Skip to main content

Reluctance

Just thought I'd kick off the new year with a poem which really appeals to me and reminds me of the harsh realities of life. Frost, very simply puts it in words, which rise up and punch me in the face every time I read these lines! Hope you get something meaningful from this!


Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?


Robert Frost

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Understanding the job

Working with a product company, one of the bigger dilemmas facing the Product team is what to build based on the backlog of product items. Listening to a Harvard lecture podcast online recently, I came across a concept which helped me clear this dilemma. It simply asks a question- what is the job that your product is hired to perform? Ideas for the product you are building can come through various routes. We're going to lose this customer if we don't incorporate this now, this is something the CEO really wants to see in the product, it's been sitting in the backlog forever etc. But a very good way to go about prioritizing what goes into the product is to find the answer to the question- what is the job that your product is hired to perform? Imagine the product to be an employee who is hired for a particular profile. Now there are certain roles and responsibilities or KPI's which will define whether this employee is fit for the post. The same logic will apply to the p...

F1 in India!!

All you Formula 1 fans out there, F1 is finally coming to India, to Delhi specifically speaking!! Talks were going on(they always go on..and on) for the past ten years to get the F1 on track here in Gandhi land, now finally its a go! Few months ago liquor dude Mallya proposed to get the track as Rajpath and the surrounding roads around Parliament(as if we have less trouble there already!!), but good'ol Ernie wants a new track altogether. Hey, wouldn'tve been cool if the track was the same one they thought about earlier?? Burning rubber at 300km/hr+ in front of Rashtrapati Bhawan!! Where would the pits be? possibly inside the parliament!! Anyways, the very fact that F1 is coming has got me super excited! Just to see the Ferrrari's and McLaren's zooming past and the sweet sound of the roaring v-8's would be a delight. The only thing I am worried about is the snails pace at which work is carried out here in Delhi, in India as a matter of fact! Alonso crosses the first ...

Art of the Start

Building out something can be one of the best experiences one can have. As kids, we took great pains building structures using Lego bricks, modelling clay into art which put renaissance sculptors to shame, or making barracks and castles of scale in sand where we were nothing less than kings. These activities gave us a sense of achievement and entitlement. These were some of our first products. Some of you would have gone on to build sand walls around those castles, and moats to fend off intruders. You were the consolidators, empire builders. If you build out that castle and kicked it to the ground to then make another masterpiece, you were in the true sense a serial entrepreneur. Sat on the sidelines and got the other kids to build stuff for you? No comments. Fast forward to today. Looking to be a pioneer and build out something, or provide a specialised service? Ever wonder what it would be like if everything you ever imagined went on to fruition the moment you thought it out? Woul...