What is your goal?

OK lets get straight here. What do people want to do? What do they want to achieve?

I want to go outside India man. Life there is so cool. Beautiful girls, fast cars, lifestyle!! Life in India sucks. In the west, people give you all the personal space you want. India is too crowded.

I want to come back home. I feel lonely here. I am so excited I am finally coming back to India.

B-School: My final goal is heading a multi million dollar organization.

Engineering College: I want to get admission into IIMA

School: I want to get into IIT

Me says: I want to be happy!!!
Response: Whaaat? That is no goal man. Your goal should be specific. It cannot as generic as this. You cannot achieve happiness by trying to be happy. You have to earn it. You have to work hard (read. seriously), to achieve your goal. That’s the only way to live.

Why is that? What would you gain by getting into IIT, IIM, going outside India or other such things you plan to do? Aren’t these all a means to an end? The end being happiness. Everyday we hear people setting goals, achieving some of them & then chasing other goals. How much time do they spend savoring the happiness of having achieved that goal. I am no exception. I had set some goals in life too. To what end? I did enjoy the achivement of those goals. But for a very short while. As soon as you get what you aim for, your mind automatically shifts its attention. People who would have ever fed a dog would know. Say you have a roti in your hand & you are feeding it in pieces. The dog would not start eating until all the pieces have been dropped. It is not satisfied with what its got. It’s the same with us humans. We are never satisfied with what we’ve got. We strive to get more. Maybe that drives innovations and all the improvements in place today. But in this whole process aren’t we forgetting to hold back a little and be happy.

Here I’m not saying that you forget everything & have no desires. Although this maybe good for some. But I guess I and most of the people cannot reach that level of consciousness. So what to do?

Enjoy every moment of your life!!!

This must be one of the toppers in the “Most clichéd statements Hall of Fame”. It definitely looks easy. But I look around and all I find is unsatisfied people having all the excuses to be not happy. “Life sucks” “I don’t deserve this” “My job is totally screwed up” Now I am new to the blogging world. But majority of the blogs too seem to be about cribs in life. They generate a lot of comments too. These are other cribbers sharing the same line of thought.

Maybe we should all keep reminding ourselves of the ultimate goal always. “Happiness”. But we seem to always lay one step below the ultimate goal. “Let me achieve this one last goal & I will be happy forever” is the rant all through life. We feel that happiness is that elusive goal which has to be achieved by years of toil & hard work. We don’t possibly realize that happiness is all around us. You just have to change your point of view.

Do you really need an umbrella ..?

OK, I’m back in Mumbai. What can I say. I couldn’t convince myself against indulging in yet another update on rains. After all, the whole of my last week was a celebration of this unique phenomena called Monsoon. As you enter Lonavala, the first thing that strikes you is the amount of moisture in the atmosphere. Now I am not new to places with high moisture content. But Lonavala is on a whole new level. This could be because of the rains there. The rains never stop. Its rains on an average for about 22 hrs in a day. There are small 5 min respites every half an hour or so when people can move from one shelter to other. Its possibly also the time when the rain gods take rest. In spite of all this, I had a great time. I spent hours just sitting & watching all this amazing volume of water fall down from the sky. I got drenched many times. The difference between Mumbai & Lonavala was that I did not have to travel on muddy roads for hours in Lonavala which I do everyday here for coming to office. It was also because I was living in the luxury of a resort.

I have lost my umbrella & I will not be buying a new one. I feel the umbrella gives you protection but it also takes away your freedom. I have to carry it everywhere I go, and it is of use only when I am outside & its raining. Losing the umbrella really gave me an opportunity to enjoy the rains. This also helped me in realise that this is not such an essential requirement – even in the heavy downpour of Lonavala. In fact, if it rains heavily an umbrella is anyway useless. I have decided to take on life as it comes & not worry too much about the rain. But what do I see here? The rains have gone. For the last two days it has hardly rained for an hour or so in Mumbai. I also hope the rains subside in flood affected places too, so that rescue operations can continue.