Monday, April 02, 2007

Alchemist versus Murphy

"Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time..." Sounds familiar? Righly guessed - our very own Murphy's law... I am certain that most of us have been victims of the validity of this law... For instance, how many of us badly want to reach on time and got stuck in a traffic jam or fell ill when we had an important interview, a fully planned outing or a party to attend... Leads me to believe that most of us have experienced the regularity of this irregular law... And for strangest reasons this law always gets applicable to me... My plans are always minute by minute when I have to meet my friends - meaning there is no concept of buffer time to allow inexplicable delays... Those timelines would work 99.9% of the times (which speaks of the efficient time management) but say I want to really be on time for this party thingy and this party would inevitably fall in that 0.1% zone making it impossible for me to reach there on time... And then people accuse me of being tardy... What they dont get is that it's Murphy conspiring against me... :)))))))

Reading is one of my hobbies like that of zillion others... I like Fantasy fiction in particular but I am open to reading any book, if someone recommends it... So, while reading this one highly recommended book I came across this sentence - "When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it..." When Paulo Coelho took us through the journey of Santiago in The Alchemist most of the people just believed him... A story wrought with fortune tellers, dreams, travel and hardwork the story does seem believable... But what I liked the most about this book is the strong message it sends - dare to dream...

But reading this line just made my life more confusing... I managed to find ample examples of Murphy's law and its relevance in my life but I just couldn't get anything for The Alchemist Law... Could it happen that 2 laws with universal applicability are just not applicable to me... These seemingly contradictory laws that govern the universe but not my life... So, here I was; trying to find out how to relate these laws to my life :-
One which said - if there was one way to go wrong, you will go that way
One which said - if you are on a way, whole universe will conspire to lead you the right goal...
I am neither bold enough to question the validity of these laws nor am I foolish to ignore them... In an effort to find a resolution, I stumbled on this line in wikipedia about Murphy's laws and I realised where I was going wrong... It said that interpretation of Murphy's laws depends on one's outlook and attitude... One interpretation is sour and the other is an affirmation of the predictable being able to be surmounted, usually by sufficient planning and redundancy... This same rule applies to other laws as well...

Then was it that my interpretation was incorrect of these laws??? Was it because of my outlook that I got confused??? I mean my pessimism clouded my life so much that I refused to see the brighter side of Mr. Murphy... When all the time I blamed him for making laws that govern everything that went wrong in my life, I failed to see the learning... The learning to make sure that the things that went wrong once; could be avoided the next time... And working on these lines, I would have eventually reached a stage that would have led whole universe to conspire to give what I wanted outta life...

Thus, every law just fit perfectly... What I kept thinking were contradictory laws actually complemented each other, enmeshed deeply within the power of interpretation.... And this interpretation was the very basis of every law that came into existence... Newton interpreted the "Apple falling on his head" and made a Law of gravity... Einstein wanted to interpret behaviour of particles at speed of light and formulated Law of Relativity etc...

So, having interpreted this, will my life become easier hereon??? Will I finally reach the stage where the only law applicable to me is that of The Alchemist's??? I do not know but I am atleast happy that I figured something constuctive instead of plainly cursing Murphy all the time when things went wrong...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

heyy... my comment is in the mail... good article... your thoughts do have a theme...

superaghu said...

I stumbled on your blog searching the exact line of Alchemist..
Even thought I knew about both Alchemist and Murphy...I never related it your way...they definitely are contradictory and complimentary!!

I hope your thoughts on this have helped you answer your question...as you said...the opionins will differ on weather you are pessimistic or optimistic....the glass can be half empty of half full :)