Feeling down? Don't bring others down

It happens to all of us, doesn't it. Some days we are happily walking down life's road, watching to the roses bloom on both sides of the road. And then there are days, we are dragging ourselves on the same road, rocky this time and thorns to avoid on both sides. Well, it's the same road, the same flowers but our view of it had changed this time. Because we stumbled over a few rocks, we now see the road as rocky and because a few thorns pricked us, we forget the flowers.

The worst part is that when most of us feel low, we tend to (whether knowingly or unknowingly), try to bring people, especially our friends and close ones down as well. Just imagine having a bad day at office, then coming home. Getting a nice greeting from family and friends and just exploding in their faces. I've been guilty of doing that and believe me, that's not a nice way of meeting some one close to you. Because it ends up passing your bad mood onto that person especially if he/she is close to you. Most of the times, family and really cool friends will understand that you are having a really bad day and will be most comfortable listening as you blast about how you day was bad. But then it takes one nasty word, a few hasty sentences that can really put strains on a person's mood.

The best thing is to keep a control when we feel down. Sure, it is not easy to not get upset when you just missed your 7:48 local and you are jammed up in the train. But then again it is easy. When we feel low, we continuously think about it. We should realize that if we can do anything to change our situation we should. But if not, then there is no use of thinking about it and worse passing it on to our loved ones.

So the next time you come home and feel like banging a cricket bat on your boss's head, remember to postpone that till you reach office the next day and the friend in front of you is willing to take it but does not deserve it.

Indian education kills

Everyone knows the Indian education system sucks when it comes to exams and the grading of students by their marks. The recent spate of suicides by students all over the country is an indication of what happens when marks are giving so much importance than the education of a student.

Parents should be blamed for putting much pressure on their children. In trying to keep up with the ever increasing competition (in scoring good marks), children lose their childhood and peace of mind. Stress is a killer disease for all ages and it has a very significant impact on the minds of children. Kids are made to run for tutions and classes the entire day. The tension just keeps on increasing from school, the 10th, 12th, so on and so forth.

We are always obsessed with marks and percentages. Parents who want their children to do well in life get stuck to making their children into doctors or engineers. They pressurize their kids to do well in school. Every child cannot score 90+ percentages. The schools also should be blamed. The kids who score well are placed on pedestals. The kids who are unsuccessful in scoring marks are made to feel inferior with red marks on their reports, disrespect, etc.

One of the ways to be adopted it to do away with the marking system. Instead of teaching them to mug, children should be educated with knowledge. Knowledge not just about physics, maths, chemistry, english or marathi. But also knowledge they can use to cope with their life when they venture out into the world. More emphasis should be placed on the development of the child in all aspects like education, sports, arts, etc.

Some level of understanding is growing among parents who have realized that education is something that can be put to use and not just mugging. Schools have started realizing the importance of the all round development of children. But that is occurring among the affluent, autonomous schools. The education provided by the government aided schools and colleges still continue to sit in the comfort of deciding student's fate by how much they can memorize and put on paper. Hopefully, the media which is helping people realize this folly, should be able to bring about at least some changes in our education system.

Eskimos and the wolves

I went to church today so that I can save some morning time tomorrow. Holy week has started with Good Friday and Easter this week.

Today's sermon was short and sweet; Eskimos and the wolves.

When Eskimos would want to hunt down wolves which would kill their cattle, they would take sharp swords and apply thick coatings of fresh blood on them. Then they would place the swords into the ground pointing upwards. The wolves would get the smell of the fresh blood and get attracted to the swords. They would then start licking the swords. On enjoying the taste of the fresh blood, they would continue licking it. As the layer of blood became thin, the sharpness of the sword would increase. Gradually, the wolves tongues would get cut and start bleeding but the wolves would be so engrossed in licking the fresh blood that they would not be able to make out that they are swallowing their own blood. Eventually, they would grow weak due to loss of blood and pass out. After which the hunters would come and kill them easily.

This story was compared with what we do in our lives. People who fall into the vices like drinking, smoking, drugs, etc are compared to the wolves. In the beginning, they enjoy their addictions with the most pleasure. But in the end it leads to nothing but their death.

Late stay = Hard work?

I've always been asking this question to friends about late stay and hard work. Because I've always been confused about my stand on this. Considering today's work culture especially in the IT industry, late stay has become a norm. People don't mind spending 10-16 hours in office. So does this equate to productive hours?

