The Eye Opener

"The change doesn't come when you realize you're right or wrong. The change comes when you start rectifying the wrongs you have done."

The boring Chemistry class got over, and it ended with a dull conversation with my best friend about life. I jumped over the desk as soon as the teacher (sir) left and decided to go visit my friends in the next class.

But no sooner had I stepped out, than I saw this teacher (ma'am) scolding a few of my class mates at the far end of the corridor, and another Chemistry teacher (sir) walking towards our class. When I asked him if we had Computers instead in the last period, he replied with fearful eyes that it didn't matter and the best move for me right now is to go back to my class. I sensed something strong in his eyes, and looked over that far end of the corridor. I instantly judged her character and went running inside the class shouting "Damn she's strict!" and sat in my place and had my Walkman and earphones hidden deep inside my backpack and myself comfortably placed before she walked in with utmost confidence.

As soon as she walked in, she started demanding the girls to sit in the center row and the guys to occupy the either rows left. We all were shocked and confused as we didn't even know this teacher and she's acting like she's the boss. The first impression, or rather first thought in my head was "Who is this?" and mind you, it was "Who is this?" and not "What the hell is she thinking of herself?". I wish I had that thought. But I didn't.

Then, as we settled she began addressing us. As the lecture on life progressed, I started growing my respect towards her. She told things which I had known before and nothing new, but it was the way she told it. It was her confidence. It was her orating skills. It was her attitude. That attitude a person develops over a long period of time by doing good things all the time that they have nothing to lose and are living their life with pride. And she told it. She's living her life with pride and has all the success she needs.

As soon as she left, it was the voice she took with her, but it was the words that stood there echoing in the walls of the class in few of our friends' minds. It was her sayings. While coming back to my home, I was dull and hadn't spoken a word to my bus mate. He waited for fifteen minutes but soon got worried and was tempted to ask me what exactly had my mind so engrossed that I've been staring at the chair in front of me for good fifteen minutes. And then it started. Welcome to this "kind of personal" diary entry probably for the first time in my life. This is a lesson I learnt, and thought it might make someone else's life easy too. Welcome to "The Eye Opener".

*** Consider the below as my reply to the question my friend asked because in the whole one hour trip, it was only me who was talking, and all he did was listen and then later said bye and got down ***

I don't know. I feel like everything I have done in my life so far, is wrong. I don't know what makes me feel this way. I don't want to be this. I want to change. But I don't know how. There's this teacher who came today. And she told some pretty good stuff and it influenced me. I knew it all along, but had no one to tell it to me. 

I'm not the person you think I am. I'll tell you how I was in school. I was disciplined. I was aware of my culture, my ethics, and my rules, and my limits. I was in control. Everyone had respect for me and that is how I always wanted to live my life. I have always believed that at the end it's not how many people you met, it's about how many lives you changed for the good. And I was on my way. I was this guy who cared too much about his own set of rules. 

Yes, I always had a few set of rules for living my life. I always followed them. I was this guy who enthusiastically wanted to do something for the society. I was the one who started the Save Environment Group on Facebook and made sure everyone of my friends knew the importance of saving the nature. With the hard work of my friends, and my own, we grew our reach from 3 members to over 350 members today. I was this guy who never took a leave on any National Celebration especially Republic Day, and the Independence Day, because I felt even if I can't do a lot for the country at the moment, I can show my devotion to the country by doing or performing at least something on those days to make a small change. Not a big one, a small tiny one.

I was this guy who used to eat chips packets and used to keep the wrappers of my chips, and my friends' who threw it on the street in my pocket and carried it all the way to my home to dispose them well. Not to litter. I was this guy who respected teachers for their position and for their person. Never in my life had I even thought ill about any teacher both consciously and unconsciously. I was this guy who believed in ideals and believed in Gandhi's words that "Be the change you want to see in this world."

Yeah, you might be thinking what a boring guy I used to be. Well, apparently you're wrong on this one, pal. I used to have the same amount of fun that my other "funky" friends had. I too had a girlfriend, I too used to watch many movies with my friends, I too used to go out for dinner, and used to attend every field trip and flirt a lot and everything that makes you look cool.

But I used to also be the one begging around for clothes and some money so that the next time our school took us on the Orphanage Trips, I wouldn't have to see the sad "lost-hope" faces of the old women and men when I say, "I'm sorry, I've run out of supplies."

But I used to also be the first one to stand up and contribute. I also use to be the one to sacrifice everything I am doing right now just to help my friend. I used to fight with my parents just to make sure my friend sleeps a peaceful night. 

But I used to also be the one sacrificing my seat in the city bus just to make sure that old tired man from his work at least helps his leg carry him home. But I used to also be the one to make sure I respect everyone - women and men equally, and that one day, there will be a change in the country and there will, trust me, be a better world. 

