Hunger – A Sign of Strength or Weakness?

Often, the word Hunger is linked to lack of something that makes one weak. But are we looking at it as an instigator to fill what we lack? What we achieve or would like to achieve is the result of hunger/craving/passion that we have towards it. Hunger is not a ‘lack’ of something, but if we don’t have it, we lack success. This is the crux of my thought process today.

Like an expert swimmer who doesn’t fear the deeps and like the phoenix, which doesn’t fear the fire, a person with a hunger for something doesn’t fear obstacles towards his destiny. Let us literally take the attitude that we demonstrate when we are hungry. Don’t we eat crazy like a glutton the moment we see food after prolonged fasting? Does that demonstrate the force that we have/exhibit when seeing our passionate food?

A spiritual digression to this topic can also be cited here. The reason why we follow fasting before we offer our prayers ... There is an unconscious activity or energy flow that happens in our body, when we are hungry. It is believed that when you starve for a very long duration and sit near a small tender plant for few hours, the plant droops down losing its vitality. It is because our body tends to absorb the vital energy around it, when it lacks/craves for energy. Scientifically I would say that energy flows from higher to lower concentration. Thus came the belief of praying in empty stomach that makes our body absorb the spiritual/positive vibes effectively. When every cell of our body exhibits this involuntary behavior, don’t we have a reason to believe that hunger is a sign of strength in us?

I have heard of a story where a man goes to Swami Vivekananda to know the secret/tip behind achieving what he wants.  Vivekananda takes this man into the nearby water body and immerses him inside water. When the man somehow manages to come out and takes a deep breath for his survival, Swami says that one should be that desperate like how desperate he was to get that one breathe of life while he was under water. That’s the hunger that can also be called as desperation to achieve.

Hunger gives us the drive to run for what we want. It sets us on fire and helps achieve greatness. Its only when we don’t act upon this intensity, it starts to develop weakness in us.

Stay Hungry and Stay Tuned towards your goals!

-         -  Mani

Sustaining Vs Stagnating

I was supposed to pen this blog a couple months before, when I completed 10 years in IT. It took some time for my brain to connect my fingers to the keyboard. So here it goes...

The months of May and June, usually puts me into many questions towards my career, every year. Every May, I complete 1 extra year in my company and Every June I complete 1 extra year of experience in IT. This year I was checking myself against "Stagnating Vs Sustaining".

There is life, when you say that you are sustaining on your goodness and success. It means that you get past your previous milestones and constantly maintain a pace in the race, to meet new laurels. Sometimes your successes and your comfort zone make "Stagnation" look like a Sustaining Activity. Appreciations from known colleagues, people praising you wherever you go, setting goals to your comfort and laziness can cause this delusion.

As life changes and you get into more commitments, it is difficult to have the same vigor in you that you had when you were a bachelor. Everything in this world is bound to wear-and-tear and thus we slow our pace too. But, it is always good to check if you are stagnating at a level. Sustain and Stagnate means staying in a level. But as you can see one is lively and flowing and the other is stale.

Making smart moves to sustain your success is very important as we get into a lot of personal commitments. Work hard Vs Work Smart is again a key. One can work hard and get the same results as working smart. But as you progress in your career and get into a higher role with lots of professional and personal commitments, we will have to choose the smart way to enjoy success. We can't run fast and work hard, when our hands and legs are fettered with too many commitments. Are we just concerned or cautious about the steps that we take during this transition? Again, both "Concerned" and "Cautious" shows your worry towards a happening. But, as you can very well see, one is of superlative in nature. I feel being 'cautious' begets actions from your end towards careful planning of your career.

Being 'Cautious' about what you do, to 'sustain' your success is the simple message that I wanted to convey. Again you can either think about this or meditate on it. You know what I am going to say here ... :-) Both 'meditate' and 'think' create a thought process. But when you meditate, you give life to the thought process and make it flow through your smart deeds!

Innovate, Inspire and Get Inspired always!

- Mani

FRIENDS - Old Poem Revisited for Friendship's Day!

This can be fine-tuned a lot now. But I wanted to leave it like that. A baby's prattle should be admired and not corrected. I see this poem that way. Takes me back to my memories of 2002 and my naive in it, as an amateur poet ;-)

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In the hectic world of worries,
There are some queries,
What gives us pleasure?
That is hard to measure.
Sure, Friendship is that treasure.

