Beseeching Motivation

My interest in my final year project has faced a slow decline during this entire semester and the previous month in particular. The absence of my guide as a source of weekly acknowledgment has perhaps significantly contributed to that feeling. Things seemed a lot more exciting four months ago. Our investigations had led to interesting results albeit the classical, purist nature of the problem we were pursuing.

Much of our earlier findings were comparatively humbler compared to this one problem that was the subject of my efforts in the last one month. The problem was to investigate the agreement/differences in predictions of the properties of a particular system using three different mathematical models or theories as you might want to call them. Refraining from getting into further details, let me say that weeks of efforts culminated in the finding that these models predict exactly the same thing about the system. I remember my guide telling me that finding a difference would be a significant result in many respects and that would lead to many more interesting threads. But that was not to be. My professor responds to my communication of this news to him in the following manner:

Dear Karthik,
These simulations establish a point either way - when they show differences and when they do not, so I would not be worried too much. These are important results nonetheless and we must plan towards communicating them.
Best,
Suresh

As a novice researcher, there are times more than one when one is compelled to question the worth of one's pursuits and efforts. And the opportunities that I encountered to make suc introspections were more than a few. I would never describe my project in too much detail to anyone who asked me; it falls short on providing either of the two kinds of joy that encourage researchers. I am well aware of the fact that my results will neither have significant practical consequences in the industry nor are the equations that I deal with and the analysis that I do even close to being a mathematician's delight. In terms of the quantum of work needed, my professor tells me that I am ready to submit my thesis but that it would be nice if I worked on a couple of other threads and got them to a 'logical' conclusion.

On another matter, I am thinking of nominating your thesis for the Indian National Academy of Engineering Award (see attached note). This might mean that you organize your work so as to complete the entire process of submission (also examination?) byJune 30. Please go through the site mentioned and see what are the requirements.

Best,
Suresh

I will work for a whole month on organizing my thesis, ensuring that my work flows logically from the premise to the hypotheses to the proofs, judiciously citing every reference and acknowledging every possible help that I received along the way, numbering each equation, table and figure; I shall organize the report in chapters nested with sections which will in turn be nested with subsections. My thesis shall be bound and the institute library will be supplemented with a copy of it. And there it shall remain till antiquity until the taste of the papers matures well enough in the musty shelves to whet the collective appetite of a community of termites.

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It was with this feeling of resignation that I decided to take a three day break from work :-). There was an urge to take a long walk along a rainy footpath on a hill starting midnight, to smell the wild flowers along the way, to smile at the people who come there looking for firewood before sunrise and to reach the top early enough to be able to greet the sun as it languidly but unfailingly illuminates our world. When fatigue takes over and when one lacks resolve, poetry seems less poetic and hence I decided to spend saturday night at home. Had coffee with an old acquaintance from school and kindled a (possible) friendship, let my mother relish her powers over me and my appetite and had long talks with my father after a significantly long time.

I know it's difficult to find any kind of reconcilation when you're dissatisfied with work. Acknowledgment works to an extent to satisfy the deluded man. He/She who is satisfied by mere acknowledgment is in all probabilities someone who doesn't have a passion to pursue anything in this world dedicatedly. I have often seen the following question pop up during conversations that I have been a part of, especially if the persons involved are feeding on each other's dissatisfaction with the world as to which pill must Alice take, happy delusion or her unhappy self?

Something that partially inspired me was a letter by Richard Feynman to one of his former students who was unhappy with his life and research. The student had sent a congratulatory mail to Feynman on the latter's winning the 1965 Physics Nobel but had sublimely expressed his unhappiness. The student wrote that he was a 'nameless man' working on 'a humble and down-to-earth type problem' somewhere in oblivion. Feynman writes,

Dear Koichi,

I was very happy to hear from you, and that you have such a position in the Research Laboratories. Unfortunately your letter made me unhappy for you seem to be truly sad. It seems that the influence of your teacher has been to give you a false idea of what are worthwhile problems. The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. A problem is grand in science if it lies before us unsolved and we see some way for us to make some headway into it. I would advise you to take even simpler, or as you say, humbler, problems until you find some you can really solve easily, no matter how trivial. You will get the pleasure of success, and of helping your fellow man, even if it is only to answer a question in the mind of a colleague less able than you. You must not take away from yourself these pleasures because you have some erroneous idea of what is worthwhile.

To Koichi Mano (the student) referring to himself as a nameless man, Feynman wrote the following words. In the past two days, I have forwarded the entire letter to many of my friends. One among them said that she read the following lines 'over and over again'; they are indeed moving:

You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself - it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of your naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are.

Best of Luck and Happiness,

Sincerely,

Richard P. Feynman

This letter carries a lot of meaning for me and as luck would have it, I encountered it at the most appropriate time.