Sharing of responsibilities

One of the weekends I spent with my cousins in Mumbai. It proved to be a memorable. I learnt a lot about people in the course of the conversation that we had.

The first thing that stuck me, about myself was how relaxed I felt! It was not my house. I did not have to answer calling bells, telephone bells, mobile rings, intercom beeps. I have a very bad association with bells. I always hear my school bell in all these which I always missed, but in comparison, these bells are better!

The first lesson that I learnt was to relax even at my house. Well, to be honest I feel that if I learn to understand that even this is not my house, then I know that I can relax.

But is this possible? To have a detached attachment sounds like an oxymoron and surely is one. I have heard one of my father’s friend often say, “This is not my house, I happen to be here”.

Those words, in the recent past, have started flooding my memory. As I sat in a pensive mood trying to untie the knot around detached attachment, one of my cousins narrated an incident.

One day Bhagwan SaiBaba went to a house hold with few of his disciples. An old lady lived in the house and she felt proud having a holy man in her household. After discussing about a lot of things, they finally went to sleep past mid night. At around 2 a.m., Baba woke the old lady up and asked her to make 2 dosas for him.

Obediently, the old woman got up, lit the flame and made all the preparations for making the dosas. As she was about to make the dosas, Baba told her to make it silently. The others were sleeping in the adjacent room and he did not want to wake them up.

Now the lady did not know what to do. While making dosas the noise the water sprinkled over the tawa makes a noise followed by the wet batter. She silently took the batter and mixed it thoroughly. She exhibited no signs of tension, nor did she even take a break in her work to think about what Baba said.

Baba seemed surprised. He again told her that he did not wish to disturb the others who were sleeping peacefully.

Now the lady stopped and turned towards Baba. “You told me to make 2 dosas for you. Till I complete your orders I will not hear anything else. Making the dosa is my job. Ensuring that there is no noise is yours”, she said.

When she finished the narration, I understood the reason for the stress that most of us undergo when we are at home. When we step out of our house, we do not feel the stress.

The detached attachment now seemed possible. Do what you are responsible for. This is what the old lady had realised, may be through the years’ of experience.

Only making the dosa was her responsibility, the God knows how to supress the noise!

The reality about truth

The mysticism that surrounds the word truth has been a subject of debate for ages. The more we try to find out the truth about a given situation the more its vistas broaden making us gasp for breadth at its sheer enormity and our miniscule form in comparison. The reality about truth may be surmised to be its boundlessness.

Sometimes I hear people say ‘Don’t tell lies’ or ‘you are not telling the truth’. I want to tell them nobody knows the truth. What is truth for you may not be so for someone else.  When we reach what we think is the truth we understand that it was nothing but a mirage and to find out the truth we have to travel longer still. Only a few noble souls have been able to endure this tiring long journey in the path of truth and the rest of us are left to wonder if even these great men have reached the boundary of truth.

When a mammoth object breaks into several parts, we all pick up pieces of it. Each of us have a tiny piece of the object and the ego dictates to us and we think what we have on hand is the object in entirety. A few more of us team up together and try joining the pieces the way we understand and by virtue of mere numbers think that the object we have is the whole object. We can endlessly join the pieces, but the truth is we do not know if the way we are joining the pieces is the way it is supposed to be joined. We do not know if the number of pieces that we have is enough to complete the picture or if there are missing pieces. And we never will know.

In this context I also would like to make an earnest appeal to the readers to try and find as many of the pieces and join them in the best possible manner and yet not assume you have enough to declare the truth. Humility is the only torch available with human race that will help us find the pieces and wisdom is the light at the end of the tunnel that will help us join these pieces.

We must take utmost care about not losing the torch mid-way to anger, jealousy and ego. These are like the cloud blocking our way in finding the truth. While many of us may be too quick in jumping to conclusions about other people’s intentions we take ages to apologise even after knowing that we have erred in our judgement.

