Destiny & Probability

This afternoon I was talking to one of my friends and we were discussing an achievement when he said that it was just plain luck. As usual.. my mind immediately picked up a thread of reasoning that I had started some time ago. It centers on luck. Destiny. And believe it or not.... Probability.

I had read this book by Scott Adams called God's Debris a couple of years ago. The book broached the same point. What we call luck/destiny... is it not just probability playing it's part. One of my favorite arguments in the book happens something like this:

A delivery guy Y delivers a box to the person X. X starts the argument saying that the box has delivered the person. Y believes that it's the opposite. He's the delivery guy so he delivered the box. And it's revealed that the box was posted by X himself to his own address. The purpose of the box was to make the delivery guy come to his home. So the question hangs.... Who delivered whom?

Anyways coming back to the intertwining of probability and destiny. A Hindu holy scripture says "Karm kar. Phal ki iccha mat kar" Meaning that the duty of a person is to do the work assigned to him in the best way possible. But the person should not expect the outcome. The outcome may or may not be in the person's favor. Doesn't the second part sounds like probability. But then you ask.. why even work if the outcome is not in our hands. Well.. Probability is strange. But being a part of mathematics. Still follows some rules. Whatever work a person puts in goes towards improving the odds of the result being in the person's favor. But probability being probability sometimes it's the less probable thing that happens.

I wanted to talk a lot in this blog. About how probability has worked for me. But well.. maybe later.

Water and Me

So this Saturday when I woke up after a 16 hour Sleepathon... it had just stopped raining outside... The first thing I did was tp pick up my Cam and run to my window. I knew I'll find water droplets still hanging on the tree outside my window. I clicked around 5-6 photos with various zooms and shutter speeds. As soon as I was done I transferred them to my lappy to have a look at them without wasting any minute.

And here's one that I captured...

Now why am I posting only this.. you ask?
Well... looking at this pic elicited a thought chain that has been in my mind from quite some time.
Which is... Are we connected with the basic elements in different mythologies/fantasies in some way. The elements that I'm talking about, if you don't know, are: Earth, Water, Fire and Air. Some myths/fantasies add Spirit as a fifth element.

Not sure how many people would know or believe this... But I am very much into zodiacs/astrology/myths and their relation to the us, the humans. The year 2010 has infact been very helpful to me in this context. Some wud tell me that it's just a perspective or my way of looking at things and may not be completely true... But well... it's my blog.. so my view rules. :D

So again.. from the past some time it has been my belief that I have a relation to water. I am somehow connected to it. My being a piscean just kind of confirms the relation. Pisces is the only zodiac sign amongst all 12 that is truely and completely water. The other water signs namely cancer , scorpio and aquarius are half water. Cancer and Scorpio are primarily water but carry Fire and Earth with them while Aquarius is primarily Air.

Coming back from the detour. So 2010 confirmed that I feel a lot better if I have a natural source of water to visit often. In absence of natural source, lot of times a shower does the trick. In Hyderabad it was lakes, Mumbai it was the sea that I loved. Rain has been a common factor in both the cities. Now here in Louisville it's the river Ohio which my office window looks upon.

But what does this have to do with the pic you ask? Yes.. I detoured... So coming back from my memories into today's world.

When I looked in the pic above I saw the water droplets glowing like beads of light. And my brain took a train(oh! that rhymes... Cool!!!) to the glow within someone's heart. And then I thought that the glow in the water droplets is not coming from themselves. But they try their best to keep the glow. Give them just a ray of light... and they'll start glowing. Isn't the heart same. Give it just one ray of hope, one ray of something good. And it catches onto it with all it's strength.

Going back to other forms of water. The flowing water represents the life. A lifeline of a river... is also the lifeline of a human.
Starts in the mountains rushing down, with so much energy.. Isn't childhood the same? Trying to cut down the rocks to carve a new path.. Some are successful in that and some aren't... Beating against each rock that is in the path... Learning something from each rock.. each hurdle...
the river reaches the plains... The major portion of a rivers lifeline. The working age. Working.. sometimes giving.. sometimes gathering... sometimes flooding with emotions.. sometimes feeling emptied of everything.... The ups that are more and more difficult to climb with each passing hurdle... The downs which give just that little boost that makes it going on. Sometimes merging with other's lives creating a new one... Others just continuing alone.. making its own path...
the river reaches the last stage... the deltas... or the old age. After losing all it's energy it just wants to reach and merge with the sea. But still there was a lot of work it did during the plains. And it's time it deposits the good work done in the form of sediments, minerals before it drains whatever's left of it into the sea and dies....

The calm waters represent stagnancy in life, the whirlpools are the emotional vortexes that we find ourselves in a lot of times.

Rain.. isn't it a form of giving.. Without condition... Love... which infact if goes overboard turns into obsession and is as dangerous as the rain that pours down more water than is needed by earth and brings floods. Some areas.. arid areas desiring rains desperately while others have it in abundance....

For now I think I'll stop here. Lots of threads were running in my head while writing this. On zodiacs, on elements, on life.. Hope some of the above does make sense to you....