Kapeesh Saraf

I saw the movie Chariots of Fire today. One of the finest movies I have seen in a while. While the story revolves around sport, it is much more than just another sports movie. The movie as a whole is truly inspirational, with excellent dialogs. I am compelled to quote a couple of them.

The first is a speech made at a Freshman’s address at Cambridge University:

” I take the war list and I run down it,

name after name, which I cannot read,

and which we who are older than you

cannot hear without emotion;

names which will be only names to you, the new College,

but which to us summon up face after face,

full of honesty and goodness,

zeal and vigor,

and intellectual promise;

the flower of a generation,

the glory of England;

and they died for England

and all that England stands for.

And now by tragic necessity

their dreams have become yours.

Let me exhort you: examine yourselves.

Let each of you discover

where your true chance of greatness lies.

For their sakes,

for the sake of your College and your country,

seize this chance,

rejoice in it,

and let no power or persuasion

deter you in your task. “

The second quote is the poem, Jeruselam, from which the movie’s title has been taken. Read it here.

If you’re an engineer, you can attempt to invent a machine that’s the perfect antidote to the problem. We’ll need a machine that creates oxygen, oxidizes carbon, filters nitrogen, creates solar energy, processes and cleans water, changes colour with the seasons, is self propagating and costs nothing, rather generates energy surplus after doing all this.
Seems like a tall order? Well, such a machine already exists. Its called a tree.”

That’s William Mcdonough talking in this wonderful presentation. Fascinating stuff.

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

-Robert Heinlein

No, learning to change diapers or pitch manure aren’t on my list of skills to learn (yet), but you get the drift.

Sigh.

Nothing is certain, except death & taxes.

So said Ben Franklin in his immensely popular Poor Richard’s Almanac. I think we can add one more certainty to that- Failure.

We are all going to be failures, we are all going to die with more than a few regrets and there is nothing we can do to set this right, no amount of hard work that can make us die without regrets. Our world is so incredibly complex, there is so much to do, so much to feel and experience, so many places to visit, so many wonders to marvel at, so much to read, to understand, so much life to live; that one lifetime is beyond doubt too little to have done it all. We make little compromises then, every day and every waking moment, and no matter how much we’ve accomplished, no matter how successful our society believes us to be, in the final analysis we’re sure to regret the things we didn’t do. Or the things we could have done. We’ll question our choices and regret that we didn’t squeeze out of life, the last possible drop of juice.