Many of us keep wondering “what” we are doing in life ? We keep asking “Why” we are doing “What we are doing at every stage of our lives. The question before us is which should come first – “Why” or “What” ? This is the million dollar question of our lives.

In my view, it does not matter. We could do “ what” we enjoy in life. Sometimes “what” we do ,may not necessarily answer a “why” ? On the other hand, we may end up doing other things ,since we have specific reasons to do those things.

I would personally spend more time to understand ,what gives me joy in life. Yes sometimes the things which give us joy, may not have any answers to why we do them. But does it matter, as long as we enjoy it.

We need to ask ourselves if we are living first for ourselves, then for others or the other way around. I am not recommending that we lead a selfish life. What I am trying to suggest is that ,we need to live life our way first ,before we live for others.

Many of us spend most of our life time living for others and subsuming ourselves and our own needs, in the process. We may realise this, a bit late in our lives. But it is ok to realise it at any stage and make the mid course corrections.

I would say that we may have some duties, roles and responsibilities in life. This could be for our personal lives ,as well as our work lives. While discharging those roles, we need to do things ,since we know why we need to do those things.

On the other hand, there are many things in life, that we may feel like doing, which may not answer a “why” we do them. In my view, it is perfectly fine ,to do both.

Let me illustrate with some examples. We know why we tutor our kids when they are young, as that is part of our role as parents. However, if we take a long drive to an unknown destination, we may not even know why we are doing it. We do it ,because we enjoy it.

With respect to our roles and responsibilities, we have little choice, but to do them. However, with respect to other things in life, we are answerable only to our own conscience and our hearts. So, it may be worthwhile to listen to our hearts and do what we enjoy most in life.

Many may wonder, if I have had the perfect balance between “what” and “why” in life, so far. The answer is an emphatic “no”. All of us evolve in life and so am I ,trying to evolve. However, one thing I am clear is that life is imperfect for all of us and the joy is to enjoy the imperfections in our lives.

What we do in life and why we do something ,is less important in my book ,to how much we enjoy ,whatever we do in life. This may look impractical but not so. If we are willing to tread our own path ,without worrying about what the world thinks of us, this is possible.

Both “What” and “Why” are incidental and circumstantial. So let us do what we love ,from today. We may sometimes have to do things, which we may not like but those may be our duties and responsibilities in life, which in any case ,we cannot avoid.

Let us learn to weave our lives with all things we enjoy ,without worrying ,what or why about them. Of course, we have to ensure that we do not hurt or harm anyone around us ,while we do them.

Let us do what we enjoy from today.

S Ramesh Shankar

3rd Jan 2024

A friend of mine called the other day and said she got an insight while spending time with herself. She is an accomplished professional whose spouse is a professional in the same field and she has two beautiful children – a daughter and a son.

When I asked her what the insight was ? She said that ,today after so many years of marriage and professional working in a company “ she realised that she needs to live for herself first ,before she serves others in her life ,including family and friends.

I thought ,this was quite insightful. Many of us spend our whole life time ,living for others and in the process forget that we also have our individualistic needs. Our health may be fading and we may never have spent time ,on things we enjoy in life.

I am not for one saying ,that we need not serve others. Even this friend of mine did not mean, that you need not help others. She is a working professional and takes care of her family including spouse, children and parents from both the sides.

What she meant is that ,sometimes ,in our quest to excel at work or taking care of family and friends, we forget our own individual needs. Self care is as important as caring for others ,she said. I more than agree ,to this concept.

If we do not take care of ourselves, nobody else will. Our health is in our hands and so are our other interests and hobbies. If we cannot spend time for our own selves, nobody else will. We may realise that health is impacted after we are down with some disease or handicap, since we neglected our own health ,all the while.

If we do not discover our own passions in life ,by spending quality time on them, nobody else can invest that time ,for us. Even if somebody is willing to spend some time with us, it may not kindle joy in us.

I walk every day and also practise yoga and play badminton whenever time permits. I recall many years back ,when I used to skip my walk on some silly pretext ,my wife used to remind me that diabetes is mine and not hers. This was a very timely reminder to me that if I don’t take care of my own health, others can do nothing about it.

Life is also that way. We need to find time for ourselves every day. We may call it “me time” or whatever one wants to call it. We need to discover and re-discover ourself, as a human being, every day of our lives. We need to maintain our health and be physically, mentally and emotionally fit . It is then , that we can take care of others better.

I am grateful to my friend for sharing this insight with me. It has not only reminded me of this important aspect of life but also may be a good reminder for many of my readers.

Let us pause, look at the mirror and discover ourself all over again today.

S Ramesh Shankar

3rd Dec 2023

Some people may say – “we should be like the sunflower”. Why would they say that. The sunflower faces the sun and turns its head as the sun moves from east to west during the day. Similarly, we could, in life, choose who our sun and follow them day and night to evolve as a better human being.

Each of us have the privilege of choosing our own sun in life. It could be either of our parents, a sibling, a friend, a neighbour or even a colleague at work. It could be a public figure as well. It does not matter. We will always choose someone, who is a role model for us , in life.

This phenomenon is called “Phototropism”. The stem of the sunflower grows in such a way that it will bend towards the sun. Similarly, in our lives, we need to discover who our sun is and need to learn from them everyday of our lives. We, as humans can have more than one sun too as we are more privileged than the sunflower, who has only one sun.

During our childhood, in most cases, the parents become our sun and role models in life. As we grow up , our friends tend to influence our lives, more than our family. Then it is the turn of colleagues at the workplace, who make all the difference to our lives.

When they say, we have to to be like the sunflower – what they mean is that , we need to decide whom do we follow to learn the best in life. One of the leadership theory in management talks of “followership”. Just like the olden days, the students considered the “Guru” or teacher as their role model and followed whatever they said blindly, because the belief was that , whatever they said or did was in their best interest.

Similarly, every day of our lives ,we have to determine who our role model is, whom we may metaphorically call the sun. It could still be our parents, teachers, friends, siblings, neighbours or colleagues at work or could be different people at different stages of life , too.

As the sunflower follows the sun, it grows. Similarly, if we follow our role models in life, we always may grow just like the sunflower does. It is up to us to determine our role models. We have the liberty to have different role models ,for different aspects of life too.

The sunflower does not look at the other flowers around and change its direction. Similarly, we also need to be focused ,on who our sun is in life and follow them diligently. The more focused our followership, the more successful, we could be in life.

As I said earlier, unlike the sunflower , we are more privileged as we can have more than one sun ,in life. We can further change our sun for learning in different phases of our lives too. It is up to us to define who our sun is and learn from, on a continual basis without fail.

It could happen that sometimes we may make mistakes and choose the wrong sun in our lives. We are human and it is natural to err , at times. But, we could again learn from the sunflower and change our direction to the new sun , as we have determined for our success in life.

Let us learn from the sunflower every day.

S Ramesh Shankar

17th Sep 2023