"What do you do when you have a pot of boiling water and curtains nearby which catch fire?
You obviously pour the boiling water on the burning curtains!
Okay, so now you know how to extinguish fire with boiling water. Now what do you do when there is cold water instead of boiling water in the pot?
You do the same thing!
Nope. You (an engineer) can't because you don't know how to deal with something which is not boiling water. Therefore, you must break the problem down to something you do know. In other words, you must boil the cold water first. Then you know how to deal with the burning curtains once the water is boiled. And this my friends is why recursive thinking is not always helpful. "
A 6 feet embodiment of sheer brilliance and goofiness, my Computer Science professor wears Hawaiian shirts on Fridays to honor "Aloha Fridays". We didn't even realize it until he pointed it out to us around Week 5 of the quarter. But he made a clever point about life. Not everything can be viewed as a problem to be solved.
Life gives you something you can handle. Just when you become adept at that thing, life throws you into the abyss of the unknown. There’s not a place where you could have felt more inept. Eventually you find your grip. And so, the cycle repeats itself.
It’s the simplest, most obvious fact in the world. Yet a lot of us struggle with it on a regular basis.
On my birthday, two of my best friends and I took a trip down to Santa Cruz. The tide was high and there was a flock of birds floating around the ocean. Occasionally, a few would paddle swiftly enough to the crest of a tidal wave.
I kept staring because one, they were a literal embodiment of the phrase “sometimes you have to ride against the tide so you can go with the flow”. For some reason, I was extremely fascinated by that realization. Two, was this how they come up with the idea of surfing and surfboards??!!
These two instances called out to my brain to finally sort my priorities. So, here’s some friendly reminders for 2018:
- It’s okay to not know where you’re going. It’s more than okay to get sidetracked for a while. As long as you know you will bounce back when you feel ready.
- Life’s unfair to everybody, some more than others. So, curse all you want at it but you’ve got to try to make the most of it.
- An observation: gratitude helps push past any and every pain.
- Familiarize yourself with the unknown because change is the only constant.
- Negative emotions like anger are like pills. An overdose will destroy you.
- Good ideas make life and relationships better. So, hunt for them. Like the hypothetical person in my unproved theory about the invention of surfboards from observing a flock of birds. He/she/they probably made billions off of it.
- Family precedes everything. If you don’t have one, build one. If you have a dysfunctional one, remember you are not them and that you can do so much better. If you have one, you are incredibly lucky and should at all costs treasure them.
