Motif

Back in yore (actually not so long ago) when I had picked the name for my blog, I wanted to capture my "eccentricities". "Neuro-tics-de-Kashif" seemed to rightly capture my quirks. "Neurotics"were then my peculiarities, however the "Neuro", pointed to my inclination for this subject. Followed it was "de" which portrayed my love for romantic languages, and not just for French only. But there is only so much a title could tell. My crotchets, as variegated as they were, all seem to run through this rubric. With passage of time, however, I have come to respect human limitation that you can't master them all. One can only maintain a level of interest that makes ones life beautiful that otherwise faces the risk of being banal.

I can't be a political activist, for my countrymen. It seems to me a dead end and an utter waste of energy which, in broader sense, is very limited in today's world. Dr. Read Montague, a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine writes in his book, ."Your Brain is (Almost) Perfect: How We Make Decisions" that efficiency is when you get the most with the least investment. Politics thus appears to me a highly inefficient activity to be indulged in, even just writing about it. I enjoy reading good books, perhaps even write a review about them sometimes but again literature is not my forte. I read books only to appreciate the beauty, love, remorse, anarchy, creativity, realism, idealism that existed or still prevails in this world, and in the process be a little wiser myself. I can't be an authority on poetry although I love the archaic expressions of thee, didst or doth, for example. Similarly, I can't be a Environmentalist, though I love spending time in the lap of nature which sooths my riling nerves. I prefer that whatever volume of air that enters my lungs be a little over the cleanest, and I don't think it is too much to ask for. I enjoyed playing football back in school, and I still do whenever I am back in my town but I have to face the fact that I can never be a professional football player. I only play it now for physical fitness, avoiding whenever possible, any contact that risks an injury. My interest in Badminton, Swimming and Jogging, thus, remains only to the extent that these sports help boost my capabilities to perform better on the task I cherish the most.

The question, thus, I really asked myself was of "committedness". Like an embryonal stem cell, beginning life at birth to the gradual differentiation that paralleled my institutional and social education rendering me a little more committed, with every passing moment, by paring away apparently unrelated activities. I very well might have been an Engineer, had I not taken Biology as my major or I could have been an English professor because I loved the language. Long before this stage, I could have been a painter if only our arts teacher had stayed in school. Dr. Daniel J. Lavitin of McGill University in "This is Your Brain on Music, The Science of a Human Obscession" writes that with every decision made, we loose a certain broader perspective on things. He talks about differentiation while expressing his love for music. He says that being an expert, in the context of music, robs us of that innocent amusement that one has as a novice.

I have come to formulate a much too obvious theory about life; that it is short. Transitory than we expect it be. So fleeting in fact that to achieve even a single remarkable thing, said, of course, in strictly "perfectionist" terms, is mostly impossible. By that I mean to do that one thing such that in your heart you know that’s how you wanted to it to be. When many years down the lane you look back, you only feel complacent thinking that there is not a single thing you could improve on any aspect of it, and that what you had done was flawless. Something we only wish. Minutes after I write this post, I will find many thoughts that need rearrangement, many words to be replaced with more suitable ones and many appearing out of place and context. That, perhaps, is basic to human nature. Of course, I am a firm believer that with enough dedication and perseverance there is little that can't be achieved. Light rays when focused, through a convex lens, onto a piece of paper can ignite fire. The brain, a miracle in itself, can do wonders when its faculties are combined to perform a single task.

It may seem apparent now that I am heading towards neuroscience, the theme that could rightly capture my interests but I still face the challenge of being too broad. Many subdivisions within neuroscience such as Cognitive Neuroscience, Computational Neuroscience and Nanotechnology, Behavioral Neuroscience, Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience and Developmental Neurobiology are areas that one could write about. But I can't possibly know and write about all of them then will I be too narrowed in my approach towards this science by writing only about topics that interest me or the ones I will be working on. The risk, is, thus, of being too broad or too narrow but that's a risk one must take.

Commenting further on the evanescing life, consider a ten minute lifespan. Your task, to do the most of those ten minutes. You plan, and try to squeeze everything possible. There is a maxim that it always takes longer than you expect, so leave some leeway. Even with the leeway, you were unable to finish you first minute life task, it now impinges onto the second minute which in turn encroaches onto the third and so on. In the end, of life, then, there will always be somethings that remain unfinished.

Ghalib had once said:

Hazaron khwahishain aiseen keh har khwahish pe dam nikle
Bahut nikle mere dil ke arman, magar phir bhee kam nikle

This further stresses the need to focus and most importantly, prioritize. If a person is able to make a difference in just one area, I believe he served the purpose of his existence. Only that is the path to immortality otherwise we are very transitory beings. We can do more than just eat, sleep, reproduce and die.