Life is what it's meant to be..

There's this uncomfortable feeling since a very long time now. No it's not that I am not busy in things, infact I am very very busy lately. But somehow, everything seems like nonsense. No, it's not that I'm depressed, just that life doesn't seem to make sense. Maybe I am not good at accepting limits.

Let's talk about depression for a moment and move ahead. I think it cannot be stopped, but can be dealt with, and the best way to deal with it is to expect nothing out of anything. For me, the definition of depression is that things are not going along the lines as expected and you are helpless and this results in depression, hence it can be termed as a symptom that something is wrong and you are unable to fix it, hence helplessness.

After all life has its own turns and tricks and one can only accept these and understand why things happen. I have lost all the interest in life almost 5 years back, maybe because something happened and that unveiled life altogether and since then things have been revealed for me gradually. At this point in time, I think I have understood some of the basics and to cut a long story short it's nothing but observation. You observe life and understand it. But then, I think you can change it to some extent, but again everything could be pre-written and you're just discovering it.

I think I have found how to remain calm, just by accepting that it's just learning and by the end of it, you'd have learnt everything required. We might think that we can change everything, but how can one tell that the change you brought in wasn't written? Once you understand what life is, it doesn't matter how much challenges come to you or how much you are tested, it's just a matter of time and will pass by. For many, life can be wonderful and operational things matter, but really the concept seems to be different and then there's no interest in it and then it doesn't matter what happens and you feel nothing.

Life is as it's meant to be and for me somehow it doesn't make sense at all. Maybe my standards are very high and that's why I have kept aside my feelings altogether and I want nothing for myself and just prioritize what others want and try to achieve those. Some might call this foolishness that I'm not selfish at all, but I have developed into this gradually.

After all, are there any other options?

Praying for alternate paths?

Often times a situation comes into somebody's life where prayers are the only hope towards achieving something important in the world. When nothing else seems to work, praying seems to be the last resort.

The concept of praying becomes very ambiguous at times, specially when you have strong belief that things will go on as written in fate or if one believes the saying "what is written will happen". To me, this is somewhat conflicting at times: What'll happen is already written, then why pray? Will prayers lead to alternate paths in life? e.g. if I had to attain a degree and this is written as my fate then whether I work hard and get it with flying colours or I don't work hard and get it for the sake of just getting it, I'll get it.

If I were to do something and its quality depends upon my effort and concentration, then what role does prayer play? Or to be exact of the conflict I am in right now, what if I am not certain of getting something I really want, do the prayers play any role?

It's not certain that: "If you pray for something it's just a matter of time that you'll get it" because of the reason that it might be good for you but not for everyone. Again this is logic and my question still remains the same: What do prayers do?

If we limit this discussion to the result of the prayers as: "I will get it or not" rather than "I will surely get it, but I pray that I get it with lesser obstacles", etc. If we are to think upon whether prayers really make it happen or not, we can come up with the following combinations, after praying:

• You get it IF you pray, not otherwise
• You get it regardless of praying
• You don't get it regardless of praying

The last two combinations are solely based upon logic and prayers don't work. Let's talk about the first one, can this be true? If yes, then this statement: "Whatever happens, happens for the best" becomes false. And if this becomes false, then the alternate path which occurs after human praying is better than the original path. This implies that human path construction is better and leads to a weird state of mind.

Coming back to the last 2 points above and assuming that our last paragraph is just false, then we arrive to a conclusion that praying does nothing. Again, a weird state of mind.

All these questions can be answered if we think of this:

• This world and its events are based upon humans, but God's intervention is there whenever required. Requirement is posted through praying.
• There's no such thing as fate, everything is done by humans, except for maybe a few things such as birth & death? Maybe a few more?

The Software World..

Software Engineering, a term commonly used nowadays and easily comprehended by most of the people in this world, is a world in itself. Just for the sake of mentioning, it means to develop software or a program which models a subset of reality onto a machine. The skills required for developing software are not only the analytical ones but logic plays a major role as well. On the other hand, creativity is required as well as the empathetic sense relating to the user. Hence we can easily say that Software Engineers are one of the most skillful people around, in this world.

When I say “Software Engineering is a world in itself”, it means that it’s a virtual world and not a real one like Earth. The mapping of the real world onto this one is what Software Engineers do. Let’s limit ourselves to the design & coding phases of Software before we move ahead, generally termed as programming. The difference between the task of a software engineer and other engineers is the presence of this virtual world. If one is good in this virtual world, this means that he’s doing his job well.

Coming from a different direction, I would like to highlight that when a person indulges into some environment, he develops some familiarity initially, moving forward he becomes smooth and then he gets used to it. One gets so much used to it that sometimes it feels like it’s the only world (or sub-world) and he’s not able to comprehend the situation (or environment) outside it. For example, I used play Unreal a lot (sometimes more than 5 hours a day) and it happened many times that I dreamed about it during sleep.

Now, if a software developer works for many hours a day, spends a few hours in sleep and spends the rest of the time in the actual world, there seems to be a high probability that most of the developers would confuse these 3 different environments.

Putting all of this on the plate of our discussion, is Software development changing the lives of the Software engineers by making them used to this virtual world? After working for more than 10 years in this arena, can the developers manage to segregate the virtual & the real world? One extreme example of this world is the game development line, supported by the statement that game is a modeled virtual world which is derived from reality or illusions, and is closer to being called a world than any other software.