November 12 2014. I was listlessly surfing the web when suddenly a thought came to my mind. It was about 'Life' - perhaps the most dramatic topic in the world. The thought said to me that Life is like a Chemical Change - the latter is a topic in Chemistry that I had learnt in junior high a long time ago. Simply speaking, a chemical change is any change around us that is permanent and irreversible. For starters, burning of paper could be an example. I don't know why this thought suddenly sprang up in my mind. But it made me glad. Because Chemistry had been my favorite subject back then and I still kind of like it. After an undying love for about nine years, it has now completely left my life. But that didn't deter me from sharing my thought on social media. More so because I had not come across an explanation of life in terms of Chemistry before.
So, in the next 15 minutes, I'd posted my status on Facebook. This is how it went:
From a strict Chemistry standpoint, Life is a Chemical Change. Because:-
1. It involves making and breaking of bonds.
2. It often results in creation of a new stable product after several years.
3. It undergoes a complex (=complicated) reaction catalyzed by good times and slowed down otherwise.
4. Most importantly, the change (=journey) is irreversible.
1. It involves making and breaking of bonds.
A stunning start, isn't it? Who would possibly deny? Not me, not you. Needless to say, this is pretty much what everyone does in their lifetime. We keep meeting people; Then a time comes when they no longer seem vital for our survival - that's when we tend to ignore them or, let me make this a little subtle, we lessen touch with them. Meanwhile, we would have had some more people barge into our lives. Of course, some don't barge - they creep in nicely, slowly and gradually. This almost simultaneously happens alongside we doing something similar in other people's lives.
It's strange how we humans deal with our relationships. Sometimes people are just too indispensable for us to let go of, while at other times we just don't bother remembering them maybe because they were despicable or too stubborn or maybe just 'not our type'. And there could be some more analogy with Chemistry here. Even human bonds could be ionic or covalent. We are into an ionic bond with someone when we give our all to them without expecting anything. There cannot be a better example of this than the relationship between a mother and her child. A mother gives her all and the child takes it all. The result of this is a bond that, most often than not, lasts for a full lifetime. Mother's love! It's been the best thing on this planet all these millions of years and I still don't find an able contender to it.
Now coming to covalent bond - a shared relationship between two elements - this is rather a common kind that we see every now and then. Selfish, seeking mutual benefit, relationship with expectations - sound familiar, isn't it? Well, this is how I would describe a covalent relationship. No please don't frown at me, I am not making it sound bad. In its essence, such a bond is known to possess these attributes. The most common example here could be a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. Not that I am against it, but this is the underlying truth. Things are shared between a couple - love, happiness, grief, togetherness, (sex, money, presents, bitterness, frustration, encouragement to live, motivation to die) etc. but it's always a two-way street. What goes around, comes around! Some make it to the zenith and Chemistry tells us they have a formed 'a stable compound'. On the other hand, some others feel the conditions just aren't right for them. Perhaps heaven could only bring such people together, perhaps the compound is meant to be stable only at absolute zero!
Well now it makes to me more sense when I think in retrospection about the common phrase that people use - "they indeed have a great chemistry!" or "their chemistry is pathetic!". They obviously mean the bond. Sigh! And I thought I was among a few that had a fair grasp on the subject.
2. It often results in creation of a new stable product after several years.
A 'stable product', could mean an offspring - a child; an heir. A couple often feels desirous of starting a family when they are of and above a particular age. When two individuals attempt to consummate their marriage, they undergo a chemical change, in order to give birth to a new life. Of course instead of 'undergoing' the change in their life, they could simply adopt a child in which case this analogy doesn't work out that well.
But another way to look at a stable product in this regard is by referring to the phase in everyone's life when they attain physical and emotional maturity. Our maturity is a stable product that stays with us and only increases in volume until it finally decays along with our bodies. And attaining this maturity indeed involves a complex physiological as well as hormonal 'change'. And in cases where someone doesn't show the right judgement or maturity or has an unstable mental state; or if I may say, the product isn't as stable as it was meant or hoped to be, it's fair to assume that the conditions were not conducive to the change. In other words, the change occurred under unfavorable circumstances giving the 'product' the incorrect set of attributes and causing instability.
3. It undergoes a complex (=complicated) reaction catalyzed by good times and slowed down otherwise.
At the end of all happy times, we often say "Oh I wish time hadn't moved this fast" or "Wish we had some more time together". Again during tough strides or simply during a boring lecture, we turn to our friends and say "Hey, looks like my watch has stopped working. What's the time?" or "It seems like ages since this class started. Is it ever going to end in this lifetime?". So this whole 'reaction' that we undergo our whole life has its periods of speed as well as perceivable slowness.
