Your past can be your teacher

In hindsight, all of us are wise. The key is to learn from experiences and not either cling on to grief or guilt.

A recent issue of TIME magazine carries an interview with ace golfer Tiger Woods. Lorne Rubenstein asks him: “Your private Life was exposed in 2009. What would you have done differently?” And Woods replies: “In hindsight, it’s not how I would change 2009 and how it all came about. It would be having a more open, honest relationship with my ex-wife. The relationship that I have now with her is fantastic. She’s one of my best friends. We’re able to pick up the phone, and we talk all the time. We both know that the most important things in our lives are our kids. I wish I would have known that back then.”

Woods nails it. It is very important to pause, reflect and internalize what you can learn from a past – any – experience. With reflection, and introspection, grief and guilt may arise. But you must develop the ability to stay detached from these debilitating emotions. You must look at your own Life – and the past – dispassionately. Ask yourself if there is any point in brooding or feeling angry and guilty? There really isn’t! Once you realize the futility of harboring these emotions, you let them go. This does not mean you don’t either feel them or don’t learn from them. You will feel them. And you can learn from them. But just don’t get bogged down by them!

The past always teaches you – something about you and about Life! The past can also hold you hostage. It is up to you whether you want your past be your teacher or your captor!

On why do ‘bad’ things happen to ‘good’ folks?

‘Good’, ‘Bad’, ‘Right’, ‘Wrong’ … all these are societal labels. In reality, Life simply boils down to events and choices.

Something happens to you. It is an event. How you react or respond to that event is your choice. Period. When events meet or exceed your expectations, you label them good. If they don’t, you label them bad. If a choice you made delivers the outcome you expect, you call it good. And if it does not, you call it a bad choice! Simple.

Last evening, over some exotic Moroccan Mint tea, someone who had heard of our story and my Book asked me how could a ‘talented’ couple like Vaani and me be put through such a ‘trial’ by Life? This is a question that we are often asked. And I don’t have a very elaborate answer. The one I have is this…

Talent. Trial. Time. These are three things that we always obsess about. We think we are talented so we must be successful. We believe because we are good folks, Life should not try us! And we always want to be having the time of our lives – the way we want it! To be sure, talent and trial have no correlation. Often, we wonder why should we be tried in Life when we are talented, intelligent and ethical? Why should ‘bad’ things happen to ‘good’ folks? We must remember that talent is what we are endowed with; that includes the ability to deal with all kinds of trials and tribulations in Life! Trials are what we are and will be faced with. Both talent and trials are Life's ways of making us who we must eventually be. And time is the eternal healer. Time is the catalyst. Time eventually makes us complete. When it is time to be tried, we will be. And when it is time to be toasted, we will be! So, if we give up the expectation that talented folks must not be tried, and learn to flow with time, we will never agonize in Life! We will be blissful!

Last night, as I caught Yash Chopra’s 1965-classic Waqt (Time) on TV, this iconic song played on aptly. The lead lyrics are aage bhi jaane na tu, pichhe bhi jaane na tu, jo bhi hai, bas yahi ek pal hai…meaning that you don’t know the future, you can’t do anything about the past, all you have is this moment, the now, to live in! So, peel off those labels. Don’t obsess over whether your choices are right or wrong. Just be happy you made one! Just be – live – in the moment. For there is no right or wrong, good or bad. Your Life, at the end the day, is all about choices you make in response to the events that happen to you!

In order to find time for yourself, simply create it!

If you can pause and reflect, for a quality period of time daily, the quality of your Life will undoubtedly improve.

Yesterday, at The Brew Room, a beautiful café in downtown Chennai, I caught a hand-written sign that read: “Everything gets better with coffee.” I smiled as I took a picture of this sign. And I thought to myself, how true this simple promotional line for coffee is – in a real world context.

If there’s one thing that we all need desperately in Life it is time. And if there’s one thing that’s available in abundance, and uniformly, to all of us it is time. To be sure, we have the same 24 hours at our disposal. Within our reach. No one has a minute more or a minute less than the other. Yet we scramble along, stumbling and falling, struggling and heaving, complaining forever that we don’t have enough time! Now, the reason why time seems elusive is because we expect all our responsibilities to be settled, all our tasks to be completed, all our goals to be achieved, before we sit down to experience some quality time for ourselves, with ourselves. That certainly is not going to happen. Because each gone moment is gone. It is never going to come back. With each moment that is past, we have lesser time on this planet. This is the bitter truth. And unless we invest time we are not going to be able to create quality time – for ourselves, our families and for doing what we love doing. Period. Just as investing money wisely helps multiply it, investing time wisely alone helps create time.

