Sunday, June 29, 2008

Achievements and Needs!

When I was in the first year (first semester to be more precise) of my 4 yr Engineering course, English was one of the papers in curriculum. It was a class full of guys and needless to say nothing was taken seriously and the classroom was loaded with fun. When material physics, industrial chemistry and engineering papers were ignored, English naturally went for a toss. However, I remember one topic that our English professor threw in as a topic of debate - "Should great scientists necessarily be eccentric?". Even though we didn't have a serious debate then, I remember thinking about the topic once in a while, though with a slight variation. I used to think about the great achievers who revolutionized their field and what it took...

To summarize my observation in one simple word that I'd call the reason behind their achievements, I'd say 'despair'. My favorite lines from the book 'The Art of War' keeps echoing in my ears.

Never make your enemy desperate. Always leave a room for escape; for desparate soldiers fight for their life and it's tough to match them in a combat.

The way I see it, great achievers have been pushed to the corner of their lives and made desparate by the society and back they came with a bang. At least from the limited knowledge that I possess, I don't find too many traditionally rich people revolutionizing things. They make better profits and perhaps contribute to some charity but there it ends. But the urge to do something out of the box, the urge to invent, the urge to make a difference; has all been driven by crisis and helplessness.

Today, I see quite a few people who are not so happy with their jobs (including me) and some of those go to a level of losing their sleep because of this restlessness. But the fact is that there is a convenient working option in hand, giving you the money and the status quo that you badly need and unfortunately we've always been trained to think - "A bird in hand is worth two in the bush". Unless we are really desparate or atleast start believing we are desperate, I don't think there is a way out of the self-constructed prison made of golden bars!

8 comments:

ஸ்ரீனிவாசன் said...

maapla, desperateness alone wont make u doing something different. one should posses some knowledge about what he's goin to do. say, u r not satisfied with work and too desperate. u want to become 'someone', but if u r not clear with that, then life will be pathetic !!!!

like that pyscho's blog i mentioned that day....

Agni said...

True Srini. Despair is a 'necessary' condition but not a 'sufficient' condition. Not all people who are desperate succeed but everyone who made a difference was desperate at some point. It's like the famous/infamous analogy - "Everyone who is an Engineer should've completed their XII grade but not everyone who completed their XII grade are Engineers" :))

ஸ்ரீனிவாசன் said...

:-) , btw, Art of War book naama chennaila irukurappo vaangunathuthaana ???? 70 page book....nalla interesting a irunduchu.

Agni said...

Exactly... Un punnyatthula sila pala books padicchurukkaen! :))

Unknown said...

Kind of, true ... last minute la exam munnadi, oru 4 mani neram mug adichu engineering mudichadhey oru periya achievement illaya!! Indha achievement pinnadiyum andha desperateness dhaney irukku ...

Smiles,
Vinayak
p.s and agreed with the necessary/sufficient condition. Was about to comment that only ...

Lakshminarayanan S said...

words of wisdom :)

I have read about people, who didn't have any knowledge in the field they shone just because they were desperate...also, I have seen many blue blooded thinking out of the box and achieving laurels..so, its very difficult to generalize albeit what you have written holds good even today...

Unknown said...

Nice blog Mr.Libran!

Unknown said...

Me a libran too, i happened to go through your orkut profile as well. I think we have damn similar things between us. But I could not succeceed to get your mail ID yogu......If you are not feeling strage then only talk to me otherwise...it's alright.
Keep smiling
Like u so much!