FOCUSSING IN LIFE

Superior is he

Who has focus in his life.

Inferior is he,

Who has deviated in his life.

By mediating on his shortcomings

He can be focused in his life.

By blaming others for his shortcomings

He will be deviated in his life.

If he has faith in God

He can sense His energy within

Then he has a balanced mind

Which will make him successful in life

If we do not know how

To focus in life

Then it will be difficult

To overcome our problems in life

If we know how to focus in life

And have faith in God

Then together it will lead us

To sense the fragrance

Of our beautiful life.

Responsibility

Responsibility is a word which every civilized person comes across in his lifetime, at every stage of his life. In his early life, he is supposed to shoulder various responsibilities towards his siblings, towards his studies, etc. then as his next stage sets in, his next responsibilities come ringing at his doorstep – viz. responsibility towards his job, family, etc. Even in his later stage of life, he can brag of not being devoid of responsibilities – like responsibilities to settle his children and what not. So, practically a person’s life may be treated as a plethora of responsibilities to be taken care of and how he shouldered his responsibilities and contributed to the society pretty much sums up every ‘average civilized person’s life’.

But my question is that what about ‘after-life responsibilities’? Yes, after-life responsibilities (or were you thinking that all responsibilities would end with your life?JJJ ) which might have to be taken care of in this very human life which we have got. Has anyone ever given a thought? Well, this idea has been given a thought by many revolutionary thinkers and these thinkers also spread their conclusions to the world far and wide in their lifetime; but unfortunately few are there in this world who follow their conclusions to the roots. I will discuss this aspect of responsibility later.

First, let me define what responsibility actually is, what should be its features and in how many varied aspects this term ‘responsibility’ can be visualized.

The word responsibility has been defined in the dictionary as: the state of being responsible; the opportunity to act independently; a thing which you are required to do as part of your job, role or obligation. So, we see that there are three different meanings of responsibility. The first out of these ma have two different meanings (having slight difference): ‘being the cause of something and so able to be blamed or credited for it’ or ‘able to be trusted’.

Responsibility in terms of the opportunity to act independently is what I believe one of the best forms of responsibility and it is my favourite form of responsibility too. The best feature of it is the fact that the person is free to act in his own way. He is free to innovate new ideas, learn from past mistakes and the experience gained from shouldering such type of responsibility is worth a lot. The only requirement in this is the fulfillment of the responsibility in spite of whichever way it is fulfilled as it is not of much concern.  Some examples of this kind of responsibility are: in olden times the responsibility which the king and queen had towards their kingdom and its subjects; the responsibility of parents towards their children; the mutual responsibility of a husband and wife relationship, etc. The best part of this form of responsibility is that one does not have a ‘supreme power’ forcing on him the responsibilities instead this this type of responsibility arises from deep within one’s heart towards those to whom we are devoted a lot.

Next form of responsibility is ‘a thing which you are required to do as part of a job, a role or an obligation ‘. This form is of a lower degree than the previous form of responsibility because in this form of responsibility, there is always a ’supreme power’ (a person who has given you the responsibility and expects it to be fulfilled) egging the person towards the fulfillment of the responsibility. Some of its obvious examples are: various jobs in government and private organizations and institutions, etc. unfortunately, nowadays, one thing is rapidly falling into this category of responsibility and that is patriotism towards one’s country (I am talking of the gandhian type of patriotism and not the war-raging type of patriotism). Citizens today need to be reminded that it is their responsibility: to keep the streets free of trash and rubbish, to save electricity, not to spoil our natural resources and what not. Is it not something which should arise from deep within our hearts to carry out such responsibilities and out of sheer devotion to our country? Well, I think that unless every citizen has devotion from his heart towards his country, true patriotism cannot be said to have been exhibited in the country.

