If you do not live with passion, you do not live at all!     

Dear Friends,

Life is an abiding opportunity to make it better, and it is not seldom that most of us fail to realize, that the same opportunities  may not come our way  again.  Opportunities are not always what one generally is inclined to  think of them  as, like having won a lottery ticket, or the chance of winning a huge sum of money in a Telly Show.

Opportunities are  small  things that we fail to look at.  I am reminded of a visit to Vienna a couple of years ago, when I was waiting at the station for the arrival of my train.  I saw an old man walking  with great difficulty to the train,  with a bag in his hand which was too heavy for him to carry. I was on the other platform and without even giving it a thought, I went to the other side, picked his bag and walked him to the train, in fact with a little amount of apprehension, as I was in an alien land and could easily be looked down upon with suspicion.  This occurred to me only after I was done with the job.To my great surprise, the entire congregation  of passengers on the platform stood up from the seats and clapped in  appreciation.  I was of course utterly embarrassed because I had simply done something that comes to me naturally. 

The point I am making is that in order to  become someone who can make a difference to one's life and to that of  others, you have to enable yourself, by creating habits in your life that  build capacities within yourself, without your  even knowing it.  These capacities condition one's life, and without knowing it,  you become a different person, apart from the crowd,  someone, others look up to in admiration or awe.

You can ask an Olympic gold medalist or a mountain climber who has made it to the peak of a steep mountain face, what delights him most, the applause of the crowd or the inner joy of doing what he wanted to do, and the obvious answer would be the latter. So success is not often what others think it to be, about you, but something entirely private, entirely personal. 

This could be stated of any IIT or IAS topper who, when questioned about how difficult was their journey, would readily answer that "it was not too difficult".  Do they mean that it was a cake walk? Certainly not.  What they  say,  simply is, that the success became less difficult because they had taken small,  less difficult steps right from the beginning, which have conditioned  them to take bigger steps much more comfortably .

I believe human greatness is embedded in everyone, and the differences among people are not so acute.  It is how we tap, nurture, promote and protect our inner strengths, that we end up doing what we are doing. Take for instance, success in the exams.  People perform below expectations, either because their learning technique is not correct or do  not apply their mind to what they have to do.  But between those who have genuinely tried to  give their best and succeeded,  and those who think they have given their best and not succeeded, the difference is not  about the intensity of  application as about the deficiency of conditioning. 

If one has conditioned himself or herself right from earlier years by placing his/her  priorities in the centre stage of everything in his/her  life,  without compromise, his/her  ability to perform would have been far better conditioned than the other one who also worked hard but failed to get himself/herself  conditioned through consistent small steps.

Success depends entirely on your ability to know what you want, the diligence you put in place to look for it and find it, and the courage you have to pursue it. And such a success is not only what you do, after 5 or 10 years but what you do each day, each month and each year. So gear up your internal strengths to arrive where you want to, but please remember, that in order to arrive  at a particular goal, you must first be able to identify that goal and pursue it blindly.

A mother who wakes up each day, early morning,  to ensure that kids are dressed and ready on time to school with their tiffin packed, and that the house is clean, before she herself leaves for her daily work, experiences  success coming to her each day. Perhaps the intensity of that commitment could vary,  and that exactly  would be a difference between one  and another. That is each one's greatness. 

A student who completes his home assignment on time, each day, has his uniform pressed and clean and arrives in school on time.  S/He is a hero each day of her/his life.  The same could be said about a teacher who prepares her lessons each day and makes sure that she enters her class full of confidence and newness,  day after day and gets her students' attention instantly.  There could be others who simply state to themselves that they know the matter  since they have done it so many times earlier and feel that they are doing enough.  It is obvious that the former teacher will be walking on the clouds each day of her life, whereas the latter would be just walking. 

Passion makes a difference to what you do, how you do it, and how others are affected by it!  

The Indian Crab Story:

There is a story of an exhibition  of  Crabs of the World,  held at the United Nations headquarters.  When the official inspection took place the dignitaries were taken on a guided tour of the exhibition hall,  where the crabs had all been displayed in glass cases duly ventilated and closed from the top.

The countries had been arranged continent wise, thus  the crabs of the American continent were the first to be inspected.  Canada and USA, as  well as the Caribbean and South American countries,  and Galapagos were vying with each other about the quality, size, colour and delicacy that their crabs were. Next was the turn of the Asian continent and as a special arrangement the Island nations like Japan, Indonesia, Philipines and Sri Lanka  were listed first followed by other nations.  Here too each country  had its own glories to speak about and with the electronic gadgetry the Japanese had added to the pavilion, they had the edge. 

When the team entered the India pavilion, the Indian team bragged about the Coconut  breaking giant crabs of the  Andaman islands, etc. all displayed  in open glass cases, unlike all the cases of other countries. Obviously the  inspection team was surprised by these open glass cases, and were further confounded by the remarks of the Indian Ambassador who stated  that the Indian crabs are well trained not to come out of the enclosures. 

Wanting to find a more detailed explanation to this fact, the Indian Ambassador was asked by the Japanese delegate if the Japan  send their to India to be trained.   The Indian Ambassador readily told his Japanese counterpart that  the Indian Govt. would be happy to do so, and  adding that the indian crabs are not too difficult to train, remarked, "no indian crab allows another to  climb, as it will pull  it down,  because it is  him  first or none, and since no one can climb without the help of another, they stay all in".

Sometimes, your worst enemies are your peers, so choose them right, so that your own sense of purpose is not affected by those who do not share your greatness and your values. Get hold of your inner strengths and be passionate about what you want, and take small daily steps that will condition you to success and greatness!

Dec, 18, 2011

 

FR. J ALARICO CARVALHO

PRINCIPAL