Life - It’s Open Source by Osmosis
Inspiration comes from the weirdest places. This time it came from a plurk that I posted saying “TheNerd wishes he could open source his life“. AaronMSB responded with the following statement “isn’t your life a little open source already. You learn and take mannerisms and stuff from the people around you”. This was quite an inspiring statement and is what this post is based on.
Life really is very similar to open source. Just think of how we adapt and change based on the actions of other people around us. We do it, for the most part, unknowingly. We absorbe this information and process it subconciously and, still subconciously, adjust our behavious accordingly. We all know this is what happens when you finally meet your “significant” other and settle down. Settling down is exactly what I am talking about. Most people don’t say “I’m going to settle down now”, it’s just natural progression and no one really even notices or questions it (there are obviously exceptions).
Not all of this information is absobed completely unconciously. Sometimes we have the choice to make a decision on what information we absorbe or reject. In this case we can be seen as the “Lead Developer” of our own “personality software” project. We make decisions based on what we see best fits the roadmap or vision of the project. Just like a newbie developer that has his latest patch evaluated and rejected because of errors, we tend to evaluate the people surrounding us and reject those which do not follow the coding guidlines or are just plain old poorly written.
But what does this really have to do with life? It has lots to do with it I think. If we were to live our lives with a good understanding of this concept I think we could make better decisions about how we act and treat other people. Life is all about learning and creating a product that you are proud of and can show it off to others, just like you would show off a new piece of software that you are proud to have been a part of. Understanding this concept would also allow you to better contribute to the other “personality software projects” of those around you. We all know that open source software is most successful when there are many dedicated people who are working towards a common goal. Life is very similar in that if you surround yourself by good people, who are dedicated to your friendship, it creates a better product in the end.
Give it some thought.
~TheNerd
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That’s an interesting analogy.