It is that love and care,
That the friends mutually share,
The feelings that are relished,
Forever, to be cherished.

In any field of battle,
They stand together with mettle,
Throw their arms out,
And put their enemies to rout.

Keep in mind,
They are one of the kind,
Who are really hard to find,
Sure, it is a lifetime bind!

Composed By: Mani Jayaram
Date: 23rd May 2002.
For: A dedication to all those who respect Friends and Friendship.

The path might end;but the journey continues ...

A borrowed thought from one of a tamil film song but it meant a lot to me. Isn't it the fact that whatever happens in life, time heals the good/bad and life moves on. Even if we are at a dead-end, we turn around to find our next way. Whether willingly or forced, we have to find our way until time stops us.

Time/Destiny is so authoritative that it doesn't wait for us and on top of it, it makes us wait for it one day or the other. Being a winner always, it never stoops down and makes us look for it accepting our defeat. Nobody or nothing stands the testimony of time.

So what it means to stand against Time. It needs courage, diligence and more than everything, THE FAITH. Believe in what we do, do it sincerely, pierce through the barriers, put all of you into it and you shine. When you put all of yours into a thing, you in turn give LIFE to it.

But, is giving LIFE just enough to stand against time? Life needs to survive/sustain against its mighty opponent, the Time. So how it happens? It needs followers, people who look upon it, get inspired and follow it. Thats how it stands against time.

Has anything stood against time for a few centuries? And even if it is, is it looked upon with the same level of exuberence like how it was looked upon when it was born? I dont see many! Its due to lack of followers that this unfortunate thing happens. For example, there are many architectural master-pieces that were built centuries ago but I always feel that most of them stand as a dilapidated piece without LIFE. How many of us know why it was built, how many laborers were involved in that and how long it took to build them. Only when all of these information exist and gets passed on, we see the architectural piece and the life behind it. And for those pieces for which, we know these answers, life/glory still exists. We lack followers to propagate information and make the life behind anything survive beyond time.

A religion without followers slowly perishes. If we dont cultivate our tradition/goodness/beliefs to our offspring, heritage is gone. According to me 'Marriage' is coined for the same fact. Marriage is a tradition/concept that acts as a follower-factor to reinforce love to offsprings. We follow marriage to make love survive. If it is just about sex and children like in primitive ages, would 'Love' have survived? Anything without followers, gets wiped off eventually.

What do we leave for the next generation? Is our value-system strong enough to raise the next generation. Whether you follow a nice path, or create a new path justify on what you are doing, make sure you are right 100 times and most importantly see if there is a strong following to it.

Ending my thought here ... By slightly twisting the heading of this blog to 'Your journey might end; But the path should continue to exist', I see a new beginning to my above thought ...

Take Care!
Mani Jayaram

And miles to go before I sleep ...

These famous words of Robert Frost, kept moving through the grey and white matter of my thinkcenter for a long time now that I wanted to drain this thought off my brain into my blog ...

In general I was thinking of 'destination'/'destiny' and what role it plays in us! When I was waiting for my shuttle bus to go to office, I was watching a man walking across the street here and there. It looked to me that he had nothing to do and just simply standing out on the streets. So I was thinking what happens to life without objective, aim or destination. Even for Robert Frost, Sleep [or his death as this was one of his last poems] was the destination and he wanted to do a lot before reaching the destination.

We come to office and work for a well defined time just because we know, we have to reach home at some specific time. Imagine there is just work and no home. What defines our work timings in that case? Every thing that starts needs an end. Without this end for every start, life becomes traggic! Lets take 'end' optimistically as destination/completion.

The good and the bad have a start and end. When we face the bad we should be optimistic that it will end sometime. Ideally, when we face the good we should be prepared that it is not ever-lasting. After all, the cliche says 'All good things come to an end' ...

Without end to man's life, what happens! Is there a thrill if it is a bright day always without a night or the vice versa? Even an active day is followed by a peaceful rest/sleep. Isn't it? Nature and Life teaches us the same lesson. It is the crest that defines the trough and vive versa. An end begets a new beginning. It is just that we fail to understand this.

