Turn Turn Turn

Hi there,

Bang in the middle of a workday, just thought about the worth of my individual effort in the scheme of things. Well - its small and insignificant by most paramters, but by my own - it is singinificant and may I say, decisive about the future of the world, atleast my view of the world.

Have you ever wondered while listening to the number from Forrest Gump, "Turn Turn Turn". I have and it has been quite an amusing intellectual excursion everytime I have listened to and ventured into the thoughts that the song stimulates. This time around it was- how does ambition or drive really give your life a direction. Or probably if you have been conveniently lazy like me - to think about the actual control over the direction of one's life. To me, there is no one single answer to any question you pose in this sphere of metaphysical exploration. You do control some part of what and where you will be in the future, but there is still an element of chance that you might end up elsewhere, either a lot more interesting than you expected or in a different realm of existence altogether.

Hmm. . . hope that was coherent enough to be understood in one read, but anyway something more on the song itself. The central theme, there is a time for everything. So when I think about getting hitched, I try to think this is the time. Not important if its right or wrong. This is just the time for this to happen to me. I am glad to anticipate and hypothesise about the big change that might come about (not sure if this hypothesis is statiscally proven) once you change from being bachelor to being married.

A good friend of mine introduced the concept of unlearning to me, and hypothesised that we could go beyond unlearning. What does that mean? A lot of things, but essentially, it means that the natural state of development in all respects, is cyclical. Our environment changes, we face a problem, we innovate, we falter, we learn, we succeed, and then the environment changes again. So someone else comes up with an innovation, and that involves change which involves some unlearning of the current ways. And we repeat the cycle, on and on. But what we unlearnt isnt something that is useless - it will be relevant at another time. Also unlearning is restrictive in the paradigm it operates, to truly bring significant change - we need to move beyond unlearning. Well, I hope my version of it and the compressed representation is meanigful enough for digestion.

Have rambled enough, but the key takeway for this piece will still be the song. If you havent heard it as yet, suggest you do. And if you havent seen the movie Forrest Gump, suggest you do that first :) Its time to do that!

A few lines from the song:
To everything - turn, turn, turn
There is a season - turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

till the next time,
hv fun!

satish