All through these years we live in denial and it further slows us down in the path of finding the pieces. We have a long journey called life which is ours. We cannot allow our ego to slow it down. At every step, therefore, humility is the torch which expels the darkness called ego. To carry on the forward journey give up the burdens of yesterday. Lighten yourself, so the journey can be fast and burden-free.

The Scientific emotions...

The fast paced human life has very little scope for emotions and to appreciate the finer aspects of human behaviour. Anger and fear seem to have taken over the emotion space and marginalised all other emotions.
Soon there will be a time when we have to be taught what emotions mean. There would be classes like '' Emotics' instead of 'Robotics'.
Believe me, there would be a mad rush for this too and every mother would want to enroll her child into this class, provided there is a certificate issued and the grades scored in this can be converted to marks.
Try taking an imaginary tour into a class where emotions would be taught to students and they would have to write tests and enact the emotions base don the lessons taught.

Here is an attempt to give scientific definitions to human emotions. I am sure the youngsters of today will understand emotions better if they are taught as scientific definitions (equation form would have been better, infact for emotional problem solving equations are the best!)

Revenge: It is what we do to others again and again, knowingly for the mistake they have committed once….unknowingly.

Anger: It is the punishment that we give our body for the mistake our mind perceives to have been done by others!


Hatred: It is the weapon that has the power to destroy almost anything on the face of earth.

Magnanimity: The ability to wake up everyday without bitterness about the previous day's happenings.

Though these are easy to ponder over, they may be very difficult to put to practise. Each day reminding ourselves of the goals that we have set and the journey that we have to reach those goals will keep us focussed on what we need to do rather than what we cannot change. This will help us maintain a positive stance and forge ahead towards our dreams.


 

Exclusive growth vs. Inclusive growth

There was an era of inclusive growth in the history of human race. It is fast being replaced by exclusive growth. With the advent of nuclear families, the unit grew as one and then broke off, rather than getting bigger. The nuclear family system is now being replaced by individuals who grow at their individual pace and the family as a unit is getting pulled in various directions.

This can be attributed to the fact that members of the same family prefer exclusive growth rather than inclusive growth. What this trend is bringing in is the drop in the care for elders, children and patients. Due to this there was a mushrooming of baby sitting and day care centers all across the globe. The second feature is the growth of care centers for patients. Now there is a meteoric rise in the number of old age homes or elder care centers.

Without getting judgmental, I would like to project the facts and maybe guess the reasons behind these societal developments of the last decade or so.
Every parent starts with the ambition to earn enough for the children and their education, then the job tends to become a habit, or an individual's identity rather than a need. Quitting the job, therefore can cause an identity crisis, which many of the women who are forced to quit their jobs for the varied reasons that accompany marriage and child-birth are going through.

Added to this woe is the pain of being a silent witness to the rapid growth in the spouse's career (Remember with a working wife the growth is not as rapid as when the wife is at home). If this growth is shared by all the family members there is solace. But if the earning spouse is bothered about his/her career growth the family gets neglected. This causes frustration and a sense of deprivation. The growth of one person becomes exclusive and may not serve the larger interest of the family.

Exclusivity in growth is becoming very common which is leading to late marriages and still later and therefore a complicated child birth. Single child syndrome is on the aise due to late marriages.
This trend is counterproductive to life and its sustainability needs to be questioned. Bringing in inclusivity to growth has become the urgent need of the hour.

How we address this issue, will make for an interesting  read for the generations to come. But come what may, we need to wear a different outlook, a fresher, newer outlook to initially define the problem on hand and tackle it subsequently!



The burden of knowledge

"I buzzed noisily as a bumble bee

until the burden of knowledge weighed on me".

This happens to most of us. We do not know why we do certain things, yet we go about doing it. Then someday we wake up as though from a trance to the reality. Then we seem to understand why things happen the way they do.

As kids we started going to school, not knowing what school means. Then as we grow we start enjoying school (most of us!) and the day of farewell seems to be the most difficult day.

Though we feel that if the end of school would be so hard, we would have enjoyed school more, in reality we would have been the same. Many times we think that we would have done things differently, the truth is that we would have done it the same way, how many ever chances are given.

