All of us feel good that we play a significant role in our own lives. We may have great responsibilities at home and also play a vital role at work or our own business. However, at some stage of life we start believing that the world may not have existed before us and may become extinct after we depart.

This may not be true in reality. At home, we start believing that we are the fulcrum of the family and similarly at the work place we think, everything may come to a stand still the day we are not around. Let us examine this and do a reality check through some real life examples.

Let us examine it from the family perspective. As a parent ( mother or father), we may be thinking that we steer the family and shoulder all responsibilities till some day our children grow up and we realise that they do not need our support to lead their lives independently. Now, they may feel the same and believe that without them the family cannot move forward till they get married and have kids who grow up and make them redundant for their survival and growth in life.

Our work life is no different. Many of us may have grown from junior to middle and and senior levels of management and would have shouldered significant responsibilities. The day we start believing that we are indispensable , our learning and growth may come to a standstill. The likelihood of a downfall from this stage is more than any future growth in life or career.

This phenomenon I have referred is a false imagination of one’s importance in life. While I am not saying that each of us do not have a vital role to play in our own lives and work but if we start believing that life did not exist before us or may not be there after us we are living in a fool’s paradise.

We always have to live with humility and be grounded. Life has been there before us and will prosper after we leave this mortal world. Our ability to make ourselves dispensable in life and work will make us more respected. Our ability to delegate and share responsibilities in the family and the workplace will make us more valuable than the other way around.

The more we share, the more we learn. Our value has to be felt in our absence not by our inability to develop our family or team members but our ability to make them self reliant. Learning is a life long journey. The day we start believing that we have arrived and there is no further need to learn, it could be the beginning of our end.

The best leaders are those who leave when people may ask – “ Why now ?” They will not wait for someone to ask – “ Why not now ?”. It is like the world champion players retire when they are at the peak of performance and not when they may get dropped from the team for lack of performance or leadership.

Let us believe life does not begin or end with us.

S Ramesh Shankar

11th March 2023