Do it anyway!

Sometimes life is too uncertain to believe, too opaque to see the big picture. But you know what, it still is amazing. It is in those low moments, that we need the wise words of Kent M. Keith. 

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.Give the world the best you have anyway.




It is a long poem, but you have read it anyway ...:) . May your week have an amazing start. 

If I had a time travel.

You might think the idea of a time travel is another one of those puerile ideas scientists come up with to prove just how weird they are. Its probably true, but as long as there is a  possibility its only a matter of time before the government starts taxing trips through time. Like any other positive thinker I already have a list. A list of stops I'll make as I make my trip through time.

  I don't know if watching philosophers makes you wise, but I'm hoping it does. It is why I will stop at centuries before Christ. Perhaps I'll absorb the minds of Plato, Aristotle, Aristarchus and Archimedes just simply  observing them. I have a  likening for smart minds so I would have would admire the smart minds of Egyptians and Babylonians, the minds that invented Algebra. It is my hope that I'll swallow their thought process.

   Next stop would be the 17th century, to catch up with my buddy (in a parallel universe) Isaac Newton. I think I will spend years there. There's a lot to learn here. All the way from half my Physics textbook to the real stories behind them, to the brain behind them. Newton is a living proof that you don't have to be loud or normal to make an impact. 

   Thereafter I would have to meet Michael Faraday, the black smith's son who later refused the prestigious position of President of the Royal Society of Britain. This man's life will re instill in me the fact that passion is the real key to sucess not even finances can get in the way. 

   Next stop would be 20th century. I will of course pay tribute to the big names of Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Steve Jobs among others. I also wouldn't want to miss out on the really extraordinary people; Mother Teresa who believed in the power of small, Jessica Cox, who is a living proof that we can't make excuses to achieve what we want.

   All these people were pretty ordinary, they didn't have 25 hours in a day and neither did they eat special manna from heaven. Everything about them was just ordinary, in fact if I hadn't seen their familiar faces, am pretty sure they wouldn't stand out from the crowd. I guess that's what makes life amazing, when extraordinary is borne of ordinary, or even less than ordinary.  Through passion, perseverance and persistence they have built something, broken barriers and lived miracles.

 Am not sure if the time travel will travel to the future but I would like to leave that a mystery. I would come back to now, a messy world where the real adventure happens. I don't know how this experience will affect me but am pretty sure I will be wiser. Every obstacle will just seem so small compared to what these giants had to live through.

   Here I am, with so many possibilities for the future, with opportunities Newton never dreamed of and visions of a professional dreamer. I guess that that's enough because if there is anything I am certain of is that, there is nothing wrong with wanting things you can't see.

The true nature of small.

 So we look at skyscrapers then we get the impression that our world is big; then we look at mountains , islands and we get even more convinced that of the illusion. We then see the vast  bodies of the oceans and the sky and we conclude that Earth is a big planet and  perhaps consider the possibility that the sun is revolving around us. Well, we all know that its not true. Infact in 1990 as the Voyager I space probe was leaving the solar system, it was made to turn back and take a picture. On that photograph (above) our 'big' earth appeared as a tiny , pale blue dot. Yes, Everything we know of is stuffed on that 0.12 pixels dot. However, the most intelligent, most inquisitive and intuitive creatures the universe has had are not found giant Jupiter or Neptune but on that blue dot . This only means one thing; small is not the same as insignificant. 
We all want great things in life, we have big dreams and sometimes they just seem too big to be realistic. When this crosses your mind just remember that everything big started small. Every great ending has a humble beginning. Bill Gates started Microsoft in his college room, same story with Mark Zuckerberg and all the big names that we hear of today. They all  convey one message; there is no shame in small. Everything starts small, a book starts with a paragraph, a dollar starts with a penny, we are born small and grow older with every sunrise. Small may appear insignificant, but it has potential, lots of potential. 
Henri Frederic Amiel, a wise Swiss poet once wrote, "What we call little things are merely the causes of great things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point of departure which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence. One single black speck may be the beginning of a gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution." I can't add onto that but all I can say is value what you do no matter how small it seems, because the truth is every second and every step of the way counts. 

Moving.

  Today am going tell you the story of John. In his mid 20's John lost his job, he ran bankrupt over the next month. After a few days later he bought a lotto ticket and won the lottery. He got so much money that he bought a house, a car and could afford not to work for the next 50 years.At least that's what happens in movies and God knows we love to be in John's shoes.We love drama, that's a fact. We do want results in the shortest amount of time. Unfortunately, in the real world, different rules apply.Big change happens not in a day or week but in years. 

Change is always happening. We see it as we grow up, flowers blossom, rivers dry up and rejuvenate, we see change everyday of our lives. Some changes are rapid while for others, we are less likely to notice they happen; but they do. For instance, the petroleum we use today originates from fossils of organisms that lived hundreds of millions years ago before the time of dinosaurs. Even slower is our universe which has evolved to this stage in 13.7 billion years ago there was no plan for life in the universe.

So yes we are changing, and most of the time we don't notice it. We are moving, whether that means rotating with the earth every 24 hours or revolving around the sun but point is life is dynamic. We are always headed towards a direction, either up or down, but we don't stay the same. Anyone who has been on a weight loss journey can relate to this. You always have your focus or else you dwindle to the 'down' direction.

We have goals and are probably working towards them. We obviously have plans but when plan A and B and C don't work it can be hard to know the direction we are headed. That is not the time to quit but to make plan D and E and F until something happens.  When we give up, we don't just stay stationary but we start heading to the 'down' direction. What matters is we keep the goal in mind and trust the process. Believe, there is nothing wrong with wanting things you can't see. Drama happens, the romantic happy ending happens, it will take a little longer but it will happen,  all we have to do is believe. 

