Herding - simplifying control?

We have redefined 'herding'

Image Source: ramblingtraveler.co



Image Source: china.org.cn

From Simplicity to Complexity, looking for Simplicity

Yes – that’s pretty much us humans! We were raw, simple and hairy when it all began. And then we drowned ourselves into the ‘race to it’. 

We invented the fire and started cooking food. Then we grew up foodstuffs and spices to make it delicious. We started adding up oils and butter to make it even better. And one fine day, we realize it’s not ‘good for us’. So we are cutting down on oils. The next day, they say spices are not good to your intestines – so we cut them too. One more day, and they say we cook our food and destroy the vital minerals and vitamins – here we are eating everything raw and fresh! It’s not sarcasm – all I wonder is how things which go around come around.

We had kings who had palaces of stone and furniture of wood. We felt it’s not right – so we spent decades perfecting stainless steel, glass, marble and plastics. And now, we are bored – so we go back to ‘oh-so-mahvellous’ wooden wardrobes and coffee tables. 

First it was bicycles and people were all healthy. Then came the steam engines, and then gasoline (petrol) and then – gasoline with additives. And now we go forward to compressed natural gas and the way things are now – pretty soon, we will ‘reinvent’ bicycles. Need of time or of brains – what went around, came around.

Why else would cotton come back in the show after being wrapped by for decades by leather, rexine and nylon? 

The sole recognition of humanity itself lies in refluxing oneself back to his past, periodically, to prepare for the future.

The Very First

We are all about answers – we live for answers, we die for answers, we fail for answers & we succeed for better answers. Why, Who, How, When, Where … where do we come from, what happens when we kick the bucket, why does the earth revolve around the sun, when will the earth end, why do we ask so many questions, what was the question anyway…. On a simple day, a simple man with a simple brain will ask at least 200 different questions in some or the other form. 

Have you noticed that emotions are a type of question too? You feel angry, because you are asking yourselves something like ‘Why this?’ or maybe ‘Why me?’ The more questions you ask, the more lawn you lay for more questions. It is as if you are being sucked into a black-hole of interrogation that you built yourself. 

I am not a cynic – questions are something (people think) that have kept us driven – alive. A world without questions would have been a world without fire, wheels and google. It was the answers who bettered our lives, bringing us to the today we live in. What I am surprised about is the extent to which we allow these questions to diversify our everyday. Let me tell you what happened to me yesterday. 

My everyday is pretty much the same as everybody else’s. Living in a metro, my mornings are controlled by the snooze button, coffee and an unattended gym session. I wake up and enter the rat race. My first question is obviously ‘Should I wake up?’ Maybe I can pretend I am not awake although I am. So I am asleep and awake at the same time. That might trigger a really good paradox which will remove my name from my company’s list for the day and I can spend the rest of my day building a really superb business plan I can execute once I retire after 30 years from today. 

But I knew the answer – and yet I ‘chose’ to ask a question – and why shouldn’t I? Questions are free (except those asked to your lawyer and your astrologer)! What I didn’t realize was that I just pulled off a considerable amount of mental energy into an act that will not fetch anything productive. Research has proven that a person has the highest positive energy levels in the morning – a chance to implement some really good thoughts! I however, chose, otherwise, when I could have used that same 2 minutes to meditate for a while (wait a minute, I did ask myself ‘Should I meditate?’) or have a good laugh to vitalize the upcoming day. 

Until the moment I pulled my car out on the road, I had shot myself with another 50 odd questions, hardly 5 of them being necessary. ‘What color should I put on today?’ knowing I only had one set of clothes ironed. I even went ahead asking myself ‘Should I just do the laundry and iron up a new set in a jiffy?’ knowing that I won’t be doing it. The breakfast was another battlefield – fighting off the fast food on one hand while negotiating with my diet plan on the other. While putting on my shoes, I even started wondering about the ingenious inventor who would have come up with shoelaces and aglets. All in all, I had just spent about half a gallon of mental gasoline trying to get myself into my daily piece of action. 

I entered my office and suddenly sensed the increased activity. A rather important client of ours was paying us a last-minute visit to discuss some important changes into his project. All of a sudden, the boss had ordered everybody to get set to their locations, finished with their pending assignments. I, being in charge of the corporate presentation, began browsing through months old emails and attachments to find out relevant snippets for the presentation. 

All of a sudden, my brain became a rugby field gone wild. Thirty different confusions had jumped right in – which file, is it that one, why today, why now, why all of a sudden, any chances the client will crash-die, can it be topped up with my boss getting a massive coronary? I am not a messy worker – rather I am better than at least half of my colleagues – but when it comes to last-minute panic – I win by a mile and a half. So there I was browsing through hundreds of different questions when my colleague just popped into my cubicle and yelled, ‘He’s here….’ 

It was a magnificent moment – I could have given a million dollars to somebody to just abduct me for the cause. A cluster of stern-looking japs rushed in through the main entrance. They paused for a moment, glancing around, obviously expecting a round of applause. No one clapped though – everyone was too busy keeping mum. Anywho, in an hour and a half, the clan left, pleased with the surprise lunch and the presentation I never gave. The rest of the day went at leisure – just some hundred questions to pop out. 

The evening saw me driving back gloomily, wishing they would invent teleporting machines real soon. My insides were projecting themselves like a really huge and messy network of stuff that makes my life less worthwhile – questions, hunger, confusion, more questions, a little tinge of hope, still more questions and still more. I honked pointlessly, waiting at a red light when I saw it. 

A billboard on my right – a really simple one – I wouldn’t have even bothered to take a glance were it not beaming with a word that really touched my insides. 

All it said was – SIMPLIFY