Maybe in other industries like those involving manual labor, working more may equate to working hard because more output will be obtained. But the IT industry works differently (by IT I mainly refer to software producing companies). Here people work their best in bursts because the main tool used is the mind and concentrating cannot be done for long stretches of time. No person can be productive continuously for 10 hours. It is in taking breaks and then concentrating for some time which produces the maximum productivity. So we have different views regarding late staying. One is that because we work in bursts, late stay is good as we can relax and work periodically instead of working under stress. This sounds good but then what happens is people tend to over stress themselves. That is why many young people are suffering from illnesses like blood pressure, diabetes, heart problems, which sometime back were heard of only in old people.

Looks like it is the managers who promote late staying. They themselves stay late and expect other's to do so too. Now working late during deadlines is acceptable but when it turns into a routine something is wrong somewhere. It seems that the crazy scheduling of work is where the problems start. Companies are into competition and the best place where they can compete is reduction in the delivery time. But this decision is paid heavily by the employees in terms of mismanagement of time.

So what is the solution? Frankly, I'm still searching for answers by analyzing what people have to say about this. But the solutions are definitely there. Many countries like Germany, UK, etc have strict norms laid out when it comes to work. Do you work with utmost efficiency and go and live your life. Such norms should be enforced by the organizations like NASSCOM who have a say in the IT industry. Only then can we expect some regulation in this matter.

Where are we headed in life?

When you determined what you want, you have made the most important decision of your life. You have to know what you want in order to attain it. ~ Douglas Lurtan ~

If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else. ~ Laurence J. Peter ~

Well, life is like that. A life without goals is somewhat wasting it. Just getting swayed like a leaf in the wind, having no sense of direction just causes us to fail to live the life that God has given to us. So the first thing we should have is a goal in life. Actually we should have many goals in life.

We should have at least a long term goal as to what we want to achieve say 5 to 1o years from now. We should put ourselves in place of that person that we want to become after those years. Seeing how it feels to be that person will help us to be motivated towards our goals.
For me, in about 5 to 10 years, I see myself as a successful person both at family and at work. I want to have a lovely family, take care of my parents and increase my position at work.

Also we should have short term goals. Short term goals are like the energy pills for our motivation. When we achieve success in our short term goals we feel good and motivated for moving forward towards our long term ones. Short term goals are basically milestones in achieving your long term goals.
For me my short term goals include improving myself as a human being, learn to respect and love others, keep reading to improve myself and my work, trying something different, etc.

But just setting goals will not help us achieve them. Action is what will achieve those goals for us. If our goals are from our heart, we will always be motivated towards achieving them. We should use our short term milestones to achieve our optimal best.

Sure when we try to achieve our goals, we will face obstacles. That does not mean that we should give up. Life just tells us that we should take a different path than the current one but our final destination should still be the same. Never, ever, give up on our goals and we will find true happiness.

So what are your goals? What are your milestones to achieving your happiness?

Prayer: A connection to God

I must inform you that I pray very few times and I need to increase my prayer time. Just wanted to post my thoughts on what prayer is about. We take any religion, there is prayer. Whether it is Hindus, Muslims, Christians, etc. All religions provide prayer as a means of communicating with God. Prayer is supposed to be the divine link between mortals and God.

But then start some problems. One is that people perceive prayer synonymous with granting of our wishes. So most prayers are made asking for this or for that. Mainly materialistic things. And when not obtained, there is discouragement which shows how hollow our praying was. Even I would shamefully suffer from the same situation. Also once we pray too often, especially prayers provided by so called priests, pundits, maulvis and so on, we forget the real meaning of prayer. Prayer just turns out to be a recitation of some memorized words which don't come from the heart but only from the mouth.

But prayer is much more than that. It is the path to our peace of mind. Prayer has been provided to us to relieve us from the stress that life throws at us. After a stressful day, just closing our eyes and talking to God (which is prayer), just mentioning our troubles to Him seems to bring extreme peace to our minds. That is what prayer is supposed to do.

So the next time you are stressed and go to a temple, mosque or church and by habit just tend to recite your prayers like a parrot, just pause for a minute and talk to God like to a friend. You will feel much, much better.

Contentment - happiness with one's situation in life

I was in the discussion with friends after lunch today and this topics seems to just come and go once too often. So I thought to write about it. The thought about being content with our life.

The first job that I had i.e when I could be considered an SET payed very little money, the work hours were 12 hours compulsory and life was tough. But the work helped me to learn a lot about being an actual programmer. Never in my later jobs have I learned as much and as fast as I had back then. But people who join large organizations with a hefty pay packet do not seem to be content with their job always comparing it with others. Something my mother says is quite true. Only when we grow from the ground level do we realize what we have achieved in life.

