Mind All Logic

By Siddhi Karadkhedkar

The timeless saying by the literary artist, Sir Rabindranath Tagore, implies that a mind governed by facts and logic alone is analogous to a knife without a handle. It would bleed the hands of user, meaning that the person would experience pain and suffering. Deeper context of the proverb opens up to the fact that a key to a beautiful life is through emotion, creation and imagination. There is no peace to a person bounded by analysis, rationality, facts and knowledge alone. As important as they might seem, we also need its counterpart.

Creativity expert, Sir Kim Robinson in a TED talk, has emphasized on the need for bringing about reforms in education system. This would nurture the creativity in young minds sowing seeds for future breakthrough. Ever since the earliest shaping of science, till today’s development, there has been a plethora of great inventions and discoveries for the young minds to learn. This seems like bombarding of information without a word to question it. I believe, that creativity, imagination and intuition are as important for the development of society and science, as, is logic and knowledge. The Russian physicist, Michiu Kaku, in his book “Physics of the Impossible”, says that unless we can imagine something ridiculous and seemingly impossible, a breakthrough is not possible. Development in field of metamaterials, teleportation would not have been possible unless the science fiction novels or movies didn’t emphasize on their applications. They seem impractical and impossible in the first glance but with the developments that have recently followed in the Physics and engineering, availability of this would only be a matter of time.

Pondering on another aspect, Important part of a personality development comes through experience and failures. Success often teaches less than what a failure does. In this age of competition and comparison, we are all scared to make mistakes and fail. This also stops us from trying new things and living life. It may include doing something that isn’t productive according to the new standard definitions, like sitting idle. A recent newspaper report claimed that people who spent time doing nothing benefitted and saw reduction in stress levels. We required a survey and analysis to tell us that its okay to just sit by yourself sometimes, isn’t this something that William Wordsworth had

described so beautifully in the poem “Daffodils”! It is important to do something without being completely aware if it has a positive impact on us.

It couldn’t be helped, but to address the elephant in the room, the love, which would bring to the next part

“Romeo, he called himself and roamed on the streets, naked

Madness, they called, what ‘love’ seemed from his pouring eyes.”

The hidden between lines meaning of the couplet is that, a person deeply hurt in love, has took to streets naked, implying leaving apart all the self-respect and the inhibitions that a human has, since he has been deeply hurt in love. Love has capability to harness the best and worst out of a person. It is the path of self-discovery that one embarks on, ever since he falls in love.

There have been a thousand poets and a million poems about love, but still the readers can’t get enough and the writers can’t write enough. What would the world look like without the timeless romantic poets like P. B. Shelly, William Wordsworth, John Keats and countless more, whose classics have ruled and still continue to, till date. Even the sheer thought of love or the love stories that have intrigued and inspired generations would probably lose its beauty if analysed by the mind full of knowledge, logic and rationality. Loosing oneself in love and making sacrifices is a part of human nature that overlooks the otherwise rational and logical brain. This distinguishes human beings from other species on the Earth.

A way to peaceful life is like the recipe for a perfect dessert that your grandmother made. It isn’t just one ingredient that goes into the dessert to make it to perfection but it requires everything in proportion. This is how life is, we can’t be having only logic and rationality guiding us, neither can we stay aloof from it. Apart from this, curiosity and mystery keep us going in life, it is the reason why we wake up every day. If we happen to take it away, there would be no meaning to life.

By Siddhi Karadkhedkar