Live the adventure

Life is uncertain, tumultuous, almost random. My father puts it best, "It is a game of snakes and ladders." It is a hitchiker's dream and a business traveller's nightmare. So, stop being the business traveller, and become the hitch hiker, the backpacker, yes, the maverick. Do what you love and bother not where it takes you because wherever it does will be splendid beyond your wildest dreams. Live the adventure.

Is criticism overrated?

Criticism is overrated, so is constant improvement. Why not stop thinking 'critically' for a minute and just enjoy the "perfect" as well as the plenty of "not perfect but still enjoyable" things that life offers us?

Embroidery

The world is like a very intricate, multi-coloured piece of embroidery. Each one of us has to pick a single thread or a few, if we can and ensure that these get weaved well into the fabric. Neither of us is capable of controlling where the entire piece goes. Trying to do so will only botch it up. So just choose your own thread and enjoy yourself thoroughly as you weave it and in your heart, have the firm understanding that in the end, if everybody did just that, the embroidery is bound to be neat and beautiful.

~Prajakta

Knowing the true source of happiness

Here's a fable with a great message:

"I once met the housekeeper of an Indian yogi who owned a collection of gorgeous natural crystals. One day the housekeeper knocked over a display case, smashing many of the irreplaceable stones. When she apologized, profusely and in tears, the yogi smiled and said, "Those things were for my joy, not for my misery." Such is the ease with which a practiced mind embraces endings. "

Price of making a mistake

Sometimes I wonder, how much can the price of making a mistake be?

I have grown up building a flawless, enviable career path for people of my age. While that makes me perhaps the "luckiest" in most people's view, it creates a strange predicament for me. I have been finding it increasingly hard to give myself the permission to make a mistake, to be wrong. Ironically, my success has not made me more confident, but less! (Yes, it has puffed up my ego...but ego is not confidence) What if I were to take one wrong step and throw all that I have built over years of hardwork to the winds?! More and more, I am leaning towards taking the safe route - sticking to titles rather than pursuing less glamorous but interesting projects, judging opportunities by the fame/prestige they bring or doors they open rather than whether they truly make me happy ... in other words, taking the beaten path, the time-tested track record and nothing but copying those who have been successful before. Yes, there is no doubt that following in their footsteps will take me where they are today, but will it ever make me an original? I sincerely doubt it!

My father often told me when I was growing up, "Run a different race." Perhaps, the time has come to take his advice. The race which is different is inevitably risky, one where there is nothing else to trust but yourself. Perhaps, that is the only way to become fearless again.

Don't take life too seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway!

There is more to life than increasing its speed. There is no point in running all the way to the grave.

~Mahatma Gandhi