In my opinion this is so because, it is only after we go through the experience the intelligence is converted to wisdom. Once wisdom dawns on us we need not go through the same experience. This is when we start looking at the world differently.

Let me discuss a few common experiences to put things in perspective.

When we travel through a road or an area the first time everything looks new and we develop an image based on what catches our attention. The second time we go through the same place we start noticing newer things and the place now does not seem as it seemed the first time.

Similarly, we may look at a design without knowing what it is. When the artist explains what it is then how many ever times we look at the design, we can only see it through the artist's eye and we are unable to see the way we saw it the first time.

Once our mind understands a concept, the naivity is lost and wisdom creeps in.

One purpose of life, therefore could be in converting intelligence into wisdom. God gave intelligence to all of us and then makes us go through life's experiences, so that this intelligence may be converted to wisdom. As we age we tend to become wiser. Life becomes easy when we live through each day as an experience, so that we may become wiser and learn the art of viewing good and bad alike. We then have the maturity understand that happiness and sadness are just two different states of he same mind and that they come and go.

We are mere spectators to events happening around us and learning is nothing but the conversion of intelligence into wisdom!
 

Patience vs. Tolerance

Once I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine. He asked me the difference between patience and tolerance.

I had read a Tamil poetry when I was 10 years old. The poet had described the patience of mother earth. Earth is patient with the farmer as he tears her surface open and sows the seeds. Earth is patient with the seed as the seed takes in the rain water and tears her deeper, planting herself with the help of her roots.

Having read this poem I appreciated the patience of mother earth towards all of us. Unfortunately we assumed this to be tolerance and stretched our luck too far. We started piercing her with harder tools and deeper still. We could not stop with food and basic shelter. Slowly her patience started wearing away. We are now experiencing landslides and earthquakes. Mother earth is running out of patience.

So this is the difference between patience and tolerance. While patience wears off, tolerance does not.  Tolerance can be understood as the everlasting patience, which comes out of a certain realisation that the situation will not change.

Some interesting ways of differentiating between the two would be thus:

·         While most of us are tolerant towards our children, our patience for our spouse wears off.

·         We not only tolerate the mistakes done by people we like, we also defend them. But we have very little patience towards people whom we despise.

·         While it is a virtue to tolerate one’s unfavourable circumstances, one needs to be patient till it changes.

The Stress of monotony

While the globe trotters are aware of the stress that change can bring in, any public sector employee in India would vouch for the stress associated with monotony.

There is no ‘doctor ordered’ medicine for coping up with stress though there are many ways of dealing with it. For a person who is used to frequent changes, stability for a while and relaxation by way of vacation could be an ideal stress buster.

 Nevertheless for the stress brought in by monotony, it is very difficult to find a practical solution. Creating a change or coping up with a change is never too easy.  It causes more stress and therefore cannot be an antidote to the stress of monotony. This form of stress sets in very gradually and grows silently.

While some people are able to handle it well, for some this could be as difficult to deal with as it is for a jet setter.

The picture that has been emerging in the past decade or so clearly indicates that neither the monotonous government job nor the high paying private job is a permanent solution to stress. In today’s world we have to think differently and learn to understand our own system and needs. When fatigue or burnout presents itself, we have to create the change necessary for ourselves and then be able to get back to work once we feel rejuvenated.

There was a time in human history when people knew what they had to do and went about their business. Those were times when lazy people were outnumbered by the active ones. Today the scenario is changing and people are used to making use of external resources and getting their work done. This has created monotony in the entire system and the active people are outnumbered by their lazy counter parts.

This explains why there is so much of talk about stress and how to manage it. The solution though is very simple. Stop, think, work.

The brand crazy crazy brand

I had just delivered a girl baby and overheard the doctors say that they had to check to see if she was perfect. I prayed silently that the result of the examination called the 'neonatalbranding' should be positive and my daughter should be accepted by the branding committee.

