My speech on Murphy’s Law

Last week, I was searching for Inspirational Speeches on Youtube. I found one titled ‘Life is easy. Why do we make it so hard?’ by Jon Jandai, who is a farmer from Thailand. His philosophical views on Life inspired me a lot. In that speech of his, he talked about his village where everything is simple & straight forward. He talked about his people who work hard in planting rice for a month, harvesting the same one more month and spending rest of the 10 months enjoying themselves.

Well, certainly the thought which is coming to your mind is completely apt. We are not cultivating Rice here. But, what his speech made me realize was that whatever problems we have, howsoever sufferings we go through, we need to take a pause and think: Is it worth it? If you believe it’s not: change your path and if you believe it is, then, there is something which can make your sophisticated journey unsophisticated. This is something I’m going to talk about next.

We all have problems in our lives; no one has something called a picture perfect story in the real world. For all the bad things that happen to us, we curse our luck for it. Bad luck is something that seems to haunt people and I am sure that all of you assume that you have the worst luck; nothing goes the way that you plan. 

Your bad luck is due to Murphy’s Law, a law that affects us all. No matter how hard you try to escape, Murphy’s Law will find you and turn things from bad to worse. The most popular version of Murphy’s Law is that “Anything that can go wrong; will go wrong”. If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the first one to go wrong. Let me give you an example:

You're sitting in eight lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic. You're more than ready to get home, but you notice, to your great dismay, that all of the other lanes seem to be moving. You change lanes. But once you do, the cars in your new lane come to a dead halt. At a standstill, you notice every lane on the highway (including the one you just left) is moving -- except yours.

Welcome to the aggravating world of Murphy's Law. This isn't because of some mysterious power the law possesses. In reality, it's us who give Murphy's Law relevance. When life goes well, little is made of it. After all, we expect that things should work out in our favor. But when things go badly, we look for reasons. From the most failsafe plan to the faultiest one, Murphy’s Law will make something happen that was not expected. This law has become the downfall of humanity and mankind as we know it.

Murphy's Law taps into our tendency to dwell on the negative and overlook the positive and it uses the rules of probability -- the mathematical likeliness that something will occur -- to support itself. For example, the chances of the Bread falling with the Buttered Side down are higher than 50% if we use simple Physics. There’s a popular saying though: the chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.

The law captures our imagination. Murphy's Law and its offshoots have been collected in books and Web sites. Several bands are named after Murphy's Law, and it's also a popular name for Irish pubs. It was also used as the title of an action movie.

The most obvious question that comes to our mind is, ‘How can we escape Murphy’s Law?’ Unfortunately there is no way. Much to the disappointment to everyone, this is the way life works, get used to it. 

So, if you are one of those who keep on blaming their stars: stop doing it; because now you all know what you should be cursing instead. Even when things seem the worst, think of this: Smile today because tomorrow will be worse.

Thank you!!