AneeshWrites

Lately I have been giving a lot of thought to what life is all about. It is one of those thoughts that crosses every 20 or so year old’s mind. Though it does happen to most, one seldom gives much heed to it claiming it is not the right age to think about such matters and old age is when one must do so, as is the social norm. I, however, disagree with most of them and believe that the sooner one expends mental energy on this subject, better is the understanding one gets about life thereby increasing the potential of living it better and consequently being happier. In this post I will, embrace my rebellious nature and, try to briefly articulate my thoughts on ‘What is Life?’

To aid my explanation, I introduce a couple of definitions/concepts:

• Quantum of time - is the smallest unit of time a human can consciously or unconsciously comprehend.
• Reductionism – is a methodology where one tries to reduce the conglomeration of events occurring in his/her life to atomic events which fit in a ‘quantum of time’.

I would now like to state and explain the theory that I have constructed – Theory of Reductionism.

The theory simple states that, Life is a series of a finite set of Boolean decisions each of which are made at each quantum of time (consciously or unconsciously).

Understanding this theory requires an individual to identify and reduce one’s life to events which occur in a quantum of time – defined ‘Reductionism’, I have chosen to christen it ‘Theory of Reductionism’.

To begin explaining this theory, I would like to ask you to observe yourself at this very moment, keeping in mind the definitions of quantum of time and reductionism. Let me help you.

You were engaged in some activity before you started reading this post. Now you are reading it. Later you will engage yourself in some other activity. This is a very broad classification of immediate events that occurred in your life. Let us zoom in - as the concept of reductionism requires the events to be broken down to atomic events which are consciously comprehendible (for this example). You read the intro of this post earlier, now you are reading the example to understand my theory and later you will read the conclusion. This is a decent magnification of the event but we need to zoom in further into the events, enough so that each event in the past-present-future triad becomes atomic – further indivisible without losing its meaning. Doing so would yield us a series which looks something like, you read the words of the sentence ‘Doing so would…’, now you are reading ‘this’ sentence, later you would read this. At this juncture, according to the theory, you have made a conscious decision to ‘read’ the word/sentence. It was a choice, a decision made by you and it was a Boolean decision – meaning it was a simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. You could have said no and stopped reading, but you did read on and it was by choice - result of a decision. Now if you integrate all such atomic Boolean decisions that you have ever made, the result of it will be your Life, as you have experienced it.

A question at this juncture would naturally arise – So what? What are the implications of this theory?

Before I state the implications and application of this theory, I annunciate a concept of psychology – any action done (including decision making) with awareness (active consciousness) will produce better results (desirable results) than when done without much awareness, which is not hard to understand.

Now, if you were to apply this theory in your life, you will reduce your life events into atomic events in the present. As this would require your awareness and judgement (to make those decisions) you would invariably be “Living the moment”, experiencing life at its “present” not bothered by the past or the future. Since your attention would then not be divided between the past, present and future, it would be concentrated on the present/now. You would then be more aware of the “Now” than ever. This will mean you will consistently make decisions which will produce better, satisfactory results more often than ever. When you practice this (approach to life), it becomes a second nature to you making you a happier person. After all, that is the motive of life isn’t it, being happy.

I hope this theory will benefit you by accruing a dimension of happiness to your life. I end this post by quoting Eckhart Tolle who said -

“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.”

Until next time…Cheers to Life!