The Joys of life!

I think everyone has some special things where they are completely in the moment. For me dancing and coding are those things which give me the ultimate joy of being in the moment. But lets be real, for both it won’t happen right away. You need to invest time to get to that state. 

When coding, You start by figuring out the problem, brainstorming solutions, thinking about all those tricky corner cases, and planning how to handle them. After doing all this you come to a framework of an algorithm that you want to write. Now things are clear, they are flowing in your mind. You can connect dots in your mind and now just need to type them all up using your favorite IDE. That’s when you are in the zone. Your favorite music is playing in the background. But you are not really paying attention to the songs. Your complete focus and attention is on translating that mental image to your computer. Sometimes it can happen that you are not writing fast enough and are so thankful for the technology that auto completes your letter to a word. For me, this is one of the moments that I work for.

This whole process also reminds me of how Mahabharata was written. As the story goes, Vyasa who is the composer of this epic, faced challenge where his mind was thinking too fast but his hands couldn’t keep up. So he went to lord Ganesha and requested his help to be his writer. Ganesha agreed but with a catch: “He will write the epic for Vyasa but he should never have to stop. If he has to stop and wait for Vyasa to come up with next verse, he will abandon the writing of Mahabharata.” Hearing this Vyasa countered with his own condition: “Ganesha can only write after he understands a verse.” So whenever Vyasa was running out of story, he would throw in a complicated verse. Ganesha would take some time to understand it which in turn would buy Vyasa some time to compose the next verse. As the story goes, this is how they wrote Mahabharata over a period of three years. 

Just like coding, the zone state of dancing won’t come right away. You won’t be in zone the first time you are learning a new routine or choreography. You will need to put in the effort to get to the zone state. You will need to learn the steps, sync them to the musical beats, practice them multiple times. Once you do all this, the joy of learning a new choreography and dancing will come alive. Once you put in the effort, you won’t have to think but your body and mind will be in sync. Mind will be telling body the next step to perform or next position to go to. This state my friends is a pure bliss and gives an ultimate joy of dancing. 

I've been lucky to experience both these joys recently. I started a new job in February and have written more code in the past six months than I did in the previous three years. Just as I was wrapping up a major deadline, we had a 15th August celebration in the office. There I got to learn and perform a dance with some amazing colleagues. Both experiences were incredibly fulfilling and made me feel like, "The time is now! Grab it and enjoy the moment!"

So, what about you? What are the things that make you feel like "The time is now"?