Potential

Lately it occurred to me that I have grown lazy and rusty with age and so decided to put pen to paper only to find to my great consternation that I simply had lost the knack of conveying my thoughts. May be I was running out of ideas, may be I was getting sucked into the usual grind of going through the motions or may be I had placed my priorities in the place where they should not have been in the first place. I don't know. Thank God I realized it now rather than tomorrow. It would have been wonderful to have realized it yesterday as some of the damage could have been averted but anyway we can't change history.

Anyway without bemoaning over a sense of personal loss for too long, let us come to the main point directly. Mozart had once remarked "It is a pity that so many of us die with so  much of music left in us." So let us play all the music within us before we leave this planet and also learn some new notes along the way. Let no one bog you down with castigating remarks like you don't have the potential to handle this etc.

I am not going to bore anybody with the examples of people who were sneered at once and then went on to become champions in their respective fields of vocation by sheer will power and unwavering discipline and dedication. You can get that list on Facebook or just google it. But do that anyway. Will make for an interesting reading.

Don't give too much latitude to others to  make decisions on your behalf. Take charge of your life before someone else does that for you. There are chances that he will mess around without any repercussions. Know where to take your life to and act in consonance with your thoughts. Most of the people wish for something and then get dejected when life doesn't turn out that way. Don't wish. Think and act.

Pursue your goal with unwavering faith. If you want to be a good nurse, learn how to heal and don't care about people judging you. If you want to be a good teacher, learn how to teach and if you want to be a good businessman learn how to create value.

Now here is where it gets slightly controversial. People say you should be satisfied with what you have and Thank God for that. I too say you should be satisfied but only to an extent. There is a dangerous thin line separating "satisfaction" and "complacence". NEVER GET COMPLACENT and start basking in the glory of your achievements because soon you may have none. You may turn out to be like the quick hare who lost the race to a slow but steady tortoise because he got complacent with his pace and took a nap along the way. Always be on the prowl for the next best meal without snatching it from somebody's mouth.

Cultivating above mind-set and practicing it is a bit hard if not outright difficult given that we live amid societal/peer pressures where we at times have to fake things that we otherwise won't have done and are made to give up on things that we personally like because they don't have a social stamp on them. But then life comes with a premium. I am not advocating developing a "rebel without a cause" mentality where people would resort to "It is my life" type catch phrases at the slightest provocation lest it be confused with that. As Mozart said "let the music play."