Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh
I've remembered these two questions a couple of minutes ago, they were mentioned in a movie called "The Pursuit of Happyness" and as you see Happyness is written intentionally with 'y' but that's another story!
The scene was that the hero who was a depressed poor guy was walking in the street then found a guy parking his very nice & expensive car, he stopped him and asked him "may I as you two questions..." "What do you do? and how do you do it?"
Away from the scene and how things went on in the movie, the question that came to me was why don't I ask myself the same questions.. it's not that I'm successful or something but my point is to try to analyze what "were" my goals during my past life... and what did I do to reach the state I am in now -fail/success/progress...-
I believe what brought this to my mind is watching -again- Steve Jobs's motivational speech when he said "you can't connect the dots when you look to the future, you can only connect them when you look backward"
This is not 100% true I believe, because for somethings, we believe for sure what will happen if you did x then y then z...
Anyway, for some extent I felt his statement was true and can be applied to a lot of our day to day actions.
Are you now smoking? go back to what led you to smoke your first cigarette? was it depression? what were you depressed about?.... go back and back... you will find a lot of answers... a lot of consecutive actions you or somebody made that led to your first cigarette...
Are you leading your very successful company? I'm sure a lot you did in the past that led to you to this, nothing comes to lazy people, even if you didn't enter college, you did a lot of other things that you didn't realize back then that they will lead you to this...
Think about them again... What do you do now? and what led you to this?
The next question is, what is the point of tracking the past? I believe knowing what led you to this will make it easier for you to learn what mistakes you did and what did they led to.. and what good things you did and what did they led to... planning to your future should be easier by now In Shaa Allah..
Long post... this teaches you patience ;)
Have a nice week..
I've remembered these two questions a couple of minutes ago, they were mentioned in a movie called "The Pursuit of Happyness" and as you see Happyness is written intentionally with 'y' but that's another story!
The scene was that the hero who was a depressed poor guy was walking in the street then found a guy parking his very nice & expensive car, he stopped him and asked him "may I as you two questions..." "What do you do? and how do you do it?"
Away from the scene and how things went on in the movie, the question that came to me was why don't I ask myself the same questions.. it's not that I'm successful or something but my point is to try to analyze what "were" my goals during my past life... and what did I do to reach the state I am in now -fail/success/progress...-
I believe what brought this to my mind is watching -again- Steve Jobs's motivational speech when he said "you can't connect the dots when you look to the future, you can only connect them when you look backward"
This is not 100% true I believe, because for somethings, we believe for sure what will happen if you did x then y then z...
Anyway, for some extent I felt his statement was true and can be applied to a lot of our day to day actions.
Are you now smoking? go back to what led you to smoke your first cigarette? was it depression? what were you depressed about?.... go back and back... you will find a lot of answers... a lot of consecutive actions you or somebody made that led to your first cigarette...
Are you leading your very successful company? I'm sure a lot you did in the past that led to you to this, nothing comes to lazy people, even if you didn't enter college, you did a lot of other things that you didn't realize back then that they will lead you to this...
Think about them again... What do you do now? and what led you to this?
The next question is, what is the point of tracking the past? I believe knowing what led you to this will make it easier for you to learn what mistakes you did and what did they led to.. and what good things you did and what did they led to... planning to your future should be easier by now In Shaa Allah..
Long post... this teaches you patience ;)
Have a nice week..
Well at first I am glad to see the rate of nontechnical inspiring posts going upwards ;)
ReplyDeleteI think yes it is pretty much necessary to have a stop every now and then and ask yourself some questions. What you have done compared to what you have wanted to do. And to do that you must be from that type who have got goals at first place.
About that dots theory, sometimes I imagine life a a chain of events and events handlers. Everyone calling another. Didn't you say lots of times before to yourself "omg if I were not in that place in that time that wouldn't have happened to me" even sometimes just seeing a movie or a song or meeting someone leads to a change in your entire life.
Concerning looking through the past I think it should be done in a careful way and without exceeding a certain limit of thinking. It should be positive as well not that negative type which leads you backwards. I have just come to realize something bad about myself which is that I regret lots of things in the past and worry a lot about the future that I don't have time to enjoy the present. I think we should be aware not to fall into that trap.