Every other day brings about a change in us. The change ranges from being a memory fragment, good or bad, that sticks itself firmly to the mind, to being a lesson learnt that one would want to remember until death, to being a wound that leaves a permanent scar, to an achievement that stays the best until a future one would overwrite it, to making a friend who would go to any lengths in the future to either preserve the bond or destroy it or maybe to being a road taken that would go on to change one's course of life entirely. None of these changes could ever be revisited and stopped from happening or made better by alteration; not at least until this time as I compose this piece!
Some of these changes really boost us forward and give a positive meaning to our lives. That's the catalyst I talked about. They give us the classic 'life is a bed of roses' feeling and we invariably tend to say something like this to ourselves "Some more of these and my life would just sail past smoothly over the years and then I'd die a happy death". The love of our parents; a bunch of awesome buddies; a wonderful partner; a road trip; an excursion; a roller-coaster ride; a treat of our favorite recipe; an unexpected present from someone; a semester with the best grades; a birthday bash - all these and many more constitute those changes in our life that provide a mighty push forward and give us a reason to live. We keep thanking our God and everything in life just seems damn doable. A catalyst for sure, eh?
The other side of the story is the dull side - the painful and the miserable. These have to go hand-in-hand with the good ones because that's what life is: a mixed bag! These changes, or happenings, almost about strangle our hopes to live. They make us go "Why does it always have to be me? Why am I the only one walking down this hellhole?". An injury to a part of our body; a period of being grounded by our parents; a friend who goes behind our back; a lover parting ways because of a misunderstanding; an exam of our most-hated subject; a failure at getting that final score in a sport when everyone depended on us - such events squeeze out whatever motivation we would have garnered until that point in time; making our lives, temporarily, a living hell. We spend a lot of our time retrospecting on the things that led to the unfortunate event and feel an unsuppressed desire to go back in time and prevent the mishap. Go back in time?! That sure is a negative catalyst don't you think?
4. Most importantly, the change (=journey) is irreversible.
If only I'd written this article earlier this year it wouldn't have been the lone entry in 2014. Wish I could go back...
Happy New Year 2015! :)
So, in the next 15 minutes, I'd posted my status on Facebook. This is how it went:
From a strict Chemistry standpoint, Life is a Chemical Change. Because:-
1. It involves making and breaking of bonds.
2. It often results in creation of a new stable product after several years.
3. It undergoes a complex (=complicated) reaction catalyzed by good times and slowed down otherwise.
4. Most importantly, the change (=journey) is irreversible.
I felt elated after posting. Not only it was my first thought-provoking post in years but also it brought back memories of my favorite subject. And if that was not enough, I decided to compose a blog post by the same name and put some more thoughts into the topic. So here I am, typing just whatever's coming to my mind. The only thing that is premeditated here is the outline. I've decided to delve a little deeper into each of the above points. Feel free to stop wherever this post beats the brains out of you!
1. It involves making and breaking of bonds.
A stunning start, isn't it? Who would possibly deny? Not me, not you. Needless to say, this is pretty much what everyone does in their lifetime. We keep meeting people; Then a time comes when they no longer seem vital for our survival - that's when we tend to ignore them or, let me make this a little subtle, we lessen touch with them. Meanwhile, we would have had some more people barge into our lives. Of course, some don't barge - they creep in nicely, slowly and gradually. This almost simultaneously happens alongside we doing something similar in other people's lives.
It's strange how we humans deal with our relationships. Sometimes people are just too indispensable for us to let go of, while at other times we just don't bother remembering them maybe because they were despicable or too stubborn or maybe just 'not our type'. And there could be some more analogy with Chemistry here. Even human bonds could be ionic or covalent. We are into an ionic bond with someone when we give our all to them without expecting anything. There cannot be a better example of this than the relationship between a mother and her child. A mother gives her all and the child takes it all. The result of this is a bond that, most often than not, lasts for a full lifetime. Mother's love! It's been the best thing on this planet all these millions of years and I still don't find an able contender to it.
