Thursday, July 06, 2006

Flow Chart of Life

I was thinking about the first time I started looking at a flow chart. Remember the simple ones that will have a start block, an end block with processing in the middle with nothing other than adding two numbers. Dont pick me on the initialisation. I am just trying to draw an analogy here. You got the picture.

Once you have the flow chart in mind, think about birth and death. They are basically the start and end blocks of our flow chart. Stuff happens in between. Now, you will have to remember the conditional block which checks for a condition and branches to one path or another accordingly. One way to view life is to think of it as a connection between a start and an end block with nothing but a big depth of conditional blocks with infinite possibilities under each condition. I chose the word big depth since the amount of conditional blocks that we will encounter on a macroscopic view should be finite. Only the possibilities are infinite. And, death, in my opinion is like a "goto end" statement that could be "executed" at any point of the control. At every passing moment, we evaluate conditions and decide on a path. For example, while I could have been watching a TV program or just be asleep, I have decided to type this blog, and while I was at it, I also chose to type the fact that I have decided to do the typing.

If one could somehow unroll the entire flow chart before you, all you will see is that the options that you chose will be a single line of decisions connected by conditional points that denotes the decisions that you made all the way. Can this be called the life line? Some of the interesting observations based on this analogy are these. At any point in time, you have infinite possibilities to work on. Death is just an unconditional goto statement and can happen at any time. If we can only look at how closer we were to death based on the flow, it might be interesting to see how some unchosen paths served as the luckier ones. If we could overlay the flow charts of everyone in the planet and link them at the conditional points based on each other's influence in reaching a decision at a control point, I think, we will find that everything in the world is connected. Not just the living things, but also everything in nature. This is probably how the term "butterfly effect" was coined in the first place. So, what you do at every moment in time has a significant effect on the entire planet. Your livelihood has a far more importance to the planet than you would dream of, whether you wish or not. So, live your moment before it "goes to end"...

8 comments:

Survivor said...

Mindframes,
Kojna kala kaatu pa. Kumbitukalaam... Wonderful way of thinking though....On a further note, we can talk about conservation of energy..everything in the world is connected and energy just transforms from one to another , living and non-living.

sdpal said...

"If we can only look at how closer we were to death based on the flow, it might be interesting to see how some unchosen paths served as the luckier ones" - this wonderful line with a whole depth of meaning (to me atleast) is buried in between the blog. Just wanted to highlight it out for those quick scan readers.

BrainWaves said...

I was reminded of a (advanced) physics theory (which sounds like a sci-fiction). Every second (or smaller unit of time) the universe splits and we all do parallel things. i.e Same person in parallel universes may not be doing the same thing.

If you try to fit in that theory with flow chart model, every outcome of a flow chart is creating an additional/parallel layer of remaining flow chart.

Do I make sense OR do I sound like suresh? :)

nourish-n-cherish said...

Yengayo poyittiyae pa!

I have often wondered about how our life would change, if we knew the next step. Would we enjoy this current stage in life more, or would we forego a bit of the joys in anticipation of the joys the next phase brings?

Suresh Sankaralingam said...

Survivor: Your comment about energy conservation triggered an interesting series of thought. Will use it for my future blog..:)

Shankar: Thanks da machi..:)

Sri: You are definitely making sense... I remember hearing about it from you sometime back...

Saumya: You are correct in saying that our life would change if we knew the next step. But, how it would change is purely driven by randomness... But, anticipating about "joys" is always a good thing than the other way around...

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Suresh Sankaralingam said...

I did mention that "Death is just an unconditional goto statement and can happen at any time"....

Suresh Sankaralingam said...

I take my comment back.... I thought you mentioned about death. Yes, it is the unconditional jumps and that is where the interconnectivity of influence plays a role..may be..:)