Understanding
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Well most old-time friends who get in touch after a long interval, have that familiar question:
*How come you're not yet in the IAS?
*What happened, when did you move away from conflict resolution?
*You're supposed to be working for the society right, so what's this you're doing now?
... and so on.
Right since childhood, when that innocous question, "Son, what do you want to do?" was popped, my answer was almost always IAS. And yes IAS it was going to be till school and even in college (though by then the resolve was weakening).
And then of course conflict resolution. At 19, I was on the Steering Committee of the apex body for conflict resolution in the Asia-Pacific, member of so many other bodies in the field. It could be just-about a perfect launch pad...and maybe it even fitted perfectly with IAS...
But by then a personal realisation had started taking form, something that has gradually taken the shape of a conviction.
The most important change required is in Understanding. Implementation and the other things of course are very important too...without them, how will the world ever feel the change? Yet, understanding the unknown or the imperfectly known...that's the first step. It's almost always the new understanding that sets in motion the revolution...creates the maximum long term impact...and of course is so much fun. :-)
As Einstein famously remarked when rejecting the offer to be president of Israel,
"Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity."
Opinions would differ on this and it's impossible to make a judgement (who's lived to eternity ;-)), yet on the whole, I'd tend to agree with that wise old man's wise saying. :)
Well most old-time friends who get in touch after a long interval, have that familiar question:
*How come you're not yet in the IAS?
*What happened, when did you move away from conflict resolution?
*You're supposed to be working for the society right, so what's this you're doing now?
... and so on.
Right since childhood, when that innocous question, "Son, what do you want to do?" was popped, my answer was almost always IAS. And yes IAS it was going to be till school and even in college (though by then the resolve was weakening).
And then of course conflict resolution. At 19, I was on the Steering Committee of the apex body for conflict resolution in the Asia-Pacific, member of so many other bodies in the field. It could be just-about a perfect launch pad...and maybe it even fitted perfectly with IAS...
But by then a personal realisation had started taking form, something that has gradually taken the shape of a conviction.
The most important change required is in Understanding. Implementation and the other things of course are very important too...without them, how will the world ever feel the change? Yet, understanding the unknown or the imperfectly known...that's the first step. It's almost always the new understanding that sets in motion the revolution...creates the maximum long term impact...and of course is so much fun. :-)
As Einstein famously remarked when rejecting the offer to be president of Israel,
"Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity."
Opinions would differ on this and it's impossible to make a judgement (who's lived to eternity ;-)), yet on the whole, I'd tend to agree with that wise old man's wise saying. :)
posted by Ayan Bhattacharya @ 22:33
2 Comments:
At 12:13 pm, January 23, 2006,
pentium77 said…
"Although doing great work takes less discipline than people think-- because the way to do great work is to find something you like so much that you don't have to force yourself to do it-- finding work you love does usually require discipline. Some people are lucky enough to know what they want to do when they're 12, and just glide along as if they were on railroad tracks. But this seems the exception. More often people who do great things have careers with the trajectory of a ping-pong ball. They go to school to study A, drop out and get a job doing B, and then become famous for C after taking it up on the side. "
Full article at :-
http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html
At 3:52 pm, January 23, 2006,
Ayan Bhattacharya said…
Very true
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