Being with friends

Comparing the act of giving with the act of taking is a bit tricky. You of course gain by taking, but you might gain by giving as well. And if you believe that you gain immensely by the act of giving, welcome to the world of friends. Giving out a smile, giving out some beautiful words, giving out a kind gesture, giving a little help is all it takes …

Friends make us grow. The act of giving entails the act of taking. For somebody to take, somebody has to give. The mutuality of belief in giving is what can forge the bonds of friendship and the act of giving and receiving is what can set the ball in motion. Careful analysis, planning, execution is more of a professional concept, while friend zone is more about being impetuous, being instinctive and at the same time, knowing what is good and what will be beneficial. The best part of friends is they will make you grow, just through some random act of bonhomie.

The necessity of friends is primordial but just gets lost sometimes in the world of pressures and stresses, where we are all out to make a living for ourselves and just end up drowning ourselves in the waves of competition. If we have more competitors than friends, we are assured of growth, but if we manage to have more friends in our lives, we are assured a piece of peace and harmony. As we move higher and higher in the hierarchy, lesser and lesser becomes the friends circle. Friends simply seem to phase out of our daily lives and we have the world of peers, juniors, seniors and bosses all around us. All we need, in reality, is just friends.

 
            The joy of an unselfish act of goodness cannot be measured. The more the friends around, the more the positivity and the more shining the light around appears. Strive to be a friend and the world smiles back !!

Three Innings : Do you look forward to the sunrise?

I think I can roughly divide a day in three innings – the start of the day, the day, the end of the day. And the cycle repeats all over again. The question is ‘Do you look forward to the sunrise?’. Honestly, I don’t. I get up, get ready for the work, work throughout the day and spend the rest of the evening at home doing yoga and some family time. But, do I look forward to any part of the day – Well, I guess ‘It’s a No’. Making it very clear - I enjoy it, definitely do; but I don’t look forward to it, I never have. I have never and I don’t yearn yet to look at the sunrise.

Taking the analogy a step forward – our life can be divided in three innings : readying yourself for the job, the mid-life of doing the job and the final post-job innings. And the same question - do I look forward to any particular inning? Well, I guess ‘It’s a No’. Making it very clear – I enjoy it, I definitely do; but I don’t look forward to it, I never have. It’s time to look forward to the sunrise, the day, the sunset and the night.

I am probably at noon of my life and what will it mean to look forward to the next inning? I am deeply thinking about retirement planning – makes me feel as if my third inning is more of an unwinding part of the day and this doesn’t make me look forward to it. What would make me look forward to the post noon, the sunset, the evening, the night and to the very enthralling and ensuing, next sunrise. A sunrise should not start in the bedroom, the noon in the stress, the sunset in your car and there shouldn’t be a tired evening and definitely not, should be a disturbed night. The irony is ‘how do we look forward to sunrise?’ is not a difficult one to answer but it just doesn’t get asked and subsequently, is probably not going to be answered.

         The energy in your life is what will make you tick. It takes a lot to live life positively, to create positive experiences and simply, being positive is a whole different ball game. Welcoming sunrise is the next step, but if so less people are able to do it, then hopefully it doesn’t turn out to be difficult than anticipated !

Was it worth?

As I take a pause and go about writing another blog, I have a question. Was it worth writing all the blogs I have been writing and bombarding the mail boxes?

The topics ranged from the north pole to the south pole. It started from writing articles and emailing. Now, I have converted all my writings to blogs. I got feedback, comments, appreciations, a little bit of peace of mind plus I can call myself a blogger now. Having said all of this, I still wonder was it worth it?

Thinking more on these lines, although I am thinking ‘Has the past 6 months of blogging been worth it?’, I am realizing I don’t question/analyze the worth of my time, my life. Starting the blog has really been a chance event and it has made me ask myself ‘Has my life been worth it?’ – It’s turning out to be an interesting blog. May be it’s worth it.

It makes me question – have I made some difference or have I just lived my life, centered around me, my needs, my problems, my wishes and my desires. It makes me think will I make some difference moving ahead or will it be centered around me, my needs, my problems, my wishes and my desires.

                My blogging has been worth it, if it made you think positively a bit, if it made a tiny difference in your mindset, if it made you live differently, may be even just for few moments. It would have done it’s purpose. Questioning the worth of life is entirely different ball game. Some say to evaluate your ‘circle of influence’. It looks like it is much tougher to have a life which is worth it.

