Impulse

Impulse is actually quite a significant, if unnoticed, term in the realms of dynamics. Mostly used in Rocketry and other such things way beyond the comprehension of the average man, it is defined as the product of Average Force and the Time… or is it the quotient??? GAWD, I am forgetting everything I learnt… KNEW college was a bad idea!

But then, this is MY page and so I WILL NOT talk about such unholy things such as Physics and Mechanics and other such stuff that, the society has decided, are very important for an Engineer to know. So what IS the impulse that I have given as a heading so grandly at the top of the page… yeah, I meant that totally indefinable characteristic of humans which makes them do weird stuff at weird times, some things which their logical mind would have dismissed as outright crazy.

From my observations of the above defined indefinable property, the conclusions are that an impulsive action is one which you do by listening to your heart and not your mind. Yeah, THAT makes a lot of sense, I know. But that’s all it is… really.

In a normal scheme of things, the heart DOES have the first say in everything we do. But, it’s the mind, the logical, scheming, rationalizing, devilish part of us, which has the second, third and so on till the FINAL say. So the body does what the brain commands it to and we all remain holier-than-thou, doing the thing that…well, SHOULD be done, as defined by practice or law or society or whatever.

The impulsive act, however, does not allow time for the mind to think. The heart says, and wham, it’s done! Everyone would have done it at some point in their life. Just doing something for the heck of it…. Like, I wanna do it and so WILL do it. The other day, it was raining like there was no tomorrow and I had just finished watching FRIENDS. So, jobless as I am, I sat by the window and watched the rain pelting down on the asphalt. And then suddenly, I just got up, walked out of my house, walked through the rain till the gate of my apartments and walked back in. More than enough! I was drenched to the skin, my hair was a wet mess and my clothes were stuck to me like I was born with them or something, like Karna. Did all that matter? NO! I had just done what I had wanted to do, and I felt very pleased with myself.

There are many other things which I have done on an impulse, totally shutting out the voices in my head screaming “What are you doing?” and “DON’T!!!!!!!!!” So far I’ve not had to regret any of them. Of course, none of them have been earth-shaking events which decided the future of this planet. But still, so far, my mind has not had the opportunity to tell me “Ha, I told you!” And even if there came such an occasion, where an impulsive action could have been avoided in favour of the logical, rational one, well, I don’t think I would care. For I would be secure in the thought that for that one moment at least, I had set aside all the complicated thought processes rushing through my head, and simply followed my heart…