I sometimes wonder whether we eat to live or live to eat. It may not be either or, as it could be both too! I eat to live. I believe, I eat food to survive but some may live to eat and it is fine too. Eating to live or living to eat is a personal choice and everyone has a right to live life their way.

I have never enjoyed cooking. I enter the kitchen only when it is inevitable and I have no choice. I do help my spouse when she needs help in cutting vegetables or doing some other chores in the kitchen. But cooking is not my hobby. Sometimes when people ask me what I would like to eat – I would reply – anything and they would be amused. The people who enjoy food want to plan for it and put in a lot of efforts to cook and relish it.

I can spend an entire day with fruits and snacks to survive and not cook anything if I am alone. But for some others, this may be a torture. So, if I have a guest, I need to cook good food for them if they enjoy food and not offer snacks just because I can manage with them.

In my view eating to live or living to eat is a personal preference. I neither believe my philosophy of eating to live is wrong nor someone else enjoying food and living to eat is wrong. However, the problem is when one thinks the other is not ok.

When people want to take you out for dinner to a famous restaurant in a new city and you are not that excited, they feel disappointed. They may be right in feeling unhappy as they are putting in extra efforts to make you happy, but they don’t realise that food is not your priority. On the other hand, if you say no, you are making then unhappy since eating good food, is life for them.

In my view neither eating to live nor living to eat, is right or wrong. What is wrong is our belief that the other person is not enjoying life as we are doing. We tend to typecast people based on our own frames of life. The moment someone does not fit into our frame of life and living, we feel they are wrong.

Our ability to live life on our own terms and letting others live their own way, is a better way to enjoy life. The day we realise that we have a right to live life our way and others their way, we may be right. We also have to learn to respect the opposite of our worldview of life.

It may be easy to say this, easier to write about this but rather difficult to practise it. In life, most things we adore may not be what others do. The day we learn to live life our way and let others do their way , we have arrived.

Life is all about live and let live.

S Ramesh Shankar

15th Oct 2021

Our world today seems to be revolving around “I”. The day we grow from “I” to “We”, we may have arrived. While it may look simple, it is possibly the most difficult and challenging transition in life. While it looks like a single alphabet to a double alphabet, it is is not as simple as that.

The first and foremost hurdle in this change process is our “ego”. Our ego prevents us to subsume the “I” in our thinking and move towards the “We”. We are worried all the time about ourselves and our family members. The first step could be to think of our community and our society at large, wherever we live.

If every individual is selfish enough to care for self and not worry about others well being, the world evolves into a cruel place to live in. The day we are able to sacrifice selfish needs to the larger good of others, our journey of transition begins.

One may wonder where this all begins. In my view, the family is the basic social unit of society, where it all begins. As parents and elders, it is our duty to inculcate the right values amongst children so that they are able to see beyond themselves always.

I remember my school days, wherein sharing our tiffin was such a source of joy. Today parents advise children not to share and think it is unhealthy for everyone. Ofcourse during the pandemic days it may be better not to share. But in normal times, sharing is caring.

Our schools and colleges also need to re look at the curriculum to promote the “We” rather than the “I”. Everyone is encouraged to excel as individuals whether in academics or otherwise. We need to possibly redesign our academic courses to promote peer learning and enabling each other to succeed.

I realise that countries which promote “We” more than “I” are better in team sports than individual games. Team spirit not only enables this crucial transition in life but also enables growth of individuals, teams, communities and societies, at large.

Even organisation cultures and performance management systems tend to promote “I” over “We”. It is time to challenge all of these and ensure that we promote team work more than individual excellence. I am not for one stating the individuals should not strive for excellence. What I am suggesting that individual brilliance should not be at the cost of others.

Lastly, as a community, society and nation also we need to promote this change. We need to enable each other to succeed every day in our lives. We need to support other families and communities to be successful. Even states need to enable each other to move forward.

The current pandemic is a great opportunity for the developed world to enable the developing world to face this crisis together. We need to remember that humanity will survive only by collective efforts and not by individual brilliance of nations.

Let us together resolve to move from”I” to “We”.

S Ramesh Shankar

10th May 2021

I got married 37 years back and live with my life partner and travelled around India and the world. One of the questions many people have asked me as how do we maintain individuality even in a harmonious partnership like ours.

I am not sure if I have perfected this art but I can say confidently that both of us have found our own paths. We are different personalities. I am an extrovert and my partner is more of an introvert. I enjoy driving, playing with gadgets and meeting people of different genres, while my spouse is the other way round.

Our ability to find “me time” and “we time” helps us strike the right balance in life. We both enjoy walking, travelling to places, yoga and music. So every day we have been going for a walk for almost three decades. We have been doing yoga together daily for more than five years. We have travelled around the country and some parts of the world and enjoyed our time together.

However, I do enjoy my “me time” exploring new gadgets and visiting business schools or engineering colleges to share my experience. On the other hand, my wife loves to learn new arts and crafts and write poems when she wants to express her emotions. This is our way of giving space to one another. Similarly, I enjoy sports, while she enjoys gardening and we are perfectly fine with each others varied interests.

We need to find ways to supporting each other in both frames. There may be times when we want to be together and there could be other times when we want to be left alone. Each of us needs to find ways and means of respecting each other’s time.

We may sometimes feel that our partner is not interested in what we want to do and that is perfectly human to feel so. Our partner may feel the same about us too. In such situations, good communication between us may help us prevent any misunderstandings.

It may be sometimes worthwhile to transition from “me” to “we” and then “us”, as we also need to remember that we are part of a bigger family and hence our ability to balance our time share between self, partner and family folks becomes important.

One of the challenges we face while juggling between me, we and us is our ability to manage time. We may at times get carried away by our own personal or joint interests and in this process may hurt our partner or other family members.

It is important to realise that “me time” is as important as “we time” to build and sustain a relationship. The ability to understand ,when and where which one is more important than the other makes one an endearing partner in life.

We need to respect others “me time” as much as we would want them to respect ours. Similarly, we need to find ways and means to have a “we time” together so that it helps us build and endure our relationship.

Let “Me” lead to “We” and also the other way around.

Lets try from today.

S Ramesh Shankar

15th May 2021