Why was "happyness" written with a 'y' by the way ?
Well, briefly I liked the post. I will just comment on the part you said you didn't believe totally in the dots-backwards and -forwards part ..
ReplyDeletePersonally, I do believe in what he says. I don't believe we have the capability to expect that if u do X and Y, u'll sure reach Z. It's always that X and Y now make no sense or relation, Z is revealed later.
Since u do watch movies, I suggest u watch "The Secret: Law of Attraction". It's a documentary which contains so many stuff u'll agree and disagree to. But there's one scene I'd like u to watch. It discusses how even though u can't see what comes next, u should have faith that u'll reach ur destination if u follow a line. The gave an example of a guy traveling at night (headlights of the car show a small part of the road - the only part he can see) from a state to a state. The point was that he doesn't see more than 10m ahead, but since he follows the line (or the part he sees of it), he will eventually reach the other state regardless how the road may bend or twist - he can't see any further than the headlights! I believe that's pretty much closely related to what Steve mentioned. You just work hard, fill urself up, later u'll find a use to that.
LOL. I wrote an essay about a trivial point! :D
@ Ahmed:
ReplyDeleteYou are welcome ;)
I agree with you, you should not spend your life looking backward to realize there is no much time left in life to enjoy...
As I was told by a trusted source ;), y means you... so happyness means your happyness while happiness means mine...
so the meaning is that I'm working hard looking for YOUR happyness
@ Alaa
ReplyDeleteWhat I meant by those things that we know for sure is mostly related to religious beliefs, i.e you know if you didn't believe in Allah, you will not go to paradise...
In general -in our day to day life- we can never know for sure what will happy as a consequence to what we do now... and this is the part I agree with you and Steve in..
It's a nice situation to demonstrate the idea...
I see no need to see the movie after this essay :P
Thanks
Haytham, I really like your post because it got me thinking, but I've gotta say... I don't entirely agree that looking back and connecting the dots really makes you that much better at avoiding the same mistakes in the future.
ReplyDeleteThink of someone that falls in love with an unsuitable person for reason X. It's over, people move on, and then this person looks back and realizes the connections.. does it mean they won't fall in love tomorrow with a person that has the same issue? No.... because a lot of the time you won't even see this until it's too late. And a lot of the time even if you see it, you can't always help how you feel.
And lets say they do avoid X... who says they won't fall for someone that has a characteristic Y which is even worse but in some other way?
Think of yourself at school taking the practice exams. You made a mistake and lost a grade. It sucks. Does that mean you wont make that mistake again next exam?? Heck I'm sure everybody would get way better grades if that were the case :)
At the end of the day, there's a myriad of mistakes one can make, so realizing one doesn't really mean you wont make it again, or won't make a different-but-equally-bad mistake.
I'm not arguing that it's impossible to learn from your mistakes... I'm just saying that a lot of the time, it's normal not to - no matter how thoroughly you analyzed your past.
Bass keda :) khamsa falsafa 3al dohr.
@ Dina
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting :).
I agree with you that at a lot of cases we "seem" not to learn from our mistakes. Like some examples you gave.
I believe in things related to emotions and things that your mind doesn't 100% control. It maybe harder to avoid previous mistakes. However, it's still feasible like that you learn to give your mind "more" control the next time... I know things don't go this logical :) but the point is to "try" to avoid what you previously messed up.
About school practice exams :D b2a, fa ma3lsh I disagree with you and I believe it's really really feasible to avoid previous mistakes... I don't have a "proof" but I just believe so from my own experience.
Think about when you write some code, you produce a memory leak, the next time you write similar code, you try to avoid the memory leak (and you produce a BlueScreen crash mabye :D)
I also believe producing another worse mistake is not something bad. Because we can think of it as a totally new experience, and we can learn from it.
Last thing, I totally agree that looking back != avoiding mistakes. It just decreases the probability of doing the same stupid mistake over and over again..
Long reply... as always :D.
Thanks