Re-publishing my post from a few years back, as a tribute to the great John Nash.

A Beautiful Mind, released a few years back is a movie based on a true story. The protagonist John Nash was a mathematician, who found his life turned into a complicated expedition due to schizophrenia. He was haunted by 3 characters of diverse nature, age and beliefs, who took over his life, causing Nash and his family much anguish and a storm in his married life. However, the movie ended on a positive note, as we sit through an extraordinary battle he fought against these 3 characters and the schizophrenia. He found his professional touch back and in fact went on win the Nobel Prize for economics a few years later. Amazingly, while those characters still did not go away from his life, he learnt to ignore them and went on with his life and made much success and fame.

I got a chance to see this movie once again on television a few days ago; and could not stop appreciating John Nash, his wife and the audacity with which they fought the illness. That also set me thinking – why is it that people with such severe infirmity like schizophrenia can overcome it, while there are people who are completely broken down even by the smallest of incidents that can be overcome and forgotten easily? After all, we are all humans, so should there not be some semblance in all human nature? Why would circumstances and nurturing have such an effect that some become extra-humans, while others sink into the depths of despair and become sub-humans?

I believe the answer lies in the question itself. There is such miscellany in us, because we are humans. We are a concoction of such emotions, intensity and tenacity that no other living being can ever achieve. All that is needed is reason and resolve; and even the greatest of challenges would just melt away, should the human mind be influenced to take them up. And because these attributes are present in varying proportions in every person, the reactions to these challenges are also different. If only we can take inspiration from the likes of John Nash, these variations would get smeared. After all, in spite of these varying attributes, we all have one common, significant attribute – A Beautiful Mind.