How helpless are we?

Sometimes I think would it really have been better if I was born in the age of my forefather?? Or the situation would still have been the same…that I was as helpless even then as I am now? Has anyone pondered over this issue that how our life is governed by a number of factors which are out of our control? How every time when we think that our life is perfect , the next moment it shatters, bringing down all our hopes and desires? Be it our college life, school life or workplace we are no way near to being ourselves, we are just what others want us to be. How often have we protested for some injustice that has happened to us? How often have we raised our voice in support of someone we know is ailing from the dealings of this biased world? You want to open your mouth and it’s made to shut, either by piling huge amount of money in front of you or by scaring you to death. We all know that we are the most selfish beings that have ever prevailed on this planet, even the animals are better than us when it comes to saving their own community. We on the other hand just know one thing…..Where do we benefit from all this? What harm is it doing to us? Why are we so concerned? How will it help?. It has always been about us, ourselves and only we.


Talking from the point of view of a student who has spent considerable years of her life away from her parents, in boarding ,I can clearly see myself failing each and every time if I come to think of how often have I succeeded in doing what I actually wanted to? My wishes here doesn’t mean my ambitions, they mean my social virtues, my want’s , my desires out of this world . What have these years of isolation given me apart from a self confidence?? Yes, they have taught me how to close your eyes whenever you see something wrong happening, they have taught me to shut your ears if you hear someone’s plead , they have taught me to pretend that everything around you is awesome even if it’s not , they have taught me that listen to those who have money because they ultimately will have power, to bow to those whom you can’t defeat ,to serve those whom you can’t equal……………In reality it has just taught me how to become more selfish and more inhuman. This is not just me, it’s the millions of us who are surviving...Either it’s due to pressure or fear or in vain but we all have degraded ourselves to such an extent that there is no rising……We all know in our hearts that we have literally murdered our souls and are treading on a path which will someday take us to our doom, but the fact is that we are still heading towards it………What we lack is not just Courage, It’s the ability to think beyond ourselves…to be what we were supposed to be HUMANE…….humans!!!

Mantra's of Success

I remember being in 6th standard at that time when I was queried with a very complicated question…. “What’s your aim in life?”. It was complicated because I had no answer , it just threw me off guard…I simply wondered have I become so big that I need to decide what’s my aim?? I thought and then came up with a very obvious and safe answer, “I want to be successful”. And the next thing I saw was everyone smiling. Nobody asked me anything else and I was happy enough to think I gave a satisfactory answer. What I did not realize at that time was the fact that in my desire to play safe I had uttered a very strong word “SUCCESSFUL”, what did success mean I never knew and now if I come to think of it it’s hard to believe I spoke those words…


Success is very vulnerable word….it’s like when we point at the sky and ask someone what do you see ? ,we might end up hearing answers like a bird, the clouds, blue color , the sun….the list is endless…while actually what we were referring to was a plane flying above. Success actually deals with one’s imagination. How successful we are is decided by what definition of success we have known so far. If we think that having a good job and being satisfied with ourself is being successful , even a street vendor who does his job well and earns a satisfactory living can be called a successful man. Actually success is never decided by the world, because the world might never stop comparing us with someone better. On the contrary success is the difference between the desires and achievements of a person. We may not end up being the best amongst all but we might end up being a successful person if we go by our will.


Just like success the Mantra’s for success are also not well defined and fixed. They might vary with our own definition of success but like no matter how intelligent one might be the basic foundation of everyone’s knowledge is built from ABCD…similarly there are some basic mantra’s without the help of which we might never be able to climb the first few stairs of this success podium, forget about reaching to the top!!!!. One such mantra is REALISING YOUR AREA OF INTEREST ….Ever wondered what would Bill Gates have been doing if he would not have associated himself with computers, (I guess it’s something he himself wouldn’t have thought of). He was fascinated by this machine and what it could do from his school days and thus went on to pursue it further, and believe it had it not been the thing he liked the most he would not have been holding the position he holds now, the Chairman of Microsoft Corporation and the 2nd richest person in the world. It’s said that when you do what you love the most it makes a difference. However this alone is not enough, success actually is this coupled with hard work, focus, determination, enthusiasm, passion, innovativeness and much more.
Another means is to DREAM and that too dream big because a dream is a seed of thought that opens one's mind to new avenues. If you dream big, the next step is to make a path for yourself to get there! In the words of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam , “we all are born with a divine fire in us and our effort should just be to give wings to this fire”. Then why is it that most of us inspite of thinking big are never able to reach a position which we choose for ourselves? The answer is very simple and lies within ourselves, it is because we are never quite sure of what exactly we want. At every stage we are confronted with numerous thoughts as to what would benefit us and thus in our greed take steps that we shouldn’t . Being CONFIDENT is one more quality that distinguishes successful people from the unsuccessful ones. Success is termed as a journey and not a destination and while journeying we ought to make decisions , decisions about which way are we heading and what path should we follow. So in turn success is also judged by our DECISION MAKING SKILLS. We might face failures on our way but the ultimate success lies in learning from them because if we always win we think we know it all and thus it inhibits our learning while success is LEARNING…learning at every phase of life. Failure on the other hand just needs a seed; and very often words are those seeds. Many a times when we think that we aren't as good as another, we reinforce our thought through words like, "I don't know", "I'm not sure", "I am incapable of", "How can I", and so on. This constant insecurity then spreads to all aspects of our life and before we know it, our self confidence is diminished to the size of a pebble. Thus OPTIMISM is another mantra for success. However we can never attribute success to only these values, it is a lot more than this, a lot!!

Kin Hubbard once said, “There's no secret about success. Did you ever know a successful man who didn't tell you about it?”. Success comes with time. It is the fruit of the endless efforts we have made all through our life. The fruits might take some time to ripe but ultimately it’ll, one day, we just need to be patient enough and see it grow.