How I discovered The Graphene Mentality?

It was a bright Sunday morning in Bengaluru. I woke up to the roaring sound of bikers racing past my residence, which abutted the National Highway on the outskirts of this sprawling metropolis. Sunday mornings are the only time these bikers have plenty of space and time to ride their majestic bikes to fetch barrels of euphoria.

As usual, the moment I woke up, I reached for my journal and the graphite pencil kept on my bedside table. This is a morning ritual I’ve been following ever since I instilled the habit of jotting down wonderful thoughts and ideas that spring to my mind as soon as I wake up.

But this time, instead of writing in my notebook, I kept staring at my pencil, examining it for hours. Days passed and months elapsed as I tried to decode the worth of this innocuous-looking object that I’ve been using to scribble bizarre words and figures since I was a toddler.

Meanwhile, the COVID- 19 pandemic started wreaking havoc on an unprecedented scale. The entire country was put under lockdown. It seemed that all Homo sapiens had vanished and a new species would replace them as they had replaced the Neanderthals about 60000 years ago. The situation perfectly resembled the harrowing scene from Avengers : Endgame- as if Thanos had incarnated as Covid- 19 to unleash hell on Earth.

To combat stress, people started exploring various skills and exhibited their unique talents on social media. This period saw the emergence of a new genre of social media artists- painters, singers, dancers, scholars, chefs and fitness experts. All tried desperately to flush out the cortisol accumulated because of the prolonged confinement at home.

But I remained in my usual contemplative mode, diligently seeking answers to the questions that kept troubling me. These questions that constantly assailed me (and I presume you too) were:

What is the purpose of our life?

What are our aspirations?

Why do we fervently pursue transient pleasures such as wealth, status, power, and fame?

Why are most of us not leaving a meaningful and productive life? Why do we spend more time on social media and less on work?

Are we classic epitomes of inefficiency, and self-saboteurs of the highest degree?

Why do we suffer from indecisiveness when we pick up our smartphones to order food from Zomato?

Why do we always find ourselves with the dilemma of choosing between Covishield and Covaxin even though we know that both vaccines have equal efficacy?

Why are we so capricious by nature and seasonally change our decisions? With the advent of spring, we pledge to do something remarkable, and by the time autumn arrives, we lose commitment, energy, and the drive to persist with what we’ve begun.

Why do we lack firmness and tenacity to follow through?

Why do we get terrified after failures? And abandon our dreams so easily?

Why can’t we show resilience to fight back? Or display flexibility to review and revamp our strategy?

Strangely, the answers to all these questions were hidden in the graphite pencil that had captured my investigative mind since that Sunday morning. I knew already that under the veneer of its simple appearance, the pencil possessed a priceless element, graphene. But I never imagined that this element could be the source of such a wonderful concept- The Graphene Mentality. It was this revolutionary mindset I had been searching for through my questions.

Just as the element graphene was discovered unexpectedly, The Graphene Mentality was also a revelation to me. When Professors Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov first examined flakes from bulk graphite under a microscope in 2004, they were fascinated by what they found. Similarly, I was exhilarated when I unearthed this unique mindset-a mindset with the potential to redefine the very model of success.

It was a true Eureka! moment for me, just as it had been for Archimedes.

This is how I discovered The Graphene Mentality.