Simply proactive.

As we move through life we pick up certain skills, independence, communication, personal management and of course the conniving skill of making excuses.  We naturally learn to conjure up explanation so that everything looks good. A project fails and we blame it on the weather, someone dies and we blame it on sorcery. Somehow the blame game has become part of being human.  With this cycle we end up being reactive creatures. We wait for something to happen before we actually do something.  There is a term for creatures that live this lifestyle, its animals. Naturally, we too are reactive; after all we evolved from chimpanzees.

But we are not animals; we can do better than that. Given the size of our brains, nature raises expectations on us. We are expected to be proactive. Abraham DeMoivre’ clearly portrays what proactive means. De Moivre could have easily lived like any other tutor, live for the next penny. He was poor, he couldn’t get a reasonable job at universities due to his French origin and yet he didn’t give up on mathematics. . He even played chess to supplement his income. He read from giants like Isaac Newton and he eventually derived the infamous deMoivre’s theorem.  Here is the difference between DeMoivre and ordinary people. DeMoivre had something to blame, poverty, but he didn’t use this excuse, he worked his way around it. If you are wondering what proactive means then you got your answer.

Proactive means going for our goals and working situations around them. It means moving towards our goals even when its’ not feasible to do so. It means taking charge of our lives and learning to adapt to whatever obstacles comes our way because reality is always made of obstacles. Reiterate that goal in your head so that nothing you do will jeopardize it. It’s by far the most direct way to being proactive.

There will always some kind of obstacle, something to keep you from reaching that goal. If excuses is all we are looking for then we have nothing to worry about. But if we live for excuses, then what is the point in living. Be proactive, it’s the only way forward, no great man became great accidentally. They had a mission, and when obstacles came like De Moivre they worked their way around them.  So here’s the moral of my 400 word essay, be proactive, life’s amazing that way.

                

Extraordinary.

Today, I will tell you a story; an ordinary story of an ordinary boy who lived an almost ordinary life.  He was born smart and exuded it even more in school. Curiosity and support drove him to read, read and read that at 16 he managed to pass Physics and Mathematics University entrance examinations.  This is the part where the story gets ordinary. Reality hit hard after he graduated from college, he couldn’t get a job.  All he wanted was a teaching post at a university. Well, every dream job is hard to find. It must have been a turn down considering he was THE genius since childhood.  After 2 years of unemployment, he got a job, not the dream job but still a job. He worked at the local patent office in Switzerland. He used this opportunity to play around with stuff. That is how he got to unveil the secrets of the universe. This ordinary boy was Albert Einstein.

“Have ambition but not too much, it’ll cost you” We hear this voice of mediocrity from almost all corners of life.  If the boy was not Einstein, this story would have a slightly quieter ending. Some other boy would simply listen to voice of mediocrity, live an ordinary life and leave an ordinary legacy.  Einstein, on the other hand, had passion and ambition.

We look at people like Einstein and think they were either superhuman of some sort or they were more talented. We look at legends like Dr. Ben Carson, Barrack Obama , Bill Gates  and immediately assume these people were born to succeed. They weren’t, they simply realized the power of the human brain and were confident enough to explore it. In short they had ambition and guts to ignore the voice of mediocrity.

I think there is nothing with a little ambition, nothing wrong shooting for the stars. Many will kill your ambition to ‘protect’ you from disappointment. Here’s the somewhat good news, everyone fails at some point and its’ no reason to quit. We might be fragile physically but mentally, we are stronger than we think.  Bring intention to your actions and everything will fall into place. As you keep with 2014 resolutions, hold onto that ambition no matter the circumstance, that’s you make change happen. 

Making magic.

They say a New Year is supposed to bring some sort of magic. They say you get one wish on this day, a wish we want granted in the next year. Scientifically this doesn’t make the minutest of sense simply because nothing is expected to come out of nothing. But then again, as credible as science is, it can’t explain a lot of things, especially when the human mind is involved.
Truth is there’s nothing special about beginning a New Year. Technically, its’ just a day we change a digit of the date on a calendar conventionally made for our convenience. A new year could begin in February, June or even December; any day could mark the beginning of a new year. It is that moment when you make the decision to make life amazing and explore its magic.That is what makes it special.
I remember this day Tuesday 1^st January 2013; I was sitting with a blank page trying to come up with realistic resolutions, so I wrote a list of everything I wanted to do. Excel academically, Build my character, make better lifestyle choices, oh yes and start a blog. I had an idea of a silent blog, fun, progressive, a blog that draws inspiration from science, blocks the noise we constantly we listen to and believes in humanity.  Now that I look back I think I did just fine. This blog has over 4500 pageviews, something I never expected. Yes, I've had accomplishments and disappointments too. But that’s life, failure is never the end but merely means to the end. The journey continues in 2014.

So, here’s 2014, am still staring at a blank page, just like 365 days ago. This time it’s not the same. This time, I actually believe in New Years’ resolutions, I’m not afraid to fail or take chances; I actually believe that life is amazing. There’s a common phrase that everyone uses on New Year, ‘New Year, New me’.  Well, I think I’m still the same old me, only bolder.

They say New Year is supposed to bring some sort of magic.  They forget that magic is all around us. We make magic in the choices and commitments we make. Here is a perfect moment to make that wish and make it come true, you got the magic. On this first day of the rest of your life, I would like to wish you an amazing new year.