Tag: life

Life

Do we live life to its full ? Most of us are not willing to enjoy the moment. We are not investing in our own happiness. We are spending more time worrying about things beyond our control rather than rejoicing all that God has bestowed us with to enjoy life.

We live life comparing ourselves with others and dying out of jealousy. God has given equal capacity to all of us. Each of us craft our destiny by our own hard work. Why are we worried about others ? It is like a sprinter looking at all his co-participants behind him while running a race. The chances of his failing are higher than his success. The best sprinters in the world trust their capabilities and focus on their efforts. They are always confident of their success as they are determined in the efforts they put in every day. They are confident that the results have to follow their efforts.

Life is a journey. Every day is like the page of a book. We need to read every page of the book and move on to the next page. Most of us tend to turn back and not move forward. While, it may be useful to learn from the mistakes of the past, it is more important to focus on shaping our future. If we keep turning to the back pages, we may never move forward and read the whole book in our lifetime.

Life is full of possibilities. We have to make the best of everything in life. We have to dream big, work hard and aim for the impossible in life. If we put in our best, we can make the impossible, possible. After all, it is mankind who dreamt of walking on the moon and made it possible almost five decades back.

It may be inspirational to look at achievers in life. The successful people in life we are not born with silver spoons. Most of them were born in families with limited resources. But, they had a clear vision of what they want to achieve in life and they worked zealously to achieve it.

I have met people in life who have represented my country in Olympics and could not even afford the sports kit when they started learning their sport. Nothing is impossible for the human mind. It is our own limitations in the mind, which makes the possible look impossible. We draw our own curtains and encircle ourselves with self created limitations.

If we look at life as half full glass rather than half empty, the impossible looks possible to us. It is all about our attitude to life. We have to be clear in our mind. We need to set our goals, work hard and always believe in ourselves and our team. Our family, friends and colleagues will always support us if we believe in them and in ourselves.

We need to make life exciting for us. Imagine taking a train without a destination in mind. While we may travel a distance but may be moving in the wrong direction. So, lets set our vision, work conscientiously towards achieving it by believing in ourselves and all people around us.  Life is colourful (as in the photo above) if we live it that way.

We can make the impossible, possible.

S Ramesh Shankar
November 2016

Reality bytes

Today I went with my wife for a tour to Dharavi in Mumbai. This is one of the largest slums in Asia. There are almost a million people living in an area of less than two square kilometres. A home is less than ten square feet and on an average houses five adults. It is indeed an eye opener. You need to visit the place to believe it. We went through an organization, which organises these tours and partly gives back its profit to support the people and children living in Dharavi.

The first part of the tour is the commercial area. In this part, thousands of men and women are working in different types of industries. The first sight of old car bumpers getting shredded and recycled as plastic beads to be moulded into chairs and other plastic durables. Then we pass through suitcase makers, the leather soles for shoes, leather bags, bakery and food items being made for consumption within themselves as well as for sale around town.

You realise how difficult are the working conditions. In dark room with minimum light people inhale dust and paint flakes as they shred material waste to generate the raw material for plastic remoulding durables. People from the remote parts of the country are working day and night leaving their families behind just to earn a livelihood. We realise how privileged we are even to be born in middle class families. Our parents take care of our education, provide us a place to stay and a decent standard of living.

Then you move to the residential area. We see people from different states of India and following different religions living peacefully together. It is here you realise that wealth may not help you buy happiness. You see children, adolescents and adults enjoying each other’s company and helping each other in their daily chores. You see happiness writ on their smiles and this makes you realise that it is not materiality which can bring you happiness in life.

You also see schools – run by government, NGOs and private organisations. While the government and other organisations are tying their best to improve the quality of their lives, the problem is mammoth. One good thing I noticed is that I did not see children working in the commercial areas although this cannot be totally ruled out.

Some of my reflections and learnings after today’s tour are –

A. We need to be grateful to God and our parents/elders for all the comforts we enjoy in life and never realise their value

B. We realise that happiness is not directly correlated to the wealth we possess. Rather happiness is a state of mind and attitude to life.

C. We also need to realise that we need to give back to society more than we get as are indeed much more privileged than millions of people around us.

As in the photo a( courtesy – Reality tours & travels)above, children sitting in a cart within the slum seem happier than many of us. We realise how privileged we are in life.

What do you think ? Is it time to reflect ?

S Ramesh Shankar

Taking for granted ?


Do we take people for granted ?  I assume we do.  It starts from the family and then extends to society and organisations too.  Let us start from the family. Do we take our parents for granted ?  Yes we do.  We almost assume that they are duty bound to take care of us and our needs for the rest of our lives.  We are not much bothered about them but if they do not support us when we need them we feel betrayed.  

The story is not very different with our spouses.  Whether we both are working spouses or not, it is a fact that we take each other for granted.  Let us assume that our spouse is not working in an organisation but a home maker.  We almost imagine that they do not have much work and no tensions at home.  If we  get what we want at home on time, we assume that it is their responsibility and hence take it for granted.

On the contrary, let us assume that both spouses are working.  Even in this situation, we do not balance home and office work.  We tend to take for granted that our wives will take care of our home as we are busy at work.  We do not even realise that our wives also have work pressures and balancing home and work is not easy.  Hence, taking your wife for granted is more true than not.

Now, let us move to the organisational sphere.  Do we take our team members, colleagues and bosses for granted ?  Yes, it is true that many of us are so self centred that we look at the world only from own prisms.  We are not much concerned as to how it impacts our team or even our peers.  We take them for granted.  Sometimes, we also take our bosses for granted and assume that they will cover up for us in any crisis.

Why is it that we take everyone in life for granted ?  I assume it is a psychological phenomenon.  Human beings tend to believe that the whole world exists to support them.  We assume our family members, colleagues at work and members of the community are duty bound to help us to be successful in life. When this belief becomes one sided, that is where we start taking people for granted.  

The moment we start believing that we have to give before we take help from others, this problem will perish.  We have to learn to respect everyone and not take anyone for granted in life.  There is nobody in life, who is obligated to you.  We are born alone and will die alone.  But, we need the support of everyone in life to be successful.  Help is always mutual and respect is earned rather than given.  Hence, taking people for granted could lead to more distress than happiness.

We should neither take people or things for granted.  It is like taking a turn while driving your car by looking only at one of your side view mirrors as shown in the photo above.  This is like the driver taking his skills for granted.

Let us learn to respect people from today.

S Ramesh Shankar