Thursday, May 30, 2013

Why

Sometime between 6th and 9th grade, we were taught how to write notes in English class. The main questions you were supposed to answer were, Who, What, When, Where, Why. My most hated was always the 'why'. It could never really be answered in the word limit that was allowed. As the years have progressed, it's held its place as the most annoying question in my mind.

Over the years however, the complexity of this annoyance has gone up significantly, thanks in no small part to the many scenarios where this question raises its ugly head. Things like, why did that happen, why didn't that happen, why does my code not work, you get the picture. However, I'm starting to see that the worst of it all is the question, why am I doing this?

Let me give a little more perspective. Over the years, I've experienced frustration in the work setting, and seen others go through so much more, all for doing something we love. But work is like any other mistress, if it doesn't love you back, the affection starts to fade and you're left wondering why you're going through that frustration to begin with. The other, worse part has to do with the fact that I'm surrounded by very intelligent people who hold the skills and temperament to succeed at pretty much any endeavor. I like to believe I'm one of them, and it probably is true. The next part might sound patronizing or self-aggrandizing, but it really isn't, so my apologies if you're offended. The key problem when you're so intelligent that you can do anything, is the question why should you devote your efforts to that particular something. Yes, it can be seen as overconfidence, but the fact is that most people are driven by a reason. There's a reason people are willing to put in their nights and days, their sweat blood and tears for a cause. Because the simple fact is that it needs to be a cause. And the importance of the cause is proportional to the effort required. A lot of my friends, they've spent a good part of their lives studying and working pretty damn hard. Which means that the 'why' at this point needs to be pretty darn strong. This is the point where companies and business execs lose the plot. At this point, money can only do so much, family considerations and pressures a lot more. But what they (and me), truly desire, is a sense of satisfaction, or achievement, of having made a difference to this world. They want a fulfillment of that dream that was shown to them when they started college and were told they could change the world.

Much as this might seem annoying to you, people who aren't happy with how much they've achieved, the desire to achieve something in life is universal. It's the scale of desire that differs. I'm sure when Alexander would have told people he wanted to conquer the world, people would have wondered, why the hell isn't he happy with having a kingdom. Yes, I will agree that he died young, and that might suck, but the world knows who he was. There was a line in the movie Troy, when Achilles' mother tells him, that if he stays, he shall have many sons and daughters who will love him and pass on his story, but slowly his name would die out. But if he went to Troy, he would not return, but his name would live through history. He chose the latter.

I don't think all of us want that strong a cause, but scientists try to map it to the autism spectrum. How focused you are on one particular thing tends to decide how much you want from your work. That's a gross oversimplification I agree, but there is a correlation. In fact, autistic tendencies are positively correlated to success in STEM fields, simply because hard work and perseverance pays off in these fields more than others.

So in the end, the irony is that I at least know the answer to one of the why's, which is that why I must know why I do something, and that's a good beginning. Hopefully, some time before I hit 50 I'll also understand why I ended up taking the path I took.