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Not everyone will respect your struggle. So don’t start ‘look what I have been through…’ at every opportunity.             

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Everyone has a story and every person is the protagonist of his or her own story. And because people tell their stories from their angle so all the characters are aligned in the narrative to serve that angle. That’s why everyone thinks that he has been through a lot, or she has seen the worst, or he has fought alone, or it was only her guts to survive in spite of all that happened.

Moreover, all of us secretly compare our struggles with each other’s. That’s why it is difficult to bear someone telling (and subtly glorifying) his collection of the stories from a hero’s diary. That’s why we interject, dissuade, divert, or every now and then subtly place a story or two from our own proud collection.  So… don’t start that epic on the slightest of excuses.

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And if a rare person will really respect your struggle then you won’t have to start the story. Actually he will not leave unless you tell it completely. 🙂

When you block your schedule with busyness, there is no time available to accommodate ‘greatness’.

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One peculiar thing you would typically find with most of us – the middle-class people – is that we try to fill every vacant space in our house with something. It could be anything but the place would get filled somehow. And the reason is simple. We have more aspirations but less space.

Average-performing people tend to do same thing with their ‘time’. They fill every gap of their schedule with something. In fact, they feel guilt if they (or others) think they are not doing much. Well! This tendency doesn’t let them drop below average because they seldom remain idle. But this also doesn’t let them become ‘great’…

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…because they are addicted to speed, at the cost of… velocity.

The most important job of a leader is to mold people without… breaking them.

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And for that, a leader has to blend what is ‘seemingly separated’.

Yes! A leader has to be friendly yet firm… strong yet accommodating… participative yet decisive… mature yet enthusiastic… empathetic yet objective… ‘in role’ yet genuine… progressive yet rooted… accessible yet enigmatic.

But for that, the leader has to first be ‘integrative inside’.

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After all, you can’t lead people unless you lead yourself first.

Patience is not to ‘not do anything’, it is to ‘allow things to happen’ once you have done your bit.             

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Often people confuse patience with inaction. Patience is not inaction. It is to bear the gestation period without restlessness and complaining. But gestation period can only come into picture when you had timely prepared the farm, sown the seeds, and sprinkled the nourishment. To now let the land do its bit is called patience.

Patience is not unfounded hope, or baseless optimism.  It is not shallow talk replacing the hard yard, or leisurely walk substituting for ‘sweating it out’. It isn’t useless intellectualizing and hollow philosophizing. It is rooted in pursuit, and grounded in purposefulness. And only those who had persisted and perspired earlier have a right to exercise it now.

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It is interlude in a song, until… the voice emerges again.

No disgrace or glory can define anyone. It’s always something ‘in between’.

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In a way, a negativity bias is natural. However, you can’t keep reminding people about their ‘moments of weakness’. That’s not their true representation.

We all have moments when we are at our worst behavior. In fact, it’s never far from any of us. Just a bad day or a tough phase, and you discover that the lid can’t remain closed anymore and ‘burst bringing out the worst‘ is inevitable. At times, you see it building up, and at times you get shocked by the vehemence of it.

But that’s not ‘you’. That’s a part of you for sure. Still that’s not you. Just the way, ‘when everything clicks on a day and you seem invincible’ is also not you. That’s again a part of you for sure. But still that’s not you. You are both of them, and still aren’t either of them.

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That’s why, when you keep bringing any one extreme as an evidence of ‘who you are’ or ‘who someone is’ then it is unfair and misleading.

The other day, someone told me that ‘someone less deserving has reached where I deserve to be’. I took it as a compliment, thanked person for affection, and then… disagreed completely.

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I firmly believe that, when someone reaches somewhere legitimately, it is always… well-deserved. I mean, there must surely be something that he or she has that others don’t.

I often call it talent-blinded-ness. Yes! Even if you’ve got more talent, the other person must have had some other thing to compensate for it. It could be tenacity. It could be temperament. It could be timing. It could be tact. Or it could be a trump at the top.

Whatever it is, something must have gone behind attaining and retaining it; and that something must have taken toll on that person. After all, nothing comes or stays for free.

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So, let’s not stereotype struggle; and let’s respect people for what they have.

