On Measurement and Immeasurables

Ever since I attended business school thirty five years ago I have been obsessed with measurement.  That is one thing business school does to you.  It teaches you that you cannot evaluate what you cannot measure.  And, at the risk of oversimplifying, management is all about evaluation or assessment.  So it teaches you to measure all kinds of phenomena.

Over time I took my tendency to measure to new levels of obsessiveness.  Long before we were invaded by fit bits I used to count the number of steps I walked.  I measure with great effort the time it takes me to chant various slokas.  I have carried out extensive analyses of the speeds at which I chant the many slokas I know by heart and the time it takes to complete each of them at the various speeds I chant them. 

I measure the number of shaves I get with each disposable razor and therefore the cost of each shave.   I have a meter running in my head that calculates the cost of each shave, including the number of shaves I get from a can of foam versus the slivers of shaving cream I would have used instead. 

I estimated the number of cups of tea that I needed to make on the new water heater that I bought for making tea in my office for Rs 900.  Each time I make a cup of tea I remind myself of how many more cups I would need to have made before the heater would have paid for itself.  I reset this number for the fact the price of a cup of tea in coffee shops increased even while I was recovering the cost of the heater. 

Let me also remind you that before I bought the heater I had figured out that the time taken to make my own tea was less than the time spent in going to the faculty lounge for having tea.  And this did not include the time I spent often in gossip at the lounge.  When I worked out the time spent on such gossip tea at the lounge would often prove to be even more costly as I took time to work out the emotions that would get stirred up on getting to know things at the lounge, that I would have been better off not knowing.

Before I bought my new scooter I worked out the number of trips I would need to make to my office to recover the investment I would make in the scooter that I wished to replace my car with.  I did this under multiple scenarios, depending on when I would sell the scooter, in case it started giving me a back-ache.

Although I am a terrible penny pincher myself, occasionally I give away a minuscule fraction of my relatively meagre earnings to people or causes I consider deserving.  I keep track of every paisa of it, right in my head.

I guess you get the picture – I am one helluva measurement monster.

Now, that is not without collateral costs.  It makes me a miserable spouse, father, son, son-in-law, sibling, nephew, colleague and whatever else.  I can go on.  

Luckily for me and the women of this world I have never been a boy-friend.  Imagine the reaction of this woman who realizes that I had been measuring the cost per unit of intimate moment that I spent with her by dividing the cost of an evening out with her by the number of minutes I got to look at her beautiful face or hold her delicate hand!

I have pressed on with my counting, remorselessly, all these years.  I have believed that life would be one unstructured financial and emotional spaghetti if one did not measure everything.

But, out of the blue, some weeks back this question struck me like a bolt:  What would I do with the results of all those measurements when it is time to move on?  . 

This question crossed my mind a few weeks back again when I had occasion to interact with this super wealthy benefactor.  He is a fairly old man.  My first thought was that the measurements that this man would have to deal with would be too many, too complex and too large for my puny, tiny brain. 

Just as instantly this other thought started bothering me: What would happen when he left this world, as indeed he would have to some time?  How relevant would all that measurement be to him once he ceased to be in this world?

It occurred to me that whatever we measure in life does not seem to matter in the larger scheme of things.  That said, I do not know what makes for that larger scheme of things. 

It did occur to me though that once I am gone what would matter is what I have done for those that I leave behind.  The joy I would be able to give them out of what I have provided them would matter I am sure to them.  The misery I would leave behind by the hurt I may have caused would matter just as much.

Ironically, business school did not teach me how to measure such emotions.  Which is perhaps why we always talk about indescribable joy or immeasurable suffering.  If you cannot describe how can you measure?

Under the circumstances it appeared reasonably safe to say this about the larger scheme of things though:  What one can measure does not seem to matter.  And what matters, it seems, one can never measure, to quote that miserable genius Albert Einstein.

Nanni….Namaskaaram…