"Gosh!! How ironic? I carried an umbrella and it did not rain. " This is usually followed by " What a waste of energy and resource?" These are statements of frustrated people when it does not rain even after carrying the umbrella and putting on the rain-coat when the forecast said showers through-out the day! These especially happen in India because of weather forecast there which we know. "I missed the bus yesterday when bus had come 5 minutes early and so I decided to come early today and hell the bus was late! " Another frustrated sentence from a frustrated party. These are some of the very common occurrences that happen in our day-to-day life. The summary of this is nothing but the umbrella rule. It is a very simple rule that we experience but a very meaningful and a very useful one nevertheless. Some instances now:
There is a nice movie called " Crazy , Stupid , Love" . In that the protagonist being in a mid-life crisis after a divorce is shattered in a bar drinking liquor and blabbering. At that time , a stranger in that bar becomes his friend and suggests a shake-up in his appearance and routines. Hence the protagonist works very hard to woo women by enhancing his appearance and working on his communicating skills (like speaking lies like he is not a divorcee etc) . He is taught daily by his stranger friend for around 1 month. Then suddenly he finds a women really sexy and wants to woo her by his now acquired skills from his stranger friend. But when he prepares himself and tries to woo her, it all comes crashing down to earth as he is found out to be lying and she becomes angry on him. Then he loses hope and is frustrated and then shows his frustration about his life and his divorce with his wife where he becomes his usual self. This surprisingly attracts the concerned woman and she falls for him. This is one nice instance of the umbrella rule. The protagonist least expected for the woman to fall for him when he became his own-self and too even after preparing to be someone else to woo her!
There was also an instance during my college days about this rule. There was a Mathematics class and we were told by our professor that we were going to taught one of the toughest and the most important theorems in Mathematics which is De Moivre's theorem on complex numbers. Hence the Professor told us to have complete attention and use all our resources in our brains to understand it. After hearing that, there was a pin-drop silence all were into the theorem while the professor was explaining. After explanation, we began to think whether this was really a very tough theorem and we wondered that it was one of the easiest theorems. Then our Professor told us about this rule and exclaimed that he lied about the toughness of the theorem as it was very important for our exam so that we will give all our energies into the theorem. Like this talking about exams, how many times have we been in a situation such that we study like a man possessed for one particular tough subject but the exam appears to be really easy like Geoffrey Boycott says "Even my mom could have answered that question paper" :). The vice versa also has however happened wherein we expect an easy paper and don't study much and then we realize that it is one of the toughest that we have encountered.
I have also encountered a funny incident in US wherein I was denied driving license twice even without driving the car as the brake light was not functional once and during the second time, the car battery had drained out. So for the third time, I took a car from a very good enterprise by shelling out a lot of money and check all the batteries and the lights in the car before the driving test. This time the driving instructor did not even check the car lights and told me to drive and I got the license . So look at the irony here and hence the umbrella rule!
A.R. Rahman himself did not expect to win an Oscar for Slumdog millionaire. In-fact he had done much better work and had pushed himself to the extremes in many of his earlier films but couldn't win an Oscar in those films!
So what are the stuffs to hark back on this rule? What do we learn from this rule?
The US President Abraham Lincoln once said " I will prepare and some day my chance will come". This is exactly what this rule describes according to me. If you have prepared well and something does not happen, no need to lose hope. It will happen when you least expect it happen. Maybe the wish from the hard work and preparation will bear fruit at a later and unexpected stage. It is something like this " It is better to carry and umbrella and not get wet or sunburns when hot rather than not carrying an umbrella and get sloshed by rains. " So better to be well prepared and not lose hope when we dont achieve the desired results. Results will come later when you least expect it to. Life is a funny ride . So take it easy and prepare well. :) Also share your experiences of this rule and hope you all agree with this rule or agree to disagree.
