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Historical single-piston diesel engine displayed in the Deutsches Museum, Munich.
| Photo Credit: Olivier Cleynen / Wikimedia Commons
What are your motivations? Barring what we do spontaneously, almost all of our actions are driven by motivations. It is, in fact, all-encompassing, starting from the seemingly mundane to those that define us as a being.
In case you are wondering how, think about this. We brush and bathe for our own wellbeing. We behave a certain way with our friends and family members, motivated by our own perception of ourselves. We study and work to fulfil our own goals, objectives, and ambitions. You get the drift.
Be it the one sitting next to you as you are reading this, or the one who is looking to run for a country’s highest office in the future, everyone has their own motivations to do what they do. The scientists and inventors, whom we often place on a pedestal after their accomplishments, aren’t too different.
Even in the case of serendipitous inventions and discoveries, the ones working on it have put themselves in a position to notice what is panning out through a lifetime of conditioning to spot those very things. And then, there are those who spend a lifetime towards a goal, without certainty as to whether it will ever be realised or not. French-born German engineer and inventor Rudolf Diesel neatly fits into the second category.