This discontentment branches out into all aspects of our life. We crib about our job, about our finances, about our love life. We complain about our looks, about not being smart enough and this and that. We always try to compare ourselves against other people and are never satisfied. Now I don't intend to tell that we should not have ambition. Of course we should always strive to improve ourselves. That is what life is about. But then we should also spend the time to appreciate the things we have in our life and avoid taking them for granted. True happiness can be found not on the outside but inside ourselves and that is when we are content with what we have.

The next time we feel dissatisfied with ourselves let us try and remember the things we have that many people can only dream to have in their lives.

Tribute to the Nice Guys

I was using StumbleUpon and stumbled upon this article. I found so many things matching that I could not resist posting it. Once again it's not my original but many of the things written in it do match with my thoughts about that topic cause I too am one of the "nice guys".

The link at http://www.stwing.upenn.edu/~jenf/writing/rant04.html

Ode to the Nice Guys
This rant was written for the Wharton Undergraduate Journal

This is a tribute to the nice guys. The nice guys that finish last, that never become more than friends, that endure hours of whining and bitching about what assholes guys are, while disproving the very point. This is dedicated to those guys who always provide a shoulder to lean on but restrain themselves to tentative hugs, those guys who hold open doors and give reassuring pats on the back and sit patiently outside the changing room at department stores. This is in honor of the guys that obligingly reiterate how cute/beautiful/smart/funny/sexy their female friends are at the appropriate moment, because they know most girls need that litany of support. This is in honor of the guys with open minds, with laid-back attitudes, with honest concern. This is in honor of the guys who respect a girl’s every facet, from her privacy to her theology to her clothing style.

This is for the guys who escort their drunk, bewildered female friends back from parties and never take advantage once they’re at her door, for the guys who accompany girls to bars as buffers against the rest of the creepy male population, for the guys who know a girl is fishing for compliments but give them out anyway, for the guys who always play by the rules in a game where the rules favor cheaters, for the guys who are accredited as boyfriend material but somehow don’t end up being boyfriends, for all the nice guys who are overlooked, underestimated, and unappreciated, for all the nice guys who are manipulated, misled, and unjustly abandoned, this is for you.

This is for that time she left 40 urgent messages on your cell phone, and when you called her back, she spent three hours painstakingly dissecting two sentences her boyfriend said to her over dinner. And even though you thought her boyfriend was a chump and a jerk, you assured her that it was all ok and she shouldn’t worry about it. This is for that time she interrupted the best killing spree you’d ever orchestrated in GTA3 to rant about a rumor that romantically linked her and the guy she thinks is the most repulsive person in the world. And even though you thought it was immature and you had nothing against the guy, you paused the game for two hours and helped her concoct a counter-rumor to spread around the floor. This is also for that time she didn’t have a date, so after numerous vows that there was nothing “serious” between the two of you, she dragged you to a party where you knew nobody, the beer was awful, and she flirted shamelessly with you, justifying each fit of reckless teasing by announcing to everyone: “oh, but we’re just friends!” And even though you were invited purely as a symbolic warm body for her ego, you went anyways. Because you’re nice like that.

The nice guys don’t often get credit where credit is due. And perhaps more disturbing, the nice guys don’t seem to get laid as often as they should. And I wish I could logically explain this trend, but I can’t. From what I have observed on campus and what I have learned from talking to friends at other schools and in the workplace, the only conclusion I can form is that many girls are just illogical, manipulative bitches. Many of them claim they just want to date a nice guy, but when presented with such a specimen, they say irrational, confusing things such as “oh, he’s too nice to date” or “he would be a good boyfriend but he’s not for me” or “he already puts up with so much from me, I couldn’t possibly ask him out!” or the most frustrating of all: “no, it would ruin our friendship.” Yet, they continue to lament the lack of datable men in the world, and they expect their too-nice-to-date male friends to sympathize and apologize for the men that are jerks. Sorry, guys, girls like that are beyond my ability to fathom. I can’t figure out why the connection breaks down between what they say (I want a nice guy!) and what they do (I’m going to sleep with this complete ass now!). But one thing I can do, is say that the nice-guy-finishes-last phenomenon doesn’t last forever. There are definitely many girls who grow out of that train of thought and realize they should be dating the nice guys, not taking them for granted. The tricky part is finding those girls, and even trickier, finding the ones that are single.

So, until those girls are found, I propose a toast to all the nice guys. You know who you are, and I know you’re sick of hearing yourself described as ubiquitously nice. But the truth of the matter is, the world needs your patience in the department store, your holding open of doors, your party escorting services, your propensity to be a sucker for a pretty smile. For all the crazy, inane, absurd things you tolerate, for all the situations where you are the faceless, nameless hero, my accolades, my acknowledgement, and my gratitude go out to you. You do have credibility in this society, and your well deserved vindication is coming.

Fu-zu Jen, SEAS/WH, 2003