Nature may be our best teacher in life. Every plant and animal around us teaches us every day in every possible way. We, as humans have become blind, deaf and dumb to these teachings from nature. The chirping of the birds in the morning or the loyalty of a dog – everything is a lesson in life for us.

When we are born, we are not attached to anything in life. We arrive on earth with no clothes on us and the same thing happens when we leave this world. We cannot take back with us ,anything we have possessed during our lifetime. We literally come bare handed and go back the same way ,wherever we go as per our own religion.

However, during our stay on earth, we get attached to many things and of course many people. We start getting attached to our family from our childhood. Then friends, relatives and neighbours come into our lives. Every relationship makes us feel connected and we miss them when they are not around.

Our material possessions grow similarly. We have the bare minimum in our childhood and as we grow into adolescence ,our greed tends to go beyond our needs. Then adulthood makes us self reliant and thereby we start valuing our worth ,based on the material possessions we have.

As we do we well in our lives, our value for people decreases and material wealth increases. We start believing that we can live and survive on our own ,based on our financial wellness. We get connected to material things more than the people in our lives.

If we reflect on nature, we realise that birds do no accumulate any material things. They are always caring for each other and flock with one another to make each other successful. On the other hand, humans want to be financially well to do and relegate the value of human relationships.

Nature teaches us to be connected with everything without being attached to anything. The birds, the animals and even the plants are connected to every part of nature ,but they do not get attached to anything. On the other hand, we as humans ,get attached to our possessions and are not connected to other humans ,as we succeed in life.

Our ability to value people and not things in our lives ,may be the first step. Then, our ability to be detached and at the same time be attached with people ,is the key. This may look like a dichotomy of life but it is invaluable ,if we are able to master it. We need to enjoy the company of people we love as long as they are around and then need to live their values in our lives rather than keep worrying about them when they are no more.

The art of being connected to everything and not being attached to anything ,is the “mantra” of life. This may be easier said than done. It is easy to write about being detached than to practise it. However, the earlier we internalise this basic truth of life, the better it may be for our survival and growth as a human being.

S Ramesh Shankar

15th Feb 2023

I have always been an ardent admirer of Nature. I have never had enough of nature and every day I am astonished at the miracles around me. I recently had a few experiences which made me admire nature more and learn important life lessons.

The first one was when my Christmas tree was growing up in the garden. As we know, Xmas tree grows tall and so was mine. One day its tip reached below the leaves of my coconut tree. I thought I will have to ask my gardener to chop of the coconuts fronds. But before I realised, the leaves of the Xmas tree found its way through the leaves of the coconut tree and continued to grow tall without complaining to anyone.

The second instance was when I saw a lotus pond near the place I stayed in Pondicherry. I had requested the estate manager to get me a small lotus sapling from the pond. But every time he tried, he could not. I was disappointed till my visit last month. He presented me the same and I brought it diligently to Bangalore and put it in my lily pond. Within days the lotus sapling dried and died. I realised and learnt that a lotus pond is more than 20 feet deep and my Lilly pond is around 3 feet only. Hence, there was no way that the lotus could survive in a shallow lily pond.

Both these experiences are great learnings in life for me. The first was to let people learn and grow their way. We should not interfere and want them to do it our way. In the second experience, nature taught me that I should not mess up with nature. If I try to force people to do it my way or learn my way, they may not succeed. Encourage people to do it their way and let them bloom in their own backyard.

If we sit down and reflect, we learn a lot of life lessons from nature every day. Many of us tend to complain and crib all the time that we are not able to grow for any number of reasons in the organisation. We sometimes say bad boss, poor opportunities, lack of support or resources or something else. If we are willing to learn from nature, we will not allow anything to come in our way and will continue to learn and grow.

Similarly, as leaders and parents we tend to make people behave as we think since we feel it is the best way to do. It may or may not be right. If we create a work environment as a leader or a home environment as a parent and let our colleagues and our kids learn and grow as they would like to do, they may prosper. If we try to force fit like I did with the lotus tree in my Lilly pond, nobody prospers.

Nature teaches us every day in every way. It is upto us to admire, observe and learn.

Time to start is today.

S Ramesh Shankar

8th March 2022

As a kid I hailed from a lower middle class family. During the summer days especially in a city like Chennai, it was very hot and humid. We used to run to the terrace and sleep under the night sky to cool ourselves. Life was blissful admiring the sparkling stars and the moon too.

Then as we grew up, finished our formal education and started our career, we split from our families and started life on our own. As a bachelor, I never had the time to go to the terrace to see the night sky again.

We then moved to bigger cities and the stars almost disappeared from the sky. It was not because the stars were not around but we as human beings had polluted the environment so much that there was a layer of dust and pollution hiding the stars from our naked eyes.

The air coolers and then the air conditioners entered our homes making us cosy indoors and we moved further away from the beautiful night sky. Literally we found ways and means to run away from nature. We neither got the clean air to breathe nor the sights of stars and planets.

We have become materialistic human beings. We are happy accumulating wealth and not realising that money cannot buy health or happiness for us. There may be nothing wrong in satisfying our material needs as long as we can afford it. But to forget the laws of nature and respecting nature can be catastrophic for us.

We realise how much we miss our connect with nature only when we visit a hill station or a forest for a vacation. Unfortunately most of the holiday destinations have also become as crowded as a city nowadays. We need to find destinations where we can connect with nature and wander around listening to the song of birds, admiring the movement of the clouds, the sound of the wind or gazing at the stars.

We need to strike the right balance between technological advancement and the preservation of nature. One cannot be at the cost of the other. While technology and development have definitely made life more comfortable for us, it cannot and should not be at the cost of nature. After all nature bestows us with unlimited resources and gives life to our living. We have a responsibility to respect and sustain it.

This pandemic is a wake up call for all of us. We suddenly realised that we have destroyed nature for fulfilling our selfish human wants. A symbolic illustration was recently seen by many of us. We cut trees from the forests and destroyed nature in the name of modernisation and today we are in need of oxygen from cylinders because nature may be teaching us lessons on sustenance.

Life comes a full circle. I would love to go back to the open terrace and have a good night’s sleep on a natural fibre mat under the stars. I would like to commit that I will respect nature in all ways I can. I will give back to nature at least as much as I take from her.

Let us commit to respect nature in all ways possible from today.

S Ramesh Shankar

15th May 2021