The check to brand the newborn goes thus:

The length of the fingers and toes, the sharpness of the nose and the position of the cheek bones will be analysed through DNA tests. Based on these the child will be branded as A, B,C or D. It is every mother's hope and dream that her child gets the A brand by the neonatal branding institute. While people from the yesteryear may wonder why this is so important, the branding status will determine the playgroup that the child can go to and then the nursery, the primary school, up to graduation.

Recently I heard that now-a-days some of the top brand companies ask for the neonatal branding certificate and top-notch companies like  Zeepro, WINTEL,UBM, etc. recruit only A branders.

I want my daughter to go to VeeKids, so silently I prayed, "God let her be A brand or at least B, but nothing below it". With a B brand she could go to TITS college or LXRI if not EET. I could send her to the IKSE or the VBSE board schools. The nearest branded school near my house is the BPS. With little more luck, I could even think of KIS.

My heart was racing when the doctor came back into the labor ward to announce the result of the neonatal branding. The doctor had a glum look on his face as he said, "I leave the decision of keeping the baby with you, to you. We will all respect your decision. May God give you the strength to accept the result and the courage to take a bold decision. Your daughter has a D grade."

My heart sank as the world came crashing down on me. I felt the earth giving way under my feet as I slipped from the bed. I gathered myself before I could fall and woke up with a jerk. I sat up and gently felt my stomach. I was due to deliver in about a week's time. The panic slowly vanished as I realised that the only positive I could take away from the nightmare was that I might have a girl baby. As I looked down I promised to myself that I will keep my child as healthy and happy as possible and never to buy something because it is branded and not to deny anything good just because it is not branded. Let the brand craze end here, I told myself!

The arithmetic of life

Ever wondered what life is all about? All of us, sometimes do ponder about the true meaning of life and more often than not, return a null search result. Few are the blessed souls (or so we think) who are sure about the purpose of their birth and are also successful in pursuing this purpose. 

I keep going through this thought process and time and again have drawn the same blank as a reply. But in recent times I have been trying to write up a formula describing life.

I am not saying that the truth of life or definition of life can be so simplistic as to hold it within the bounds of expressed words. No, the truth is that life is so abstract, so vast that it will break open the seams of any such container trying to define its bounds.

But to make for an interesting read, I attempted to contain this limitless word within the walls of an expression and here it goes:

Sum(t1(Forming a cocoon) + t2(Growing inside the cocoon) +t3(breaking free from the cocoon))

where sum --->age 0 to lifespan of a person

and t1, t2 and t3 are the time coefficients of the associated activity.

Let me explain the formula.

I feel that from the time we are born to the time that we die, we are constantly evolving. This evolution of a personality happens in stages and life itself is a sum total of all these stages. Each stage is very similar in nature to the preceding stage.

Put in very simplistic terms, each phase can be described as the total of time taken to form a cocoon around us + the time taken to grow to a certain stage + the time taken for the struggle to break free from the cocoon, only to repeat the process of forming a cocoon once again.

Though finite in nature for each person this process continues infinitely in nature. The number of such iterations depend not only on the life expectancy of the particular species, it also depends on the time taken for each iteration and may differ even with a particular species.

Though this attempt may seem futile at explaining life per se, it has brought out one interesting feature of life. Life is going to be a constant struggle. Some of us stop at stage 2, i.e. growing to a certain level within the cocoon and remaining there peacefully, while some of us struggle to break free from the cocoon. Once we break free from the cocoon that we are in, we struggle even further not knowing where to go. Then we start making a new cocoon. Whether the struggle is the purpose or we struggle to find the purpose will remain a mystery. A very intriguing one at that!

Cutting the Umbilical Cord

This is a phrase that I am going to use metaphorically to explain a few intangible yet real phases in our life. When a lady gets pregnant, that is the first tie for her with her child. She no longer is the same person. There descends on her a sense of purpose and one way or the other she has to start taking decisions, sometimes including whether to go ahead with the baby or not.

