An 8 year old and his ‘Secret Treasure’

...On Practice — your Secret Treasure, and the Power of having a Growth Mindset

Circa 2004, my 8 year old self went up on stage and performed a bunch of monologues from Harry Potter, all by myself. I had never performed on stage alone before. I knew nothing about acting. The thought of going up on stage would give me chills. I would start shaking whenever I had to say something in front of an audience. I was introverted, shy, and didn’t like attention- clearly not the kind of kid who you’d imagine would get into acting. But I did…

Choices

Life is queer at times. Sometimes, even though you know your goals, you end up making the wrong choices. And it may take a long time for you to realize that. For a long time, you might be disillusioned into thinking that your choice is leading you to your goal. But then, after a long time in the darkness, it suddenly hits you. That you've been lost all along. That you had made the wrong choice. Then suddenly everything seems dark. You wish you could alter that choice you made. You wish you could go back in time and make your decision all over again. But life isn't like that.

So what do you do then? initially, you feel lost for a while. But then what? Are you going to fill your days with regret, sorrow, and self pity ? Or will you try to change things? But how, you may ask. What if its not possible. What about all those external expectations from friends family and society? Will you see this as life hitting a brick at you or will you see this epiphany as an opportunity to make amends? You'll probably hear from a lot of people, "it'll all work out okay in the end. Just work hard" or if you're like me, you might cuddle into your bed, get your iPod out and get goosebumps hearing Steve jobs tell you to do what you love and discard everything else. Well, you may feel inspired for a while. But then what? You still won't know what to do? It's not that easy to suddenly change to doing things just the way you want. It just doesn't happen that easily and practice. You need direction. You need planning. Often times, because of the irreversibility of the choice you made, you may have to compromise on something. You may have to sacrifice certain things that are important to you, but less important than your real goal. I'm not going to tell you that follow your heart and everything is going to be okay. I'm no one to say that. I don't know for sure  if it will be okay. I just hope that it might be. Because that's all I have. And you need something to hold on to, something that leads you, that drives, that shows you direction. Something that enables you to feel alive for another day, that helps you go through another day. It's just this vague hope that guides you through the dark caves, the hope that soon, you will emerge out of the darkness and find light, find direction, a road-map that you had been missing all along that will lead you to your goals.

Destiny, and a Seventeen Year Old's Encounter with Failure

My dad often tells me, "Work hard. But in the end whatever has to happen will happen, you cannot control your destiny". I find this rather uninspiring. I always reply that if my fate is predefined that why should I work hard at all. Let this great 'destiny' determine everything, I'll just sit back and relax. 

I have nourished my dream for a long time now. I have worked very hard for it, taking each and every step I needed to, in order to get closer to it. Often times, there have been setbacks, obstacles. I have often fallen down. I have been told a zillion times that I should quit, that I won't be able to make it. That it is very difficult. Lot of people have given me examples of others who tried and failed.  But I have, always discarded all that. 

And today, when I find myself so close to achieving my dreams, I feel a little lost. I worked so hard for something which I thought was going to be a major step towards the fulfillment of my dreams. I was so sure of making it. Nothing could possibly have gone wrong, after working so hard. But something did. I don't know what,  but it did. That's when I remembered my dads words. 

I wonder, is there something as destiny? Is everything predetermined? 
Was I destined to lose? Is this life's hint that I should be focusing on something else? 

After three years of working really hard for one thing, when life hits you in the head with a brick, you're left wondering if you had been lost all along.
So what am I going to do? Am I going to abandon my dreams, believing that life has just shown me that I can't achieve them, that I have something else in store for me? Do I really have something else in store for me? Or is my dream the only thing that matters. Is this all an illusion? Or is it true. Is it really life's way of telling me that I should alter my path...
To be honest I don't know. ..It's hard to think of abandoning my dream when I have nurtured it and worked hard for it so long. It's hard to even accept the possibility that I might have been deluded all this while. 

Today, when my mind is haunted by the fear of failure, I seek control. And I am being forced to realize that my life, is not entirely in my control, that success may not always be proportional to efforts, that there is this thing called fate. I detest the idea that my life has to be controlled by some great force other than those within me. Does it have to be this way? And why so?....

