselves respectively. "Respectively"; that's the word that's of importance here to most of us. Or so we are made to believe. That we should be looking for and something that's good, something that makes us and others happy. But over a certain of period of time, I realized that pain is inevitable and rather a very necessary entity in life. 

Let me give an example. Throughout my curriculum in my Masters, life has been crazy. Assignments and projects made me stay up till 3 & 4 AM, and the early morning job gave me 1- 11/2 hours of sleep kinda just enough for sleep to prove its point throughout the day that "yes, we rule you". And then there are no excuses. Whether at work or attending lectures after that, or crosschecking your concepts before you click on that "Submit" button when submitting assignments online. There is simply no excuse, no matter how hard you try. 2-3 days in a week without sleep at night or few hours of sleep had become a thumb rule. And then comes along this semester. With simply research to finish off the course, there are no assignments, no labs, no deadlines. "I would be so happy with absolutely no pressure in life", was my presumption. It was fun initially, no much work, no worries. And then it starts getting on your nerves. And that's when I realized how much I loved that life even though I used to crib, complain and wait for that golden time of relaxation then. And it further reinforced my belief that pain by itself is what makes this life worth living. Pain is necessary for relief to make its presence felt. Relief and comfort by itself have no meaning at all in this life. Not without their complements.

And I realized that this is what our life is all ever about. There are downs and then there are ups which we crave for. If you understand simple high-school physics, then let me try explaining this concept. Consider your life as a fast moving vehicle on a straight line. Is it possible to suddenly go upwards? No. Not without a depression. The depression exists only to thrust you upwards. Get the point? We would never ever know what "good" is; unless we know what "bad" is like. And even if we had all good in life, we would never really value it. And its always the rare and hard to find things that are treasured in life. Whether it is money after a series of misery, a love after a series of heartbreaks, or success after a long series of rejections and dejection's. Its inescapable and its necessary. 

And then comes along the times of the better, the craved for opposites. Does it not become surprisingly easy to go towards what we want then? There are no hesitations, no second thoughts, no uncertainty. Its all so clear, as if you could somehow feel what that guy up there has in mind for you. Was this possible without the darker side?

The wrong paths are necessary, the pain necessary, the darkness necessary and the uncertainty & worries necessary. Its only after we know what they are that we can recognize their counterparts. And without them life is incomplete and meaningless in a way we could not imagine.