Computers Are Like Children

 Arun Kumar

 

We live in the era of computers. There is an entire generation of children and young adults that have not seen a world without them. They also cannot comprehend brick and mortar video rental stores. I know, they existed.

World evolves.

15-years back, I used to own a desktop and a laptop. Between them, they constantly sought attention. Various aspects of needing to manage, and to make them function properly, sometimes made me think about the experience of raising children.

The journey of owning a computer started with bringing a new one home. After unpacking, I would place it on the table, step back and admire its shape and fresh out of box "baby" smell. After a few moments of admiration and reveling in the warmth of having a new companion, the journey of raising, teaching, and managing emergencies began.

Everything plugged, and when the index finger reached forward and hit the start button, a low humming of the hard drive spinning up followed. The first breath and we looked forward to many many years of being together.

After a few minutes of hiccuping and steadying the breath, words started popping up on the blue screen. Welcome to Windows. Your eyes to the world beyond, it seemed to whisper.

I was asked to choose a language it will speak; pick a time zone that it will live in.

Getting initiated next required giving it a name. What should I call it? Something mundane like Home-Laptop? Or should I name it after some forgotten love? Or invent something mysterious or esoteric?

Picking up a name required some thought. After all, down the road, we will be on the first name basis. I picked BlueSky.

Few days of saying hellos and getting introduced, exploring through various software that BlueSky came preinstalled, the process of expanding BlueSky's brain and capabilities began. First and foremost, I got BlueSky inoculated with a virus protection. Gave BlueSky a password so strangers cannot intrude on our privacy. I got BlueSky connected with the external world via the wireless.

To BlueSky's whirring and curious brain, I introduced Firefox, Thunderbird, a pdf reader and continued to expand its horizon and capabilities and bring it to a point where we could have creative conversations.

 And slowly time passed, and we started to develop a level of comfort with each other, learn each others quirks. Once a while, BlueSky will throw a tantrum, become forlorn and stop responding. In those moments, I had to reach out to make sure all elements were healthy, let it sleep for a while, and later, wake it up from its well-deserved rest.

But most of the time, BlueSky was a happy, and a content companion.

Many years have gone by, and we have developed comfort being around each other. Only occasionally, I need to give BlueSky booster shots of upgrades or enhance its capabilities, but otherwise, BlueSky, from its humble beginnings, developed into a youthful responsible adult.

Getting a computer, and taking a journey together, is not that different from raising a child.

Choosing the Path of Virtue

 Arun Kumar

 

In the last couple of years, I had some issues related to sleep. Initially, there were occasional sleepless nights. They would be like waking up in the middle of the night, or in the early hours of morning and then not being able to go back to sleep again. Slowly, I became aware that this pattern was repeating more frequently.

As the realization of having trouble going to (and staying) asleep dawned, it increased my level of anxiousness about sleep. Before going to bed, I would start to think about sleep and then try to make concerted efforts to fall asleep.

That was when l lost the automaticity associated with sleep that we have. The rule about sleep is that we go sleep without trying but if we try, it does not happen.

Over months, occasional sleepless nights turned into severe insomnia. There would be 3–4 nights straight when I was not able to sleep. The positive feedback loop between obsessively thinking about sleep but then staying awake kept feeding the monster of insomnia. My lack of ability to sleep also started to touch on other aspects of life.

Somewhere along my search to find a key to resolve my insomnia, I learned about the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). CBT is a technique for consciously intervening to prevent negative responses from occurring that can result from various triggers — a thought of not being able to sleep tonight (the trigger) cascading into fears about the quality of day tomorrow (the negative response).

Upon further reading, I also became aware of the specific CBT approach for Insomnia (CBT-I).

CBT-I utilizes various methods aiming to enhance positive association between bed and sleep in contrast to making bed a battleground for a struggle for sleep. The practice of CBT-I includes (i) developing sleep routines that create a positive association between bed and sleep and (ii) encouraging positive interventions between triggers (associated with the possibility of a sleepless night) and catastrophizing its negative consequences on a host of other life related things. The fear of negative consequences pushes us harder to try to go to sleep, which of course, does not work.

CBT-I is proposed as the first line of defense against insomnia and its practice is documented to alleviate two-thirds to three-fourth cases of insomnia. Following the CBT-I practices in their fullness, however, could be daunting task.

For example, one of the requirements of the CBT-I is to get out of the bed when unable to sleep, which, particularly on cold wintery nights, is no piece of cake.

After learning about the CBT-I, I tried to practice CBT-I for more than a year but kept failing again and again. This was even though I kept reminding myself that a few months of grueling CBT-I routine, which had the potential for getting me out of insomnia, would be a far better return on investment then continuing to live with insomnia itself.

But over and over, I kept failing and kept stumbling on my resolve to follow through the CBT-I program.

I am not a person with a weak will by any chance, but in following CBT-I, I fell victim to a choice guided by our natural preference for selecting the path of least resistance.

In a broad sense, given multiple choices that differ in the amount of effort required, we have a natural tendency to select the option that necessitates least amount of effort.

Various phenomena occurring in nature and in human behavior provide examples for the tendency to follow the path of least resistance. When encountering an obstacle, for example, a large rock, the river opts to go around it. To go the other side of a succession of hills, most hikers may select a path along the trough rather than climbing over the hill .

