Serendipity and Learning

Each time I learn something, I am intrigued by the unlearning part of the learning process. And I seem to enjoy that process. This is the part where, as you learn, you need to be fully in the moment. For example, as the coach (and the coach may be someone half your age) says, don't use your wrist use your forearms. It takes conscious effort of everything in the mind to tell the wrist to stay still and put the forearms to work. It take conscious effort to keep the racket at the right position. And you have to do it every single time. And just when you think you have got it, the mind slips into bad habits. The wrist suddenly takes over and you feel a stinging pain. Or the knee doesn't bend and the upper body does and you receive a message that, you got it wrong. And there are these delicious moments when you know you got it wrong and you know it just that at point when you got it wrong and then you get into position again and, well, try it again. As you might have guessed ...

Twitter is cool - perhaps the entire internet is. I found this piece on Neelesh Mishra (well, I heard this name for the first time - more on this phenomenon later). And found his stories on youtube. Wow...this is great. And he is quite a story teller. Never heard a story on radio, I must admit...and this is a first for me... Am not an audio learner, but this one was surely interesting...I wish we had story tellers in other languages as well on the internet. And may there are...Maybe there are podcasts and radio stations relaying forgotten stories. Now thinking what can be done with this...

That Pixar principles of story telling post was not a coincidence. The kids wanted to see a movie and as we searched through Chromecast, we saw a movie called Big Hero 6. I had heard from a friend that the kids enjoyed it so I thought, well, why not. I however, was sceptical. Yet another childrens movie - how different can it be. But it was and the children were rolling in laughter, gaping in amazement, debating forcefully, hanging onto the edge of their seats and as the movie came to an end, their eyes moistened. And then the inevitable, post movie discussion - why did this happen? Why did he do like that? How did that happen? Why could it not happen that way? Why did not bring him back? And so on and so forth... A great story makes you do all that. Stay with it for as long as it continues and then it stays with you for a long time...And Big Hero 6 does that...

I had come across the Pixar principles of story-telling some time ago. And while there is some fabulous advice there, often many movies, stories, just do not live up to the expectations of the audience. But when they do, the effect is magic! Here are the rules reproduced from the Pixar Touch blog. [ Pixar Touch Blog ] #1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes. #2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different. #3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite. #4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___. #5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free. #6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar o...