Recently I lost my very new and very dearly possessed Samsung galaxy note. It all happened in a moment faster than a jiffy, while getting down from a bus at the stop to go to work. Whether I dropped it or got pick pocketed, I ma never know.. What I do know is; something that I loved and which was just about to become a part of my life, was lost by me in a few seconds of carelessness....!!
I remember the initial shock - one of disbelief and one of numbness.. I think I was comfortably numb .. as I wasn't convinced that it was really lost. I thought I was hallucinating.
It took me almost 25 minutes and to reach my work place ( as I thought that it was more important to got to work than chase the bus where I knew I was pick pocketed or dropped it..quite a strangely abnormal reaction I 'd say) to be hit with reality.
Later , I was thinking to myself...." what was I thinking"..
Anyways, I spent the whole day chasing the traces of where the phone could have been, going to the final stop of the bus at electronic city, almost 15 km away, then to the police station and back. Finally hoping against hope to find that very bus plying on a different route. ( I got the bus's registration number from the bus station at electronic city). I somehow had it in my head that some Samaritan might have found it and in all sincerity given it to the conductor. How wrong could I be? I realized my folly, when after a 4 hour wait I did find the bus and all I got was jeers from the bus staff who simply said - "Who in this day and age would give back a phone"....Of course I was stupid!!!
After 13 hours spent trying to recover my loss, I remember going home - It felt like a dog with tail between its legs. I was convincing myself that I did the best I could, and now if no one finds it, my loss is just a gadget, it costs less than my salary and I can buy it whenever I want.
I reached home to change my passwords in an attempt to ensure no misuse of my phone or my data by the person who gained from my loss and slept later hoping for a lousy day to come to an end!!
The thing about losing a phone( communication device) today is not the loss of hardware, but of the data, the memories and the personal touch of life that one gives to a simple gadget. When I lost the note, I realized that the loss of the database that has been built into the hardware was more painful than losing the product itself. In the age of digital communication and web 2.0, the dependency on gadgets sometimes is very close to depending on someone you trust or someone very dear.
Maybe its an over reaction. But then the fact is, I was dependent on my phone's memory and the camera to capture and hold onto certain special moments. Also were all the inputs I gave the various apps in the note to make my life more organized. All this was ofcourse done to have that place where memories could reside for ever... Did I trust my phone more than my own grey cells- I think i had started to!!... an in a way brought it to life, for me.
I have heard of stress that can build up over losing a "personal" gadget, and I think that stress is quite a fact of modern life, considering the dependency on gadgets we have today to organize, communicate, express and memorize the events in our life. Certain things that our non tech savvy previous generations put efforts to collate, build and create a library of information, we simply outsource to silicon and plastic with clicks of a few buttons.
Anyways, after the last 20 odd days since I have lost this "loved one", I have now completely lost hopes of recovering it. But then this period, has made me ponder over the losses that I have had in life so far, and what I have learnt from them....
By the grace of God, I haven't yet experienced the loss of a person dear to me and close to my heart. What I have lost, are dreams and possessions, opportunities both professional and personal, friendships, positive career moves and those moments where in I have made choices to focus on endeavors/ projects while losing some others, which on a looking back mode feel - may have been more important...!!
I think most of us are not absolved of losses. All of us do incur losses and the perception of a loss is one's own- it can be financial, professional, personal or opportunistic. Many of us have had losses that are way more heart wrenching than what I can fathom. But then the losses caused due to one's mistake are those that always come back to haunt, the reason for which I believe is because it happened due to that one moment where one experienced a "momentary lapse of reason".
The lesson that take from all the losses and downs of my life is - It takes a lot to build something very very special... but just one moment of tardiness, of a lapse of reason and of callousness can bring down all that effort, all the energy and all the emotion that has been put into building the same.
"They" say that one should learn from others mistakes, but I wonder how much of learning happens through that. Its also not safe to keep losing and learning I guess, as some losses are beyond repair in a lifetime and some are just not recoverable, but I guess the biggest lesson which reverberates is that " you loose money, you can make it back, you lose time- its gone forever". In the era of consumerism, I know that I can buy back another note- when I decide to, but I know I cant recover the "life" I put into it.
For me this loss is a lesson from my experience, for the way I will want to deal with everything special to me. From my relationships, my love, my dreams, my possessions and more. I don't think I can blame any of the in-competencies - be it lack of understanding, carelessness, laziness or temperament if I lose that special person, person or emotion from my life, and I have to be on my toes always, as it just takes that one"momentary lapse of reason" where all these in-competencies can have a combined attack and neutralize all the effort used up build up something really very special, and makes it very difficult to "come back to life".
