Lost in Translation

One thought that always rankles in my mind is - 'Could I have done this better?' - or its variant - 'What would have happened had I not done what I did?'. Thankfully for me, after some moments of moping and self-pity, I do come to the comforting conclusion - 'I did the best I could, and things couldn't have been better'. There is nothing wrong in thinking like that, save the fact that my argument is specious.

I have come to believe that things don't pan out the way we expect because we dont heed the warning signs early enough. Digressing slightly to bring in a metaphysical perspective, I do indeed think that we are playing a part in the drama of life. That means that we are not completely free-willed ( though libertarians may think other wise ), and do get affected by our milieu. I think we need to look for cues provided by some supreme-being ( call it God if you like ) in order to play our part well, akin to what an actor does in a play.

Alas! It all seems a nice bit of thoery, but what am I getting at? The sad part is that we all look for signs, right or wrong is altogether a different matter though. An interesting tradition comes to mind. Many moons ago, I heard that in a village near Goa, arranged marriage is conducted by tossing a leaf ( a special kind, of course ). If it does land on a specific side, the marriage is propitious; otherwise, doomed. This seems a rather extreme example, and I should clarify that I don' t want to hint at superstution here. What I do mean to say is that we all can do a lot better in our lives, if we know what to look for and do keep on the look-out.

I would propose, that we might even think of life as a 'Controlled Experiment'. We all have our wishes, our dreams, our aspirations. We might as well go about them in a rational manner, and with an intensity and patience befitting a research scientist - pick and choose the conditions that favour us and replicate them for life. The most important message is that we should persevere, and do enjoy this process of analysis and synthesis if we wish to improve our lot.

I seek comfort in Mr. Einstein - "God doesn't play dice with the world". Seems true to me, and there is good justification for it. Maybe, its just because we do not have perfect information. Maybe, we do not extract the 'signal' from the 'noise'. Or maybe, it is all 'lost in translation'.