Saturday, July 20, 2013

Thinkers vs Doers

We box people based on anything and everything- their sex, color, caste, religion, nationality. My grandmother, however traditional she may be in her appearance, but ultra-modern in her mind, said to me “The world consists of people who do and who don’t do!” 18 years later, I believe her and I think there are people who just think and people who act. It’s completely binary- you are either a thinker or a doer; there isn’t a quasi-state!

Inherently and intrinsically, I believe that we are either of the one. But we have the ability to be a bit of the other side, when need be. However, this is just a feigned skill that fades away.
Being a thinker doesn’t equate to being a procrastinator, as a procrastinator actually acts upon his ideas, albeit with delay. I am talking about people who want to be writers , but are engineers; people who want to be singers, but are engineers; people who want to be dancers, but are engineers. The problem here is (apart from the fact the an engineering degree is very easy to get these days) that we want to “BE” rather than “DO”.

Even if you are a thinker, don’t think what you want to be, think what you want to DO. Don’t be a writer, WRITE; don’t be a singer, SING; don’t be a painter; DOODLE (especially, after you are high! You might end up painting a colorful blob and the world might get its next Picasso).
I often hear people talking about what a great thinker, say eg. Mahatma Gandhi was! Well, it would have been all thought and no act, had he not marched all the way to Dandi. Just imagine if Einstein would have just dreamt the energy-mass equation, and tossed around in his bed and continued to snore. Well, he got up and he wrote. He did and lived on the t-shirts of nerdy geeks from around the world with the famous equation scribbled across his portrait.

I know you would say that in order to do, you must think. And I completely agree with it. I am not saying to stop thinking. I am saying if you have been thinking…and you have been thinking…and you are still thinking, then I guess you are thinking too much. J

Just get up and do!