I remember the initial shock - one of disbelief and one of numbness.. I think I was comfortably numb .. as I wasn't convinced that it was really lost. I thought I was hallucinating.
It took me almost 25 minutes and to reach my work place ( as I thought that it was more important to got to work than chase the bus where I knew I was pick pocketed or dropped it..quite a strangely abnormal reaction I 'd say) to be hit with reality.
Later , I was thinking to myself...." what was I thinking"..
Anyways, I spent the whole day chasing the traces of where the phone could have been, going to the final stop of the bus at electronic city, almost 15 km away, then to the police station and back. Finally hoping against hope to find that very bus plying on a different route. ( I got the bus's registration number from the bus station at electronic city). I somehow had it in my head that some Samaritan might have found it and in all sincerity given it to the conductor. How wrong could I be? I realized my folly, when after a 4 hour wait I did find the bus and all I got was jeers from the bus staff who simply said - "Who in this day and age would give back a phone"....Of course I was stupid!!!
After 13 hours spent trying to recover my loss, I remember going home - It felt like a dog with tail between its legs. I was convincing myself that I did the best I could, and now if no one finds it, my loss is just a gadget, it costs less than my salary and I can buy it whenever I want.
I reached home to change my passwords in an attempt to ensure no misuse of my phone or my data by the person who gained from my loss and slept later hoping for a lousy day to come to an end!!
The thing about losing a phone( communication device) today is not the loss of hardware, but of the data, the memories and the personal touch of life that one gives to a simple gadget. When I lost the note, I realized that the loss of the database that has been built into the hardware was more painful than losing the product itself. In the age of digital communication and web 2.0, the dependency on gadgets sometimes is very close to depending on someone you trust or someone very dear.
Maybe its an over reaction. But then the fact is, I was dependent on my phone's memory and the camera to capture and hold onto certain special moments. Also were all the inputs I gave the various apps in the note to make my life more organized. All this was ofcourse done to have that place where memories could reside for ever... Did I trust my phone more than my own grey cells- I think i had started to!!... an in a way brought it to life, for me.
I have heard of stress that can build up over losing a "personal" gadget, and I think that stress is quite a fact of modern life, considering the dependency on gadgets we have today to organize, communicate, express and memorize the events in our life. Certain things that our non tech savvy previous generations put efforts to collate, build and create a library of information, we simply outsource to silicon and plastic with clicks of a few buttons.
Anyways, after the last 20 odd days since I have lost this "loved one", I have now completely lost hopes of recovering it. But then this period, has made me ponder over the losses that I have had in life so far, and what I have learnt from them....
By the grace of God, I haven't yet experienced the loss of a person dear to me and close to my heart. What I have lost, are dreams and possessions, opportunities both professional and personal, friendships, positive career moves and those moments where in I have made choices to focus on endeavors/ projects while losing some others, which on a looking back mode feel - may have been more important...!!
I think most of us are not absolved of losses. All of us do incur losses and the perception of a loss is one's own- it can be financial, professional, personal or opportunistic. Many of us have had losses that are way more heart wrenching than what I can fathom. But then the losses caused due to one's mistake are those that always come back to haunt, the reason for which I believe is because it happened due to that one moment where one experienced a "momentary lapse of reason".
The lesson that take from all the losses and downs of my life is - It takes a lot to build something very very special... but just one moment of tardiness, of a lapse of reason and of callousness can bring down all that effort, all the energy and all the emotion that has been put into building the same.
"They" say that one should learn from others mistakes, but I wonder how much of learning happens through that. Its also not safe to keep losing and learning I guess, as some losses are beyond repair in a lifetime and some are just not recoverable, but I guess the biggest lesson which reverberates is that " you loose money, you can make it back, you lose time- its gone forever". In the era of consumerism, I know that I can buy back another note- when I decide to, but I know I cant recover the "life" I put into it.
For me this loss is a lesson from my experience, for the way I will want to deal with everything special to me. From my relationships, my love, my dreams, my possessions and more. I don't think I can blame any of the in-competencies - be it lack of understanding, carelessness, laziness or temperament if I lose that special person, person or emotion from my life, and I have to be on my toes always, as it just takes that one"momentary lapse of reason" where all these in-competencies can have a combined attack and neutralize all the effort used up build up something really very special, and makes it very difficult to "come back to life".
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