Magic and Ockham’s razor

Two people meet. A beautiful setting, a gathering of likeminded people. Or it can be a random chance event – just two people meeting. Them being together can lend so much to a particular setting and raise it above the normal realm. A glint of an eye, a hint of a smile dancing around the corners of the mouth, an energy that flows and charges all the particles between them. What is spoken about is immaterial; squiggles of electricity form and pulsate from both, intertwining in the middle and wrapping them together in the same energy field. A certain ‘chemistry’. Cannot put it too well in words, but I am sure you have experienced it. Magic.

If you feel all that magic, what do you do?
You apply the principle of parsimony, pick up Ockham’s razor and shave the meeting of everything except the bare essential. Two people met. Ha.

I was looking through a friend’s pictures, and there was a picture of two of our faculty playing a game that the students set for them. They had to shave the surface of a balloon. Apply shaving cream on it, and use a razor blade to 'shave' it clean. The image is sort of stuck in my head.

Imagine various situations in life to be a balloon; the razor to be Ockham’s razor, and the shaving cream, our minds.

Firstly, the how we perceive the incident will determine the color of the balloon – if you are angry, black with lightning on it and so on. Then, how much we blow up the balloon. Whether we are looking at the incident in its true magnitude or blowing it out of proportion!

Too much cream. Different fragrances, different consistencies of cream, leading to different types of layers on the actual event. Until we start believing in our perception of the truth so much, that the truth itself ceases to exist.

Too much pressure with the razor – it can burst the balloon.
Too little pressure can allow a lot of residual cream to remain; we are not looking at the balloon ‘correctly’, there is still some color to the perception.

We need to be very careful with all these components. People might say each thing is important in its own way. But according to me, the most important is the razor. Let’s not shave everything away! Life won’t be that much fun anymore! Let the Magic remain! :-)