So, the simplest way to find that time for yourself is to create it. Just drop everything and sit down for 15 minutes to half-an-hour quietly, each day, and feel your breathing. Read something. Check Facebook. Listen to music. Just don’t be under pressure. Think through your day and week. Do this diligently, daily, and watch the quality of your work and Life improving with this practice. I am not sure really if “everything gets better with coffee” all the time, but everything does get better when you pause and reflect. As someone has wisely said, “Now and then it is good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.”

Accepting (extra-ordinary) pain leads to extra-ordinary grace entering your Life

Everything happens for the good. And you can’t quite get through Life unscathed.  

I don’t mean to sound overtly philosophical or even euphemistic about our rather unique Life journeys where we may be singed by a health challenge or a relationship issue or the loss of a dear one or a career nightmare or a business crisis. Our stories may be different. But the thread that binds all our stories together holds a common theme – all the trauma that we may have to encounter and endure in Life always has a deeper reason for it to happen. And that reason is to make us stronger from the experience. Also, without exception, every dark night eventually makes way for a beautiful dawn.

A recent issue of TIME magazine has a story by author Jim Rendon who writes about how trauma changes people for the better. Rendon’s new book Upside: The New Science of Post-Traumatic Growth reveals that 75 % of people are affected by a traumatic phase at least once in their lives. He writes in TIME: “Post-traumatic growth can be transformative. Post-traumatic growth can be powerful. Many people I interviewed for my book told me that despite the physical pain they suffered, the daily struggles they faced, their lives were unquestionably better today than before their traumatic experiences. Trauma sent them on a path they never would have found otherwise.”

I can completely relate to this view. This has, in fact, been my experience too.

Just 12 years ago, I used to be perpetually angry with myself and the world around me. My business was under stress then, but there was business – work and income. I had clients and I led a team that operated in six cities in India. But I was neither happy nor content. I worked 16-hour days and worked on weekends too. I had a tobacco habit and drank daily. And then in end-2007, early-2008, my whole world fell apart. My Firm went bankrupt and I became insolvent. In the years that followed, my family and I have been through some indescribable times – often penniless; no work, no clients, no staff, no offices, no business, no money!

A couple of years ago, I was talking to my friend about the experience I was undergoing as a parent when I could not buy my dear daughter a new set of clothes as her old ones were worn out. My friend, quoting (I think so; disclaimer: I am not an expert in Tamil literature, I can’t read or write the language.) from the Tamil epic Kamba Ramayanam said, “Kadan Petrar Nenjam Pola” - denoting the ache in the heart of a man in debt. I know my pain pales in significance in front of someone who has lost a child or who is dying of a rare cancer or who has been convicted for a crime that they did not commit (like the Talwar couple). But trauma is trauma. Pain is pain. Whatever be the reason, whoever causes it, whichever way it happens, the way pain overtakes our lives and drives us to dead-ends and tests every sinew – that experience is the same for everyone. Pain cannot be avoided. It is inevitable. But you can avoid the suffering if you stop asking why there is pain – and stop asking why you have to encounter pain.

My problems are far from over. But because I have learnt not to suffer, I have discovered that the trauma, the pain, doesn’t affect me anymore. Yes it is difficult, at times excruciatingly difficult, to get through some situations. But because I don’t suffer, I am at peace with the way my Life is. There is complete chaos around me, in my world. But I have learnt to anchor within and maintain and preserve my inner equilibrium. I face Life every day with renewed vigor and pour my heart into whatever I am doing to get the business and our lives back on track. Important, I am no longer angry – with myself or my circumstances. I am a firm believer that this too shall pass.

This transformation in me has happened only because of the experience of abject penury that I have been through. In a material sense my family and I have lost everything. And we have a mountain of debt to repay. But I am grateful, just as many of the people Rendon interviewed for his book have revealed, for the Life-changing crisis that I have been through. I have now come to realize that extra-ordinary pain always leads you to experience extra-ordinary grace if you are willing to accept the pain and go with the flow of Life! Your problems may not always go away, but your ability to deal with the improves dramatically if you can handle pain and avoid the suffering! 

