Adopt a Tree

‘The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.

The second best time is NOW!’ – Anonymous

The above lines outline the purpose of Chandrakant Shinde and his colleagues. They are preparing for this year’s Environment Day by asking Goans to adopt a Jamun Tree. They are using varied media to involve more citizens to their circle of commitment that looks beyond now. They want participants to not just plant a tree, but to take care of it so that it can bear fruit for the future.

Shinde and his friends, belong to Vivekananda Environment Awareness Brigade, Keri, Sattari, in Goa. Over the years, they have nurtured their love for Mother Nature with consistent and committed actions. They have kept away from lucrative career trails. They have charted their own journeys to create a legacy that will endure beyond their lifetime.

Planting a tree is an activity that has become fashionable. But adopting a tree requires the resolve of greater and consistent commitment. It is a choice made by those who connect totally to what they believe is a common good. They look beyond to become the creators of a desirable future. They do not seek immediate benefits for themselves. They are seized by selflessness.

So often, we are seized by an emotion that is well intentioned and sincere... whether planting a tree or an idea. But, the best of intentions can come to nought, if we do not back our initial act by as series of appropriate actions to nurture that tree or even that idea. So while it is good to ‘plant’, it would be better to ‘adopt’ and nurture that tree or that idea!

To BE BETTER at creating a legacy...

Do not just plant... adopt the tree!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.

Variable Vision

In less than ten minutes, the 1977 short film ‘Powers of Ten’ depicts the relative scale of things in the Universe using factors of ten. The film, made by Ray and Charles Eames, is an adaptation of the 1957 book Cosmic View by Kees Boeke.

It begins with a view from a meter above (10⁰) a man resting on a blanket. The camera then zooms out to a view ten meters above (10¹) to show that the man is at a picnic in a park. Then it pans to a view of 100 meters (10²) to show that the picnic is taking place on Chicago's lakefront. Further on we see on the way the views of Lake Michigan, our earth, our solar system, the Milky Way… the zoom continuing to a view of 10²⁴ meters - the size of the observable universe.

The camera then zooms back to the man's hand and moves on to zoom into views of negative powers of ten (10⁻¹) (10 centimeters), and so forth. The zoom moves the range from the surface of the skin to the inside right up to the proton in a carbon atom at 10⁻¹⁶ meter. The film thus travels two extreme extents of our universe.

However, the lessons go beyond the attempt to understand the universe… they guide us on how to be better at understanding our situation. We need to be better at seeing, both, the larger-picture and the smaller-picture... to see self and situation from a perspective that moves from a wide-angle outlook to a deeper insight into our predicament.

So often, so many of us are seized by a myopic vision that connects only to peripheral considerations. We need to apply the variable vision to see the larger consequences as well the minute intricacies of the situation that surrounds us. We need to be better at zooming out to the larger context as well as zoom in to the diminutive but crucial details.

To BE BETTER at understanding the real situation…
let’s zoom in and out to the entire variable vision!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India

Avert the Negative

‘If anything can go wrong, it will!’ – Murphy’s Law

Often, when things go wrong, we use the crutches of what is popularly known as Murphy’s Law to justify unanticipated failure. Thus, we shift the onus of responsibility from ourselves and condemn the fiasco to the vagaries of the unknown. Some call it fate, some call it bad luck and others employ other words. But Murphy’s Law is really something else...

This modern hypothesis is credited to Capt. Murphy, an engineer at Edwards Air Force Base in 1949. One day, on finding a wrongly wired transducer, he cursed the technician responsible by saying, ‘If there is any way to do it wrong, he'll find it.’ The project manager added it to his list of ‘laws’ and called it Murphy's Law thus giving name to an ancient pessimism.

However, the articulation of the negative was put to positive use by the Air Force. In fact, they went on to describe their good safety record as due to a firm belief in Murphy's Law and in the necessity to try and circumvent it. Aerospace manufacturers picked it up and used it widely in their ads during the next few months, and soon it became part of modern metaphor.

Murphy’s Law is not about cynical logic about our perceived vulnerability. The law’s effectiveness is in first envisioning the most remote of possibilities for ‘things going wrong’, and taking remedial measures. While it is good to do the right things; to be better we must be able to anticipate what can go wrong. Doing so is termed risk analysis in planning parlance.

Murphy’s law inspires us to BE BETTER at the affirmative…
By first predicting and then averting every plausible negative!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Learn by Doing

‘For things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing’ - Aristotle

In ‘Nicomachean Ethics’, Aristotle’s makes the distinction between capacities acquired by nature and those acquired through exercise. Natural capacities are those in which ‘we first acquire the potentiality and later exhibit the activity’ such as hearing or seeing. According to Aristotle, we do not develop our capacity to hear sounds and see colours through repetition or practice. Rather, we simply see and hear if we possess functioning eyes and ears.

In contrast, some of our capacities, such as distinguishing musical themes in a symphony or spotting a fracture in an x-ray, are skills acquired through exercise. He writes that just as ‘men become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts’. He further mentions that ‘it is from playing the lyre that both, good and bad lyre-players are produced’ and that ‘men will be good or bad builders as a result of building well or badly’.

So often, we insist that there are things we cannot do because we have not learned them. Aristotle’s assertion makes it obvious that both, arts and virtues are such skills learned through practice. We acquire competencies by conscious and consistent actions. Just consider how we learned to walk as toddlers... we learnt by doing it, again and again.

However, it is also pertinent to note that just practice will not make us perfect. In fact, practice can make us better or worse. We must ensure that the focus is on doing things right... practicing the right way. Again, not everyone who learns to walk walks well! To be better at developing skills we must learn them by doing the right things in the right way...

Do not wait endlessly to learn before doing
we must BE BETTER at learning by doing!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.