Category: Attitude/Discipline

Never judge anyone..

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It is easy for us to judge others. We end up judging people all around us every day. I am no different and have been guilty of this phenomenon in my life. However, I did realise through some incidents in my life that it is not fair to judge others without knowing the background or the context. What we see may not be the whole. We generally end up seeing only the part of the circumstances and end up judging.

I recently heard of an incident about a doctor, who was late to the operation theatre. The parents of the kid who was seriously injured were waiting outside the intensive care unit waiting for the doctor. As the doctor arrived, the parents were agitated that he was delayed and their son may not survive because of his delay. The doctor apologised for the delay and went ahead with the operation. After completing the operation, the doctor assured the parents that the kid will survive and left the hospital in a hurry.

After the doctor left the hospital in a hurry, when the agitated parents enquired as to why the doctor was in a hurry, the nurse explained that the doctor’s son had died in an accident in the morning. He rushed to the hospital from the grave yard because of the emergency. Now, he is rushing back to the graveyard to complete the cremation of his son. On hearing this, the parents fainted and felt miserable in judging the doctor without knowing the full story.

Life is similar. We end up judging others without knowing the full story. It happens every day in our lives. If our child is late from school, we scold the kid even without enquiring the reasons for the delay. After we have passed the judgement, we neither have the time nor the patience to listen to the child’s true story. When such an incident repeats itself, the child stops telling us the truth because she believes it is of no use as anyway she will be scolded by her parents.

This happens in the work place too. If an employee is regularly late to work, we assume that the person is indisciplined and pass a judgement even without asking or listening to the employee. We tend to brand such employees and then such employees lose their self confidence. They get branded for no fault of theirs. They lose interest in work and sometimes even in life. On listening to them, we may realise that they are going through a very serious crisis in their personal lives and they need our emotional support the most.

We also take our friends and relatives for granted. If a friend does not wish us on our birthday, we end up thinking that he has betrayed us and even forgotten our birthday. We make our judgement on one single incident without taking the pain to find out why it happened. In today’s world the mobile phone and its messaging systems has also led to a lot of misunderstandings and judgements.

We need to wake up and realise that we shape not only our destiny but also those of our near and dear ones. We not only have a responsibility to be happy in life but also contribute to the happiness of others around us. How can we make others happy if we misjudge them every other day ? Can we resolve to ourselves that we will not judge anyone without getting the full picture ?

Let us promise to ourselves that we will put ourselves in the other person’s position and listen them before coming to any conclusions. This will ensure that we are empathetic. This will reduce misunderstanding and help us cement our relationships. It is time to become non-judgemental. Although easier said than done, it is time to realise the perils of judging others.

We generally think all policeman are corrupt. In this case, this person proved otherwise by being honest through his deeds.

May be time to look at the mirror before judging others !

S Ramesh Shankar

Take nobody for granted…

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We take life and everybody around us for granted almost every day. It starts from the family to friends and even colleagues in the organisation, where we work. Let us start how this evolves from our childhood. As a child, we are respectful of our parents and others in the family and do not take anyone for granted. However, as we grow up as an adolescent, we tend to take our parents and family members for granted. We decide when we want to leave the house and when we want to return and expect our parents to wait for us endlessly for us to return.

We start justifying our erratic behaviour and interestingly demand services from our family members as if they were dying only to serve our needs. We do realise that this is not desirable behaviour when we grow up as adults and even regret our actions. This may be psychological in nature and may not be intentional. Our parents generally understand and tolerate our rebellious behaviour and at times try to counsel us too. We realise how much we took our parents and other family members for granted when we get into college or a job and leave the safe precincts of our home to live all alone.

Now, let us move to our friends. We almost take them for granted always. One may say friends are meant for that. I also thought so till I realised that it is not fair to think that way. After all even our best friends are human beings and have emotions and feelings. We need to respect them and empathise with them. Our friends stand by us at all times, even more than our relatives. Then, why should we take them for granted. We do realise sooner than later that we need to give them space and respect they deserve always.