Remember: you too have come with an expiry date. So, live, don’t exist!

“The wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop, the leaves of Life keep falling one by one!” – wrote Omar Khayyam, (1048~1131), the Persian poet, in his classic ‘The Rubaiyat’.

Today our son Aashirwad turns 25. Suddenly a quarter of a century seems to have flown past. A quarter of a century!!?!! That’s a third of a lifetime, if you can hope to be at least 75! These are the 25 years that I have grown up from being a boy to a young adult to being a lover, a husband and a father, to being an entrepreneur to going bankrupt – and resultantly penniless – to being a student of Life. It is when I was ready and willing, as any good student should be, to learn,  that Life, the teacher, appeared before me and taught me this invaluable lesson – that we are all perishable. Each moment is perishing even as we are going through it. Everything around us is perishing and everything – and everyone – we knew has perished. You, me, all of us will perish too. The learning I have from Life is that the opportunity of this lifetime must be utilized within the lifetime of the opportunity. Life is a limited period offer. Period. Enjoy it as long as it lasts! Indeed, sometimes, you may only be in a position to endure Life. But if you understand Life and its impermanence, you will learn to accept, and therefore even enjoy, what you are enduring! So, as the famous song from the Hindi film, Golmaal (1979, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, R.D.Burman, Gulzar, Kishore Kumar) goes: “Aane Wala Pal, Jaane Wala Hai, Ho Sake To Isme Zindagi Bita Do, Pal Yeh Jo Jaane Wala Hai…” It means exactly what Omar Khayyam wants us to realize: “Each moment – and Life – is passing us by. If possible, seize the lifetime in the moment, because it too will be gone soon.”

Realize the value of each moment. At least from now on, go do what you love doing. Don’t think. Don’t analyze. Just do it! Also, please make time for your family and children today. Because even before you realize it, time would have flown, the birds too would have flown, leaving your nest empty. What you will be left with are just memories. Those are funny things, these memories. The stuff you laughed about will make you cry and what you cried over, you will laugh about when you look back! Work hard without doubt. Earn money, that’s important. But with advancing age, decreasing efficiency, and limited time left on this planet, what you will be left holding are only memories. Make sure they are happy ones, of happy times, of memorable moments that you want to relive. Not of times of which you have no memories because you merely existed back then! Someone wisely said, we don’t remember days, we remember moments. Ensure each of yours from now on are worth living for and remembering happily later!

We all have come with an expiry date. Except we don’t know what that date is. So, when you don’t know how much time you have left here, won’t you want to make each day, each moment, count?

Are you taking advantage of the time you have here?

Actually, the choice to live – and not to exist – is a no-brainer if you keep reminding yourself that “you live only once”!

Picture Courtesy: Internet

The latest issue of TIME features an interview with acclaimed American photojournalist Lynsey Addario, 41, who specializes in covering war and champions human rights and the role of women in traditional societies. In 2000, she photographed in Afghanistan under Taliban control. She has since covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Darfur, the Congo, and Haiti. She has covered stories throughout the Middle East and Africa. She has photographed for The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, and National Geographic. Addario was one of four New York Times journalists who were missing in Libya from March 16 ~ 21, 2011. The Libyan government released Addario and the other journalists on March 21, 2011. She reported that she was threatened with death and repeatedly groped during her captivity by the Libyan Army. Penguin has recently published Addario’s first book, It’s What I Do – A photographer’s Life of Love and War. TIME asked Addario to explain her unique, albeit risky, career choice – “Is it because you think you have a lot of time left that you can tolerate danger?” And Addario replied: “It is important to take advantage of the time that we each have.”

Her reply is awakening. Addario says it so well – and simply. In fact, it reminds me of what the Buddha has said: “The trouble is you think you have a lot of time.”