Now what has happened? Until my school life, I was exactly how I described above. Now in college life, everything changed. And if you honestly ask me, it changed for the worse. Everyday the same routine - get up in the morning, send your close friends a good morning message and if time permits, chat a little too, then get ready, face the college for eight hours and come back home and chat again, then think about studying, but never study, and then it's too late, and I go back to sleep. No learning, no fun, no knowledge, just stress. What life is this?

Are you still listening? I'm sorry I'm boring you. But I need to talk. Honestly, what life is this? I don't belong here. I know I keep talking about prioritizing stuff and working accordingly, and not that in my life I have never learnt to prioritize - I had. And it was only my discipline and my passion to do something big that I managed to get the marks I got in my tenth.

And that's what is lacking. The discipline. Do you know when my mom used to tell me in tenth that you aren't studying, I used to take it up seriously. Even if I didn't make a timetable on the paper, I used to mentally calculate my time and always stick by it. It was my discipline. I honestly don't recall any fights with either of my parents regarding my studies during my tenth grade, They knew I was studying, I knew I had what it takes.

And now? Not even a single day passes without my mom scolding me for not studying, for stop chatting, and not a single day in which I don't shout, or scream, or throw and break stuff in the house. Somewhere, something is going wrong. I know it.

And I'll tell you something interesting. In Bhagvat Geeta, there is a reference to a Mahabharata incident. When Krishna asks Duryodhana that what he's doing is wrong, Duryodhana gives a very interesting reply.

He says, "Don't tell me what's wrong or what's right. I know what's wrong or what's right. Tell me why I can't stop doing wrong even when I know I'm wrong."

Even though Krishna came up with a rather psychological answer, it was worth a thought. We all know what's wrong or what's right, and yet we fail to stop ourselves. One of my chemistry teachers in Deeksha, popularly called TVS Sir was shouting at us for not paying attention in the class and randomly gives this mind blowing quote.

He said, "To reach another level, we will first have to leave the level we currently are in."

It struck my mind, actually, you know, knowledge is like air. It's everywhere. And I'm not shameful from soaking knowledge wherever I get it - maybe it's from my seniors, maybe my batch mates, or even juniors for that matter. Knowledge can be taken from anywhere.

I really don't understand what's happening. Something must have changed right? How did a guy who was so good suddenly turn like this to something messed up? And all of my close friends reading this blog post, don't think it is because of me falling in love.

I'll proudly tell you that I have fallen in love before too, but I didn't let it affect me. Yes, this time it's more serious than ever, but it still is love, right? Then what's wrong? I'll tell you. It's prioritizing stuff. That's where all the planning fails. We do wrong things at the so called right times. And then wonder our whole lives what went wrong.

And honestly, me thinking about my life so deeply and this teacher's lecture on me will not change anything much. Anybody knows of  Sandeep Maheshwari? In one of his seminars, he is seen quoting something really powerful.

He says, "After the end of this seminar, nobody will remember anything I said. It will just be a temporary change in all of you, and then from tomorrow you are back to living your life. Then is this seminar a waste of time? At the end of this seminar, if I ask the audience to raise hands all of them who are paying hundred percent concentration to what I'm speaking, I'll get ninety percent of the people raising their hands. But if from that ninety percent I ask one of them to requote what I said just in the beginning, I'm pretty sure after one hour of the seminar nobody will remember my words. But if I ask the same crowd to briefly explain the meaning of this seminar, everybody will have their say."

That's interesting right? Why can't we remember what he said? And to be honest, after the hour's session, I actually wasn't able to recollect what he said. But I knew what he meant to say. It's definitely got to do something with his orating skills no doubt, but it also has something to do the way our minds works.

Anyone seen Inception? It's the same thing. We see our favourite actor Leonardo DiCaprio tell this plane simple line, but it leaves a mark on the people who think about it deeply.

He says, "What's the most resilient parasite? An idea. A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules."

That's what Sandeep wanted to convey too. And this was a little before the movie came out, so I actually respected what Sandeep said. It's not what I say that matters, it's the meaning that stays. Why am I writing all this? It's because I want to find out where I am going wrong. Maybe the idea is not clear in my head. Maybe my brain hasn't yet measured the damage I have done to my future by wasting one year of first PUC. 

And as I continue to write, I remember another of my Deeksha teachers, known as AR Sir, quote something interesting too.

He said, "We do difficult things in our life with utmost care and perfection. Yet we fail to do simple things in our life."