If we move to the organisational front, the story is not very different. We take our colleagues( as in the photo above) for granted. We sometimes even take our suppliers and customers for granted. In the worst case scenario, we even take our manager for granted. We start believing that everybody is working for us and we deserve to be served by them. We do not realise that we also have obligations towards them and we should first give then expect anything from other stakeholders.

So, this is a vicious circle. Taking someone for granted is a natural state of evolution and all of us fall prey to it sometime or the other. We need to realise that as responsible human beings we have no business to take anyone for granted. Everyone has a right and has an equal measure of responsibility. This phenomenon possibly happens because we remember our rights diligently but forget our duties. Let us reflect how this impacts our behaviour in our daily life ?

As a child, we consider our parents’ duty to take care of us all the time but we do not realise that we have a responsibility to serve them in whatever way we can in return in every stage of our life. As a friend, we are happy when friends help us in distress but we forget them when we doing well in our lives and they may be in distress. At work, we seek guidance and support from everyone when we are under stress but we claim to be busy when others need our help.

This is my learning in life. We should not take anyone for granted in life. If we try to put ourselves in the shoes of others before we take anyone for granted we may realise their value in our life. It is time to wake up. It is time to be grateful to others rather than take them for granted.

It is time to change ourselves.

S Ramesh Shankar

28th August 2017

Perseverance

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One of the qualities all of us wish we had would be “Perseverance”. I have not come across many people in my life time, who are perseverant in the pursuit of their goals in life. An unflinching belief in yourself and a dogged pursuit of your goal is what you aspire for. But it is just an illusion for most of us. This is one quality, which I learnt from my father in law, who left on his heavenly abode on 20th August 2017.

A self made man from a poor middle class family. After losing his father at a young age, he got into the government service. He rose from the lowest levels to retire from service after more than three decades as a Chief Accounts officer. His passion for mathematics was visible. But, what I really admired about him is his passion to learn new things in life all the time.

I have seen many incidents in his life, which speak volumes of his learning attitude and his passion to persevere. He lived along with his spouse and till the age of eighty five and was fully self dependant. He neither depended on his kids financially nor otherwise. He lived in his self built house, cooked his own food and maintained everything around him with his own hands.

A master of mathematics and a voracious reader. His command over English was admirable. He would discuss and debate on all issues and always had a point of view. He would never be satisfied with any response unless he verified it himself and was convinced. At the age of eighty two, he took to writing a book. He wrote the manuscript in his own hand and then requested my wife to edit it and contribute to complete the same and publish it.

Another interesting attribute I have learnt from him is his meticulous maintenance of records and documents for everything. The accountant in him was embedded in his blood. But the systematic maintenance of household records is indeed worth emulation. Luckily for me my wife has learnt this quality from him. He would maintain the receipt and history of every asset in his house and neatly maintained and easily retrievable.

He was a well read and a pious person. He had deep knowledge of the scriptures and all the Hindu rituals. While he followed all religious practices, he never imposed his views on others. He was always open to be challenged and was willing to accept alternate view points on any issue. He had in depth knowledge of Hindu rituals and could easily challenge the priests on festive occasions if they took a short cut.

If a person can pursue his post graduation at the young age of 75 in order to fulfil one of his unfulfilled goals in life, it is worth adulation. I have not seen many people in my life time, who have persevered with such dreams and pursued it till success much after retiring from service as well. He was a man of letters. Well read in religion, current affairs and even medicine, where he could end up challenging doctors on a wrong prescription.

I recently visited him with my spouse on a courtesy call. While I was leaving his house, he asked me to explain – “What digitalisation means ? “. Honestly, I was stunned and had no answers. I told him that I will research and revert to him with an answer. I did tell him that it could mean applying technology to make human life better. But, I did go back and did a lot of research to understand the concept of digitalisation. But, unfortunately, he is not alive today for me to share with him.

I can only state that he was a perfectionist in the true sense of the word. A man, who would pursue till he got what he wanted. Of course at times it could be termed nagging and you may get irritated by his perseverance. After all , none of us are born only with virtues. But, the positives in him far outweighed his improvement areas. I salute him for his stature and am grateful to have learnt something from my interactions with him.

May his soul rest in peace.

S Ramesh Shankar

20th August 2017