And that indeed is the problem with most of us. We go on postponing the Life we want to live by kidding ourselves with our earning-a-living logic: the family has to be provided for, kids have to be schooled, raised and sent to university, retirement has to be planned and saved for … The list of things to do, to prioritize, over living a full Life, is endless. This is why so many of us feel that our lives are incomplete, listless and monotonous. My wife and I have been, since January this year, running an Event Series in Chennai called “Follow Your Bliss” (inspired by Joseph Campbell’s famous thought/quote) which celebrates people who have had the courage to break free from “financially safe and secure” careers to do what they love doing. Almost everyone who attends this Event Series concurs that they are keen to do “something more meaningful” in their lives. But few actually take the first step. One gentleman, in his 50s, who quit his 26-year run with the IT industry last month, told us: “It had to happen. I realized that I had to give up running on the corporate treadmill if I really wanted to get some place else in Life. And I am not getting any younger either, you see.” I am sure you too agree with his view here.

Indeed, Life is a gift. And you should not waste it. The way to use this gift – effectively and efficiently – is to take advantage of the time you have on the planet, doing what you love doing. That’s the only way to live a Life of meaning and happiness! 

Forgiveness leads you to inner peace

When you want to forgive someone simply forgive. Don’t judge whether the person is worthy or not. What matters is whether you feel forgiveness at your very core.  

Think about it. When does the context of forgiveness arise? Forgiveness becomes relevant when someone has acted in an irrational, resentful, violent and/or a hurtful way with you. Your hurt is causing you to feel miserable about the episode and you want to see that the person responsible for this is admonished, made accountable or even punished. This is what anyone will normally want done. But as long as the act of reprimand or retribution is not complete you will continue to grieve, you will continue to suffer. In some cases, the person who hurts you may realize her mistake and seek your forgiveness. It’s possible then that you may or may not forgive her. If you choose not to, you will still be carrying the angst of the injury, the hurt in you. But, if in any situation, you choose to forgive, you will be liberated - instantaneously.

Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra, the Rajiv Assassination, Nalini Murugan
Picture Courtesy: Internet

There’s so much attention on the people responsible for former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s assassins, with the Indian Supreme Court, commuting the death sentences of some more of them to Life terms recently. This development, in the context of forgiveness, brings the focus back to what happened in March 2008. Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra, Rajiv’s daughter, visited Nalini Murugan, one of those convicted in the assassination conspiracy, in Vellore jail in Tamil Nadu. According to what TIME magazine reported then: “The two women both wept when they met. Toward the end of their meeting, they compared stories about their children's births (both have had caesareans) and even swapped small gifts, though neither revealed what they were. Nalini, whose initial death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment a few years ago after intervention by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling Congress Party, apparently found Priyanka's visit Life-changing. Nalini told her brother P. S. Bhagyanathan that she feels as if "all my sins have been washed off by Priyanka's visit... I feel she has pardoned me by calling on me at the prison... I am indebted to her all my life." Whether Priyanka explicitly offered forgiveness will probably remain between them. In her statement, Priyanka said that "meeting with Nalini was my way of coming to peace with [the] violence and loss that I have experienced." Perhaps Priyanka was not trying to forgive so much as she was trying not to hate — and their meeting was a very private gesture that, after becoming public (through a media leak), has come to appear heartbreakingly heroic. "I don't believe in anger, hatred, and violence," Priyanka said simply in her statement. "And I refuse to allow it to overpower my life."”

Priyanka’s effort to reach out, and to be human, in the face of such a traumatic personal loss, is as awakening now as it was then. That she chose to do what she did, without investing to evaluate whether Nalini deserved any forgiveness, if at all, or not, is inspiring.

We must remember that when we forgive someone, we let go of all the pent up, wasteful emotions like anger and hatred, within us. We forgive someone for our own sake first. And through our inner cleansing and peace, we help the one we forgive too to move on in Life. Forgiveness frees the person who is forgiving and therefore is not dependent on whether the person receiving it is deserving or not. If you understand this perspective, you will never carry any resentment, any hurt, any suffering in you – ever. And you will be at peace!

Time, Destiny, Karma, Life … whatever, just accept what is!

We are all a product of the time that we go through. Time plays the biggest role in shaping the way things pan out for each of us during our lifetime.

This is an unalterable truth about Life. But the way we are conditioned to think about time, thanks to the way we are raised, we are either totally driven by a belief that everything about our lives is pre-ordained and pre-set in, and by, time or that nothing is. A more aware approach to Life, however, can be helpful.

