We live in a world where nature has bestowed us with abundance. Why do we live with an attitude of scarcity ? We tend to live life miserly. We want to conserve everything around us. We tend to have a hoarding mentality and never want to let go on anything in life.

I am not sure if this is evolved in the family environment or influenced by the society around us. I am not professing lavishness or waste of anything in life. I do agree that we need to preserve everything in life for our future generations. However, an attitude of miserliness in our thinking could lead to actions which reflect that behaviour in our everyday life.

As parents, we may not allow our children to enjoy some privileges in life because we did not have them when we were kids. Is this fair ? I am not sure. As teachers, we may be reluctant to share all our knowledge with the students because we may believe that they may outsmart us. As managers, we may not be willing to let go of our skills or knowledge because we believe that may degrade our corporate value.

This attitude percolates to every aspect in society as well. Everyone wants to guard their key skills or knowledge with the worry that it will get replicated. Imagine a world of open sharing. Imagine a world of sharing and caring. Imagine a world of spreading knowledge skills and attitude. We need to believe that the more we give to others, the more we learn.

I was lucky to grow up in an open environment. My family members shared everything they could and enabled me to pursue my passion in life. We ( my spouse and me) have also tried our best to create the same environment in our family. Our children ( daughter and son) have pursued their passions in life . We have not imposed our interests on them in any way ( at least consciously).

Similarly, I have been privileged to work with managers and leaders, who have shared everything they could. They have enabled me to succeed and learn from failures in all that I wanted to do. There has never been a deliberate attempt to hoard knowledge or skills. I have been coached to give more than what I have got in my career. I have tried my best to share whatever I can with everyone I can in my life.

I firmly believe that the more you share, the more you learn. I have never declined an invitation to interact with students unless my work prevented me to do so. I have been willing to share my knowledge and skills with everyone in my team and with colleagues in other organisations, whenever I could. I have benefited from cross industry forums, which has given me great opportunities to share and learn.

Nature gives us everything in abundance. It is we, as selfish humans, are not willing to conserve it for our future generations (as in the photo above).

Let us learn to give more than we get. I have realised that the more I am able to give back to society, the more I feel blessed. I am grateful to my family, friends, colleagues and the Almighty to inculcate the mentality of abundance in me.

Let us give back more than we get always.

S Ramesh Shankar

5th August 2018