Wednesday - November 17th, 2010

It has been a long day at work, trying to understand code without any documentation. It is multi-threaded application and several things are happening simultaneously just like in real life. Understanding this code is quite a bit of mental exercise - exercise in imagination. Because when a multi-threaded application is running, it comes to life as in 3-D, while what we program is in 2-D. Now that is when I am writing the code. You can imagine how it would be for me when I try to understand someone elses multi-threaded code without documentation reading disjoint pieces of code. And it is not just that, I am supposed to solve a problem because original people are no longer available. I am not complaining, but sometimes it gets little challenging. Like today me sitting with my head in my hands. Yet I enjoy my work very much. Even small breakthrough gives a great satisfaction. It gives a great pleasure to look back and see a piece of code smoothly working. In fact I get same kind of satisfaction looking at the lawn I mowed freshly or after tidying up a messy room. I think knowing what makes one happy is the key to a life what one could call successful. As per me happiness at work is very important, since work takes up major slice of our grown up life and it feeds many of our needs.Perfection at work needs perfection of mind.And what is a perfect mind? It would mean lot of different things to different people.For me, mind is a kind of tool one would use in daily life to get around, do things, find answers, make choices etc. But when the days work is done one should be able to shut off the mind. It is not easy to shut off the mind though. Meditation is the key to do that, but it is not easy to meditate. One of the ways to meditate is to watch our breath. If you have tried to do that, you will know that the moment you focus on breath, it becomes deliberate. It is no longer natural. You are not supposed to interfere with the breath, just watch it as per theory. For me all sorts of things happen when I try to do that. First the breath does not remain natural, secondly boredom sets in. Mind is just not used to not doing anything. It wants to be constantly thinking, worrying, fantasizing or something similar. So while I seat doing my finger poses or Mudras in the morning, I want to use that time for meditating, watching breath. But mind immediately becomes busy strategizing for the day. I have been trying to change the hard ingrained habit of the mind but with no substantial results at the moment. There is no use in forcing mind, it has to come to rest on it's own. Suppressing doesn't work with mind. So I am going with the flow.