Although there may be several arguments or methods that claim to understand how time works during one’s lifetime, the reality remains that there will be some times in Life, certain phases, when nothing may work for you, the way you plan for it or want it to work, despite your best efforts. This reality may express itself differently in the context of each one’s Life. But this reality will be un-missable, unmistakable. Now, those who use methods, like the science of astrology for instance, to make sense of the “play of time”, may find some way to rationalize what’s happening to them. Those who either have no access to or interest in such methods may simply see a pattern, “of results not coming as expected despite their best efforts”, to their lives. They may either choose to go with the flow of such a pattern, which is go with the flow of their lives, or feel defeated and depressed.

I have learnt that the simplest, and the most peaceful, way to live Life is to have faith in Life’s plan for you. I have come to understand it as The Master Plan. And I have come to realize, over the eventful years of my Life’s roller-coaster experience, that The Master Plan has no flaws. So, even if something evidently is not going per a plan that you have, and so you conclude that things are going “out of control”, everything is still happening just the way it should, for you to live the Life that has been designed for you. This perspective has been immortalized by Steve Jobs (1955~2011) when he said: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So, you have to trust that somehow the dots will connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, Karma, Life, whatever. This approach has never let me down and it has made all the difference in my Life.”

I don’t need to substantiate this point with a story from my Life or recall Jobs’ famous Stanford commencement speech of 2005. I invite you to review your own Life. And you will see the pattern, your personal journey line, as evidence of this point. Wherever you are today has undoubtedly been a result of all your efforts and intentions. Even so, you will notice that at the most crucial junctures, mystically, an unexpected twist or turn has either helped you move forward or has led to an unplanned, unscheduled change in direction. Without this providential play of time, or Life, you wouldn’t be where you are today. This perspective is as good even when you don’t like being where you are today. Perhaps, Life has laid hurdles in your path – a curious turn of events has delayed or stunted your progress. Whatever it is that you may be faced with or are going through, know that there’s a larger design that’s not evident to you just now. Someday, in the future, you too, like Jobs’ will connect the dots backward and marvel at how beautiful your Life’s design always was!

You can appreciate this perspective or debunk it. You can be wedded to the “Life-is-pre-ordained” or “it’s-all-play-of-time” theories or you can believe that you control everything. Whatever way you choose, you can’t escape the reality that Life pans out for you, as it does for me, only in its own unique way. And the only way to live such an inscrutable Life, happily, peacefully, is to simply accept what is.

Learn to give your Life, Time!

All of us wish we had 28 hour days and 3-day weekends. The truth is, surprisingly, this is possible. Provided we are willing to invest ‘time’ in this wish.

Fundamentally, to achieve this, we must learn to drink from Life’s cup, one sip at a time. And not rush through Life. Agreed that despite our earnings having gone up, and technology having simplified much of our lives, we continue to be faced with a deficit of time. We live in a world where traffic’s getting worse, the home-work-home commute is therefore only getting longer and is a drudgery, meetings are both meaningless and never-ending, targets seem even more unreasonable than they used to, the children are demanding more attention despite their having ‘grown older’ and overall, a sense of racing__from event to event, from crisis to crisis, from chore to chore__ prevails over living! And, of course, weekday mornings are still dreadful.

This, however, is the time to pause, to take a deep breath and go through your morning, day and week, mindfully. This may seem like a stupid, impractical suggestion. But consider it. By running faster and faster, by rushing, you are only going to exhaust yourself. Your energy will remain depleted all day and perhaps all week. Which is all the more reason why you need to practice mindfulness. Mindfulness means to focus your attention on whatever you are doing, unmindful of a previous task or an upcoming one. We do just the opposite. While packing the kids away to school, your focus is on your own commute. While on the ride to work, you are already thinking of the 3.30 pm meeting for which you are underprepared. And worry if it will get over in time for you to leave work and get home, because there’s the carpenter coming over at 6.30 pm to fix the wardrobe lock! This prescription, to slow down and yet proceed with focus, isn’t an original one, is definitely not invented by me, nor is it a “cure for our times”. The 12^th century Tibetan Buddhist monk, Jetsun Milarepa (1052~1135) had advised thus: “Hasten slowly and ye shall soon arrive.” He championed nimbleness and un-distractedness over rushing, even in those times.

