The Bride of Brave Men

Mercy, the only request of a cornered man, is sought most by the person who makes an insincere attempt. The brave man, who is committed to his cause like water to ocean, never fails. He may face occasional hiccups in his path. These hiccups are more common in the early stages of the fight. As the fight progresses and as the resolve strengthens, the hiccups reduce both in frequency and in torment.
The beginning of any work, more so of a fight, is the most difficult. Only a strong heart and a kind mind can withstood the sting of the indecisive path experienced at the beginning. The strong heart bears all frustrations and still bustles with joy. The kind mind ensures that the salt in the comments of passerby is not taken seriously. The brave man fights and fights every battle as if it were the last of his life. He fights to win. Even if caught unaware or if cheated by fate or friends, he seeks no mercy. Till he gets a chance, which he is sure is destined to come, he moves assured basking in the belief that at the end of the journey victory shall be his bride.

Irritants-The Uncensored Grief

If you think that you have grievances against the other person, then remember that the other person also has grievances against you. You cannot just run away, hiding your soul and dirtying your tongue by blaming the other person for what you conceive are his faults. You have to grow up one day and acknowledge the faults within yourself.
If you seriously want to forget an episode, you need to take control over the mess that your interpretations of the episode have created. The best way to make peace with your people is to enliven stranded relations. Start by proving that you care and understand. Do not get back to the waiting game assuming that the other person should start the initiative. You may lose valuable moments that you could use otherwise. What is even more important is that you will also lose that invisible entity called peace with self.
The best way to re-ignite any bond is to initiate the proceedings. Do so without losing self-respect and do so for your own sake. You have got to spare yourself of needless suffering. Once you decide to cure strained relations, start moving. Propose change for mutual benefit. Forget the episode and forgive the transaction. The person, after-all is higher and greater than any lowly transaction.
However to enliven a strained past, you need to make a great stand and that is to change yourself. Fortunately that change is not costly. All you need to do is to remove that small irritant about the other person being the reason of fault. Give the other person a chance to understand your stand and, in process, try to comprehend what forced the other person to do what you think was wrong.
Hopefully, the other person will change and listen to music. If not, the other person is not worth considering companionship. Stones are not meant to be garlanded!

An Open question to Mr. Unfortunate

If you are being screwed twenty-four hours a day and every day of the year, then you must be enjoying it for how else can you explain your state? While whatever graphic description you use to explain your troubles, it is you who provided troubles the handle to define your identity. You are confused. You fear being exposed and are underconfident about your abilities and unsure of your stand. I don't know why investing the required efforts to support your wishful statements puts you in the defensive? Do not you at times think that you are fate's favorite's joker?
While you pretend you are fighting, you know that you have said THANK YOU. Experience has taught you that it is easy to float with the stream. It does not matter to you if you hit every other rock. Is not it all boring and ridiculous, Mr. Unfortunate, to be at the receiving end always?

Fate's Game

Sarah and Mary were meeting after three years. Both were prodigious students at Stanford and were trained by education and motivated by character to make it big in career. Armed with MBA Finance and with specialization in helping dot com firms grow, Sarah was creating waves in the circles that matter. Mary, always the shy, introvert girl that she had been, chose a career in social service. She was returning from a school-building task in Brazil. With so much to share about the last three years and the spontaneous recollection of the golden days at campus, it never occurred to them when the night gave way to dawn.
Sarah had an important early-morning appointment that day and, therefore, she decided to abandon sleep. Mary was already snoring when Sarah prepared her favorite soft drink, cappuccino coffee. True to her style, Sarah switched on the TV and started surfing. The most she had ever stuck to any channel was fifteen minutes when Tyson ate Holyfield's ear. A small documentary on an orphanage attracted her, as she knew Mary would very soon run one.
"Mary", Sarah whispered, "something about an orphanage on TV that might interest you. It's named", Sarah momentarily stopped as she cajoled Mary's hair, "N B O". The name triggered the reaction, Mary was awake and excited.
The documentary went on to narrate the case of a three-week infant who was left crying at its door. A child-less Swede billionaire had adopted the infant and donated a million dollars to the orphanage. Sarah wowed in excitement, 'I guess, she must be the luckiest child. Imagine you are not required for your biological parents and left all alone to die and you turn a billionaire the next day!"
Mary bust into tears. Sarah looked at her questioningly, "what's wrong?" she inquired. There was a big silence, bigger than the three years of separation between best friends. Finally, Mary gathered the courage to reply, "She was my baby!"

