Category: Life & Living

Competition or Co-optition ?


We live in a competitive world.  The competitive spirit starts from our childhood.  Our parents tend to compare us with other kids in the same school.  Many a time, we are told why our peformance in academics cannot be like our neighbour’s daughter or son.  We are asked why we cant compete in sports like our friend’s kid and so on.  Not a single day in school or college goes without our performance being compared with someone else.   Why this competition ?  We are not born in this world with our neighbour’s son or daughter nor will we die with our friend’s children.  Then, why do we do compete and make our life miserable every day.

If we move beyond children, even adults tend to compare themselves in everything.  If a neighbour buys a new TV, it creates enough ripples within our home.  If a friend buys a car or house, we want to outbeat them in size and value of house and car.  Our value is based on the size of our house and car and not on the size of our heart.  We want to possess more wealth than our siblings and our friends.  We do not compete in giving back more.  We are not willing to learn from the best habits of our neighbours.

Why this competitive spirits seeps in our life ?  I may not have an answer but have many questions to ask myself and my readers ?  Why do our parents want us to always compete with our siblings and our neighbours and friends ?  Why do we want to possess more wealth than our neighbours and friends even though we may not need all of them in our life time ?  Why are we willing to sometimes sacrifice our personal values to outbeat our colleagues at work ? 

Many a time we justify our animal spirit of competitiveness by claiming that there are limited resources in this world and we have to be ahead of others in grabbing them.  In my view, there are unlimited resources in the world for us to be successful.  It is the limitation in our thinking, which makes us competitive.  We limit our thinking and that reflects in our behaviour.

The workplace behaviour is more competitive.  We die at the workplace virtually competing with everyone around us.  Our spirit is not to learn and grow but to compete and die in our careers.  While, it may be a good idea to be the best in whatever you do, it should not be at the cost of other colleagues at work.  It may be a good idea to compete with oneself in whatever we do in life.  We could be the best by being the best in work and in our behaviour.  

There is enough in this world for all of us.  Co-optition may be a better word.  We can work along with our competitors for jointly creating a better world.  Similarly, we can work with our colleagues to do our job better and learn from one another.  We can also learn from our siblings and support each other to succeed.  We learn more by sharing with one another rather than keeping knowledge to ourselves.

If at all there is an urge to compete, let us compete in working to create a happier world.  Let us compete to live together as a bonded family.  Let us compete with other countries to foster peace in the world.  Let us compete to eliminate pollution in the world.  Let countries compete to eradicate poverty in the world.  Cooptition may replace competition from our dictionaries.

In the photo above, friends are singing together to create a chorus rather than competing with each other to  outbeat each other.

Let us learn to live along with each other and create a world of our choice for our future generations.

S Ramesh Shankar

Personal Crisis


Today I met a young colleague, who is going through a personal crisis.  Her father is seriously unwell and bed ridden at home.  Her father in law is hospitalised and is in a serious condition.  She and her husband have been going through this crisis for the last two years.  She was heart broken and was not sure how to handle such a situation.  “Why me ? ” is a question she asked and I had no answer.

I listened to her patiently and shared some of the crisis I have gone through in life.  We can neither share the pain nor give her any advise in this situation.  Many of us have grown through such situations in life. Each of us may have faced a different type of crisis in life.  When we are going through a crisis, we have no tears to shed and no advice to follow.  In most situations, you have to face it alone and the journey is ardous.

Most of us wonder why me ?  Why is God so cruel to us ?  What did I do wrong to face such a situation ?  We have no answers and may be many more questions ?  While we may ask many of our friends and well wishers, we have no solutions.  It is in these situations, you can really know the genuine people in your life.  Your own relatives may behave differently and your so called friends may move away from you.

One may almost lose hope in life.  There could be days where you may like to talk to God and tell him that he is being unfair.  You even lose faith in God.  It is at this time, it may useful for us to keep faith in ourselves and our good deeds in life.  May be God is testing our patience and He is expecting us to lose our faith in Him.  But, we should never lose faith in ourselves and hope in life.

Hope is like water.  It will always quench our thirst.  It is in this phase of our life, we tend to recognise the authentic people in our lives.  Some of them who we thought were close to us may lose significance in our lives by their displayed behaviour during this crisis.  But, we have to keep our faith in ourselves.  We have to be grateful to the people who helped us during this crisis for the rest of our lives.

God bestows us with the courage to face this crisis.  She will support us with the resources we need to overcome this phase of our life.  Such incidents make us stronger and wiser in life.  The people who listen to us and help us wade through such crises are God in human form.  We have to respect them, love them and be grateful to them.

It may also be useful to realise that there are millions of people in the world, who may be facing much tougher crisis than us.  They may have much lesser resources to deal with their issues.  We may consider ourselves lucky to be able to face the crisis and deal with it by ourselves.  If married, we may be grateful to our spouse for being with us and enabling each other to be brave and helpful during this phase of our life.

Life is journey and we may have good days and bad days and ultimately we do fulfill our goals by our own means and that gives us happiness.

Let us live life as it comes. We need to remember that there is sunrise after every sunset.

S Ramesh Shankar

Life is like a “Marathon”


Our life is like a marathon.  We start to lay our foundation in our childhood, work hard during youth and then pick up steam as an adult to achieve our life goals.  All that we achieve in our life depends on the hard work we put in.  It is like to run a marathon, we start practising almost a year before the event.  It is not only our physical fitness but our emotional quotient, which makes us a winner.

One need not be the fastest sprinter to win but needs to be high on patience and perseverance.  After we have set your eyes in participating in a marathon, it is meticulous planning, sweating it out every day for more than a year and good dietary discipline, which makes us ready for the marathon.  Life is no different.  As a kid, we have many dreams in our lives.  We want to realize all of them and at the shortest possible time.  If one is able to set a clear goal and work towards achieving it, nothing is impossible in life.

I am aware of many people who plan to participate in a marathon.  While they set their goal clearly, they do not plan for it well.  Their daily practise does not happen regularly. Their eating habits are not in place.  So, when they participate in their first marathon and end up with cramps after just 5 kms of running, they get disappointed and many even give up their goal.  

Life is no different.  We need to set our life goals- personal, career or otherwise.  We need to plan in detail and be self disciplined.  The moment we lose focus and fail to raise our own standards, we get into pitfalls in life.  This disappoints us and we tend to give up on some of our goals even before we have put in adequate efforts to achieve them.

In a marathon, one could possibly start with a dream run of 6 or 10 kms, then move to run the half marathon, full marathon and may be even attempt the ultra marathon.  This will help them take one step at a time.  It prepares the body and mind.  They increase the intensity of their participation every year and success at each step reinforces their belief in themselves.

The same is true in life.  We could set small milestones, work hard and achieve them.  This gives us the confidence to take on tougher goals and work towards achieving them.  Each time we succeed in attaining our goals, it builds on our ability to aim higher.  This is the secret of success in life.  Many of us give up even before we try our best.

Life is a journey and we have to take one step at a time.  The icons of success in all walks of life have proved that if you set your vision, plan your action and execute with discipline, everything is possible in life.  This may help us believe in ourselves and set impossible goals. Our efforts get rewarded even before we realize it.  This enthuses us to achieve more in life.

Let us start our dream run today.

S Ramesh Shankar