We either go mentally down facing failures or wish to always bask on the success. Lets take the odds and evens positively. Destiny comes for our rescue in ending things that we start. What it means to be successful always? Will we have a target if we are alone on the top. What drives us to go further exploring and unravelling new limits. It is a destination for every source that sets the next level of standards for us.

Will a statement with only COMMAs and no FULL-STOP have a well defined meaning? There is an completion to all things that start. Do we like people who keep on talk without a pause? So it is, for this writing too :-) I stop it here for you to ponder ...

Yours,
Mani

All Life Equal ; Each Life Unique

Crispy yet Powerful! It meant a lot to me the moment I read it. I happened to read this somewhere and liked it so much to place this in my blog.

I would consider this a balanced saying that enforces on both individuality and concern for others. How often do we express the concern for others? Do we respect every being the way we would like to be respected? In this busy world the benevolence, respect and concern for others looks to be slowly fading away. It is also about respecting the feelings of others.

At the same time I also strongly believe that one cant please everybody in life and individuality is an important trait for every being to make him/her prominent in the society. Everybody is unique and that is what makes us visible amidst of million of beings around us. We should not compromise our individuality for others too.

When I mean not giving up on individuality, it is the individuality that is good for ourself and to others. We cant of course be holding a quality that is not good for us or others and say that is our individuality :-) So caring for others the same way you care for yourself gives the balance. Striking a balance between these two is the challenge.

Practice this in any relationship and see the difference it brings to the relationship.

Regards,

MJ

How Men Became Dominant...

We keep hearing that the society is full of male dominance or the practices that we follow are all centered towards male interests. Some call it male dominance, some call it male chauvinism and women generally attribute this gesture as an arrogance shown towards womanhood. But then, how it all started? I thought to extrapolate on what I read sometime back. Here you go...

The universal law of nature [or] the principle of evolution believes in 'Survival of the Fittest'. Let’s go to the period where the first single-cell organism came into existence. Its only job was to make its species prevalent in this earth and thus it started to split itself to reproduce more of its kind in this earth. To survive it needed nutrition and to spread, it needed reproduction. Slowly mutation came into play and suddenly two cell organisms emerged. This went on and on. A higher level organism never wanted to mate with its lower version mainly because every organism wanted to spread its race into the earth, evolve in their gene. To survive in the ecosystem, it has to be stronger than its predecessors. [This is why marriage in our culture is performed between people of same generation. The main reason is to bring the next level off springs fit and fine!] This kind of mutation process went on and on and humans [multi-cell organisms] came into the earth.

The main intention of humans [before civilizations emerged] was again to spread its race. Reproduction was on. When choice was considered for, who should earn bread for their daily living, it was mutually agreed that Men should do it. This is because women by nature of their body had to bear children and thus were not able to regularly participate in hunting or climbing trees et al. Thus women were at home taking care of the family and men had to go for hunting and bring food back home. This is why men went for work and it was initially done NOT with the intention to suppress women.

Men were involved in warfare, hunting and all outdoor activities to survive and protect their families. The male population got reduced slowly in this process of hunting and warfare. There came an imbalance in the men-women ratio, which showed a high threat to the spreading of human race. When a baby girl was born it wasn't considered a happy moment because the community already had lots of women and they desperately needed men to spread human race and to strike balance between men and women. This intention slowly went so rude to the level of woman infanticide.

Also the imbalance in the men-women ratio brought in polygamy and that too in men's favor. Women started to accept the same man because men population was less and it was considered legal that a man can have physical relationship with more than one woman. Spreading of human race and protecting human gene was more important to humans of that age, than monogamy or polygamy.

All the intentions were thus noble in those olden days and when civilizations began, these noble intentions slowly turned into a male-dominance dogma. The human race got established well enough and evolved over time but, the gene in men and women took time to evolve or change in their pattern. Thus men kept women under their hold, kept most of the rights/privileges with them, suppressed women to express their opinions and considered them a child vending machines.

Situations have changed now. But some practices in our society are still male centric. Anytime we are into any doubt on male-centric practices think back to those prehistoric ages and see if that practice bears any relevance. Considering men as hunters and women as home-defenders is the clue. Dominance whether done by man or woman is not right. So hormones, genes or prehistoric practices can't be used as a defense for any human action :-)

Regards,
Mani
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Seed: Why Men Can’t Think and Why Women Can’t Read Maps – Allan/Barbara!
Extension: Mani