Two pieces of news have been making me think.
One – the T20 Cricket World Cup that is close to conclusion. When it started, India were hot favorites (or at least some said so) and the first match against Pakistan was to be a formality – an exercise in continuing the humiliation that the Pakistanis had faced whenever they played against India in the World Cup.
Every op-ed, every commentator said that India would win. Even the Pakistanis.
We all know what happened. A whitewash – we lost by 10 wickets. There couldn’t have been a more one-sided match.
The Pakistanis didn’t stop there. They went on to beat every team they faced – and all victories were comprehensive. All of a sudden, the underdogs looked like the team to beat!
Which brings us to a very valuable lesson – every underdog has his day. An underdog means a person (or team) that has been underestimated – not a team that does not have enough potential. The fault lies in the estimator, i.e. us. The team has all that it takes – as Pakistan are amply demonstrating throughout their World Cup campaign.
We underestimate a lot. But what we underestimate by the biggest factor is our own capabilities. It takes another to help us reach our potential – seldom do we accurately calculate our limits. This is the reason personal trainers exist – they do not make you stronger by the kind of exercise that they make you do – they just push you to what you thought are your limits, and then throw you off that ledge. You fall, but you rise.
The second piece of news is not as fresh, but yes, since I am researching the topic of blockchains and protocols, this is relevant.
Dogecoin. What has the world come to, when a meme becomes a unit of currency and people make (or mostly lose) money of it? A professional studies through 16 years culminating in graduation, throws in an Ivy-league MBA and a CFA degree to boot – only to be unceremoniously out-earned by a person who thinks that an entry on a virtual ledger, named after a terrier or a poodle – is worth something…
This is either a joke that has outlived it’s usefulness, or a cruel twist of fate that has thrown all calculated effort to build a sustainable financial system out of gear.
Whatever it is…interesting times lie ahead!