Tag: concept

Should every effect have a cause ?


Every time something happens in life, we look for a reason.  We are worried and want to dig deep to find out the root cause.  We sometimes even lose our sleep if we do not get to the root cause for everything in life.  I sometimes wonder if every effect  necessarily needs to have a cause ?  If it rains on a bright summer day, is it wrong ?    If someone who has never called you up for years suddenly decided to enquire about you on the phone, is it unusual. 

I personally feel that we waste a lot of time, many a time by investigating the causes rather than the managing the effect.  Why not live with the effect ?  Why not accept the event as it comes and evolve ways and means to deal with it.  In our quest to get to the root cause, we sometimes even forget to celebrate good moments in life.  Imagine someone surprising you with a chocolate on your work desk.   We spend more time finding out who did it rather than enjoying the chocolate.

I can recall many moments in my life where something happens out of the blue.  We can never get to the root cause as to why it happened.  It may not be worth the time and effort even to try to do it.  I recall way back in 2002 I had planned a holiday to a particular country with my family.  I had booked the tickets, accommodation etc.  But when we went for the visa interview, they denied the visa for all of us with the reason that we were potential immigrants.  I was working in Delhi and my children were studying.  We were living in our own house but still it happened.  I never bothered why they denied my visa.  I changed my plans and went on a nice holiday to another beautiful country.

If I had spent my time to invesitagate the reasons why they denied my visa, I would have wasted a lot of time and energy.  My holiday plans would have got spoiled and my family may have felt miserable.  But as we changed the plans and went to another country, we enjoyed the trip and never regretted the incident till today. 

 In life, many a time, we do not follow this principle.  We are always worried why it happened and why it happened only to me ? We spend sleepless days and nights worrying about it.  Why worry about something over which you have no control.  In my view, it is not worth it.  It is like worrying about the reasons for rain on a bright summer day.  Lets enjoy the rain rather than find the cause for the rain.  Can we control the rain ?  We cannot and hence why worry about it.

Another incident which has convinced me that we should not worry about the cause is when I moved to Mumbai in 2011.  I had settled in Bangalore and was staying in my own home.  I never thought I will move out of Bangalore.  But suddenly an opportunity knocked my door and we decided to move.  I never worried to find out the reasons why it happened to me.  This is because it helped me to move to a more vaastu compliant home in Bangalore.  It also gave me an opportunity in work in Mumbai, which I had never done before.

I am told that the wild lillies in the forest grow beautifully without any reason. They do not wait for the rains to arrive to blossom.

It is important to remember that there would be events in life, which occur for no reason.  When things go well, we generally do not bother for the reason.  But when things do not go well, we wonder – why me ?  It may be worthwhile to ponder, why worry for the reason ?  Let us learn to accept things as they happen and learn to deal with them.  It may many a time happen for our good.

Shall we try it ?

S Ramesh Shankar

Success


The definition of success can be different for everyone.  It also depends on the stage of our life and our career.  It could be simply stated as achieving what we want in life.  As a kid, we mostly feel that we are successful if we achieve our scholastic goals in school or college.  We also are happy if achieve our goals in sports or cultural activities.

Most parents also define success for their children as acamedic accomplishments. This definition of success changes as we grow in life.  The moment we get through our acadmic part of our life and stand on our own feet, we redefine success .   At this stage, we tend to define success by our material wealth and accumulations in life. We would like to be the richest and the wealthiest amongst our peers.

As the career stabilises, promotions are also a measure of success.  Then we yearn for recognition and status in society.  We also grow in the family and respect is a way to defining success.  Our happiness gradually moves from self to others’ success.  At home, the accomplishments of our kids make us feel successful.  At work, the performance of our team members make us feel proud.

After we pass through this stage of our life, we realise that it is time for us to give back to society.  We redefine success in life now.  We believe that our contributions to the success of other family members and friends makes us happier.  At work, we would like our team to excel.  We also want to give back to others what we have learnt from our elders and seniors.

We now are no longer looking for more material wealth but mental peace and happiness.  Our spiritually gets redefined and we reach a stage of self actualisation.  At this stage of life, we start working on how we can support others and make them successful.  We are no longer in a rat race being competitive with others.  Our concept of success is more within us than without.

The interesting aspect of the evolving definition of success in life is linked to our life stages.  Some of us grow faster than others.  It is important to remember that we are human and hence we need to adapt ourselves to the meaning of success in life as we grow up.  It is equally essential to respect the definition of success of others in our life as they may be at different stages and may have different needs to fulfil.

Running for a marathon like in the photo above could be measure of success for some and not for others.  It is quite fine to be that way.

Let us learn to enjoy our successes in life as we define it.

S Ramesh Shankar