Turning Failures Into Victory

It is absolutely important to relish failures not because they make us feel like assholes but because of the opportunity to understand the essential contradictions of our belief-system. If we introspect, we shall find a difference between what we want badly and what we actually require to experience happiness.

The difference though small and sublime is important to enjoy life.
Failures provide a fresh perspective to what we chase. As we spend time, energy and hope to accomplish our top-most immediate goals, we realize the tribulations and frustrations attached to our quest. These frustrations redefine our viewpoint about life. If we were to achieve things easily, we would have underestimated their worth and, as a consequence, overestimated our potential. However, when we fail, the mysticism that surrounds us clears. The horror strikes clear on our face. We are forced to question where we are, what do we do and whether or not we are worth it. The cost of failure or the long-drawn process to achieve what we want provides us an opportunity to redefine our goals and aspirations. Either the desire to achieve fades away or it intesifies to become the reason-de-etre of our life.

Yes failures despite their immediate hurt-value help. Like a scavenger they clean the dead part of our system and allow us to recharge for the hilt. To do so what we need is to understand failure in the right perspective and using it as an opportunity to correct where we head. Are you game?

Book-Based Decision Makers

Have you ever met a person who reads a book and is immediately full of ideas on how to implement a complex task? You must have felt the enthusiasm and enjoyed the shine in the person's eyes. Sheer excitement might be shaking the person's voice as he narrates how to do what he thinks must be done immediately.
The book-based decision-makers occupy most positions in the middle-management and are all convinced that the corporations they work for are doomed unless some harsh decisions are not immediately implemented. These people have enthusiasm but often lack the desire to dig deep into the problem. They smack of a superficial feel of the problem and without understanding the various nuances of the problem, they propose readymade solutions.
These people also fear excellence. They find people who ask the logical question inconvenient. Since these people are not born dictators, they play backroom politics to ensure survival. People with 'yes sir' attitude can easily rise positions in hierarchy when they serve the book-based decision-makers.
Another characteristic of the book-based decision-makers is restlessness. These people never settle on to a task or a decision. They like talking in the belief that they are envisioning. Implementation is what kills the jest out of their life. These people keep on moving from one rolling situation into another and yet years pass before the fundamental problems of the system are understood or solved.
Is it fun to serve these people? It all depends on how much you want in life and to what degree can you fall to achieve that.

Making Dreams Come True

Success in life is hardly an attribute of talent but an ability to chalk a dream and work about it twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. Success is a product of perseverance, devotion and imagination.

The road to fame is open to one and all. No single person can ever be its sole occupant. Most people whom society later worshipped were icons of total failures in their initial ventures. This list includes Edison, Einstein, Lincoln and Gandhi amongst others. All these people were driven with one goal - a passionate madness to achieve their cause. They shared intense commitment and fascination about their preoccupation. They knew that initial ridicule is part of any story. Each of them-faced difficulties that could have broken any mortal's backbone but they survived because of belief in self and because of the confidence and goodness of their cause.
In life, as in death, what is important is time and time is an extremely limited resource. For time, the President of the United States of America and the beggar that crawls on the road are equal. Time also stands as the only resource that God provides for free. Any free resource is liable to be misused.

To succeed it is important to realize that time can not be earned by not going to bed but by ensuring that you do your homework for the day. Neither should a frosty January morning or a scorching May afternoon be the cause for you not doing what you have planned to do. Success is an adventure - infinitely rewarding and hypnotizing. You cannot achieve it without valuing time. When you start rewarding self-every moment as a gift, life shifts its focus from waste to continuo improvement. And when that happens, success becomes your mistress.

