Why do people have to be right or wrong? I have started believing very strongly that life is a weird mathematics. Its equations can have a very few variables yet numerous solutions. They can also have a numerous variables and just one solution sometimes. It all seems way too skewed. No surprises. It has to be. Life was never considered to be easy anyway. Still we try to peel off its subtler layers and try to get comfortable with it. Everybody reaches a different core, everybody finds a different truth.
Lately I have been into many conversations with many different people. They have been on greatly diverse topics. Well, everybody enjoys discussions. I too. But lately, I have started observing myself when I get into them. Along the course of conversation, I start registering some meta information in a familiar repository which I try to analyze in future. I have observed that in some serious discussions, I strive to win my point, at times very desperately. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. But these days, I have started experiencing a totally new wave. In the middle of a discussion I lose interest. I feel a detachment from the discussion itself. I start seeing the two or more than two schools of thought in an entirely different light. I start realizing that none of us actually can be proved right or wrong. To end the discussion will either take a time-out call or it will entail that one of the parties get awfully bored and just surrenders, not really losing the point but losing the desire to win the point.
Why do we discuss then? And what kind of things cannot be taken to a conceivable end? If I want to oversimplify, I can say that all opinions that are based on individual tenets are not debatable. Sometimes these tenets or beliefs are as simple as people liking different flavors of coffees. My tastes are my choices. My inane choices. I cannot, by any means, prove one flavor to be better than another one. To be very frank, I want to see most of the things in my life the same way. If I observe closely, I can very genuinely conclude that as much as 90% of the discussions (obviously the non techie ones) are of this sort. You work your guts off to prove your point while your point was as personal as your liking of cappuccino over an espresso shot.
I wish I could simplify all things that way.
I wish when I prove A better than B, I could just mean I like A more than B.
I wish when I see the other person quietly nodding at the end of a debate, I could see his boredom and not his defeat.
I wish....
