Here we go again

Well, here we are again – at the beginning of a whole new year.

Let’s get the cynicism out of the way first.

We all know that there is no real significance to a new year day. It is just another day which will come and go uneventfully and the world will carry on. In astronomical terms it signifies that the earth has completed another revolution around the sun since the last new year. But since we don’t know when exactly the earth started its first circle around the sun, January 1st does not necessarily signify the completion of a full orbit. For all we know the whole thing started on the 14th of March in which case the earth still has a quarter run to go before completing its current orbit around the sun.

And even if we arbitrarily take January 1st as the the starting point and celebrate the completion of a full orbit on that day, what does that mean ? If the earth actually stopped at this point and did a little jiggle or took a bow – like a sprinter completing a lap of a very long race – we’d have something to cheer about.  As it is the earth just keeps on going, which is just as well because if it did stop it would get pulled into the sun due to gravity.

Now this is an interesting commentary of life on earth. The earth has to keep moving to generate the force it needs to counter the sun’s gravity and prevent itself from roasting out of existence. And those of us living on this earth also need to keep going to prevent an implosion – as long as you are alive you have no choice but to keep going.

And this very likely explains the attraction of the new year’s day.

As evolved humans, we have some pretty crazy ideas about ourselves. We think we can solve all problems and fix everything once and for all. But deep down we realize that we cannot. We know that as soon as we fix one set of problems a new set will come up; as soon as one set of ambitions is achieved, another set is out there waiting; we know that it is our destiny to keep moving forward. And yet we desperately want to believe that we are completing at least some of the things we set out to do.

New year’s eve then, is our fantasy about closure.

One more year done, we say with a satisfied look. It’s completed, it will never come back, we’ve survived it, closed it, put it in a box and written it off. It’s over. There is a certain sense of finality in this which is strangely reassuring – even though it is meaningless because tomorrow we will be faced with exactly the same set of things we had to face in the last year.

Still, whatever the underlying meaning (or lack of meaning), new year’s day is as convenient a point as any for taking a breather. It might not really be a milestone of any real significance, but it is certainly a handy reminder to step back and look at where we are going and how far we have come.

So if you’ll excuse me now I’m going to suspend reality and pretend that I have indeed done something special by seeing thru another year and start wondering about what the next year will be like.

Looking back several years, I’m amazed at how clueless I am on each 1st  January about what the year is likely to bring and how it would unfold. Life has a way of surprising you. Happily though, I’ve been blessed mostly with good surprises. Most of my worries have been unfounded and most things have worked out in the end. And even when they have not been so, the very quality of life that it keeps on moving forward is a blessing as much as it can appear to be a curse. Whatever the circumstances, whatever the troubles, they have a tendency to wash away over time.

So here, finally, is perhaps the most important purpose of the new year. It is a time to let go of all regrets, to wash away all disappointments and mistakes, to cast away all accumulated fears. A time to once again refill our supplies of hope and inspiration and to forge ahead.

Happy new year. Or rather: Lets be Happy in the new year.

About Reading Glasses

 

I recently got reading glasses.

And I am now convinced that they are the best invention since the wheel.

My eyesight is not that far gone mind you. Indeed the fist eye doctor I went to convinced me that I should delay wearing glasses for as long as I can. He said he didn’t wear his either – which probably explains why he couldn’t see that I needed a pair.

In any case, a couple of months of headaches and squinting later, I finally got myself a pair.

What a difference.

For something as simple as a piece of glass, they sure pack a punch. No moving parts, no electronics, no Steve Jobs magic incantations, no touch panels or super-duper-gizmos – just a couple of pieces of glass – and your world looks better again.

They’re really the perfect invention – they do not artificially amplify or transform anything, do not have a light source, do not make things louder thru electronic wizardry. They don’t contain any revelations of their own. Indeed their whole point is that you should not even notice that you have them on.

Their mission in life is to help you see what is already there – and that is often the hardest thing to see.

Breaking Blackberry Addiction

I’ve recently started using the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 (WP7) – the HD7, and I must say I’m mightily impressed.

As a long term Blackberry user, I’ve also suddenly realized how far back Blackberry has fallen compared to modern smartphones. I had resisted the iPhones, and Androids, and others of this ilk in the mistaken belief that nobody does Email better than Blackberry, and that a physical keyboard is the last word in usability.

After just a few days of use on the HD7 however, I find that none of these statements is true.

Outlook integration on the HD7 device works like a dream: contacts, calendar, mails everything updates as smoothly and quickly as you would expect it to. And the interfaces are miles ahead of what Blackberry has on offer. The Email view, for example, is elegant, functional and easy to navigate, and of course the bigger screen size means I don’t have to tradeoff between squinting with a small font and scrolling endlessly with a large font. I can now read my mails much more comfortably.

And then there is the keyboard. I’ve always thought that glass keyboards would simply not work and the QWERTY is the end-all for data input. But here’s the thing: glass keyboards have gotten much much better, accurate, and forgiving, and the fact of the matter is that even with the qwerty I never did send off more than a few lines at a time from the Blackberry – for longer mails I’ve always ended up pulling out the laptop anyway.

And the keyboard is just the beginning. There is something about a touch interface that makes you feel in control, it is much more satisfying to swipe, pinch, and zoom your way through your inbox than to use the physical buttons.

When it comes to the browser of course, there is absolutely no comparison. The HD7 has the browser and the screen size that actually makes it worthwhile to browse on a mobile device without constantly struggling. Finally I can stop pretending that the Blackberry browser is good enough – it’s not.

RIM is a smart company, so I’m sure they’d be hard at work to regain the initiative. But with each new smart phone in the market the bar is set just a little bit higher. It’s going to be an interesting battle to watch.

Get out of the moment

There are moments to savor, and moments to ignore; moments to live in and moments to forget.

But it sometimes feels like the dice are loaded against us; happy moments are easily disturbed, unhappy ones have a habit of lingering – repeating over & over in the mind, till the pain of the original moment has been lived many times over.

Getting out of a bad moment is sometimes harder than hanging on to a good one.

If it is not a pleasant one: get out of the moment.

Pure Rambling……

A blinking cursor. A blank screen. And my fingers itching to write.

I have not formulated my thoughts yet, not sure what exactly it is that I want to express, but I know I need to write – the urge is almost overpowering.

There is a half-formed idea in my head, something about the possibilities of letting the mind wander away from its beaten path, something about the liberating freedom of not having an exact target, the freedom of not knowing exactly where you are headed, but being comfortable about getting there anyway.

The need to define things in everyday life cannot be avoided. But when it starts to encroach on every thought it can be trouble. Ambiguity is not always the enemy. There are always possibilities, sometimes exactly where we want them; sometimes on the periphery of where we’re looking.

Peripheral vision is useful. Unfocus, move away, let go….and wait.