There is no mortal who has never erred.            

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Erring is an integral part of growing and maturing. But what people don’t understand is that it’s not the erring per se, but the introspection subsequent to erring that helps you grow and mature. Without cycle of analysis -> realization -> amendment -> application, a person only goes one step further and two steps back. And that’s when we ‘err’ in the literal sense of the word.

However, to analyze, a person needs to first learn to dissociate ‘what he has done’ from ‘who he is’. This separation of performance from the performer is a prerequisite. Without it, a person only becomes defensive or dejected after the very step of analysis; and the next three steps go out of the window. That’s where your self-esteem comes into play.

And as I often say…

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Self-esteem is how you feel 10 minutes after failing, falling, erring, losing, or being denied or mocked. 🙂

The other day, I was discussing with someone dear about how everybody has a movie that characterizes his or her adolescence. For me, it was… ‘Maine Pyar Kiya’. 🙂

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Though at the time of its release I was still a few years away from my teens, it is surely the movie that defines that stage for me. I discretely remember how, after watching it, at least one thing had changed overnight – the way I used to see the daughters of my father’s friends. It was the case with all of them, but there was this… one particular one.

She was simply… pretty. We used to play all sorts of games, from dumb charades to antakshari to cards; and before that movie the equation was simple – the ‘bhaiyya’ stuff. After the movie, though the way she addressed me stayed same, something had changed. Incidentally, we both were big fans of MPK, and it only helped that something brew.

Interestingly, we never said anything to each other but that something manifested in all sorts of small gestures and words (the fact that we both remembered MPK’s dialogues word-by-word only helped further). It stayed that way for a few years and as it normally happens in every clichéd story, her father got transferred and they went to another city.

And the life continued…

Years after that, when we were in our early 20s, the two families happened to meet again. We all met with immense affection and connect; and so did the two of us. We were all having a good time, snacking and chatting, and then suddenly, her mother mentioned how two of us were great fans of MPK. In that one precise moment, we both looked at each other. And as our eyes met, we both could see that same something in each other’s eyes.

So what happened next? After all, it was the perfect opportunity to take it further from there. Well! As it turned out, we never met after that. We could. But we didn’t. And the reason was unsaid yet clear.

You know what… even in tender emotion of love, every relationship has a unique texture. It can be romance or passion or friendship or respect or longing or companionship. Whatever it is, it surely is there. Though there can be a mix, there is always one prominent one. And as long as that texture is there, relationship remains alive, and endures.

Well! In our case, that texture was… innocence; that innocence which belonged to the coordinates of ‘time and space’ which we had left behind… in an era that could never come back. So…we both moved on, and went on to experience the other beautiful textures of love in life. But we never tried to reconnect, probably because we both respected that…

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…texture. 🙂

When someone is going through a difficult phase, be very careful about what you say to him; as he is going to remember it forever.

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It is tough to deal with someone who is going through a tough time. Yes! When someone goes down, his sensitivity-level tends to go up. He (or she) becomes so touchy that at times you wonder if he is in fact searching for an excuse to get hurt. And in such a situation, one wrong or unkind word can leave its impression like a foot-print on a wet cement patch.

Well! With time, either the tide will throw him up as it turns, or he will swim his way out of it. But now, something peculiar will happen – he will understand that you did not mean to hurt when you had said ‘that’…he will agree with your reasons to say it…he will acknowledge all the right things you said and did before & after ‘that’ thing… and eventually he will even forgive you for what you had said.

However…

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… he will ‘never forget’ what you had said.

In relationships, when you exercise your right to move away then you have to respect other’s right to move on.

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In a relationship, when you choose to leave someone somewhere, you cannot expect the person to stay there, waiting for you to come back – that too when there is no premise that you will…or no promise about when. After all, that person also has only one life to live…only one chance to take this journey… only one shot at happiness.

Yes! It is important to remember that you don’t own anyone forever. People are their own properties. When they lend you a part of their selves then it is their choice to do so. They can’t be emotionally blackmailed to forego their right on their selves and their lives. It is the only right they have in a world where there nothing else is certain. Respect that.

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So, when you leave someone but want to begin again, then you have to… begin again.