Shuffle it Up!

I am officially a walkoholic! Can’t go to sleep without wishing the dust, the road and the breeze good night. My music has always given me good company in my expeditions but having heard the same set a trillion times now, I was getting really hard to please. I tried new downloads, even tried getting used to Telugu radio, but nothing could last more than a few days. 

Just when I had almost resigned to giving up on my favorite companion, I discovered the feature – ‘Shuffle’. Since I have started using this feature, my walking life has transformed. I have been enjoying the same set of music (shuffled up) for more than 6 months now. 

One day, I wondered how a simple feature like that could make a transformation happen. The only thing Shuffle actually does is remove the predictability of what song was coming up and the genre of that song. I used to think, humans like predictability. In fact we spend so much time in putting systems and processes (both at home and work) to ensure that life is predictable. Then how come randomness seems so appealing?

I realized, not only humans but nature by its own virtue strives on a combination of randomness and predictability. While the seasons pretty much follow the same cycle, the duration, the intensity and the timing of each season always varies. In fact, nature also likes to surprise us all the time. That is what adds excitement to life. 

While we humans still have to work Monday – Friday and work harder over weekends, I am sure we can add enough randomness in the smaller elements of our life and keep that freshness alive.While predictability works well when we are striving for results, randomness works better to make the journey towards the results more fun!