The simple truth about time is that you can have as much time as you want, available to you, provided you are ready to work for and on it. Many of us are armchair wish-makers. We want more time, but we don’t want to make changes to our lifestyles and schedules. We don’t want to analyze our workdays and weeks and decide what’s core and what’s non-core. Without investing time in understanding what’s important and worthy of our time, we can’t expect to find more time in our daily lives!

Get this straight. And know that this aspect about managing your time is non-negotiable. When you do work on time diligently, your Life will become meaningful and an endless experience of ‘leisure’. It was the super-tramp poet William Henry Davies (1871-1940) who wrote in his 1911 poem, ‘Leisure’: “What is this Life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare!” Imagine, if in a packed week, on a crazy  morning, you could just ‘stand and stare’ at people rushing to work! It really is possible. All you have to do is to understand that if you want to have the time of your Life, you must be willing to give your Life, time!

Excuse me, do you have a moment please…?

If you can help – always help. Don’t think. Just help.

Most of us lead such busy lives that we don’t even have time for ourselves. So, we don’t pause to reflect on the challenges people around us are faced with. Perhaps, there is less trust in humanity at one level – so not many want to come forth and offer help. Or, maybe, people don’t have enough time anymore. Or, often times, we don’t even realize that someone around us needs help.

An incident in Chennai on Monday, that has been reported extensively by the media here, holds up a mirror to all of us who are “too busy” to even look up from our own lives’ schedules, forget helping someone.

A 46-year-old man, Augustine, walking by the Adayar river with his wife and two children, suddenly flung his nine-year-old daughter Roshni into the river. He then tried to snatch his seven-year-old son, Joshua, from his wife, Rani, in an attempt to throw the boy too into the river. When a shocked Rani resisted his efforts, Augustine jumped into the river. It was rush hour on a Monday morning. Several people driving past on the bridge pulled up and peeped over the railing, wanting to, as it so often happens in India, “catch the action”. But none came forward to help. It would have been another typical Indian roadside story of apathy in the face of a tragedy, had it not been for Dinesh Babu, a 23-year-old, marketing executive, on the way to work. Unmindful of the depth and treacherous nature of the river, or of his limited knowledge of swimming, Babu jumped into the river and managed to lift Roshni above the water, over his shoulder. Seeing him struggle with the girl, another passer-by, Saravanan, 26, dived into the river. Saravanan knew swimming and he managed to escort both Babu and Roshni to the bank of the river in some time. Augustine however was not found for all of Monday. His body was recovered from the river on Tuesday.

Babu’s braveheart act not only calls for an applause but also begs reflection and introspection by each of us. Ask yourself:    

•        What would you have done in such a situation?
•       How can you be more sensitive to the needs of people around you?
•       Whenever you can’t help personally, do you consider mobilizing help?

Each situation that requires helping someone may not be fraught with as much urgency and risk as in Roshni’s case. But the key point to ponder over is do we even considering helping? Or are we so caught up, indifferent and self-obsessed, with our own lives that we miss even noticing that someone needs our help?

My family and I continue to be blessed by the kindness and compassion of people, often even unknown folks, who have walked into our lives and have helped us – spontaneously, selflessly. I can vouch for how much of a difference it makes when you realize that someone, somewhere cares. So, if it is possible, do pause to look up, and around you, from your busy Life – someone can possibly do with a wee bit of what you have in plenty, if only you care to offer it to them! PS – most often that resource can even be time, and not necessarily money or something in kind!

Make a sound investment today – give your child your time!

Create quality time to spend with your children before they grow up and don’t have any time for you! Caught up with our own busy careers, we often tend to postpone family time and sometimes see our kids’ activities as unimportant in the face of several more pressing tasks. Our children are very forgiving and won’t really grudge it if we miss an annual day at school or a pantomime they are participating in. But soon, sooner than you can even imagine, they would have grown up and flown away into the big world – to build their own careers and raise their families. You may have all the time in the world for them then but they will have none to offer you! 

