Ever wondered? What are the greatest questions ever asked since the evolution of mankind? Maybe -
“How the Life Began?”,
“What Makes Us Humans?”,
“Can We Travel Time?”,
“Can We Live Forever?”
Sounds pretty straightforward right? But if one tries to dive deep into finding the solution and the logical reasoning behind these, I am sure, he'll feel depressed. Because the level of abstraction human has reached in solving these simply but curiously asked mysteries, is indeed beyond a layman's understanding.
That's why either some of the people create philosophies that are nothing but a big lie they tell to themselves to keep them surviving and faking their intellect, or most of them just ignore it!
But no questions demand a ‘Lie’ or ‘Ignorance’, to get itself cracked. Short moves like these just hide the doubts but can never diminish their existence from the base. To do so, one needs to dig, dig and dig deep.
Now, there is of course a chance of getting lost when you travel in a car without having a clear idea of its direction. For the same one needs a ‘Navigation’. But where can one always find the navigation without any tool in hand? Believe! ‘Every Question Itself Navigates You.’
It was seven years back when I got to know the concept of Surface Tension. The fundamental rule in the chapter was that any liquid surface aligns itself to acquire minimum possible surface tension.
Earth pulls things towards itself with a tool called gravity to reduce the potential imbalance. The universe always tries to stabilize itself.
Things always find a solution to attain minimal suspicion.
And this is of course not the benefit of the doubt.
Humans lie! Nature can't!
Let me tell you a story! It was a special day in may somewhen in 1919. It was the date of a solar eclipse that caused a revolution in science. The specific day rose almost 4 years late since Einstein published his Theory of Relativity. People used to discuss, “Einstein has made some hypothesis. Nothing much to waste time in reading it.”
The theory in nutshell was, “Instead of Being an Invisible Force That Attracts Objects To One Another, Gravity Is a Curving or Warping of Space. The More Massive an Object, The More It Warps the Space Around It.”
Then, on May 29, 1919, an expedition of English scientists led by Sir Arthur Eddington traveled to the Island of Príncipe off the west coast of Africa to observe a ‘Total Solar Eclipse.’
“If the theory were right, the light from stars should be bent by the gravity of the sun and appear displaced.”, they proposed. An eclipse, where the moon blocks the sunlight enough for stars to be seen near the sun, was the perfect opportunity to test this.
Later that year on November 6, 1919, in London England’s astronomer royal, Frank Dyson, who had organized the expedition, presented the results at a joint meeting of the royal astronomical society and the royal society. Dyson said “There Can Be No Doubt” that measurements made during May 29, 1919, solar eclipse “Confirm Einstein’s Prediction.”
General relativity was the poster child for being a crazy, new, hard-to-understand theory, with dramatic implications for the nature of reality. And yet you could see. So, people got caught up in that excitement. And so, Albert Einstein was catapulted to rock star fame, a status in popular culture he has retained ever since.
The story seems dramatic right? It is because it doesn't complicate the jargon underlying that event, but tries to decode the simple logic behind a straightforward question the world asked! “What is relativity?”
Now, this seems pretty obvious to us to judge Einstein that if he just answered this simple question in his thesis and earned fame in a night, what makes him the greatest brain of all?
The thing that makes his brilliance gets count is the Identification of The Specific Doubt he did from literally Nowhere. One needs to have an Eagle's Eye spot the snake among thrashing waves. Otherwise, it seems just a simple flow of water.
If a random person could have sat under the tree at trinity campus 400 years ago, he might not have asked why did the apple fell? But the one who asked was also not a random person. He was ‘Newton’!
Coming to my side of the story, as a theatre artist, I always followed a method of Improvisation to try out new things randomly, until they fall into the right place and create a story from within. Because I believed that the most genuine expressions come from abruptness. Randomness is the pattern of an artist.
But NO! One of the quotes, I started obeying in past days is what Russian Theatre Artist Konstantin Stanislavski had said, “If you are looking for something, don't go sit on the seashore and expect it to come and find you; you must search, search, search with all the stubbornness in you!”
‘Anticipation’ is the key to achieving better productivity.
One must ask ‘WHY??’ consistently 5 times, before diving into finding the solution. The existence of the question should be paid more attention than its level of difficulty. One should question its existence first.
Besides, ‘Expectancy of Doubt’ always helps much more than its ‘Immediate Cure’.
It's always better to fill the tank at the beginning of the journey, right? Why rely on the probability of finding a gas station when the gas from the tank is about to die?
Philosophy is nothing but a Myth unless you mould it and load it into your guns to hit the day-to-day life problems.
Questions are meant to be Asked. But before, They Are Needed to Be Simplified.
‘Complexity is subjective but simplicity is universal.’
The need is to find a unique solution for a simple problem. That only creates a huge impact. And the story turns out to be dramatic when the way we choose to find the solution has some roller coasters, some hits, and hurdles.
But for the same to happen, the responsibility of the one who asks any question is nothing but to have an ‘In-Depth Knowledge’ of what he is ‘Genuinely Trying to Ask’.
As, Socrates once said, “Understanding A Question Is Half the Answer!”
So, concluding my takeaways for this season, the three pillars of my current philosophies are the three simple questions I always ask myself.
And those are:
WHY NOT?
…
HOW'S IT THEN?
And
…
WHAT'S NEXT?
…
As these three questions help me to simplify my scenarios and keep me moving with my goals.
On the end note, Never FEAR Asking Questions and Never STOP Asking Questions. Because you do not know when the sun will rise on a random day and the world will turn its eyes towards the simple question you have once asked.
The world needs more and more questions to keep itself discovered. So, find them and simplify them. Because “Simple Questions Hold Within the Most Real Answers.”
This article is written by a good friend of mine Neeraj Garud, currently based in Germany, who is an Engineer, Theatre Practitioner, and Experimentalist… High five and cheers buddy :-)
To know more about Neeraj, please follow him on - Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram
If you want to share anything or have any suggestions/questions, please leave them in the comments!
That’s it for today :-)
Hope each of you has a great start to your day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.
— Amit
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