The elasticity of mind

Sunday evenings are special and thoughtful for many reasons; except for the fact that they create Monday blues 😅

After spending time with your ‘self’; watching the sun go down (something that you don’t see on other days), you realise that life is actually large and it is we who make it short. While I may not be William Wordsworth to write as beautiful a poem like The Solitary Reaper, but I guess ‘we are all just prisoners here of our own device’, says Eagles. This Sunday evening, I take inspiration from The rime of the ancient mariner to share my thoughts on the world today.

The world today is all mixed up! It’s confusing, at least to me. I am not sure if we have seen her this way ever before. A small bacteria has literally put a checkmate to the so-called advancement in science and technology over the last century. Let me tell you that if all the SARS-CoV-2 particles currently circulating in humans around the globe were gathered together into one place, they would weigh an apple! Wow, amazing isn’t it? A decade old company would beat the legacy of an eight decade old conglomerate; inspite of the former undergoing huge losses. A few bizarre business models including a few Unicorns with negative cash are challenging age old bluechip companies that have solid business model with profits. It doesn’t really add up to anything, or does it? What’s really changing this paradigm? Consumer behaviour of Gen z, interdependencies within countries, war-peace game, human stupidity or AI? Who knows… 

I have my own theory, like everyone else ;). I call it ‘elasticity of the mind’. In the name of progress, we have been trying to do many things. In the process, we have increased the pace at which ‘act’. Doing more in less time! Doing more also means making more money, hence the barometer has changed to ‘money over everything’. We want our investments to multifold in less time, be it 2x or 20x. When you are chasing this variable ‘x’, you got to be running fast. Faster than the fast, in fact. At what pace? That’s left to your imagination, market conditions, competition, and other circumstances. This is where the magic happen. When you don’t have a fixed goal specific timeline, plate full of work, influenced by many variables, less time to dominate, and all the money in the world to be made; what would you do? HUSTLE. That’s what the world is getting into. The management gurus are advocating the young CEOs to do. This is how the monkey mind is beautifully put to work - Elasticity of the mind. Keep hustling till you make it.

By the way, today’s generation has more options than their predecessors. More delicious recipes, convenient food joints, sophisticated hospitals, online universities, paying employers, affordable technology, faster awareness and what not. It's a different world today where,

• convenience wins over competence;
• UX over utility;
• engagement over profitability;
• relevance over legacy;
• candid over discipline;
• jack over mastery;
• attempt over not possible

I wouldn’t have thought that I could see a day when a nobody like Elon Musk could challenge a superior body like NASA. A small software like ChatGPT could take down a mammoth like Google. We are going to see the world (the mind) changing fast in the coming years, and all I have to say is that craziness is going to multifold! The word of caution is not to get intimidated. For, things will change soon and you too can take a vantage point at some point of time. You need to stay put to make use of it. Lastly, if you can’t play the game, nobody is stopping you from watching and enjoying it.

#hustle #elasticityofmind #genz