These decisions strangely affect her more than it affects anyone else around. It is kind of very very personal. After the birth of her child the umbilical cord is cut and the physical cord remnants fall off within a few days. But for the mother to mentally cut the umbilical cord causes so much of pain and anxiety and every stage only gets tougher than the other.

When the child is past 10 months, she stops breast feeding the baby and in the process, goes through withdrawal symptoms, which a person who has quit smoking can understand to some extent. She feels that the distance between her and the child has widened.

I went to the pediatrician the day before my daughter’s first day of school. The excuse being, I wanted to know if she was having fever and if she could go to school the next day. The doctor simply told me to read the poem on children written by Kalil Gibran. The first two lines of the poem go thus:

“Your children are not your children,
They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself”

I felt better. Umbilical cord number 3, I told my husband, tears streaming down my cheeks.

But in time we get used to it, until they reach the first grade, when they are away for almost 6 hours. For working mothers this is a boon, that they have been waiting for. No more running between creches and baby sitters. But for non-working mothers this phase is umbilical cord number 4.

As we try and adjust to the ever changing motherhood horizon, the girl children grow fast and when they attain maturity, they slowly stop discussing their matters with the mother. The 5th umbilical cord snaps! And this stage is very difficult as the mother is herself going through mid life crisis.

The day our children walk free with a job or otherwise, fit enough to fend for themselves, a strange sense of pride fills our heart. Once this feeling subsides, we realize that the 6th umbilical cord has snapped.

The ultimate umbilical cord, the 7th one snaps on the day our children get married and embark on their life’s journey.

Their journey and experiences with cutting the umbilical cord will now begin. A sense of completed purpose keeps us going. We now become a moral support as our children struggle to cut the umbilical chords, one after the painful next.

Appreciation - a powerful medicine

I was returning home from the nearby super market yesterday. As I walked past my daughter and her friends who were playing badminton, they greeted me with big smiles
One of the girls told me that sometime in the past I had taught her how to play and from then on she picked up interest in the game. I could not recall the incident. But I was very happy. I told them it felt nice to receive appreciation from young people. After I returned home I pondered over the episode.

What a powerful tool appreciation is! It can mend broken relationships, it can fill your heart with ecstatic happiness and satiate the air around with positivity. I thought hard to remember the time I last appreciated someone and felt really ashamed. The little girl in one nonchalant moment has taught me a very valuable lesson.

Appreciation, where due, should be given liberally.

I have made up my mind to look out for the small little things that people do that deserves an appreciation. Let me share the happiness that I experienced. It has become a habit with me, as with most parents, to assume that parenting teenagers is difficult as they grow out of their childhood and enter into adolescence. The problem, I feel, is further accentuated by the lack of sensitivity shown by the parents. We somehow stop appreciating them even as they struggle to shed their cocoon and set flight to their wings. We stop seeing and treating them as children, because the children themselves don’t like being treated like one.

 I, recently met a child about 12 years of age. She looked pretty in her outfit and I gave her a pat on her head and uttered the words ‘cute’. She felt embarrassed and as I apologised, she told me not to apologise as she did like it. Nowadays, my mother does not do these as she is involved in taking care of my younger brother, she continued. True. I went home and held my daughter close and kissed her on her forehead. Surprisingly, she smiled and said,’after a long time’. Adolescence is not equal to adulthood. We must give them their space and yet learn the knack of treating them like kids, maybe, grown up kids. After all if a mother of a teenage child liked the appreciation she got,they are kids are need as much appreciation as they deserve.

Let us not rob their little moments of success from them in focusing too much on an uncertain future and in our anxiety to prepare them for it!

Learn to learn

One day a teacher was heard shouting at her pupil. “What happened to what I taught you yesterday?” she screamed. The distraught, yet naughty boy replied “Gone with the wind”.

Many of such witty replies from younger humans make us ponder. While all of us think that we are teaching people a lesson or two, we have to think again.

Nobody teaches anybody anything.

