If you are married, you are lucky and if you aren’t you are not unlucky. Sabka time aayega( everybody’s time will come). I have been married for 37 years and have enjoyed every moment of married life so far.

If you have a wife, you will have strife and that is life. Life without strife with wife is like food without spices. The best of Indian food will be tasteless if you don’t add spices. Similarly, if you have don’t have conflicts with your spouse, then life is not fun.

Marriage is a social institution where two partners meet each other to lead life together. Sometimes we know each other even before marriage and at other times we discover each other only after marriage. Whether it is love marriage or arranged marriage, life is fun when we are open to each other and are willing to fight with each other only to sit down and resolve our differences through dialogue.

Conflict is an integral part of married life. However, one of the two partners has to accept that if we are magnanimous, then any dispute between us can be resolved through dialogue. This may be easier said than done. Listening and willing to let go of our egos can resolve any misunderstanding between us.

We need not agree to each other at all times to be happy. We need to learn to respect each other’s differences as much as we celebrate our similarities. Learning to respect differences is the art of successful partnership.

In life, you meet people who may not agree with you. But you love the way they disagree with you. Even in parliament when an opposition leader bitterly criticises the government of the day and if the treasury benches stand up to appreciate the way the criticism is delivered we realise that differences can be encouraged and respected.

Similarly, in life we may like something which our spouse may not and vice versa. So what. We can learn to live together appreciating each other’s differences. I love driving my car for long trips and my wife does not. Both of us have learnt to enjoy the journey together. Neither I crib about driving nor my wife cribs about being driven around.

There may be days we may not even talk to each other. Sometimes silence can be the best language to use to resolve differences. Most of us may not realise that listening is more difficult than speaking. Many of us prefer to speak rather than listen. The day we learn to listen, we may be able to resolve any dispute with anyone.

If anyone thinks marriage is a bed of roses, they may be mistaken. Is it a road full of thorns – no it isn’t. It is mix of both. There will be some days where you will be flying high together in the sky. There will be others when you will regret coming together. But the success lies in managing both in such way that you make other a winner. Marriage is a conjunction of mutual partnership with mutual respect.

Lets learn to live together always.

S Ramesh Shankar

21st February 2021

One of the leading brands of cotton dresses in india caution customers when they buy it that there would be imperfections in their product and that is the way it happens in hand woven items. Similarly I live in a green gated community. When I had once raised some imperfections in my house design, my architect reminded me that imperfection is the beauty of nature.

Nature teaches us to adapt and enjoy life as it is and not as the way we want it to be. If you drive down a forest and watch the trees on both sides, they look green and pretty. But no two trees look alike although they have may have been sown at the same time and may be by the same person.

Life is no different. It evolves for each of us the way we may least expect. There are two things in life, which makes living difficult. The first is our innate tendency to compare and the other is to have unrealistic expectations of ourselves and of others.

Today I thought it may be worth while to explore as to how to live life the imperfect way. If nature can evolve this way, be imperfect and still all of us enjoy it, why not we live similarly. How do we learn to live life imperfectly, perfect ?

Many of us tend to spend our entire life looking for perfection. Searching for imperfections and attempting to make them perfect becomes our mission in life. In this process, we forget to live and enjoy life every day.

One of my friends is a perfect man. He graduated from a prestigious engineering college and completed his post graduation from one of the best business schools in our country. He has had a good career and has an enviable family with a smart spouse and a daughter who is also studying a leading medical school.

Everyone around would think this person would be living a perfect live. However, what I have seen and heard is otherwise. He is still searching for perfection in his life. He wants everything to be perfect in life and thereby a slight imperfection makes him yell at everyone around him. Now, I realise that how difficult it is for us to live with imperfections. The day we accept life as a mixed bag, we may enjoy it more than we are doing today.

In this process, what they do not realise is that neither do they enjoy life, nor allow others around them to enjoy. Most people do not like to interact with them since they are obsessed and are not willing to accept anyone with even minor faults.. Ultimately, they lead lonely lives.

While there may be nothing wrong in aiming for perfection in everything we do every day, if we spend our whole life in search of that elusive perfection, we may realise some day that it never existed and that may be too late to enjoy life.

So, one learning and insight today for me is to live life imperfectly perfect. While we may aim to do our best in everything we do, we need to accept that neither we nor others around us are perfect in every way. The day we realise this basic theorem of life, life may be fun and different for us.

As in the photo above this flower may not be symmetrical but its beauty lies in its asymmetry.

Let us learn to live life the way it evolves every day and learn to enjoy it that way.

S Ramesh Shankar

21st February 2021

Life is wonderful when it is built on the foundation of gratitude. Someone said the left hand should not know what the right hand is giving. This may be an old adage but true and valid even today. The more we give, the more we get in life.

Some may say that I am saying this because I have got all that I wanted in life. It may be true today but I was born in a low middle class family and lived life as a child in a very frugal way. We were inculcated this value in our early life years and it has got ingrained in our blood. I have experienced the joy of giving all through my life.

I would further extend to say that life is first about giving and then about taking from others. Most of us are keen to to take everything we want from others but are reluctant to give. In my view, giving comes first and then only we have a moral right to take from others.

It is interesting to realise that most people are not interested in your money alone. The earlier we realise it, the better it would be for our overall growth. People are looking for your time, they are looking for sharing their joy and sorrow with you. People want moral support. Even simply said, they want a patient ear – someone who will listen to them.

As a child we realise very early in life that there are not many around us who are good listeners. Even in listening, let us give our patient ear to someone before we expect others to listen to us patiently. We are generous in talking but impatient in listening. The more we listen, the better we understand people and the more we learn.

As an adolescent, we are impatient and stubborn and want the world to move our way or the highway. This is time to realise that we need go give back more to the people around us who have made us what we are today.

Even as an adult, our expression of gratitude is limited till the period we think we have arrived in life. Once we reach a stage in our career and life where we feel that we have arrived, we tend to forget the people who enabled us to reach there. It is at this time we need to give more than we take. We need to to express our gratitude in both monetary and non monetary terms.

The most successful people in life are humble. They are always grounded and give back more than what they have got in life. It is this humility and gratitude which set them apart in society and we admire them forever.

Arrogance and selfishness will never help us succeed in life. Nobody likes to interact with someone who thinks he or she is beyond human imagination. All of us are human and we may err at times and that is fine. It is fine as long as we realise our mistakes and are willing to learn from them.

As in the photo above, we have to grateful for all that we have rather than worry about all that we don’t have.

Life is all about giving first before asking for anything. As I said repeatedly giving does not mean it may cost us money. Giving time, respect or listening to people does not cost anything but is valued immensely.

Let us learn to give before we take.

S Ramesh Shankar

9th December 2020