Most of us are born preachers. We love to give advice even before we are asked. This habit has been inherited from generations. I do not know whether it is in our genes or not but it is prevalent around the world in human beings.

One of the interesting insights I got from “Vidhurshastra”, a Hindu relic is “Never give advice to an adult, unless asked for”. I read it only a few years back and since then have tried my best to follow. Although, I must admit that I fail once in a while and go ahead giving free unsolicited advice.

I feel less annoyed at Preachers per se. The category of people who preach before they practise is the one I find amusing. I can narrate quite a few interesting anecdotes from my life where I have experienced this.

The first instance was I went for routine annual medical check up. I was found overweight by a few kgs for my age. The physician who examined me looked at my reports and enquired if I exercise everyday. I told her that I walk and do yoga every day. She said without blinking her eye that I need to exercise more to lose weight to maintain good health. She was technically right. But coming from a person who was atleast ten kgs overweight for her age was very amusing to me.

I have seen many parents advising their kids to refrain from smoking and drinking although they feel quite normal to smoke or drink daily in their lives. These preachers not only put off their followers but end up as hollow and nobody will be willing to listen to them. Their kids may have to listen to them till they grow into adolescents and then they would rebel as they see a wide gap between what they say and what they do.

I have seen social activists fighting for great social causes like anti dowry, domestic violence against women and treating servants humanly etc. However, if you peek into their own personal lives, we find they take dowry , consider domestic violence normal in their own homes and treat their servants inhumanly.

Children will always follow what you do rather than what you say. Its good to practise before you preach. If you wear a mask always, kids need not be told to do so. They will do it on their own as in the photo above.

This reminds of the next category of such phoney human beings. They are the so called religious leaders. They are present in almost all the religions. They preach abstinence and dignity of women and practise the other way. They exploit the emotional vulnerability of women and men and misuse their position of significance in society.

I do not want anyone to get me wrong. I am not against anyone giving advice to anyone. However, I feel it is unfair to give advise on anything unless we follow it before we give suggestions to others. If I do not follow something, I have no moral authority to give advise on the same to anyone – irrespective of whether someone seeks it or not.

My mantra in life is simple. Practise before you Preach.

 

S Ramesh Shankar

24th Jan 2020

I am sure most of us would have made multiple new year resolutions to lose weight and become fit. A friend interestingly told me that “mobility leads to physical fitness, and calmness leads to mental fitness”. I was awe struck by this sentence. I reflected on it and realised that there is so much insight in this sentence.

Life is a fine balance between being physically fit and mentally fit. If you need to be physically fit, you need to keep moving your body. You need to exercise and control your diet so that you are able to maintain your weight and maintain your physique.

On the other hand, if you want peace of mind and be mentally fit, you need to ensure that your mind does not wander and is calm at times. Our mind wanders faster than the speed of light and most of the time we are thinking and not listening to others. We respond before someone completes a sentence. All this leads to stress and thereby to many mental disorders like depression etc.

One may think if you are physically fit, you are healthy. It may not be true. Similarly, if you are mentally calm (since you have your mind under your control) does not necessarily make you healthy as you may be obese and may have poor physical fitness.

All of us go through ups and downs in life. We have high and low days. We have our successes and failures. On the other hand all of us want to be fit – both physically and mentally. While most of us resolve to improve our physical fitness, many of us are not able maintain to our mental fitness.

We tend to blame the environment, the work stresses, the climate change and all external factors for our state of being. We forget that both physical and mental fitness is well within our control. Nobody has prevented me to have a daily physical exercise routine. Nobody has asked me to take all the stress to my head and further pass it on to my colleagues and family members.

So, we need to ask the questions to ourselves. If we honestly do, we may find the answers too. What do I need to be physically fit every day ? How do I manage my mental wellness ? Am I the only guy or girl facing stress in life ?

Thus, if we are honest to ourselves and make up our mind to challenge ourselves every single day of our life, we will change. We need to move our bodies to be physically fit and keep our mind calm to be mentally fit.

If you silently admire the gushing water in a falls, you can experience calmness although water is in motion as in the photo above.

Let us choose an exercise or a game of our choice and be self disciplined to follow a regimen every single day of our lives. We need to commit to ourselves that we will not allow any stress in our lives to hamper our well being. We will neither allow stress to impact us nor will we pass it on to others in our network in the family or the organisation.

Life is after all a fine balance between action and calmness. Let’s try.

S Ramesh Shankar

9th July 2019

I have always wondered if beauty lies in perfection or otherwise ? I have seen that the truth may lie somewhere in between. I live in a home today which is built by a builder whose architects play around with the beauty in the imperfections of nature.

On the other hand, I used to live in a flat where the architects believed that beauty lies in perfection. In that flat everything will be perfect to the core and almost like a mirror image of each other.

While I admired both the houses and the builders, I always wondered whether beauty lies in perfection or imperfection ? This may be true in life too. I have always been a reasonably organised person in my personal and professional life.

All my things at home will be in its place and all things will have a place in my home. Similarly my office space will be reasonably organised so that you can retrieve anything in reasonable time.

I have met people in my life who aim for perfection as the means and the others who consider it an end. There are some who get highly disturbed even if a small pin is not kept in its rightful place. On the other hand, there are others who thrive in chaos.

Another good example could be our planning process. I love to travel to places. So, while I travel I plan reasonably well in advance, book my tickets, hotels etc. Even if I am travelling by car, I am clear on my route and the place where I plan to stay. However, it may be fun sometimes to tread on a journey where the destination or the route is unknown.

There are people who fear the unknown and there are others who fear the known. So the truth in life may lie in between the two extremes. A teacher who teaches you up to the last alphabet may do a good job but a teacher who enables you to explore the last alphabet may also kindle the curiosity in you.

I am not sure whether perfection adds to beauty or it destroys ? If we plan perfectly life is beautiful but imperfection makes life adventurous. So life is not black and white. It is grey most of the times. We need to learn to aim for perfection but should be willing to deal with imperfection and enjoy the journey instead of cribbing about it.

The beauty of the craft in the photo above may be in the imperfection more than the perfection.

If you buy a hand woven garment most manufacturers will tell you that no two garments will be similar. The hand craft of a weaver is reflected in the garment and hence each garment could be different but may be beautiful. On the other hand, machine made garments may all be perfect to design and no dissimilarities between two of them and this may make it boring.

So, we have to learn to live with imperfections to have a perfectly happy life.

S Ramesh Shankar

18th October 2019