Today, I cancelled the alarm instead of putting it on snooze. Goes without saying that I overslept and was late for office.On reaching office, I couldnt find my ID card.I guessed I had left it at home. Got a temporary card made , but all this caused even more delay.Had a code to demonstrate in the afternoon.the previous day had kept everything ready. All data prepared etc.Yes you guessed it! The code would not work during the demonstration. Thankfully there were other people who had to demonstrate their code. I just said, let the others go ahead while I check whats wrong. I was shocked to see that someone had deleted the data I had prepared #@!#$%#$. I quickly fixed it and domonstrated the code. It went well.
On telling a friend about it, he said , "Well Murphy's law at work'. Yeah, all of us have faced it so many times. I wonder how Murphy could point out so certainly about somethings so uncertain. And that so, why does it work only in a negative way. Murphy's law says "Anthing that can go wrong, will go wrong". Now my point is, this 'Anything' can also go right, right? Er dont think I am making sense. What I mean to say is, an event has a possibility of succeeding or failing. What Murphy is trying to say is :- if an event has these two chances, it will fail.But why?? Why isnt the law "Anything that can go right, will go right?"
After much pondering over a "tall iced-tea lemonade, passion flavoured, less ice and extra sugar" at Starbucks, I deduced the following - Just like things go wrong, things also go right in our lives. Lets take the example of the demonstration above.I have had many office presentations/demonstrations where I had goofed up but no-body noticed.That means the alternate also happens. Just that it looks too normal to us and we dont keep a note of it. The wrong ones hit us more and we remember them for life. So a day in our lives where everything went wrong stays in our memory. We try to explain so many things going wrong by taking help of a law.
I also feel that when a series of things go wrong, the root cause can in most cases be attributed to the first thing which went wrong. Let me explain how.
When the first thing goes wrong, it makes one nervous, specially if there are other things in line which one cant afford to go wrong. And the knowledge of the 'Murphy's law' adds to it. One is already nervous - "Oh its happening ...now everything is going to be messed up". And so we mess up.
I guess we soon need to coin the Anti-Murphy's law, for those days when everything goes right.
ps:- I found my ID card in my purse at lunch.
