Life, Maths and Destiny

Life can be a well-defined function for each individual. It must be of the form

L_i = f (p₁, p_2, p₃, p₄, ………. p_n) where;

‘n’ is the total number of parameters that an individual needs to take care of

‘i’ denotes a specific individual.

The quality of life an individual lives has a direct correlation with the value of the function he attains. These parameters comprise of everything that one comes across in life. Time, money, family, friends, love, health, area, clothing, hygiene, heartbeat and many more qualify to be parameters. If I start listing these parameters I might very well grow old and pass away without even nearing the ‘n’_th parameter.

If listing these parameters is so cumbersome; juggling them to maximize the value of the function would be practically impossible. Because of human incapability to handle so many parameters efficiently what happens is a pattern of success and failures, i.e. a pattern of crests and troughs in the n-dimensional graph of L_i. What we humans find impractical and cruel is to accept our mistakes regularly and find flaws in our own strategies. It is convenient to indulge in a blame game with destiny. Also, it is a psychologically proven fact that we tend to remember winners and forget errors. This creates a false positive impression of one’s own self. We find it hard to shrug it off either.

When one is successful one hardly cares for actions and probably never reflects back. But in times of setbacks and depressions, blaming destiny is a wonderful art of consoling oneself, at least it helps one navigate through time, like anesthesia does for a patient undergoing a surgical activity. It would be a lot better if one sat back and analyzed where he messed up in the equation and why the gradient of life suddenly nose-dived. That would really be a helpful exercise and one with an extremely high amount of learning. One factor an analyst will have to keep in his mind is that he is not always right. He needs to view the events from a 3^rd person perspective.

The best a person at any point of time can do is prioritizing the parameters he can practically take care of and parameters that have significant impact on the value of the function. He must then adjust them so that he can get the maximum gradient of L_i. Proceeding in that direction might be the best decision he can make in that given point of space and time. But the problem is that this kind of plain vanilla calculation might just guide him to local maximum of L_i. Like many of us are guided in youth towards alcohol, smoke, substance abuse and so on. They give a temporary high. Long term effects are not appealing though. If a person has a better understanding of road blocks in life, he understands he is aiming at the global maximum. (Imagine a multi-dimensional graph with multiple crests and troughs). He will have to adjust the parameters accordingly. I understand it is tough. But they say one learns from experience. Yes, one does. At least, he would not accuse destiny for every misfortune that shows up.

We can also give a shot at many qualitative questions mathematically. Why with increasing wealth happiness does not increase in the same proportion? Are we happier than our forefathers? What is more important; Health or Wealth? Why is time management important? For answers, just plug in these parameters; find respective gradients and values of the function. It might be so that relationship of L_i and wealth is logarithmic in nature. Similarly, there may be cross-overs for different ranges of wealth and health.

What I intend to convey is that blaming destiny is not a solution. It is a recurring process like a disease that is not diagnosed and treated properly. It will spring up any time. Many times we screw up in life because of our inefficiency in handling and optimizing various parameters when they can be controlled. But we are irresponsible to take care of them. We are negligent and pay the price of our negligence. If we become sensible enough and understand what parameters impact our lives the most, we can position ourselves for a higher quality of living rather than a highly volatile and undeserved one.

I believe, one shapes oneself and one's life.