One Evening on a gloomy April Sunday he watched the story of Pixar on Netflix. “Some crazy guys thought about an idea and made it into reality. As the story goes, Pixar made Toy Story in which they put their sweat, sleep and blood. Toy Story became the first real computer animated movie that was a commetcial success. This was the dream of many people working and they slogged and achived that.” He loves this part of the story, hits the space bar to pause and walks to the kitchen to grab a cookie. He is noC. Auguste Dupin, but his grey cells start itching. It had been a while since such BS has happened in his top floor. Hmmm… Shutting that room of thought using the ignorance and social rationality technique he has developed over the past few years gives him some relief from the itch. He gets back to the video again. Mr. jobs comes on and makes a statement:“Pixar was hit by the Second Product Syndrome after the great success of a product. What Next? What did we want to do?”…. Thakkkk
Realizing the walls of that room are going to blow to pieces he hits pause again. Walks out and drinks another glass of water. Sensing that would be last resort he just goes to sleep. His evening passes by, with a glass of wine to numb the senses and some crap raunchy and slapstick comedies to keep the room locked.
Weeks go by without any action and the room is still locked. Then on one mundane Monday, as he sits on his desk looking at the bright computer screen listening to his favourite classical music the room walls start cracking. He is hapless here in the office. He knows his scope of rationality will not be able to handle the room being broken into bits; after all the rationality is socially acquired. Being pragmatic and yielding to the social constraints always seems to work; call it hypocrisy or otherwise. Who would dis-agree, that is the path of least resistance. He thinks wrong tangent… back to the problem at hand.. The walls crack further and his anxiety increases… The creeking sound is mind boggling… Againist all his experience, mustering the courage he has, he breaks open the lock to enable a steady flow… Since the door is open now, the thoughts don’t just bomb out.. they come in as bullets..
a) You wanted to achieve X. Awesome you have done all that now.
b) You wanted to do Y. Great you did that too.
c) What next?
He waits more. Nothing!! He is startled, is this it? All this anxiety for nothing. Just one small question. No more.. then he examines c)… What next? He starts to answer that question and its like a string of lighting bolts hitting him and he goes boink… You have a goal, you are done with that. What Next? That’s a very difficult question. Was that goal so easy to achieve? Did you aim very low? What is the yard stick to measure that? One question opening a plethora of worms… What is the motivation to keep going? Is A right for me? Is B right for me? Then he realizes that his rationality as it is not enough to answer this… This requires a different kind of a reason… Something that would not complicate and narrow down, but simplify and generalize ... hmmmm… Suddenly it hits him… in all the chaos and complexity a simple answer…
Search for “What Next?” is the answer to “What next?”
A simple recursive solution which engulfs and de-mytifies all the chaos around him…
Dead Phantom