Let the World Know Your Goals

There is a crazy assumption that many people make with regards to the execution of their goals. They keep their goals closer to their heart, closeted in the comfort of enjoyable body temperature. They work hard, sometimes sincerely, but generally secretive hoping to attain their dreams.
Is it a good practice not to involve people in your goals? Is it because of lack of trust in others or because of lack of trust in self? Do secretive maneuver generate greater confidence or greater comfort? Perhaps there are no clear answers. However, one thing is clear that there definitely is an element of doubt or suspicion in people who do not share their goals.
The process of hiding anything is difficult. It forces a greater consciousness and suspicion in human character. There is a continual uncomfortable feeling causing one to believe that somebody is following you. There is a strange fear of sudden exposure to a mocking reality. There are unnecessary doubts.
If you suffer the tendency of hiding your goals or intentions, then check whether it is helping your stand or harming your resolve. If you are capable and it is not your fears that force you to play it safe, then aren't you wasting your resources in the wrong direction?
Let the world know what you want. It will help you to put in your best and make the maximum use of time. Strike at tasks with lightening intensity, without fear or consciousness. Sincerity in your desires will soon show. However, do not make life difficult by worrying about the rewards at the moment of action. Just strike. And when you strike, let your mind know nothing but the target. Concentrate like a corpse -- do nothing else but the task at hand. Sincerity in your actions will soon mold into rewards. If you can do the basics right then there is no way in which you can suffer or have any grudge against fate.
Coming back to the original point of letting the world know about your goals. Will you be able to concentrate on work if you are keeping your goals twenty thousand leagues below the heart?
Is anything that stops you from concentrating or putting on your best worth your company? Why not send this limiting factor to your success to the grave?
If you can be earnest with your resolve and decisive in your action, then the best is bound to follow you. Is not that your real goal?

Generation Gap

When I was young, I had the firepower and the arrogance to ignore the advice of my parents. I believed that parents had become pessimists by years. They had seen a little too many colors of life, and turned a recluse. They seemed to irritate me - always repeating their talk as if truth and experience were their bastion. I would always feel irritated that my parents never gave me a chance to speak my concerns and whenever I forced them to hear my opinions they would laugh and ignore. The result was that I stopped caring for their advice whether or not it was sincere or practical.
As years flew by and I entered forties, I realized the golden truth in my parents saying. They were gone by now and I missed them badly. I wanted to be scolded and I repented having taunted them for their slow demeanor and practical submission to reality. Since they were gone, I was left free to advice my children. I worked harder to advice them - nearly everything, which I had heard from my parents but which I did not implement myself would be part of my lectures. When my children would not listen to me, I would get irritated - more so at the fact that they are going to suffer my way. This thought would suffocate me. I would then try to force change on them and perhaps turned more of a dictator. I found my children running away from me and today I am pained when they talk to strangers and silently ridicule me.
If only now aged and ignored, I could travel back to the days of my youth, I would realize what a generation gap means. For each generation, it is important to explore life in its own way. No matter what suggestions or advice is forced, teenage and youth is meant to be its own airplane. The only way this bubbly-phase of life listens is by becoming a friend, by letting them have a feel that while their excitement and ideas are valid there may be many more ways to complete a task. Without advising, a cooperative involvement goes a long way in strengthening relationships. Parents who could be a friend to children invariably find parenthood easy. They also don't have to worry about generation gap!

God My Best Friend

Religious books and leaders of faith all have a well-defined image of God and generally each of them argues to surrender everything on the altar of sacrifice. Being materialist and confused, and therefore ambitious, I have a slightly different reason for faith in God.
To me, God is a friend who helps people to define and refine their belief systems. God symbolizes to me the ultimate power watching my deeds (or depending on the frequency, misdeeds!) and yet not making a public mockery of my mistakes. His authority and subtlety of expression allows me to dispense half-hearted promises till those promises lose their mettle or till they turn firm and become my resolve.
God is my perfect friend, a listener with infinite patience, who never interrupts my cribs how many a times I might narrate them. He bears all my agony in all those small and big moments of suffering. God knows, just like I know, that my crib is against myself, against my ability to complete the promise that I make. Sensing my own unpolished desperation, God leaves me alone - never answering my irritation at His seeming unresponsiveness. As those moments of doubts (when my statements change like whirlwind) wither away, time tells what a fool I have been.
Yes desperation, dejection, humiliation, and temporal loss of hope occur to us all. My belief in the friendship of God ensures that I am not alone in those tender moments of doubt, insincerity, and insecurity. Need I ask more from any friend?