                I honestly don’t know what I have been doing and what purpose I intend to fulfil. What will be the appraisal of my life, right now and at the end of my life. Am I just doing my profession and trying to find ways to live a comfortable and happy personal life? It doesn’t feel to be worth it.. probably leaving aside just my family. I am not sure how many people desire my company and how many will miss my company if they are not going to have it any further. I am not sure if I am making much of a difference to quite a few. It’s an open question and sadly, the answer that I am hearing back inside me is not a soothing one. But, yes.. I know people have helped me and are helping me grow into something of a better being and I hope I can make some difference out there and be missed, whenever I will be no longer accessible.

                May be, it will be worth it !!

People, Finances and Growing

Diwali is just going by and being fresh from worshipping Goddess Laksmi (the goddess of wealth), I think it will be interesting to pen a few thoughts and words about money. An acquaintance used to say “Money is not god, but money is no lesser than a god as well !!” I think – How True !!

My wife and me often discuss – “what is more crucial in life : People or Money”? A probably cheeky but reasonable answer might be – “People who can generate money”. Money is one aspect of life and there are times when it has no substitute. At the same time, people are another aspect of life and there are times when there is no substitute. Are we not thinking just about life of people? Life exists without money and life also exists without people.

The answer to the question “what is more crucial in life?” has different answers – different persons might have different answer at the same time and same person might have different answers at different times. In a nutshell, both are important, definitely important. Although it seems to be an unfair and unreasonable question, the question keeps cropping up and we have to take decisions – people around versus the money. Don’t we spend more time getting educated for jobs and don’t we spend more time at jobs earning money than with the people closer to us? Doesn’t the house, the car we own and the job we do define us?

Probably, a more comprehensive answer to this question of life is – “There is much more to life than people and money”. The people around us are defining factors of our life and money engulfs us as well as enables us in our lives. We have to take good care of people, we have to ensure good flow of money PLUS there has to be much more to life. There is a house to be purchased, a car to be owned, retirement planning to be done, child education to be taken care of, life insurance to be addressed, health insurance to be bought, there is so much. There is a family, there are friends, there are relatives, there are peers, there are bosses, there is a society, there is quite a lot.

          The fun of life and the growing begins only once we can take care of ourselves, people and the money. It is important to have just the right combination of everything to ensure a smooth journey through our lives. If you don’t put the people and money first, rest assured you will have a bumpy ride – which again is not really bad, if you can achieve something which is worth it !!

Cocoon, Caterpillar and Butterfly

The ‘Random forest’ algorithm is an ensemble learning method for classification, regression and other tasks, that operate by constructing a multitude of decision trees at training time and outputting the class that is the mode of the classes(classification) or mean prediction(regression) of the individual trees.

The above is understandable only if you have some background of machine learning. We have an entire generation of engineers who have just not worked on machine learning, but are experts in artificial intelligence. There are experts in digital image analysis, natural language processing, bot building, Alpha beta pruning, etc. just to name a few areas of artificial intelligence.

            

                Having started on a relatively technical context, let’s get in the context of the blog – ‘Cocoon, Caterpillar and Butterfly’. We have a world of ‘developed nations’ who are busy dealing with the problems of scientific and technical prowess, while we also have a world, the world of ‘developing nations’ who are bound by the problems of life – the human life. The problems of hunger, the problems of poverty, the problems of casteism, the problems of reservations, the problems of making the ends meet in the day-to-day life.

                

                Coming closer to the world around – the software world, we have a world comprising of ‘developed professionals’ who are busy dealing with growing as professionals – doing the cutting edge work, honing the ‘niche skills’ while we also have another world, the world of ‘developing professionals’ who are bound by the problems of the life – the processional life. The problems of peer pressure, the problems of appraisals, the problems of job hopping, the problems of making the salaries making the ends meet in the day-to-day life.

                There is a saying ‘An average performer performs great in a great environment while a great performer performs average in an average environment'. The interesting part of the article is that the key of transforming from a ‘developing professional’ to ‘developed professional’ is hidden somewhere in the transformation from belonging in the ‘developing nation’ world to the ‘developed nation’ world.

                There is no free lunch anywhere in the world and only the journey can lead to a destination. The caterpillar has to struggle and survive the life in a cocoon to become the butterfly. A butterfly is a lovely, colorful, beautiful creature. The colors, the beauty, the loveliness are not only the resultant of caterpillar life but also the beginning of the life of a butterfly; till then it was just a caterpillar.