Now coming to covalent bond - a shared relationship between two elements - this is rather a common kind that we see every now and then. Selfish, seeking mutual benefit, relationship with expectations - sound familiar, isn't it? Well, this is how I would describe a covalent relationship. No please don't frown at me, I am not making it sound bad. In its essence, such a bond is known to possess these attributes. The most common example here could be a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. Not that I am against it, but this is the underlying truth. Things are shared between a couple - love, happiness, grief, togetherness, (sex, money, presents, bitterness, frustration, encouragement to live, motivation to die) etc. but it's always a two-way street. What goes around, comes around! Some make it to the zenith and Chemistry tells us they have a formed 'a stable compound'. On the other hand, some others feel the conditions just aren't right for them. Perhaps heaven could only bring such people together, perhaps the compound is meant to be stable only at absolute zero!
Well now it makes to me more sense when I think in retrospection about the common phrase that people use - "they indeed have a great chemistry!" or "their chemistry is pathetic!". They obviously mean the bond. Sigh! And I thought I was among a few that had a fair grasp on the subject.
2. It often results in creation of a new stable product after several years.
A 'stable product', could mean an offspring - a child; an heir. A couple often feels desirous of starting a family when they are of and above a particular age. When two individuals attempt to consummate their marriage, they undergo a chemical change, in order to give birth to a new life. Of course instead of 'undergoing' the change in their life, they could simply adopt a child in which case this analogy doesn't work out that well.
But another way to look at a stable product in this regard is by referring to the phase in everyone's life when they attain physical and emotional maturity. Our maturity is a stable product that stays with us and only increases in volume until it finally decays along with our bodies. And attaining this maturity indeed involves a complex physiological as well as hormonal 'change'. And in cases where someone doesn't show the right judgement or maturity or has an unstable mental state; or if I may say, the product isn't as stable as it was meant or hoped to be, it's fair to assume that the conditions were not conducive to the change. In other words, the change occurred under unfavorable circumstances giving the 'product' the incorrect set of attributes and causing instability.
3. It undergoes a complex (=complicated) reaction catalyzed by good times and slowed down otherwise.
At the end of all happy times, we often say "Oh I wish time hadn't moved this fast" or "Wish we had some more time together". Again during tough strides or simply during a boring lecture, we turn to our friends and say "Hey, looks like my watch has stopped working. What's the time?" or "It seems like ages since this class started. Is it ever going to end in this lifetime?". So this whole 'reaction' that we undergo our whole life has its periods of speed as well as perceivable slowness.
Every other day brings about a change in us. The change ranges from being a memory fragment, good or bad, that sticks itself firmly to the mind, to being a lesson learnt that one would want to remember until death, to being a wound that leaves a permanent scar, to an achievement that stays the best until a future one would overwrite it, to making a friend who would go to any lengths in the future to either preserve the bond or destroy it or maybe to being a road taken that would go on to change one's course of life entirely. None of these changes could ever be revisited and stopped from happening or made better by alteration; not at least until this time as I compose this piece!
Some of these changes really boost us forward and give a positive meaning to our lives. That's the catalyst I talked about. They give us the classic 'life is a bed of roses' feeling and we invariably tend to say something like this to ourselves "Some more of these and my life would just sail past smoothly over the years and then I'd die a happy death". The love of our parents; a bunch of awesome buddies; a wonderful partner; a road trip; an excursion; a roller-coaster ride; a treat of our favorite recipe; an unexpected present from someone; a semester with the best grades; a birthday bash - all these and many more constitute those changes in our life that provide a mighty push forward and give us a reason to live. We keep thanking our God and everything in life just seems damn doable. A catalyst for sure, eh?
The other side of the story is the dull side - the painful and the miserable. These have to go hand-in-hand with the good ones because that's what life is: a mixed bag! These changes, or happenings, almost about strangle our hopes to live. They make us go "Why does it always have to be me? Why am I the only one walking down this hellhole?". An injury to a part of our body; a period of being grounded by our parents; a friend who goes behind our back; a lover parting ways because of a misunderstanding; an exam of our most-hated subject; a failure at getting that final score in a sport when everyone depended on us - such events squeeze out whatever motivation we would have garnered until that point in time; making our lives, temporarily, a living hell. We spend a lot of our time retrospecting on the things that led to the unfortunate event and feel an unsuppressed desire to go back in time and prevent the mishap. Go back in time?! That sure is a negative catalyst don't you think?
4. Most importantly, the change (=journey) is irreversible.
If only I'd written this article earlier this year it wouldn't have been the lone entry in 2014. Wish I could go back...
Happy New Year 2015! :)
Just wow!!! A big Thumbs Up for the stellar insight you have regarding life. Truly an exothermic piece.
ReplyDeleteThanks Debansu... Always an inspiration having my writing reviewed by minds like you. :)
ReplyDelete