"what motivates you?"

This was a question Ramsey asked me six months back on the day I hopelessly botched my interview. Looked like I'd taken my 'mysterious self' too seriously, because I was in a complete funk - too many ideas but not a single word. Now that I'm about to face that interview again, I'm determined not to let the lack of words fuck me up.

While thinking about the above question, I hit an answer that was triggered by a movie poster. There are many things that motivate me or anybody else for that matter. Money, sex, the good life... But there's one common thread that runs through all these factors. Check out this poster; especially the punch line.


THERE ARE FEW MOMENTS IN LIFE... YOU FEEL GREATNESS

It's these moments of greatness I live for. These moments of greatness that motivate me.
There are times when one feels so great that he thinks for an instant "It doesn't matter if I do nothing else from here on. THIS moment's gonna see to it that I die a happy man."
This moment's highly transient. Blink and it's gone. Life's back to its usual drudgery. I've the ability to revel in such moments for days.

I felt great when I first took my toy apart.
I felt great when I first forged dad's signature and escaped a thrashing in school.
I felt great when I rode my first bicycle.
I felt great when I won prizes without even trying.
I felt great when I finished a game other people had been breaking their heads on. I now feel great after every game I finish.
I felt great whenever my bike crossed seventy. The poor thing can't do that anymore.
I felt great when I topped the English exam in college despite the fact that I'd left three sheets of my main paper blank and others had killed a whole forest for a few petty marks.
I felt great when I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged because I could see a part of myself in those books.
I felt great when I didn't bugger freshers to get back at a few seniors who'd buggered me for that very reason.
I felt great when I wrote my first game and collapsed due to sleep deprivation for three days.
I felt great after I finished college with the record of not having taken a single additional answer sheet.
I felt great when I told the Polaris interviewer bitch who wanted me to "sell myself to her" that "I didn't like yapping about myself" and watched her jaw drop wide open in shock.
I felt great when I was selected at Infosys. The second biggest mistake of my life.
I felt great when I wrote my first HTML page: one that neatly displayed all the Calvin and Hobbes strips I'd taken off UComics.com.
I felt great after every all-night-multiplayer-session of Age of Empires during the paid vacation read training at Mysore. Nothing gives me the feeling that flouting authority does. Especially when the 'authority' is a bunch of idiots farting out silly rules for no sensible reason.
I felt great when I wrote a program that searched a bunch of files for any number of strings and produced cool reports which saved the project a shitload of money and a whole lotta time.
I felt great when I first karted. Twenty six laps and not a single crash.
I felt great when I figured out ["learnt" is a wrong word here] how to generate reports in MS Access and explained it to a befuddled 'senior'. All in one day.
I felt great when I wrote a program that communicated with web services.
I felt great when I ran at 15 KPH for twenty minutes straight. I felt the pain for a month and still kept running, feeling greater everyday I did.
I felt great when I kicked the fucking job goodbye and stepped out facing the world with four grand in my bank account.
I felt great when I played again for fifty hours until my eyes refused to focus on any target. That was three days ago. My eyes still burn.
I feel great as I write this because I'm a damn good psychologist without having read a single book or having attended a single seminar on the subject.

These moments define my life. They've defined my past and will define my future. I don't wanna do anything that doesn't offer me moments of greatness. I hope that I croak right in the middle of one such moment. A jump off a cliff seems to be the perfect answer.

Now I'll generalize. EVERYBODY lives for such moments, no matter how they come.
Criminals find them in crime.
Inventors find them in their inventions: I'm sure most inventors would've been secretly proud of something that DIDN'T work but gave them that high.
Businessmen find them in money.
Sportsmen find them in 'their zone'.
Howard Roark found them in his buildings.
Hank Rearden found them in watching white hot Rearden Metal being poured.
Extreme sportsmen and junkies experience these moments with the most frequency.

Human being: A bag of chemicals perpetually reacting for the sole purpose of hitting the right combination.
Life: A quest for moments of greatness.