During the course of my internship, I finally sat my butt down and started doing some serious work, and some observations I made will shape my thinking/decisions for a long time.
Firstly, I realized change is unavoidable and is the inherent nature of things (atleast things I work on).
Next I came to believe my associations with objects (and of other people i presume) are of two types, I will call them logical associations and emotional associations. Logical associations are of the buy-sell variety, ex. I buy shares of a company just to make a quick buck later. Emotional assocations are when an object ceases to become an object and adapts a personality or when you associate it with a human emotion, ex. You buy shares in a company you helped build for 10 years, then the association with the same shares is that of years of hardwork which went into the company. In this case you would not be so willing to sell them for a small profit.
Now, emotional associations can be dangerous as they can bring out extreme reations in people. While logical associations will always elicit the same question, is this a gain or a loss to me, or will this lead to the goal it was designed for? For example, imagine staying in a home all your life, associating various key moments of your existence with it, assuming its existence as a security blanket, only to have to sell it, this would elicit sadness, a sense of extreme loss and irrational quotes to the buyers (which would inevitably lead to no sale, or a very disapointing sale). Now picture a land shark, he buys/sells 5 to 6 lots daily, do you think these reactions are elicited in those transactions, no, because all that is thought of is, is this transaction profitable?
Therefore, I have to come to conclude we need to detach emotional associations during transactions, because this will lead to overall rationality.
Coming to the nature of change, I was working on two parallel projects, one which aligned to my interests, and evoked a sense of discovery and learning within me, and one which simply had to achieve a goal and the means did not excite me. This situation lead me to work with great zeal on the former, and also lead to the formation of uncalled for emotional associations, I associated it with the joys of learning something new in this case. The latter project evoked no such reactions, and was just that to me, a project, nothing more nothing less. This project was poised for change from the very beginning, and the requirements seemed to change everyday and I had no problem scrapping stuff, as it was all for the achievement for a goal, the means itself had no intrinsic value.
However I was resistant to change on the first project from the very start, I would huff and puff, and attempt to build a house of cards on what was done, but not remove it. Towards the end, the first project greatly suffered due to my unwillingness to scrap. The second project on the other hand faced no such blocks, and will achieve its goal. Thus, clearly stating to oneself that the end is imporatant and not the means (in this case), and under any circumstances not developing emotional associations, will automatically poise anything to be flexible to paradigm shifting change and lead to overall ascent of human thought.