This may sound untrue if we are to go by the mere words.  But think again. The first lesson that we need as living beings, in particular, mammals is about getting out of the womb.

Almost all of us living today knew it with our eyes closed!

So who taught us how to get out into the world? We learnt. And this to me seems as the ultimate truth. We all learn. We may not know a lot of things, but when the situation presents itself we learn or we perish.

Therefore as humans who have the capacity to analyse and then act, we must strive at making our children aware of the different ways by which we learn. There is a lot of stress on teaching methodologies and teaching aids.

Surprisingly very little emphasis is laid on learning methodologies or learning aids.

All of us do not learn at the same rate. This may not always be because some of us smarter than the others. It could also mean some of us have a need to assimilate, internalise and analyse what we have learnt before we are ready with the next cycle of learning.

Some learn by observation faster than others, while some of us learn through pattern recognition.

Memorisation is a very useful technique which keeps us in good stead even during old age. While there is a school of thought that shuns the very word, I feel both as a learning tool and as a mental stimulator this is a very useful learning technique.

We must take extra efforts in identifying the learning pattern in kids and then develop tools that will enable them to learn at their pace and method. Once we have achieved in creating this awareness in children, learning rather than teaching becomes easy.

This is very important because learning happens as long as we live. My father often said we all begin with learning to learn, and then we learn. Some of us learn to teach and then we teach to learn.

Bridging Faith

There is a very interesting story about the bridge that was built over the Indian Ocean. Irrespective of whatever connotations this subject has gained over the years, the enormity of the tale wound around it can keep many more centuries of story tellers interested in it.

It is said that the monkey God Hanuman, rose over the ocean to meet Sita. This churned up the trees and rocks and sent them ocean wards forming the bridge.

The other story goes thus. The rocks were laboriously picked, one after another, by an army of monkeys and Lord Rama’s name was etched in each of those and thrown into the ocean. How the bridge was built is not of great consequence, though, what or who built it is debatable.

Did God build the bridge?

Then, does God have the time for such tasks as building bridges to help people? If that is true then why do we need huge companies and great architects?

Did the monkeys build the bridge? Or did Hanuman build the bridge?

Do ordinary mortals have the immense capability to build such bridges? Then the world would have long been a maze of bridges. Then how do such mammoth tasks get accomplished? It is rightly believed that the inscription of the name of the Lord on each stone held it in good stead, floating over the ocean. This immovable faith in the almighty helps in achieving great tasks. The faith that humans have in God spins unbelievable magic.

To conclude the thought, let me recall the inspiring words of Swami Vivekananda “Faith, faith, faith in ourselves, faith, faith in God---this is the secret of greatness. “

Natural Living no more!

As evolution progresses and eras of bygones are replaced by newer thoughts and better living standards, mankind is drifting away from natural living. Instincts are replaced by scientific approach towards life.

Every action of man now seems to require training, so much so that children have to be taught to walk using walkers. There are special centers for potty training children. What can be more natural than these tasks, for which we seem to be needing training! I could not believe my eyes when I saw an advertisement for the diapers used for children which claimed to absorb 1 mug of the child's urine free, for every three mugs of urine that the child passes!

Artificiality has crept into every thought and every action of ours that natural living seemed to have died a natural death!

Talking and communicating with people who are standing in front of us has become very difficult. While mankind has learnt to talk to voices remote over network that has so trapped us in its web, the neighbour who lives next door is akin to alien being. We have willingly moved into this realm of artificiality that has now become a reality, that a few years’ hence no one will remember the era of natural living.

Artificial living has given birth to C-section deliveries, that women are opting willing to deliver their children unnaturally! Breast feeding is fast fading from the face of earth, that some good souls are now advocating for it and creating awareness among women whose genes are so adapted to the artificiality around. In every sphere of life, either willingly or by force of situation, we have soaked this artificiality so much that we are unable to get back to basic living.

In the heart of hearts each of us who has seen the rustic life style yearns for it. It seems so near yet so far to embrace the once prevalent, slow-paced living style. In the race against time to establish ourselves financially, we bury our dreams and ambitions. The burden of raising kids surrounded by pushing competition and raising standards, we miss out on their childhood.