It had me wondering, and as my habit goes, I asked myself why we can't perform the simple things? Is it because our mind is too tuned to complicated things that it makes a simple problem a complicated one? No. It's simply because we take the simple things for granted. That's right, We all know two plus three is five. But when we get our answer sheets, we hang our head in shame because we wrote two plus three is six. We multiplied instead of adding. It's because we took that double line symbol in between the two numbers for granted. We did not care to see whether those two lines are straight (add) or diagonal (multiply).

I need to make a change. And I'll tell you my New Year's resolution.

"Make small commitments than big promises."

And maybe that will help me. Maybe I should start small. Everyone knows one good speech and one good thought can not really change everything if we don't build on that idea. Okay, let's start small. Let me start by prioritizing stuff. And of course, studies should be the main priority.

And then, how do we go about studying if we have a person running all over our head and so many problems and pressures? Let's start small. Let's start by a page. Yes, today, I'll study a page. I'll make sure I understand everything. And then tomorrow two pages, then five, then ten, and then a whole lesson! We need to keep growing. We can't get stuck. At the end of the day, everyday we should learn something or do something productive that will change our life and that's what is life all about.

I want to apologize to my dad. For all the times I have let him down. I want to be honest with him. I really don't belong here. And I really don't want to go where they want me to. I want to be something else.

You are seriously bored no? Let me talk, please?

I want to start small. Maybe a good start will be by not doing anything wrong consciously? Listen, the good habits aren't gone. It's just subdued. Know how it feels when you stand up and wish your teacher in the class and no one else does that and then they start laughing at you because you were singing that "Good Morneeeeeng Maaaaam" song all alone? Sometimes it's the people around us.

Yes, one more point. Company does matter too. I have a lot of friends. But I have only few "good" friends. It's true that the type of friend you make is most likely what you think you are. That's how we connect right?

Remember? "We become best friends the moment I do something crazy and I don't have to explain why I did that."

Interesting. I hope this blog post helped you. In some way or the other. It's never too late to start something good you know? And honestly, if you ask me why I want to earn money in life, I'll reply:

"I want to earn money in life, so that I can give it."

Help others. Be good. Be you. Lead a life with example. Know where you come from. Respect your country. Respect everyone. Keep your culture and ethics with you. Be in your limits. Stay fresh. And make small commitments than big promises, and I'm sure all of us will change one day.

***

"Dude, my stop is coming!" my bus mate tells.
"Sorry man. I must have bored you like crazy with this random stuff right?"
"No da, it actually made sense!"
"Oh, thanks."
"Bye!"
"Take care."

You be the God

"Count your blessings. Once you realize how valuable you are and how much you have going for you, the smiles will return, the sun will break out, the music will play, and you will finally be able to move forward with the life that God intended for you with grace, strength, courage, and confidence."

Did you ever feel like being a God? Do you know what it takes to be a God? Do you want to know how it actually feels when you are a God, and have the power to control everything? Do you want to be God? Well then, You be the God!

So now, you are a God. We will now give you a Super God Name. We will  now call you "Lasier". (The name doesn't mean anything, so don't break your head into that!) You are given your special chariot in which you can visit any place you want. You are shown your personal cloud where you can stay, get fresh, and look around the rainbow. You are given a computer system which analyses every human's fate and destiny, name, ID, what each human is doing, and much more. You get to meet other Gods. You have 24/7 food supply, angels flying around you, and you can order just any fast food and soft drink you want. The other Gods first test your potential. They give you a office where you have to control the world, without anyone's help or advice. That's cool, right?

Well, if you are thinking you can kill anyone you want with just a click of your fingers, or you can grant someone's wish just by smiling, you are going to be kicked out of your job. It is not that easy folks!

You quietly sit on the chair provided to you, and you have a huge SLED (Super LED) filling up the entire wall with various kinds of informations. You are confused, so you just sit there. Suddenly, a beep sound is heard by you, and it looks like you have a notification. You look at the light blue square on which "1" is written, with your eyes, and the square expands and fills the screen up. You see a man praying, asking you to help his sister get married. He promises to give you sweets. You smile, and look at the bottom right corner. His name is "Shankar" and he is 31 years old. He is from Mangalore.  You look down at your keyboard. There is a button for "Grant Wish". You click on it, and the notification square goes back to the its original size.

Just almost instantaneously, there are two more notifications. By now, you understand that the SLED screen works with eye gestures. You again look at the notification square, this time a split screen fills the screen. A guy from Taliban, and the USA, comes up. One of them wants his terror plans to work, the other wants his salary increased. You sit there confused. You like helping people, so you grant the other one's wish, and the split screen closes, and now you can only see the Taliban guy. You do not understand Arabic. So you look at the keyboard, and press the "Translate" button. He wants to plan a terror attack in his area, and he wants your blessings. Certainly, you do not want him to succeed, so you are confused.

