"The Guest" Attitude

Imagine you are on a holiday.

The place is new and you have never been here before. The people, their culture and the environment are all new. You start to have fun. You explore, you make friends and you are ever curious. Sometimes your wanderings tire you out but you don't mind. You go to sleep with a smile and sleep like a log. You wake up fresh and continue where you left off.

You learn about things, you discover amazing things. Amazing in your mind because you are curious and eager to drink it all.

Then you settle down. Stop being a guest and become a local, thinking you will grow roots here. Aim for permanence perhaps. You start planning for your future and that's a sure shot curiosity-dampener.

You stop observing because you are now living in the future, not the here and now. You take people around you for granted because you think you know them. You start to think you have seen it all and there is nothing further to see here. You want to control your experiences by plotting out a future. You develop a shell thicker than that of a tortoise and you slow down, grow old, get sick and die.

The moment before your death, you recollect your past and it feels like childhood is the best time of your life. Why? Because that's when you were most enthusiastic about everything around you. You were really interested to observe, to experience, to be in the here and now. You did not care about the future and for all intents and purposes, the past was non-existent in your mind.

What happened after childhood? Why did we stop acting like guests on holiday in a great place? 

At Peace

There I see it, the light at the end of the tunnel,
The tunnel is only as real as I imagine it to be,
But the light ahead is warm and inviting.
Hurtling towards that light, unblinking,
For if I shut my eye, I may choose to deny,
That there is a tunnel and that there is light.

Now I reach the threshold where the light begins.
It penetrates my eyes and my vision blurs,
I feel it now in every cell of my being.
What I thought is mine, is not mine,
What I imagined to be baggage is actually armour,
What I prayed for is already given.

The freedom that nothing is mine and I am nothing,
But mere conscience that finally awaken,
To Behold the Grand Sight of the Divine,
And laugh I did, and laugh I did.
With Him, in Him and Forever! 

Power and Trusteeship

'It is wise to be content with what we have'

The above line is prohibitive to growth itself. 

Aspire. Go after. Achieve. Without comparisons. Without remorse. Not because you are so attached with material comforts and can't live without luxuries in life but for the sake of the action itself.

There is no nobler work than expanding one's influence, one's wealth and one's circle of friends.

The westeners acquire power to wield as a weapon. But eastern philosophy expounds using the power for upliftment of the downtrodden.

The rich and powerful in the society are mere trustees - M.K. Gandhi

Loss of every single life where the primary cause is poverty and inaccessibility to basic standards of living, is a personal affront/insult to the rich and wealthy in the society.

But mere contribution to charity cannot be considered adequate philanthrophy. Philanthrophy is devising a plan to create wealth for the society so that in your epoch, the living conditions in and around you are better for all concerned than in any other points of time in the past.

Credit for your wealth goes to you only when you use it for others. Claim credit for paying forward and not for aquiring. 

Art of Inspiring

Dedicated to the Chief Executive:

Recently I heard a Business Leader exclaim to his senior staff, somewhat rhetorically, "In the last 2 months, what are the new things you have attempted? Do you innovate enough?"

That made me reflect on "How do I inspire people to innovate?" Forget innovation, how do I inspire those around me to do anything. 

Some answers, made famous by self-help books, are walk-the-talk, lead-from-front, paternalistic approach etc. Agreed they might work.

But there is a pitfall of your people following you blindly instead of working towards a shared vision.

Here is a very interesting story (food for thought): You have a vision to build a small community that is self sufficient.You call for a town hall meeting and you present your vision of how fulfilling it will be to become self sufficient/self-reliant. Your people nod and agree enthusiastically. You then tell your people,

"See, I will embark on an initiative to establish trade and relations with neighboring communities. Now follow my lead and start your new innovative initiatives".

All of your people start talking to your neighbors without doing anything else. You see this and you are confused.

If all of them are building relations, who will produce the stuff we need to be self-sufficient, who will barter, who will clean, who will keep the books and prepare budgets, who will contribute to infrastructure building, transport, housing etc.

You assign tasks and establish teams and say, "Do not forget that we are trying to build a self-sufficient community. Now take care of your responsibilities and your team." They do it. They get so used to this that the functions become mechanical. The vision becomes - blurred. Silos are created and individual fiefdoms emerge with ambitious team leaders batting for themselves and their interests. 

You wonder - What is going wrong? Is not the vision communicated clearly and as often as practicable?

The problem is - When you set the vision, you intended 'self-sufficient community' to be a by-product and not a vision. The vision should have been 'coordinated excellence in every sphere of work' that will result in 'self sufficiency' and many other things besides.

Excellence as a culture can never be over emphasized and never to be forgotten. Excellence, finesse and style/panache inspires people to intrinsically replicate. And it makes everything infinitely more interesting - for everybody in the team. 

Respect & It's Nemesis - The Hierarchical Society - Part 1

Classes and categories are products of human endeavor to simplify the world into understandable pieces.

But in ardently and subconsciously repeating this process of categorization, we have devolved our reasoning mind into stereotyping. I think this is the single biggest flaw of humanity.

We tend to develop preconceived notions the moment we have few basic information about another human being such as age, gender, race/caste/color and this list is endless.

Add to this list a plethora of adjectives. I take an example of the adjective 'young'.

What do you visualize as the typical characteristics of 'young'?
Naive, innocent, inexperienced, fragile, learner, active, unwise etc etc.

As opposed to the adjective, 'Senior'.
Wise, lethargic, adviser, weary, observant, condescending, deep thinker etc etc

We are busy in this process and in building our image of the person in front of us that we fail to see them as they are. 'Seeing them as they are' is akin to watching passing traffic while you yourself are moving.

If you respect someone adequately then you will move along at their speed and enjoy travelling with them without the pressure of having to categorize them because they are not yet dead. They are changing right in front of you in the time you take to typify them.

Only a fool will prefer to interact with images when he has the opportunity to commune with a real being. 

Catch up with your loved ones this new year and stop profiling them. You want something from them, be prepared to give something in return. The least of which is your complete attention.