I sometimes wonder how certain incidents happen in your life. You see something and you are inspired to shoot a photo. This happens more often than not. That moment may never repeat itself in your life time again. One may call it as a life time opportunity.

I remember some days ago I saw a cat feeding and playing with 4 or 5 kittens in my backyard. It was a scene to be seen. It was an experience of a lifetime. The patience of the mother cat vis a vis the enthusiasm of the children. As in the photo above, I got it and I shot it.

Many a time life is like that. We can get many opportunities to learn and grow every day. We may procrastinate or let go and then we may regret or we may not. Either way, we miss a chance in life and this chance may never recur.

It is upto us to keep our eyes and ears open all the time. As we see the wonders of nature from morning to night and many a time are stunned by what we see. So, it is in life. We have to be alert all the time. We never know when something beckons you. When such an incident happens, we need to wrap the opportunity with both our hands and give it our best shot. One may never realise that a missed opportunity is something which may never come back.

The alternatives before us is to consider life full of opportunities every day or it being full of challenges. What we choose is upto us. Like a thing of beauty in front of us is for us to capture or let go. We do so either believing that it will come back again or considering oneself very busy to capture such precious moments in life.

Moments come and go in life like the water droplets on a rainy day in front of our eyes. We could either capture the beauty of the water bubbles or let them burst away in front of us. Every opportunity we miss is like the water bubble bursting in front of us. We need to wait for the next bubble in life.

While on a long drive, I have sometimes stopped my car just to have a glimpse of nature’s beauty since I was not sure if it will appear on my return journey. I am not even sure if I will return and if I do will I take the same route and the same scene will appear again.

We need to pause every time we see an opportunity in life and give it our best shot. If it clicks, it is great, if it does not, we can move on and look for the next chance to appear for us. If we let go of chances, the probability of missing a good moment of life increases. So let us go with the slogan – “ Got it, shot it”

Life is full of chances and we need to grab each one of them with both of our hands, head and heart.

S Ramesh Shankar

24th August 2020

 

We all grow up in our childhood from different socio-economic backgrounds. Values are instilled in us by our parents, family and society around us. We grow up aspiring to do better in our lives than what our parents achieved through their grit and determination.

We realise that life is not a cake walk. As we finish our schooling and enter college, we experience the competitiveness of life. As we graduate out of college, we get clearer on what we want to do in life. Today, we have the opportunities to pursue what we want and aspire for. The world is an open playground for us.

We dream big and as we begin our career we realise that life is not an easy drive. We dream of acquiring all the best material things in the world, which we only dreamt of in our childhood. However, as we move on we realise that we cannot get everything we want in life the moment we dream of it.

Today everything in life is signified by a brand. We end up living and breathing brands. Aspiring from small brands to big brands is a natural evolution of human aspirations. However, in the process we sometimes may forget that we need to first build our own life brand before we acquire other brands.

We need to realise that brands we possess do not reflect our personality. Nobody in life remembers which suit you wore or which hand bag you carried for a meeting. What people remember is how you treated them and what is the lasting impressions you left in their mind as a good human being.

Human values are beyond brands. We need to realise that we have to first build our brand by living human values of gratitude, humility, respect and trust. This may be a difficult lesson to learn in life. It may be easier to acquire materialistic brands in life but more challenging to live human values.

At a young age, we all believe that the best brands we possess reflects our personality. We tend to believe that people admire us for the car we drive, the suits we wear or the watch we possess. This may be an illusory belief. It is natural and all of us have gone through this stage in life. However, the earlier we realise that human values are more valuable in building our brand in life than all the best materialistic brands we possess, it is better for us.

Life is a journey of continual learning. We all make mistakes and learn from them. This learning journey is no different. There may be nothing wrong to aspire for the best brands in life the day we have earned them through our own sweat and blood. But it is important to realise that the best brands we possess do not reflect our true personality as a person.

As in the photo above, this young girl is looking pretty in a simple white dress, which may not even be branded.  So is life.  You are not valued by the brands you wear or possess in life but the values you live and the way you treat people around you.

Let us learn to first build our own unique brand in life by living our values and then we may realise that all other brands in life fade away in the background.

Life is learning journey.

S Ramesh Shankar

23rd June 2021

Vidhur shastra says that we should never give advice to anyone, unless asked for ? I think its a brilliant piece of advise to follow in life. Today I heard my wife saying that some things in life are best left unsaid. This is equally a great insight.

We spend a lot of time talking than listening. We also believe in giving unsolicited advise to everyone around us. The need to speak is more than the ability to listen. This makes us more vulnerable in life. I have met people in life, who speak less and listen more.

The best people I have met are those who give you great insights just by not stating the obvious but making us realise it. It is like admiring a setting sun above. If you are enjoying a beautiful sunset and someone joins you, it may not be necessary to tell that person how beautiful the sun is as it is setting. Let that person realise and enjoy the beauty of nature by herself.

Similarly in life, the best advices are the ones not given but experienced. The expressions on a mother’s face makes a child realise their mistake . Is it necessary for the mother to scold the child by using harsh words ? It may not be necessary at all.

Similarly, a teacher can make a student more insightful by making their students realise their errors rather than scolding them. This experiential learning could be much more insightful than a dressing down in front of the class or the group.

The best bosses in the workplace do this very well. They do not try to verbalise your mistakes. They articulate your success well but make you experience your errors at work. They even tend to ignore genuine failures and look the other way as if they have not noticed what wrong we did.

The best friends in life support you by just being around. They may not necessarily be around you physically or talk to you often. But if they are around, you feel assured in life. Their physical absence or presence does not matter. Even if they don’t speak to you for months, you are not impacted. You experience them in life through their actions and not words.

Kinesics or the science of body language teaches us that more than 70% of human communication is done non verbally than verbally. We tend to focus on what is being said to us rather than what is not. May be it is time to learn the art of listening to the unsaid.

I have experienced better listening when I sit in front of the sea during a sunset all alone. The sound of the waves and the miracles of nature teach me more than the words of a thousand people on the beach. We not only listen to nature but sometimes listen to our own inner voice.

Let us learn life by listening to words unsaid more than those which are said. Our ability to listen to silence may make us wiser. We may be able to focus on what is not being said but meant rather than what is being said and not meant.

Let us learn to listen to the unsaid in life.

S Ramesh Shankar

29th July 2021