While you are busy thinking, five notifications pop up with very little delay between each of them. You do not understand which to choose first. You look on the summary option on the screen, and it shows you what the humans want in one sentence. The first one, as we know, need his terror plan to succeed. The second blames you for his son's death. The third one wants you to deal with her husband. The fourth one wants you help him in his exams. The fifth one wants you to stay there by his side while he is fighting his life. The sixth one is telling the world that you will be happy if he spreads terror. You are confused and do not know what to do. You do not understand why people blame you for good, and bad stuff.

You grant the fifth one's wish, and sit there unmoved. By this time, your screen is filled with more than thirty notifications, and increasing per second. You search around the office for help. You find a switch called "Relax", and you press it. Immediately, the screen changes into a beautiful scenery from the forests of Africa. You see a elephant sitting with his calf. You feel better. While you are looking at the cute relationship of the animals, you realise how dependent the humans are on Gods. While you are busy thinking, you hear a gun fire, and just the next second, the elephant is dead, and the calf runs away. You feel really angry. The screen shows you six hunters trying to take away the dead elephant. One of them is heard by you saying, "This animal will make us good profit!". You feel really sad.

You decide to give them a punishment. So, you press the "curse" button. You come back to your normal job, and to your surprise you have more than ten thousand notifications just in ten minutes. You close your eyes, and you hear a sound saying "Gesture Approved" , to which you respond by opening your eyes. You see random judgements to random people. To your surprise the people who deserved their wishes to be fulfilled, they are denied, and the other ones' are fulfilled. You immediately stop the random judgements. Your notifications had come down from "10,233" to "346", in just a matter of seconds. You are stunned to hear all this.

You put the system on "God mode" and come out of the office. Some one calls on you, and you turn back.
"What happened, Lasier? You're not supposed to come out of that office!"  You reply by saying that you are tired, and that you cannot take this any more. You tell him that there are so many problems to be handled in such little time, and that people take his name for every small thing. A mosquito bites someone, your name is called. Somebody dies, your name is called. Someone fails, your name is called. You did not know what to do.

He then replies, "That is why this office is always kept on 'God Mode'. Let the humans decide their own fate. They know to create their own destiny, and it is not our jobs to correct them. We have to show them the path, not walk with them. They know that what they give, they get. We gave them enough knowledge to understand that the nature helps you, if you are willing to help the nature. We do not have any special things to do here. Life is very boring and irritating here in heaven. You must have understood by now, right?"

You reply, "Yes. I kept wondering that what ever I did back there as a human, I thought it was Gods who made me do it."

He replies, "No, certainly not. I do have a book written on each and every human on the earth. But, I have also given the pens to you humans. You can decide what to write, what not to. Do you still want to continue, as a God?"

Next day, you are back as a human, and your memory is erased.

Keep thinking! Cheers!

P.S: All the names of the people, country, and the story is purely fictional. No real harm or bad intention intended.

Doing just nothing!

"A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life yet."

Well, there's something freaky in store for you in case you have lost your mind reading my previous blog posts. So, what exactly are you doing when you do nothing? Yes, you read that right, what are we doing when we are doing nothing. Just nothing. The answer is as simple as the question: "Nothing".

If we go look clearly, our body is doing a huge amount of work even when we are not doing anything. This work is done so that our body's essential processes do not stop, and we keep ourselves healthy and running! So, how much exactly is our body doing when we pretend to do nothing? You'll be surprised that an average school going boy of height 65 inches and his age being 15 years spends about 1393.81 calories when he is doing nothing. That is pretty impressive, right?

That is not all, when you do nothing, you waste 60 seconds with every minute passing by. And if you are a couch potato, and spend an average of an hour everyday doing nothing then you actually waste 365 hours doing nothing every year. And believe me, in these 365 hours, you can do fabulous things, instead of just lying down, and doing nothing. Indeed, small hours get together to make a big year! Well said, nah?

To continue giving you shocks, let me ask you something, how many of us have seen those second hands in a clock stay in one position for a little longer than usual. This usually happens when we quickly look at the clock and then turn to look at an object away from the clock, and then suddenly, look at the clock again.The second hand would appear to move from where you first saw it, but in reality, you are seeing it after around 3 seconds.(This wholly depends on how long you look at the other object!)

Well, I would not go into details, but those fraction of seconds that our brain loses to capture, add up to an huge amount in a course of an entire day. To get you up your chair, 40 minutes of sight are lost everyday when we move our eyeballs. Pretty awesome, right?

Hmm..that said, I don't think that we would stop telling people that we are doing nothing. But yes, in the back of our minds, we would certainly know that while we are doing nothing, we are actually doing a lot of things unknowingly. Happy working, guys and gals!