The joys of parenting, the happiness of raising kids have become a feature of the era bygone. The speed at which progress is approaching living makes one feel, to what might shall we compete this race, which already seems to have overtaken us!

Happiness vs. Success

While both happiness and success are largely what you define them to be, success is a more material approach towards achievement, while happiness is a holistic approach towards life in general. Success differs form happiness, in that it makes you yearn for more, while happiness spells contentment. Both happiness and success are very important to our growth.

While one makes the soul richer, the other makes the pocket heavier!

What can make a man happy may not make him successful and surprisingly, what makes him successful, may not make him happy. Many believe happiness is being able to do what you want to do. Well, that I would call freedom. Then is it getting what you want in life? But, that defines success. So what exactly is happiness? How do we understand happiness? In my opinion, happiness is not quantifiable and has no particular reason. It happens when it does and if you stop a bit you will feel it filling your senses and creating a satiated, blissful experience.

While success makes you want more, happiness leaves you not wanting anything more, at least as long as the feeling lasts.

For a moment close your eyes and think of two things, one after the other. First think of living in a plush house with all luxuries that you can think of. Second, think of a tiny baby holding your finger with soft, gentle hands and smiling at you, the innocent, enchanting smile. Clearly these are two different feelings, two completely different experiences. One cannot be confused with the other. While happiness falls under the super set called human emotions, success is not an emotion. It is rather a state that you appear as, in the eyes of your co-beings, based on certain position that you achieve.

We often hear people describing others as 'a successful business person' or 'a successful politician' and so on. But have you ever heard of someone introducing someone as 'a happy teacher' or 'a happy film star'?

Therefore it is safe to conclude success as your state in the eyes of others around you and happiness as an emotional state that you experience within yourself. As much as it is important for a person to please others, it is important to please oneself. Therefore success is an ingredient that improves your public image and happiness is the essence of self image.

Happiness is the core, the self around which success can be woven beautifully. The key to success is therefore happiness. Start today by feeling happy inside and then slowly build your life around this happiness.

Remember that you cannot do something to be happy.

 Doing is associated with success and feeling is associated with happiness. Feel the happiness that is within you. Keep your mind calm, so that you don't miss out on this feeling.

Pressure vs. Pressure

In today's fast changing dynamics, parenting has become the most talked of subject and yet the least implementable one. I say this because, as parents we have lofty ideals, somehow are not able to put our thoughts to practice. All the parents that I talk to are against junk food, but we pack our kids' boxes with them. We all almost shun the heavily aerated soft drinks, but yield almost inevitably to the pressure from our kids.

In fact, I have a good mind to popularise the terminology, 'childrental pressure'.

Yes. While a generation faced the parental pressure, now there is a generation that is yielding to childrental pressure. How do we get over this? Is this pressure surmountable? Maybe, on hind sight, the writing was clearly on the wall. When a generation yields to parental pressure, they will yield to any pressure.

Therefore the solution lies more in a logical analysis of every situation and treating every problem as individual issues. Eating habits, entertainment, education are all three different aspects of a child's life and we must stop yielding to one aspect to win the other.
There was a time in evolution when punishment worked. Then came the era of reward and punishment. Now we are at the cross roads of yet another system, which is in the pipeline, to which we must gear up. That of group analysis.

If as parents, we analyse every situation logically before taking decisions and share our thoughts with our children, we will encourage the same behaviour in them. There is an added advantage to this system. Our children will help us deal with our emotional upheavals that very often accompanies tough decisions. And strangely, I find that when I voice out my concerns to my children, they often offer simple solutions and help in the effective implementation of the solution.
To all fellow parents, who bravely co-exist in the complex parenting space, take heart. Stop yielding to pressure and you will stop pressurising. Engage in group analysis with your children, without losing your head over the problem. If we sincerely voice our concerns we can hope that our children will also help us in parenting them better.