The other day I was returning from the market and I was pleasantly surprised to see groups of kids returning from school. There was a spark in their eyes and they were playing around and fooling with each other.

The pandemic paralysed life in different ways. One of the worst affected were the kids in school and college. They lost two years of real life learning in their lives. No class can teach you what life can teach you when you interact with others. The best lessons I have learnt in life is the interaction I have had with other students and teachers in my school and college life.

It could be attending a class and learning from one another by asking questions or answering them. It could be doing a project together. It could be just playing on field and fighting with each other but at the end , learning lessons on conflict resolution.

While I am a great believer in technology and use it to the hilt both in my personal and professional life, I do believe that there can be no better way to learn than experiencing life lessons every day in the real world.

The fate of employees in organisations is no different. The virtual office, video meetings and all that ensured that , life goes on and we earn our wages and serve our customers to the best of our ability. But real lessons at work are learnt when you meet one another, work along side in a project and celebrate deadlines together.

We may have attended multiple programs on conflict resolution and team work over the last two years and even got certified. However, we may find it difficult to resolve a real conflict on the shop floor ,when a section of the union , strikes work.

It is like all of us would have attended live fire fighting sessions but find it difficult to put on a fire extinguisher when a real fire hits us. Imagine the fate of the employees who have attended fire fighting course online and have never seen a fire extinguisher in real and do not even know where they are placed.

Hence, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw children returning from school after attending physical classes the other day. I hope employees are also able to get back to work and interact with one another and learn from real life experiences every day.

It is time to realise that the virtual world is not necessarily replicated in the real world. It is like the postings on social media which may not reflect the true feelings or actions of a person. It is what we see in real, which is real, the rest is illusory.

The pandemic has made life difficult for all of us. But it has also enabled us to adapt and learn. A good example is that of digital payments. We see the road side vendors, the small grocery stores or even the milkman or maids being comfortable to deal with digital payments. We possibly are the country with highest digital payment density in the world.

We need to find the gap between the virtual and the real world and learn from real life experiences every day.

Lets make life real every day

S Ramesh Shankar

8th March 2022