As for many of our behavioral aspects, it is likely that natural selection guided our preference for choosing the path of least resistance. Why spend precious energy reserves by selecting harder path between two options? Save the resources for when times get tougher.

In trying to follow the CBT-I routine, I leaned towards selecting the path of least resistance. To make matters worse, enveloped in the darkness of the night, I told stories and convinced myself that just for one night it is okay not to follow the hard option of CBT-I. One night lying awake in bed turned into two nights, into a week, and before I knew, a month would go by without making any progress in following CBT-I. Over and over, I failed in giving CBT-I an honest try.

It is remarkably easy not to stay disciplined and to psychologically delude ourselves into opting for easier options.

What also helps is our tendency to go for pleasures of immediate gratification vs opting for activities that offer benefits over a longer time horizon (i.e., delayed gratification), a tendency also referred to as the present bias.

Having consciousness is a blessing; however, if not used judiciously, it could be an impediment. Maybe one day, I will be wiser and given two option, I will choose the harder one because unpleasant as it may be, the long-term returns would be better.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.

Words of wisdom for blogging without worrying about number of likes

 

Vishnu Kant Srivastava & Arun Kumar

 “You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions.”

 

 

Two friends (the authors listed above), both above 60, one already retired and one contemplating retirement in near future, started to discuss testing the waters of the world of blogging. Knowing well that getting a toehold in the world of blogging is a daunting task, the discussion turned somewhat philosophical towards whether can one engage in the practice of blogging for its own sake and not be worried about being praised and admired?

The thought was nothing new. It relates to an age old qustion — Can we engage in actions without being influenced by the expectations for a desired outcomes?

Well, considering some of us may be looking for meaningful engagements in our life in retirement after 30-years of work, can we feel engaged in writing blog posts without worrying about the scope of readership? Can we engage in an action, get fulfillment from the action and not be driven by certain expectations about results? After all, there is the old cliché that “the joy is in the journey and not about the destination”.

Pondering over these questions and having a discussion we remembered a passage in the Hindu scripture Bhgatwat Gita, where Lord Kirshna advises Arjuna in the middle of the battlefield. It happens when Arjuna’s resolve to carry forward with the battle (the action he is to engage in) starts to waiver because its outcomes may lead to death of loved ones.

Krishna said:

कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन।
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि

The passage translates to “You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results (consequences) of your activities, nor be attached to inaction.”

Can we follow the ancient wisdom and not be concerned with the outcome of our efforts or hope if the blog will go viral?

Clichés aside, human psychology, unfortunately, works in different way. Through our evolutionary process, we are geared for an action-reward paradigm. Actions that produce positive results tend to get repeated and are enforced. Actions that result in negative (painful) consequences, are avoided in future. This feedback cycle, at the biological level, is one of the foundations of the evolutionary process. We are conditioned to responses to dopamine circulating in our brains, and anticipation of rewards motivates us to act. A good example of this feedback loop is performing arts.

In the world of performance arts, during the course of any performance, we need resonators, applauders, who can continuously give support by way of thumbs up or some other such sign. Applauds provide positive feedback and accentuate performer’s confidence that things are moving in the right direction.

All performing art needs resonators. If a player is performing, the claps or roaring sounds of the audience gives confirmation to the performer. A dance that gets applause sustains the continuum of action from one step to the next.

The resonator, in other words, is meant to keep the tempo high and helps the performer in the right direction. We seek a similar praise in competitive sports also, where there are competitors engaged in actions and there is an audience to give resonance to their actions.

Resonators, therefore, are an integral part of a successful performer and their progress.

Can the action-reward-habit feedback loop be overcome in more intellectual pursuits, like writing a blog during our retirement?

After all, our capacity to think, our self-awareness raises us above merely being slaved to natural laws. We are capable of venturing beyond the principles that govern natural selection and evolution.

Blogging (writing), in a way can be considered as a performing art. In the world of internet and blogging, the resonators are in virtual space, but nevertheless they are there. A stream of thumbs up and likes is meant to sustain and encourage bloggers.

Thinking of blogging as an act of performing art, however, was not much help to us. On the contrary, it generated a need for resonators and a crowd to cheer us on.

So where does that leave us? To blog or not to blog without worrying about its outcome?

The answer may be in constantly reminding ourselves of words by Lord Krishna to Arjuna “You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions”.

Krishna’s advice can also be interpreted as it is actions (karmas) that we control but desiring specific results is out of our control.

In that quest, it helps that the age two of us are at, we are not typical performers. The purported motive for our writing helps set the context. What differentiates us from performers is that we are not after fame and glory. We are not after monetizing our efforts. And further, we have the luxury and freedom of trying something and failing and then trying something else. We have nothing to prove.

The purpose of our writing is more for utilizing our signature strengths that served us well during working life and use them to fuel engagements in retirement. In doing so, our primary purpose is to seek a sense of accomplishment and a sense of having meaning and purpose in our retirement life. Blogging for us could be an action without us being unduly influenced by expectations for end results.

At our age, we can plant a tree without worrying about whether we will see it bear fruits. The alternative is to choose path that expects an audience for praise but if it does not happen then feel discouraged and gives up.

And so, we will keep posting occasional blogs without having much expectations for praise. Of course, if you press the like button, we will feel a tingle of happiness and our aging hearts will skip a beat!!

Ciao and thanks for reading.