Tag: life

 Living within means


All of us dream to grow and prosper in life.  This is a natural human phenomenon.  It is fair to be ambitious and aim for the moon or even beyond.  We need to set our vision high, evolve our strategy, determine our actions and take the first steps.  Hard work, perseverance with a little bit of luck will definitely take us towards our goal.  We may not achieve what we want in the time frame we set ourselves.  But sooner than later we will accomplish our mission if we never give up.

Let us look back at our own lives.  We start as students in school and then college.  Apart from studying and giving our best in academics, we also strive to excel in sports and cultural activities.   No wonder our parents, friends and relatives are impressed.  Our parents try to give us pocket money for our sundry expenses.  It is here where our ability to balance income and expenditure begins. Living within our means is the first lesson in our lives as a student.

We then finish our studies and get into an employment or business vocation.  We dream to climb the corporate ladder at the shortest possible time.  If our parents reached the peak of their career in three decades, we want to  achieve the same in three years.  I admire this spirit in the youth today.  It is indeed filled with optimism and an appetite to take risks, which my generation did not even dream of.

However, there is one small point to be kept in mind.  There is no short cut to success in life.  Even if we look at the world’s best sportspersons, their successes and accomplishments are visible to us.  We do not see the millions of hours of hard work they put in or the number of failures they face before they succeed in their sport. It is this ability to be focussed and the “never say die” spirit, which accelerates our road to success.

As we reach our first milestone, we tend to believe that we have achieved our goal post.  We want to celebrate even before the ink has dried on our first offer letter.  While there may be nothing wrong in partying on the first night after our first offer, we need to remember that our long and strenuous journey to accomplish our mission has just begun.  It is at this stage we need to learn to become thrifty.  We may be tempted to live beyond our means.  We may be lucky to be brought up in a upper middle class family with all comforts.  It is our ability to realize the world is different now and all the comforts in life have to be earned by us through our own earnings is critical.

We end up competing with friends who come from rich family heritage and want to live a dream life  even before we have earned it.  It is at this stage, we need to get grounded and remind ourselves that life has just begun for us.  We have just run the first few kilometres of our life marathon.  We need to learn to save money every month to build the future of our choice.  It is like the marathon runners conserve their energy in the first few kilometres so as to put in their best foot forward in the last lap of the race.

Life is a journey and it has many facets. My learning in life is that if we can master the art of living within our means, we will always be happy.  Our expenditure should always be  less than our income.  We should never get into the credit trap.  We need to learn to enjoy life within our means.  After all happiness cannot be bought only by money.  Rather, I would say that money buys the least of happiness in life.

As in the photo above, Sikhism teaches you to be grounded, treat everyone as equal and live within your means.

Let us learn to live within our means from today.  After all, it is never too late to begin.

S Ramesh Shankar

You are not alone..


We are born alone in this world and we may leave Mother earth all alone when we die.  But, in life, we are never alone in anything we do.  When we go through ups and downs of life, many a time we feel that we are all alone. We do not feel that way when we are happy.  But, when we are going through a crisis, we get a feeling that God has been unkind to us.  Why me ?,  is a question we ask God  often in such situations.  

It is equally true that we do not ask God for explanations when she showers us with joyous moments.  I believe I deserved a promotion or I bought a house through my dint  of hard work.  However, when I am not considered for a plum role in the organisation or my promotion is denied, I always wonder why God is unkind to me.  It is in these very situations, we need to realise that we are not alone.

God always balances the good and the bad news for us.  It is possibly when we become too arrogant and forget to be grateful to someone in life that God gives us misery to get us back to mother earth and be grounded.  It may be worthwhile to reflect that all of us go through good and bad moments.  When we go through bad moments, it may be useful to think of millions of people, whose situation is worse than us.  However, it is human for us to compare only those, who are better than us.

Life has its cyclical ways.  We all have been blessed with pleasant surprises in life.  We are blessed with a healthy child or get married to a person of our choice.  We do not express our gratitude to God but consider it our dedication to life.  When something goes wrong somewhere for us, we suddenly get more spiritual and religious.  We may not have visited temples, churches or mosques for years together.  But, suddenly we become a frequent visitor to pay our respects to God.

I have learnt that life is happier when we are ready to embrace the good and the bad with equal reverence.  The day we realise that we are better off than the thousands around us, whose life is more difficult than us, we will learn to be grateful to God.  This principle is equally applicable at work and in our personal life.  If we lead a life of contentment, God will always take care of us.  If we lead a life of greed, God can never satisfy our needs.

So, it is up to us to learn to accept life as it comes.  We have to remember the good ness in others and be grateful to God and other people in life, who have made us what we are today.  Neither the good nor the bad lasts forever.  It is up to us to balance both and be ready to manage both in life.  After all, like the weather round the years, life has its own winter, summer and rains.  We need to adapt to manage all the seasons.

Just like in the photo above, there will be some people ahead of you and some behind you facing similar situations as you are facing today.

Lets live a life of gratitude and we will be ready to face life as it comes to us every day.

 S Ramesh Shankar

Grass is greener on the other side always

Many of us would have heard this saying that the grass is always greener on the side of the shore.  It looks true in life too.The poorest man in the world aspires to the be richest. While the richest man wants to the be the happiest person and so on.  None of us seem to be happy with what we have with us.  We always want what others have and we don’t.


Have we ever asked ourselves as to why this happens to most of us in life ?  Is it because of the way we are brought up in life ?  Is it because of our education system, which makes us competitive ?   Is it because we assume that status in life is determined by more wealth than others ?  I really do not know the answer.  But, the truth is that all of us go through this in our lives.

Let us start from our childhood.  We look at other children and always complain that they have better books, better clothes, better sports goods and so on.  We also have aspired for things we did not have.  Then if we move to college life, life has not been different.  The only difference is that our needs transform into greed.  We want a bike, an expensive mobile phone and a car since our college mates have it.  It really does not matter to us whether we need them or  if our parents can afford them.  Some of us have blackmailed our parents to get what we want by linking it to exam results and so on.

Now, let us move to our work life.  Many of us are not happy with our work, our boss and the the company culture and so on.   We end up changing our job or role or location.   It’s interesting that many of us have realised that when we move to the other side , it makes us realize that life was greener at our original end.

It needs a lot of guts to change.  It requires courage to challenge the status quo.  Some of us take the plunge and when we land at the other side, life looks no different – or may be it does look different for some of us.  But, as time passes, there are other shores, which again look greener to us.

So, this journey is elusive.  The destination is not definable.  Does this mean we should not dream of greener pastures ?  Of course, we should.  All of us need to aspire for betterment in life and living.  We should look and get inspired by people around us, who are our role models. But, we need to work hard to realize our dreams  and accomplish greener pastures.

The only lesson I have learnt is that in the process of aspiring for more and admiring greener pastures on the other side, we fail to enjoy the present.  We need to enjoy the journey as much as the destination.  If you can recall the last time, you travelled by train, you will remember that admiring the green rice fields, the tea garden on th hill slopes, the passing mountains and the vastness of the river along side the train tracks were as much admirable as the beauty of our destination.

“Contentment” is the art of being happy with what we have.  Easier to state than to live.  But, may be worth a try.  If we can be happy with what we have, we may get what we want in life.  Let us the enjoy the greenery in our existing life before we look at the other shores.

Admire and enjoy  your journey as much as your destination.

S Ramesh Shankar