Mentoring Chronicles 4: Tuning and Fine tuning.

I am reminded of my pre-university (11th grade equivalent) days as I sit down to pen this article. Reason being, in the physics lab we had this tuning fork experiment, where different tuning forks when struck would give specific fundamental frequencies. The main use of tuning forks are to tune musical instruments to standard frequencies. What brain remembers a tuning fork in association with the meeting of a mentor? Not just mine I assure you. If it were to happen to you, and you had the same experiences as I did, you would have connected the dots the exact same way as I am. Since the mathematical probability of that happening is almost zero, it’s possible and yet very remotely possible. But that’s not the point.

In an offbeat conversation about my responses to various people and situations that I have come across in daily life, his responses are what struck me. I didn’t even realise it at first- when I spoke about feeling proud (for a reason that wasn’t so right), he said why on earth do you want to call that an experience?! Why can’t it be something absolute, and not something relative? I didn’t quite understand the profundity of the statement until sometime later. I thought, hey I’m doing better than what somebody else would in the same situation, shouldn’t I feel proud? But then let go at that moment. Coming back to it later, I realised, isn’t the rat race and the desire for bigger houses and bigger cars and more materialistic goals just that, a relative comparison? While I can clearly see how that is a trap, even with experiences, it can be. And it is harder to see. And hence easier to fall into. (Like how Hobbes falls for the tiger trap just for a Tuna sandwich, ha!) T’was a moment of truth, it was- when it hit me that it will be something else altogether - maybe a really simple experience, but mind blowing, when absolute experiences count. Like a sunrise, a sunset, a moonrise, a full moon, a super moon- the list is endless.

Due to a slightly assertive correction of thought of that single experience I shared, I easily remember his reactions to many other situations I shared over the course of the meeting- each intended to correct and fine- tune. When I thought somebody else’s problem was mine, when I couldn’t dissociate with the glory or pain of another but had to, when I thought I was the problem when I was not, when I thought I had a brilliant experience but it was just an ego trip and such.

In the course of a single meeting if just by natural response my brain would have learnt that throwing attitude isn’t a great trait, ego doesn’t really help and so on - and the brain does learn whether you want it or not- I can only imagine the amount of fine tuning my thoughts and attitudes would have gone through over all these times when I didn’t have the conscious awareness of this.

Every place we want to go finally needs extremely tuned and fine tuned specificity to actually get there. By getting a variance of just about a degree in a rocket’s projectile, it might just end up reaching an entirely different planet than intended. While making any of those needle point decisions of life, we need to watch where we’re going. Stopping and taking U-Turns are no big deal in comparison with stepping off the road without realising it.

Do we need to go over why mentoring, once again?