The first step was the easiest, making the room messy, bringing it to the sorry state, dusty, disorganised. Then was the long, legendary battle, the will to clean and organise pitted against pure and soulful laziness. Laziness strengthens over time. Once you begin to realise that life isn't that bad even in a room in disarray, the laziness not only feels justified, but begins to eat into the modest reserves of determination you possess. Even if the room bordered on uninhabitable, making one corner a little more messy while giving the relatively clean (yet absolutely chaotic) remains of the room to yourself makes you see the wisdom in not cleaning the room. It begins to feel unnecessary.
Di-Nitrogen and Di-Hydrogen, being inert at room temperature, require high temperature as well as high pressure to react to form ammonia gas, that too in the presence of iron catalyst as well as a molybdenum promoter. And yet, under all this conditions, only a fraction of N2 and H2 react. The magic of Haber's process comes after this, exothermic nature of the reaction leading to it stabilizing the necessary pressure and temperature condition, and ammonia is formed uninhibited, almost regenerated at every step.
Here too, I needed the right weather, mood, favourable conditions of pending work, a full stomach, physical capacity as well as 4 straight hours of leisure to actually get things started. And after I was assured of all these, laziness had to be overcome. Once that happened, things would flow, much like the ammonia.
And so, on the given day, a certain foreboding to destiny came to me. It hit me, something almost supernatural, that today was to be the day. Today would see me breaking all barriers, finally action, though by no means preemptive, only could save the day.
After a long struggle, fighting through needless papers, old books, poor selection of song by the radio jockey and a pair of spectacles which thought it would be fun to jump off my nose, I was only half way through. 5 of the stipulated four hours were gone, the reaction was slowing down, there was a snag in the ammonia outlet.
An IITJEE aspirant like every other kid in the neighbourhood, city, state and country, the sheer number of books necessary to continue being one, had absolutely no place in my cosy little room, just enough to let me through.
Laziness loves enhancing thoughts, has a great way of making you believe something you well know isn't true.
So I still believe. My habitation of a room where everything is organised except my books, which form almost all of my possessions, is true to testimony to this fact.
I continue to procrastinate for I believe, my books don't have enough space.
The battle goes on
Good post. One suggestion keep the examples you give limited to one or two lines. This post reads like two stories one about your room and the other a chemistry lesson. The example is good but too long and hence distracts one from the main story.
ReplyDelete