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

I was watching a movie last night and realised how important it is to call back every missed call we get, even  if we are busy with work or life at any time. In this movie, the mother calls her daughter from the death bed and she does not pick up. Then the father calls to inform his daughter that her mother is no more. This time the daughter is in a party and misses her father’s call as the phone was left for charging.

If we look back at our lives, we are not very different. We miss calls on our mobile or landline because we are busy at work or driving or shopping or partying. We may forget to call back but that may have been the most important call in our lives.

It may be a relative who has met with an accident and is in an emergency, a friend who has lost his father and is seeking help or a daughter in distress ,calling her parents. All of us are equally responsible for such lapses and it happens all around us ,day in and night out.

The best of education may not teach you this basic etiquette of life. We need to call back every missed call ,imagining that it may have been the most important call ,for the person calling us. Imagine we are in some deep trouble and nobody picks up our call and no one calls us back. The feeling of distress and disappointment ,is to be experienced to be believed.

We do not realise that neither our work nor our social life ,can justify our behaviour in such circumstances. There is no point in regretting not attending your mother’s funeral since you were busy attending a business meeting and forgot to call back your family.

I sometimes wonder, why we do not learn from the mistakes we make, every other day in our lives. We do not call back our parents ,while we missed calls at our work place. We may miss an important call from a friend or relative but just forget about it ,thinking we can always revert later. We do not realise ,that sometimes we may never be able to speak to the caller again ,since they may be breathing their last while they called us. We may have to live with that guilt ,right through our lives.

Relationships in life are much more valuable than wealth or anything else. It could be relationships within the family, it could be friends , relatives or even colleagues at work. If we cannot be of help to friends, relatives or family when they need us the most, we may not be worthy of living a fulfilling life.

I would like to dedicate this blog to the countless people, who generally forget to call back. I want to remind them and myself too that the call we missed may be a life changing experience for us. It could be the death of a near or dear one. It could be the happy news of a new born baby or it could be a distress call from a friend or relative.

Let us resolve today ,that we will never miss a call and if we do, for any reason beyond our control, we will always call back.

Let us start today. Just call back please…

S Ramesh Shankar

5th August 2023