Being an engineering student, I prefer to define Situation as “a phenomenon that happens because something happens”. Well, engineering student always used to define anything in this format.
Leaving it apart, situation is what makes a man. One big question I have asked myself over the years is this “Does something happen in someway because it was meant to happen that way, or because we made it happen that way?”. (Even now, when I am phrasing this question, I do not know why I made it look like I am being biased). Alright, now suppose it has happened, then what? The way we act to it determines who we are. The way we act may be determined by our attitude towards life, our aim/goal/destiny/whatever-you-call-it, or what result we want to get from the situation, our purpose of life, and much more.

“You always have a choice”, people say. “Mine was taken”, people respond. That is all fine. But one person who dedicated his life towards this research is Dr.Viktor E. Frankl, authour of Man’s Search for Meaning and father of Logotherapy. He is my favorite philosopher. The main point of Frankl philosophy is “Life does not owe you happiness, it offers you meaning.”

Meaning is found by

1.creating a work or doing a deed

2.By experiencing something or encountering someone

3.By the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.

To find meaning is the purpose of life.

Situation is what triggers a thought inside us and thereby an emotion (Well, unless you are on drugs). Situation gives experience, teaches and makes a man. “Situation does not reveal a man. It makes a man” – this one sentence gives huge self-confidence. Deep inside us, enclosed in a thick shell, lies a thought of regret that we do not wish to reveal or rub on it. The regret may be due to something that we did wrong or said wrong, knowingly or unknowingly. One thing is for sure, you cannot go back and change what you have done. But you can change its course, you have control over it. When the next, time a situation occurs and you want to respond to it, you have a choice of how to act.

People might think of you in any way. You have no control over what people think of you. But you have control over how you make them to think of you, the next time. So ultimately you have a choice! There lies a path of optimism before us. (More about optimism later.) Whatever has gone wrong, you can make a difference by choosing the way you act.

(But sometimes, having a lot of choices, lessens your level of satisfaction. More later)

Finally, it zeroes up to this – “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.” – Friedrich Nietzsche.

Will you respond? If you do respond, how will it be?

Whatever you do, Have a great day!

ManoRanjan

I am writing this post in a full mood of angryness. I am very very short tempered. I usually do not get angry when I am alone. If I do get angry when I am alone, the reason will be due to someone or something that I do not have control over.  Angryness is completely induced or observed by us. Situations and states of the world are right in front of us. It completely depends only upon ourselves to become angry or not. We do not have control over anything that happens around us. But we have complete control and freedom over what action we choose and how we respond. As, Victor Frankl says in his book Man’s Search for Meaning,

“Everything can be taken from a man but …the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any ‘how’! “

The whole point and philosophy of dealing situations, he describes here.

Anyway, when I get angry, by angry I mean real angry, as opposed to fake angry, where I do not really get angry, but the outer shell of myself thinks I am angry and acts accordingly, ok wait.

When I really get angry, I usually get more productive. (proof: this blog post ). I am at full concentration level, eyes wide open, heart beat slightly above normal, and at the same time planning very carefully each step I need to make to overcome the problem. I begin to analyse all holes in the solution and perfectly correct them. I become more alert. This somewhat adds to the “Oh, I am actually useful!” factor in me. Increases my self confidence.

I get idea sparks when I plan angryily. Some conclusions I arrive at, do stay in memory for a long time and come back to me when I meet a similar situation later.

Alright, I am a little okay now.

Well, I have seen a lot of people do weird things when they get angry. I think, they do things weird not because of angryness at that point, but due to all kinds of thoughts, ego, emotions about the people involved in the situation that made him or her angry. I never act weird or do public stunts when I get angry. Usually, no one can guess if I am angry because, I happen to have a grave look always. It is like someone is playing an “Attack Release” game with me.

After it fades away, I am able to sleep peacefully and if the angryness lasts till the morning (problem not solved), I am able to wake up with full concentration. Actually, angryness is useful in someway.

As they say, “Circumstances do not reveal a man, they make him”. I completely agree with it. They way we choose to respond and react, makes us who we are.

I have more to tell about circumstances. I will continue in the next post.

Have a great day!

ManoRanjan

ManoRanjan

I had much belief in astrology. I used to read the astrology column of the newspaper whenever I had a chance. Once my grandfather happened to visit me one morning. He is around 65 years old. He was reading the newspaper. On the left side column of the newspaper was the astrology part. And as usual I wanted to read it and sat left to him and read it. And as usual, my sign was predicted to be bad that day.

On reading I got upset and I just asked my grandfather casually, “Do you believe in all these?” I asked.

“Why?”, he asked back.

“Well, today its written that its bad for me.”, I said.

“Well, then don’t believe!”, he said.

I was kind of struck.

I asked “But, what if it was written its good for me?”.

“Simple! Believe what is written good for you. Don’t believe if its bad!”.

Then I got it. I can believe whatever pleases me and reject all those that don’t! After all, they’re just predictions. They don’t have anything to do with my life. It’s my life and it’s my choice that day.

I choose to be whoever or whatever or however I want to be this day. Period. No questions asked.

Its my life and its my choice.

Anybody can say anything or predict anything of imagine anything. I cannot stop them from doing it. But I can choose the way I want do things and live my life. (As Victor Frankl says in ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’. Anything can be snatched from a man. Anything but the freedom to choose his way of action …)

And from that day, I never read astrological predictions!

Footnote: A lot of choices in life can lead to confusions. As Barry Schwartz says in his book “The Paradox of choice”. At a TED conference, he discusses the advantages of having a lot of choices in life and the disadvantages of it. He says having a lot of choices raises our level of expectations and proves it with a research study.
Have a great day!

ManoRanjan

All of us were burnt out after finishing our internal exams. As we are computer science engineering graduates and we are supposed to keep learning new things, our college CIR team had arranged for a guest lecture by Mr.N.S.Parthasarathy, co-founder of MindTree Ltd.

None of us were in the mood to sit there and listen to him talking. But we had to. And so it began. In the end I was completely surprised by the insight he gave us on the industry and what the IT industry expects from aspiring candidates. A short excerpt from his lecture:

He emphasized of three things: Knowledge, Skill and Attitude.

1.Knowledge

Knowledge is what we have learnt in our curriculum. Our syllabi. Our four year, eight semester engineering course.

2.Skill

Skill is what we acquire by ourselves when we do that “self-learning”. Our skill-sets show our self-;earning capability. And in the ever-changing field of computer science, self-learning is required to update ourselves.

3.Attitude

Attitude is what we show, when we have performed our best in everything we do – learning to gain knowledge and acquiring skills. He says, people who have the “GO GET IT” attitude will succeed.

Then we had a question-answer round. One of my friends asked him the story behind their company logo. The story was quite fascinating.

They started the company around 50 crores of venture capital fund. When they were designing a logo, the had their DNA in their mind – Imgination, Action and Joy. They went to a school for the challenged children in banglore and asked a group of around 10 children to design a logo. A 17 year old boy had designed their logo like this -

Blue color line growning up – Imagination

Red background – Action

Yellow bubbles – Joy

And thus their logo! They wanted to convey a message to the world from their logo – That we can learn a lot even from people like these children. A very noble message indeed. Quite fascinating too. With these, he emphasized more on “keeping ourselves updated” in the ever changing field of technology.

I realized – this saturday morning was fully worth being burnt out.

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