As everyone bids good
riddance to 2020, i instinctively harked back to the same time last year.
The first week of 2020 was filled with messages of hope and wishes of
prosperity and safety - all in start contrast to how the year eventually ended
up for most of the world. There were messages admiring the symmetrical beauty
of the numbers - something that would occur only once in 101 years - as a
divine intervention which will bring only good things. If only we knew it was,
in truth, a foreboding ! Normally, i dont linger much on the past, but with all
these thoughts swirling in my mind, i decided to pursue this to see where it
leads to. And in doing so, i ended up with the three laws of motion. While i
keep emphasising on 'unlearning' and 'relearning' often in every day life, this
Newtonian epiphany was something even i hadn't expected. So partly in mirth,
and partly in pensive mood, here goes my take on 2020.
If a body is at rest or moving at a constant speed in a
straight line, it will remain at rest or keep moving in a straight line at
constant speed unless it is acted upon by a force. For long, it felt like the force was
the disruption driven by the coronavirus. The body was me. And i must say, it
was challenging to adapt to a work from home, school from home, and then the
circuit breaker-lockdown period where everything was at home. Zoom became
ubiquitous, calls and virtual meetings became the order of the day and the
inertia drove most of us to continue working quite late into the day. It wasn't
much after the lockdowns etc were lifted that i realised that the force, really
was my own desire and motivation - which was often, partly driven by fear. Now,
i will not go on and quote the Joker about the "unstoppable force -
immovable object" paradox, but honestly, how many times did i reach out to
friends, colleagues and family to try to find out alternatives of keeping up ?
How often did i put ingenuity to use to find create newer solutions within the
operating constraints ? This was one of the rare occasions when one is a
spectator in her/his own life but being a spectator doesn't mean you have to be
passive. It is easy for me to say now, but the hard truth i learnt is nothing
changes until one forces things to - through the sheer desire for change, and
the belief in the reasons for change.
For an object with constant mass, that the net force on an
object is equal to the mass of that object multiplied by the acceleration. Well, you couldn't have asked for a body with bigger mass ! but If
the mass was external, the acceleration was all internal, and let me explain.
If the first law was about the individual, this one is all about the
organisational changes that we witnessed. Never before has the adage about the
whole being more than the sum of its parts came to the fore, like this year.
The individual behavior and habits were, and still are, evolving and so evolved
everything around it - from the multi-billion MNCs to start-ups, from the
mammoth Government and Judicial machinery to self-help groups. I guess when the
fear of survival looms large, fear of failure fades to the back, if not
entirely banished from the minds. Nothing else i could think of fully explained
why and how things moved so quickly now when everyone else and everything else
still remained the same, if not, more constrained than before. And this truly
is the internal acceleration i wish to see going forward as well.
For every action (force) in nature there is an equal and
opposite reaction Of all that this year threw up, in the long run, this will
probably be the most consequential. As panic spread, we saw fear mongering and
post truths being peddled to exploit society and humanity at its most fragile
moment in recent times. But what wasn't probably anticipated was the blowback
it would generate. And while it was heartening to note the growing voice of
fact checkers and myth slayers and people standing up to bigotry and forces
that be, it has left the world deeply polarised. (the recent US prez elections
are a prime example).
Oh and there is a bonus
learning as well - the Fleming's Left Hand Thumb Rule ! While i am too tempted
to say this is the balancing of the three divergent directions of service, cost
and cash (fundamental to any supply chain decision and very closely related to
my area of work) this is not what i have in mind here. Its about my long time
hero - ACP Pradyuman - perhaps saying there are more twists in the tale
expected in 2021.
