“There is no friend as loyal as a book” ― Ernest Hemingway

I started liking books since my childhood, same for most of the people I guess. I used to read them over and over and so never ran out of books to read. This compelled my mother to hide the books during my exam time as I used to perform poorly. I remember sometimes I could discover where she hid them and its feeling was similar to climbing a tough peak.

Then I grew up (my age increased). I started finding my hiding place inside them. To be very frank, I am a dull human being. I sometimes fail to tune with the outside world. So, for my peace of mind I learnt to turn to them whenever I feel lonely. It never disappointed me.

I came to college. I became exposed to many aspects of life which I did not know of. I became aware of incompleteness of life and the necessity of it. And I dived deeper into the so-called ocean of life.

At first I couldn't enjoy. I thought its because I was learning how to swim.

Many days went by. Few moments of joy, some heart-breaking and a lot of indifference happened to me. And now towards the end of my college, as I am trying to evaluate what I was doing in this ocean, I realised that what I learnt is simply how to dance at the small waves and avoiding the larger ones. What it felt to me was something similar to a subject, student of which can either perform as a general graduate or can teach that subject to produce similar students.

Now once again, I looked back at the books. Whenever I felt lack of fulfilment from the 'real' world, I turned back to it. To my joy, I found when almost everything has changed in my life, these fellows are still loyal to me, rather in the time of need its usefulness is more felt and it becomes irreplaceable.

I would like to think that, one of my favourites, Wordsworth has written the poem thinking about the books instead of the daffodils. They only truly have given me the "bliss of solitude."

That's Too Easy You See...

I sometimes wondered about and became astonished with an observation. I felt that every time in a relatively difficult situations, I am performing better. I tried to find the reason by myself as it seems counter-intuitive. I also have heard some explanations from the others. The explanations that I heard are mostly like this that, the people who find difficult situations advantageous are usually unable to solve simpler problems and that is why their performances drop when simpler situations demands a quick solutions. As one can see that this explanation itself is also against our normal thinking since it violates the very paradigm of easy and tough.

I thought of another explanation of this situation which essentially emphasises on the very basic difference between the natures of simpler and relatively tougher problems. It also is connected to the idea of time.

I was playing this game "Mahjong" in my computer, as I sometimes do in a lazy morning. I switched from an easy map to the toughest map. Well it didn't surprise me that much, I mean the result. It took me less time than the best time I scored in the easiest. I was playing the toughest for the first time. And then it clicked my mind.

I asked myself what is the difference that is benefiting me in some way. And then it also taught me something about myself. What I felt that the essential difference that distinguishes between an easy situation with a tougher one is that most of the time is the number of solutions a situation comes with. What defines a tough situation, is usually it presents itself with one possibility or maybe a few but very much less compared to an easy one.

The trick of finding the solution is hence also differs. When one wants to solve an easy problem, they try to find a solution or if more sincere the most appropriate solution which fits the situation. But in the other case, one tries to find "the" solution.

I find the first situation tougher. Its more like engineering to science. One has to note that I am referring easy and tough in its conventional sense. The second case demands the solution and does not requires to consider the situation since anyway, solution is exclusive. Maybe the idea is to simplified. But it taught me that most of the time I give up after finding an answer. While it works with the second situation relatively well, it does very badly with the first ones since challenge most of the time is to find the most appropriate answer in the least amount of time.

It also told upon my performance during the placement session which I had at my college in this December. The only three times I cleared the first round of the aptitude tests was they gave fewer problems which requires quite a large amount of thinking and time given to solve them was much more than that is given during the other kinds of question sets which requires solving many relatively simpler problems in a very less amount of time.

I believe a person should be balanced in both ways. Otherwise they must find a suitable job and situation which exploits their better quality which is almost always impossible as there are plenty of unavoidable situations life comes with. So, all the best!!