I have always admired the United States of America as a country for many things. Apart from being the wealthiest democracy in the world, it has a lot to teach the world as countries and individuals. I had been on a holiday for a fortnight to this wonderful country and learnt the following ten lessons as an individual :

1. Dream big : You need to kindle a dream in a individual and then strive hard to achieve it. Every American who migrated from different parts of the world to settle in this country dreamt of making America the best in the world. They have worked hard to achieve it and within a span of a century.

2. Unity In diversity : People from all parts of the world have come and settled down here. They are diverse in religion, culture, ethnicity and race. However they have evolved a common nationality. A common dream and a disciplined way of achieving their goals.

3. Discipline : A colleague of mine used to state of “Starting with enthusiasm and ending with discipline”. You can see it in action in this country. Every body is enthusiastic in whatever they do and enjoy doing it mostly. However they do not compromise on discipline. This quality you can see in most developed countries of the world.

4. Pride : While all of us are proud of our respective countries, one can observe a sense of patriotism amongst all categories of citizens. They display it in their behaviour and in discharge of their duties in whatever they do everyday in their lives.

5. Focus on your work: Everyone is focussing in what they are supposed to do. They are neither aware of what is happening around the world nor interested in knowing it. We spend most of our time in worrying about others and the world and lose focus in what we are supposed to do.

6. Every job is respected : We generally look at every job from a social status angle. Some jobs are more prestigious than others. However, what one learns from this place that every job is unique and needs to be respected. Every individual is respected in society irrespective of what she or he does.

7. Create a competitive spirit : Every state in the USA competes with the other to be the best. Every state is unique and wants to be that way. They set standards for other states and are not willing to compromise on their freedom or liberty.

8. Preserving your culture: While everyone is proud to be an American, they steadfastly maintain their state identity. They are proud about their culture and history and want to preserve it. Every state wants to lead the others in preserving and promoting their uniqueness.

9. Respect : The respect for senior citizens and the military is visible in their day to day actions. If you are waiting to board an aircraft, the active military personnel are given first preference after aged and the kids. They are given precedence over first class or business class passengers as well. This signifies the respect for the citizens who sacrifice their lives for their country.

10. Everyone wants to contribute : Everyone in the country wants to contribute in their own ways to make the nation the best in the world. This means that each of us have to strive to excel in whatever we do and not do it as a ritual.

The photo above is my tribute to Martin Luther King, one of the heroes of the American success.

I am not for one saying that there are no negatives in the USA. There are some things which I would not like to learn from here. But the positives far overweigh the negatives.

Let us learn from their positives.

S Ramesh Shankar

16th May 2018

The other day I met a family in the lounge of an airport. It was a man, his spouse and two kids. The man was wearing a religious mark on his forehead and looked very spiritual. But as soon as we entered the lounge, this person started consuming alcohol and other beverages like the other mortals around him.

I have nothing against his consuming alcohol or any other beverage. Ultimately, it is his personal choice and preference and nobody is entitled to comment on it. But, what caught my eye is that the appearance of a person may be deceptive at times.

This man looked very spiritual and one believes that a person of this type may not consume alcohol. This could either be our mindset or underlying my hypothesis that appearances may be deceptive.

I met another family in a restaurant. They looked from the lower economic strata of society but were doling out money to everyone. Sometimes physical appearance can be misleading and you form opinions about people, which may not reflect reality.

I have met people of different hues in life and generally noticed that appearances are indeed sometimes deceptive. A person may look calm and serene in appearance but may be short tempered and hotty in his disposition.

The interesting aspect to understand as to why this happens as we grow up in life. As a kid, all of us are spontaneous and our appearance will be symptomatic of our moods. One can easily make up the emotions of a kid with the appearance on her face. On the other hand, as we grow up we possibly try to camouflage our emotions and try to hide reality from the world.

This could be because we are conditioned to behave in a particular way in a particular situation. Any dissonance is considered deviant. This then gets reinforced in our psyche and then becomes a way of life. We start believing that we have to smile at the world even if we are in distress.

Of course it may be true that some people are more dramatic than others. They are good in their histrionic skills and hence can act different from what they are feeling inside. This may be more natural for some than others. My belief is that is difficult to have an internal state of emotions and express something else on the face. But that is the life which appears around us.

While it may be true that all of us try to hide our emotions sometimes, it may be desirable to express ourselves as we feel. This may be easier than done. However, the more we are able to practise, the lesser dissonance we may have in life.

As in the photo, Niagara Falls may look cool on a cloudy day. But it may not be safe to try and swim under the falls even when it is calm. Appearance can be deceptive.

Personal credibility in life is all about predictability. If our face cannot predict our emotions, then others may consider us less reliable. Hence, it is fair to state that face is an index of the mind. The more we are predictable the better for us and for all the people around us.

Let our appearance reflect the reality within us.

S Ramesh Shankar

The other day someone told me that he is very frustrated at work. I was reminded of a very important learning early in life which someone shared with me. It defined as Frustration = Achievement – Hope . I thought it was a very powerful equation for life.

We get frustrated when either our achievements are low or our hope is too high. So mathematically speaking, one can get over frustration by either enhancing their achievements or lowering their hope. But, one does realise that life is not all mathematical.

Hence life’s issues cannot always be solved by adjusting variables in an equation. One lesson is for sure that we need to take control of what is happening to our lives. If our achievements are low, we need kick our own backs to find ways and means of improving our performance. On the other hand, if our clouds of hope are unrealistic, we need to tone them down to make them realistic.

Let us delve both on achievements and hope. Lets begin with hope. Hope is our mental creation. An imagination of what is possible in the future for us. We create our hopes and aspirations based on self belief, our own capabilities and what we see around us.

While most of the time, we may have a realistic self assessment of our own capacities , we may get swayed away by what we see around us. For eg. we belong to a lower middle class family and hope to have a car of our own. It is not an unreasonable dream. But we need to prioritise what is important for us in life. It could be kids’ education, a home to live in, a child’s marriage and so on. In such conditions, one needs to recast their aspirations to make them more realistic and postpone the dream of a car.

In real life this is what happens to most of us. We keep dreaming without any foundations and then when we land on Mother Earth with a thud, we feel bad about the consequences. On the other hand, if we keep reviewing and recasting our dreams and make them realistic from time time, this situation is less likely to happen.

Now, lets move to achievements. We all want to be the best. We look at film stars, sports persons or other celebrities and wish we could be like them. We do not realise that many of them have come up in life the hard way. Their life is visible to us only when they make it to the top. Very few of us are born with a silver spoon.

Most successful people in life have made it with sweat and tears. We do not see their toil in their formative years nor do we share their tears. What we see and feel jealous about is their prosperity. We may not realise that this has come to them after many years of toil.

As in the photo above, we may admire the geometrical beauty of the spider’s web after it is completed but do not see how many times it is damaged for various reasons before the spider does it all over again. A lesson from nature on how to manage our frustration and never give up till we achieve our goal.

It may be time to introspect and ask oneself – Do I need to enhance my achievements or balance my hope ? The answers are within ourselves. We need not externalise the issues. We have a tendency to blame the world, our education system , workplace, bosses or even our family or friends for our non performance. This may not be the reality. We need to hit the reality buttons in life and then life may dramatically change for the better for us.

Time to reset.

S Ramesh Shankar

30th August 2020