In recent times, I have found myself consuming books and podcasts quite regularly. As a result, I am exposed to several ideas of varied kind - the remarkable, the useful, the simple, the elegant, and so on. At times, it pains me that these ideas can be fleeting, and slip away before I am able to grasp and appreciate them fully.
Enter writing. The written word is an unassuming disciplinarian. It forces one to wrestle with ideas, confront them, fine tune them and describe them succinctly, in a manner that makes later consumption easy, as well as effective. This rather unconscious exercise of having to fine tune every idea is akin to sculpting - chipping away at the excess, while retaining the essence. However, every idea is only as relevant as the spirit of its presence. Even scientific ideas purported to be timeless, such as the laws of gravitation, are fundamentally revisited and reconstructed. One art form that I have observed with quiet fascination, is that of sand sculpting - one that forever strives to capture the beauty of the present moment, while humbly accepting its temporal limitations.
Also, this blog has been started with a selfish idea. Kurt Vonnegut famously quipped, "Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.". The one person he referred to here is one's own self. Initially, I mulled with the idea of keeping these posts entirely private, and started off on that footing. Nevertheless, if putting some of these posts out could form conduits for conversations, the exercise would be worth its while. I am grateful to anybody who makes a meaningful contribution there.
Enter writing. The written word is an unassuming disciplinarian. It forces one to wrestle with ideas, confront them, fine tune them and describe them succinctly, in a manner that makes later consumption easy, as well as effective. This rather unconscious exercise of having to fine tune every idea is akin to sculpting - chipping away at the excess, while retaining the essence. However, every idea is only as relevant as the spirit of its presence. Even scientific ideas purported to be timeless, such as the laws of gravitation, are fundamentally revisited and reconstructed. One art form that I have observed with quiet fascination, is that of sand sculpting - one that forever strives to capture the beauty of the present moment, while humbly accepting its temporal limitations.
Also, this blog has been started with a selfish idea. Kurt Vonnegut famously quipped, "Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.". The one person he referred to here is one's own self. Initially, I mulled with the idea of keeping these posts entirely private, and started off on that footing. Nevertheless, if putting some of these posts out could form conduits for conversations, the exercise would be worth its while. I am grateful to anybody who makes a meaningful contribution there.
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