Sitting with best of minds make you ponder on lateral question which begets you conscience every now and then. Today had a conversation which stretched beyond prescribed times but was spellbound and resulted in spectacular observation which you can ponder on in any stage of your life should you feel down or hapless.
The million-dollar
question that came during the general chit-chat was “Are you rich or poor?”,
We were group
of four chaps sharing a common table in the neighborhood park and out of curiosity
started to converse with each other.
One Septuagenarian out of us was eager to answer the question in his own vernacular. He seemed to be over eager to quote a fine example to all three of us and make us explain the relevance of his answer. He gave us his introduction to be a retired mathematics teacher of a Government school and he often caressed his students with his life wisdom rather than bookish rotes, he thus began:
One day I popped up a life’s most intriguing question “ Are you Rich or Poor?”, the students got a little confused and seems to be in a fix to answer this presumably looking straight forward question. Sensing that I would not get an answer I started my explanation to the same.
I asked the class following questions:
1. What is
ZERO?
2. What is INFINITY?
3. Can ZERO and INFINITY be same?
Some of the students spoke in tandem and thus replied as following,
ZERO means nothing
INFINITY means a number greater than any countable number.
ZERO and
INFINITY are opposite and they can never be same
Listening to the answer from students, I rolled out another related question towards them.
‘How can there be any number which is greater than any countable number?’
I then explained the concept of infinity in a very interesting way, which I remember even after more than 35 years.
I said that imagine that there is an illiterate shepherd who can count only upto 20.Now, if the number of sheep he has less than 20 and you ask him how many sheep he has, he can tell you the precise number (like 3, 5 14 etc.). However, if the number is more than 20, he is likely to say, “TOO MANY”.
I then explained that in science infinity means ‘too many’ (and not uncountable) and in the same way zero means ‘too few’ (and not nothing). As an example, he said that if we take the diameter of the Earth as compared to distance between Earth and Sun, the diameter of earth can be said to zero since it is too small. However, when we compare the same diameter of earth with the size of a grain, diameter of earth can be said to be infinite.
Hence, I concluded that the same thing can be ZERO and INFINITE at the same time, depending on the context, or your matrix of comparison. The relationship between richness and poverty is similar to the relationship between infinity and zero.
I finally concluded the conversation by telling them that I consider
myself rich because my wants are far less than my income. I have become rich
not so much by acquiring lots of money, but by progressively reducing my wants.
If you can reduce your wants, you too can become rich at this very moment.
When he finished, we had a gala applause to his wisdom, he had convincingly stated and made us believe on to the simple explanation of one of life’s intricate question.
Thanks Uncle for todays Session, I hope we all cater to and follow up on this valuable life lesson for the rest of our existence on this planet.!
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