AP is a place to be

 

In July 2021, on an auspicious day
when the moon felt lucky
and the mood was gay
I had jumped into the river AP
to share some words
that constantly circled in the air
like a flock of birds.

I didn't quite know
what to expect
but secretly hoped
that by my post tenth
I will be among the best,
no longer be a ghost
I will be a darling of masses
like a crunchy buttered toast.

And indeed,
on my second post
there came some comments
that were worth some boast.

I said to the self
there you see
you are well on the way
to become a poster child
and will longer be a
lost voice in the wild.

The day dream kept soaring
until I realized
that the comments were
from the group of AP greeters
and there was no need
to get quiet so high;

AP greeters are there
to welcome the newbies
and lend them an ear
and not them peter.

It was a bit of damper
on my dreams of glory
but words persevered
to tell this story.

And with my post 100
to say thank you all
for your comments
and not letting me fall
and more so to say
AP is a place to be
so come and stay. 

Career is not that different from the boiling frog metaphor

 

Arun Kumar

We all have heard the metaphor of a frog in a pan of water sitting on a burner and temperature is slowly being raised by a fraction of a  degree every so often. The metaphor goes that the frog, being a cold-blooded animal, whose body temperature keeps pace with the ambient temperature, would not feel the slow rise in the temperature, will sit placidly in the warming water and will eventually die as its cell functions gradually fail.

Whether the metaphor is true or false, it does not really matter. The point is that this metaphor is used in various contexts that humans, even with much higher levels of cognitive ability compared to a frog, also fail to recognize slow changes even if those changes have adverse influence eventually.

Take the debate about the potential influence of climate change on humans and the environment. A 2 Deg. C change in the mean temperature over 100 years falls in the category of meh, what is the big deal.

Indeed, it is true that gradual changes are hard to perceive on a daily basis, nonetheless, every instant they are happening all around and within us. The basic tenet of living organisms is continuous change.

A few weeks ago, I went on a trip for ten days. When I returned, all of the summer plants in the garden looked so much taller. It was as if they knew I was not around and together they conspired to grow faster and surprise me on my return. And they did. The first sentence I said when I saw them was — look much taller they became in ten days.

I am sure if I had stayed home and watched those plants every day, I would not have perceived their gradual growth. The impression after ten days would have been different, and I would have muttered to myself — are they ever going to grow and bloom before the summer is over?

Life looked through a series of snapshots separated in time gives a different impression than if watched continuously.

I am a victim of imperceptible changes without recognizing their consequences in another important way that catches many of us by surprise. It is how over the years, gradually the work life becomes all-encompassing and ends up becoming our identity, our purpose, and our meaning.

Looking back, I have no idea how and when this transformation happened. Slowly the tentacles of work life edged out other engagements in life.

I used to have time, and an interest in reading and used to read at least 20 books in a year. As years of working life went by that number kept going down. Reading ended up merely flipping through a stack of unread issues of Time (that kept getting deposited in the mailbox on a weekly basis) that I would carry with me on work travels to someplace.

The consequence of complete takeover by the work over all aspects of life became clear when the prospects of leaving work (i.e., retirement) started to become real, and the notion that one day work life will no longer be there came as a rude shock. The realization was like when sometimes we wake up after a deep sleep and for a few moments do not know where we are.

There are no regrets though. Work, and what I did was fun. It was an intellectually satisfying, but it did happen at the expense of edging everything else away. That tide is now receding. It is time to clean up the debris left behind and to pick up the elements that fell off from the former life and stitch them back together.

Only now my eyes and mind are slowly adjusting to a new paradigm in which work is a room in which I enter through a door and at the end of the day leave the room through the same door for a different world. When I leave, I no longer carry any traces with me.

Now I do not check the emails after hours or on weekends and make a concerted effort to read a book each day even if it is a few pages.

Talking about the frog, there is another bit of scary trivia. How does rise in temperature by 1 Deg impacts human body? It raises the metabolic rate by 10%.

Ciao.

Beyond middle age

 

A defining feature
of what to anticipate
beyond middle age
is that
before the soles hit the floor
thoughts wander
whether the wind today
would be from the north
or from yonder
and joints 
will they ache yet again.