On my evening walks, I often see a father-son duo that we know of. They don’t know us. But we know of them and their family. The son is a strapping teenager. Tall and handsome. Must be close to 18 or 19. He can’t see though. And he is autistic (we know of his condition through a common family friend). Most evenings, the father will bring him along on a motorbike. The neighborhood we walk in does not have any traffic to speak of. So, the father will ride the motorbike a few times through it. The boy will be delirious with delight as the breeze pampers his face. He will raise his hands and at times yell in glee. After a few rounds on the motorbike, the father-son duo will walk through the neighborhood. The father will hold his son’s hand and tell him all that’s going on around them. The boy will ask several questions and seek graphic details__which, given his autism, I find, very remarkable. The father will patiently answer his son and provide each detail that he seeks. I find their camaraderie inspiring.  

In fact, it sometimes makes me feel guilty. In the years that my son was in his teens, I made little time for him. I rue the fact that I missed several of my kids’ special days in school because I was always having, as I vainly reasoned to myself,  ‘more important and urgent things to do with the business’. So when my son went away to study in Chicago some years ago, I felt the void in our half-empty nest the most. I couldn’t reconcile to the reality that our child had flown away even when I had not been around much during his growing up years! I am glad though that one summer, when he was 17,  we, just me and him, went on a vacation to Rajasthan. That will be a precious memory for me, forever, of spending quality time with him. Mercifully, we have a good friendship between us though. However, I made amends with my daughter. Apart from Life, and business, slowing down and offering me a lot of time to watch her do the things she loves doing, I also made it a point, with my wife, to be at each of our daughter’s special moments. Yesterday, for instance, we spent two beautiful hours watching her perform at an ‘Acapella’ concert with her very talented college band.

I have realized that we don’t need a handicap or a natural process of growing up to remind us that there are far more important things to do in Life than build a career or a business. Nothing can compensate for the joy of witnessing your child express herself or himself. Making time for being with your children is perhaps the best investment decision you will ever make. And here’s a simple tip to create that time in your packed calendar – just allot all the time you spend worrying about the lack of a work-Life balance to your children! And voila! Not only will you feel enriched, your work-Life balance will be instantaneously restored too!

Understanding the ‘other’ EMI – Each Moment’s Invaluable!

All our insecurity stems from our worries over what will happen in a future that no one has seen! And often times the insecurity is heightened by financial commitments that still remain to be fulfilled. There’s a cruel irony to this state: the financial commitments we have made are based on hope, faith and some self-confidence (in our ability to stay gainfully employed) even as we are totally clueless about our future and do not know for sure what awaits us in the next moment! This situation is further vitiated when we agonize over these commitments and always, therefore, are in a state of anxiety and worry.

I met someone who is in a well-paying job, with an excellent track record in an impressive corporate career. Seven years back he was laid off from his job when his company decided to wind up and after over three years of being unemployed, he finally landed the job he currently has. Even though there’s no evidence at the moment that history may repeat itself, he confessed, he is worried stiff about his job because he has EMIs (Equated Monthly Installments for loans taken) to be paid. “I live in constant fear of losing my job again. I am haunted by the consequences of defaulting on my EMIs,” he said to me, visibly anxiously. I advised him to chill and take each day as it comes.

When I recalled this conversation this morning, it became clear to me that as people who are continuously making an attempt to make our lives better, the EMI has become a necessary evil. Every financial institution today is willing to partner with every manufacturer or service provider to offer attractive, easy monthly payment schemes that allow us to buy whatever we “want” with an ease of repayment that’s commensurate with our projected income. This has led to our several “wants” being fulfilled. Be it the cars we drive or the TVs we watch or the vacations we take or the apartments we live in. At least a large majority of the working professionals today are users of EMI-payment plans.

Let’s clarify and understand this further. The reason why EMIs as a an option exist is to make our lives simpler. And to make us feel comfortable. And to make us happy. If they have started haunting us and tormenting us, then we have stopped using EMIs as a payment tool, and instead are being “used” by them! In the process, we have stopped living. And only seem to be existing __ slogging relentlessly, while complaining endlessly, to pay off our EMIs.

If this rings true to you, then it’s time to revisit both your financial outlays and commitments and inquire within whether you indeed are living intelligently. Focus on a different EMI as you do this. EMI does also stand for and mean EACH MOMENT’S INVALUABLE. So it is! And with every passing moment, you__and I__are inching closer to death. If there’s a great time to LIVE, it is now. If the average lifespan for us humans is taken as 70 years, then we have 220,75,20,000 seconds or moments in all to live. Each of them is invaluable. And several thousands of them are already over. They are gone! How many of them were memorable? How many can you recall? And how will you recall any, if since your adulthood, you have only been a slave of EMI payment plans, and have not lived completely to make Each (Invaluable) Moment Memorable?

