In My Favor

I got a wonderful gift from a dear friend for my 23rd birthday, 'The Tipping Point' by Malcolm Gladwell (also the author of the brilliant, 'Blink'). It was very different from my usual taste in literature, and so quite naturally, I had certain biases before beginning. But as always, with every book read, I was pleasantly surprised at what I felt post completion. I think what did it for me with this one was the simplicity with which it was written. It had very comprehensible situations, sequential trains of thought and minimalistic ideas. It summed up the "fine balance" of evolution of any given event, being, or idea at any point in time based upon the underlying simplicity of it's existence. But I think the take home message from this one was that any phenomenon is only as complicated or simple as you make them. The phenomenon of a natural disaster, the phenomenon of a scientific breakthrough, or the phenomenon of a fashion trend emerging, all of it has a very clear start and end. But they all reach a tipping point if their path becomes disoriented and detours. That's when the balance tips, one side rises and the other sinks, and sometimes it's disastrous and other times exhilarating. And it all eventually boils down to your range of risk - how much weight you are willing to put on and on which side of the balance. These ideas are very reminiscent of the bottle neck effect of evolutionary behavior. A species emerges, it flourishes but eventually, the complications of habitat and environment bring it the crossroad where it sinks so it can gain back it's simplicity and minimalism. And in context with human emotion, we have the greatest lesson to learn. The more we analyze, the more we tangle the less tangible it becomes, bringing it to a tipping point where we may have to take the risk of loosing it all.

Keep it simple and things will tip over in your favor!