You only get one chance

 Arun Kumar

Yvoire Caslte, Lake Geneva

The universe I will not touch is infinitely larger in comparison with what I will see, touch, and smell.

At the end of life, I would only manage to traverse a sliver of this world and would only meander around in the vicinity of an small speck.

If I were to trace the trajectory of all my movements since my birth, most of it would be concentrated around four places I have lived for extended time — two in India, and two in the US.

Coming out of those four points will be occasional wanderings to distant places. Those would be the tails of the frequency distribution of my meanderings. They would be my Black Swans.

Sitting here on the deck of the boat cruising along Lake Geneva I am wondering if those points will even be visible from the international Space Station circling the Earth.

It is the month of May, and we are on a trip to Geneva. In the past couple of days, we walked the old town, visited the St. Pierre Cathedral, took a trip to CERN, went to Carouge (Geneva’s small Italy), and while there, had a wonderful lunch at Indian Rasoi (recommended in the Michelin’s Bib Gourmand list of restaurants).

Today we are taking a boat trip on Lake Geneva to Lausanne and back. The entire trip will take about 7–8 hours. Along the way, we will dock at quaint little towns like Nyon, Yvoire, and Morges to drop and pick passengers, young and old.

As the boat approaches, these places slowly start to emerge. Nyon had a boardwalk with restaurants dotted along it. People were sitting and having a leisurely three course lunch (with crusty bread and an olive dip as a side) or were enjoying a cup of coffee with croissants. In the backdrop there were occasional tall spires of the churches that rise above the rooftops and the green canopy of treetops.

Approaching the town of Yvoire, the ancient castle on the very banks of Lake Geneva starts to shimmer on the distant horizon. After the boat docks, almost the entire contingent of guests on the boat disembarks and treads uphill from the lake towards the town. They all have been reading the same guidebooks and the day trips from Geneva. What gets promoted in their pages becomes a self-perpetuating positive feedback loop.

Throughout the trip other inviting little towns come into view and then recede. Some of these places call me to step off the boat and take a leisurely stroll for an hour or two.

On their own, these towns feel like they would be worth spending some time and getting familiar with. Perhaps, there is a hidden gem in one of its by lanes; a sight that would have made me feel instantly nostalgic as if I had been here before. But I would never know; we stay on the boat and through the camera on the phone try to pin the place in my trajectory of life.

Watching these places come into view and then recede, I feel the gentle ache of time drifting by and of its finiteness. Given the finite time I will only manage to see a few places, get to take in a few experiences. There is so much more I would not see and ever experience.

I would not get down at Nyon and Youvre to spend a day or two each and get familiar with its sights and sounds, and perhaps, savor the feel of cobblestones on our bare soles.

Side by side of that ache there is also a question that accompanies it — How does it matter if I do not see them all? Does it matter more what I missed than what I did get to see in the time I will have in Geneva?

I know the answer, seeing it all really does not matter. Among the infinity of things, what matters more is what I did get to see. The other side is a battle that is already lost — there will always be more to see than I do get to see. That is what infinity is — take something out and what is left is still infinity.

What matters more is that although I cannot see them all but what I do see and experience, I should see and experience, and savor them well. If I do not, what a terrible waste of the sliver of time I have been given it would be.

In that wisdom (which in the past, I have seldom acted on; so much for that), I am reminded of a podcast episode, the subject matter of which was YOLO — You Only Live Once.

The message in the podcast was that the implication of YOLO is not to do as many things as possible because you are going to YOLO and would not get another chance. Instead, make a concerted effort to excel in doing a few activities you get to do because, after all, YOLO would not allow for the luxury of getting another chance of doing something well.

And while listening to that podcast I also learned that the origin of YOLO goes back to the Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart.

Sitting on the deck of the boat, instead of feeling sorry for not being able to spend a day or two in Nyon or in Yvoire, I should feel privileged to be able to see and soak in the beautiful sights of these towns passing by.

I may not get to see it all or do it all and traverse the vast tracts of the universe, but if I try to be fully aware of the small part of the universe I will see, within that lies it’s the pleasure of getting familiar with another kind of infinity.

Ciao.