Hope you get the unputdownable learning here. The EMI-payment plan is but a tool, an instrument. There’s absolutely nothing wrong in opting for EMI-payment plans. Use them well though__prudently effectively. And never be enslaved by them. Don’t allow them to ever rob you of the other EMI! Live freely, completely, happily – for the other EMI too. Because, Each Moment’s Invaluable, Indispensible, Irrevocable and Irretrievable! Either you encash the remaining available moments in your Life by living them fully or they are gone!

Offer this lifetime to serve Life!

There is a famous book by one of my favorite authors Robin Sharma titled, “Who will cry when you die?”. I like to ask the question differently: “How will you be remembered after you are gone?”

We will all be remembered after we are gone. Make no mistake about that. Have no doubt. The “how” of it is what you__and I__have a choice with. You can either make your lifetime memorable and have people remember you as one who served, who inspired and whose Life is the message. Or you can fade away, as a friend of mine wryly says, having been “a burden on the planet” – having lived a self-obsessed Life and having been totally “un-useful”.

The other day I was, out of sheer curiosity, watching Tamil film actor Prakash Raj host the inaugural episode (his first ever) of the “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” reality show’s Tamil equivalent on Star Vijay. On the show, he celebrated a contestant who had dedicated his entire Life to support a marginalized, tribal community. Prakash Raj then went on to say what a big difference it makes when people reach out and touch the lives of people who are helpless, and in dire need. He narrated his own story of the day, years ago, when his father had passed away. He was a struggling upstart in the Kannada film industry then. He said he did not have any money that day to cremate his dead father. He recalled how, when he sat wondering what would happen, someone came by and bailed him out. Simply out of the blue. It turned out to be noted Kannada star and director Ravichandran. Ravichandran gave Prakash Raj Rs.5000/-, without him asking, and saved him, as he disclosed, “embarrassment and a lifelong burden of guilt”. “I will always be grateful to Ravichandran Sir for what he did for me and will always remember him as a great soul,” said Prakash Raj.

Veer Bhadra Mishra  - Mahant Ecologist

That’s a learning I picked up from the past week on how we can make a difference in an individual’s Life! And then there are those who touch the entire ecosystem. The Hindu this morning carries an obit titled ‘Warrior for a River,’ by Omar Rashid, of Prof.Veer Bhadra Mishra, noted environmentalist and mahant (head) of the famous Sankatmochan temple in Varanasi. Mishra inherited the position of mahant of the temple when he was barely 14, after his father’s death. But he has, since 1982, been involved in leading the Sankat Mochan Foundation, a non-profit, non-political body, that works for keeping the river Ganga clean and free of pollution. Most Indians revere the Ganga and consider it holy. But almost all Indians know that it continues to be among the most polluted and contaminated water bodies in not just India, but the whole world. Mishra’s raison d’etre was to clean up the Ganga and restore it to its once pristine state. Rashid reports that Time magazine declared him the magazine’s “Hero of the Planet” (1999) for bringing the plight of the Ganga to the world’s attention and inspiring other river activists. “For his commitment to the river, he rightly won the epithet ‘Ganga Putra’ (Son of the Ganga). Varanasi will also remember him for his “Ganga-ethics” and his personal relationship with the river, which motivated him to say: ‘I am part of Ganga and Ganga is part of me.’”, writes Rashid, hoping that the day will come when Mishra’s dream of the Ganga being free of even a drop of sewage will be realized!

All of us have this good gene in us that inspires us to want to work outside of our own myopic view of the world and climb out of our own needs’ spectrum. Yet we are also so very caught up in the whirlpool of seeking deservance that we fail to seize the opportunity to serve. A simple way to get started is to flip the paradigm and stop wanting to be only successful and instead aim to be useful. Stop saying you deserve (more) and instead try to look for ways to serve (more). This lifetime is a gift. And you may want to be remembered for having used that gift judiciously for helping make this world a better place. Offer yourself to serve Life! There’s no other God than Life. There will be no other opportunity than NOW!