As I seek these answers, I am reminded of the words of Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from her poem, “Will”- "There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can circumvent or hinder or control The firm resolve of a determined soul. "

Pleasures of Reading- “Sitting in Bombay, Experiencing London…”

You are in London. A young lady in black sunglasses bumps into you while you walk past the crowd at Lymington road, feeling the autumn chill in the air. The clouds part, and a great golden shower of sunlight pours onto the road. The young lady, who, you think is so improbably beautiful smiles apologetically and walks past. You smile back at the book and put a bookmark on that page, making a mental note that you’ll get back to it as soon as you finish dinner.

Novels, they transport us to another world, maybe another country, another city, another family, another background, another ethnicity, another religion, another personality. And soon enough we realize that we are seeing the world through another person’s eyes. Who is this other person?... Is it us? Or a transformed version of us? Well, that’s what it feels like..That person indeed becomes a part of us, so close that often it is difficult to say if he is us, or we are him. He is the character, the protagonist, in most cases, who has sunk into our subconsious and has become our companion, or an escort, to take us around his world, his life… his story. He takes through his story as we watch it like a movie in our mind, or, if it’s an extraordinarily great piece of writing, experience it vicariously, as if it were happening to us.

You get back to the book. It is an uptown restaurant in London. A few pages later, the culture of London has become like your own. Novels, they also inform a great deal about different societies, their cultures, their way of living. They do not directly inform, they reveal, in bits and pieces. The information just flows through beautifully with the rest of the novel like the mineral-rich sediments in a river. After a voyage of discovery and revelation when we get at the end of it, we realize that it’s become a part of us.

You put the book down and get back to your work. What a nice unwinding, refreshing break you’ve just had from your stressful unvarying routine of everyday life. Novels indeed provide an escapism from the humdrum necessities of reality. For many of us, they may create a world we want to live in; for many, they may show us the world we want to live in and make us feel far away from it, or they may just be an entertainment for some. But I believe they much more than just that. They are like a ship that takes us to distant lands, often it may get hijacked by pirates but that just adds to our vicarious adventures. They are like that most interesting friend of yours, whose stories you’re never tired of listening; only that they come to an end.
As Paul Sweeney once rightly asserted, “ You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little  as if you’ve lost a friend”.

Do we most value the things that are difficult to attain?

Those who have overcome great adversity in life can take satisfaction from Thomas Paine’s assertion, “The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” For people truly to appreciate their victories, they must be able to contrast them with the hardships they have undergone. To value their good fortune, they must suffer ill fortune as well.

Living in the Moment

One of the games that we played in my workshop (Apna Shakespeare) was the 1-30 game. In this game we all sit in a circle with our eyes closed, and count from 1-30 (one person says '1' the other says '2' and so on...)

Whenever there is an overlap (2 people say the number at the same time), we start from 1 again. But our eyes are closed so we have no way of knowing who is speaking when. We just have to feel the vibe and decide which the best time to speak is. It may seem easy but let me tell you it is not.

During the first few days we barely managed to cross 10. Jaimini kept telling us not to think about the end result. He told us, “don’t think about reaching 30, thinking about going from 1 to 2, 2 to 3 and so on. Enjoy yourself and live in the moment.” As we followed his advice, we began to improve. We stopped worrying about reaching 30 and started having fun. We focused on going from number to number and not from 1 to 30. by the end of the workshop, we reached 28. That is quiet an improvement from day 1 when we were on 6.

There is a valuable lesson here: don’t worry about the end result, live in the moment and enjoy the journey. As we grow older, we become very result-oriented.

                        “Yesterday is history, 
                         tomorrow is a mystery,
                         today is a gift
                        and that is why it is called is present.”

Live in the moment. Take pleasure in what you are doing. Don’t worry about reaching the end. Enjoy the journey, and soon you’ll realize that the journey itself is your destination.

My Experiments with Truth: DOES GOD EXIST?

There are many wild, wacky, bizarre, absurd, foolish and irrational ideas and beliefs when it comes to the subject of God. One hears many things related to this subject, different people have different viewpoints. Whether the truth is among them is not clear. And, of course, the big question familiar to all of us: Does god exist? Many people believe that he does; and is the supreme creator and destroyer. Many others (atheists) think more skeptically and refuse to believe in God without any evidence. Then there are others (like me) who are somewhere in the middle, they don’t completely have faith and neither are they ignorant like atheists; many of them are looking for answers, trying to find the truth.

Let’s look at some real life experiences and incidents, and see if we can conclude anything and resolve this dilemma.