Now, coming to what I was talking of something like ‘after life responsibilities’ in the starting. What are they? Are they something very high-fi or involving philosophy of highly advanced minds? The answer is- no. The next question which arises is that who can carry out such responsibilities: upper class people, middle class people, lower class people, saints, yogis, those who know philosophy intricately or any common man? The answer is: by them all. Now I am coming on to ‘what are these enigmatic responsibilities?’. The responsibilities are very simple but they require one very important factor and that is belief in God. The responsibility is to lead as ideal, righteous and virtuous life as possible. To know the features of such a life one may refer any religious scripture. They are all basically filled with it only. The purpose of carrying out these responsibilities is to purify our soul to such an extent that it merges with the God and that is what I believe is the ultimate purpose of each one’s life.

'Nice people are seldom successful and successful people are seldom nice'- how much is it true?

I have often heard people say that ‘nice people are seldom successful and successful people are seldom nice’ but I have no faith in such kind of a statement. I firmly believe that people can be nice as well as successful and that too not just ‘seldom’  instead it could even be a contrary case, that is, only nice people can be truly successful.

But, there lies an ambiguity in the statement . This ambiguity has a very close connection to how one defines the terms ‘nice’ and ‘successful’. If we go by the dictionary, the term ‘nice’ means ’good-natured’, ‘kind’, ‘good -looking’, etc  while the term ‘successful’ means ‘having achieved an aim or purpose’ or ‘having gained wealth or status’.

So if we go by the meaning of being ‘good natured’ or ‘kind’ ,of the term ‘nice’,then if we ponder upon the probability of such a person to be ‘successful’, we see that there is no relation between  ‘nice’ and ‘successful’ with respect the two meanings described of ‘successful’. I mean ,there have been many barbaric people in history who were neither ‘kind’ nor ‘good natured’ yet they gained lots of wealth and became famous (or rather infamous),that is, they achieved a high status (although in bad terms) in history or in other words they became successful (according to the definition). On the contrary, we may also say that a ‘nice’ person (defined as good natured or kind)  may not become successful, that is, ‘gain wealth or status’ or ‘achieve an aim or purpose’, just because he does not have any well focused aim in life or desire for wealth or status.

Now , when we go by the meaning – ‘good looking’ of the term ‘nice’, we can straightaway say that it has no direct relation to being successful. I mean, that just because a person is ‘good looking’ will he achieve wealth or status or some aim of his own. Obviously not! But , but, but, if someone has a doubt that can’t a good looking lady achieve or status by marrying a wealthy man having high status, then let me tell that aspect of success is not under discussion. I am discussing success achieved through one’s own labour. Still there is a slight ambiguity as I say this. The ambiguity is that would being ‘nice’ (good looking) not asset a person to climb heights (achieve success) in the fields like cinema, beauty contests, etc. It is true but as I said above that there is no ‘direct’ relation between being ’good looking’ and ‘successful’, it is also true that if that person does not have the talent required for that field then he won’t achieve any such success. So , we may also say that being nice may asset in being successful which contradicts the given statement that nice people are seldom successful.

So, it is now clear that being nice has no direct relation with being successful according to the terms defined as per the dictionary. In this way, we may say, that the given statement is incorrect or invalid.

Now, what is the thing that relates a person directly with success? It is the strong determination and passion towards one’s aim in life. It is the only thing by which a person can achieve success (varies according to the individual’s aim in life).

Now, let me discuss why I, in the starting, said that only nice people can be truly successful. For this the terms nice and successful have to be redefined at a deeper level. Here, the term ‘nice people’ is defined as the people with high moral values in life, an open minded mental state and a pure conscience (ideally speaking!) and the term ‘truly successful’ is defined as having achieved satisfaction and inner peace of mind in the later stages of life. We know many cases in which a person achieved great heights of success (here its dictionary meaning) but had horrible later stages of his life in which he had things varying from broken families, nervous breakdown, critical body health and in some cases complete madness.

One might think that after achieving heights of success why did he have such horrible stages of  life. This is because he did not have any quality of a ‘nice’ person viz. – high moral values, open mind and pure conscience.

So, he tried to achieve success by hook or by crook and in some cases took wrong paths to gain more and more wealth to achieve high status. But is all this wrongly and unwisely achieved wealth or status worth it? I don’t think so when one does not get satisfaction and inner peace of mind in his later life. That is why, I said that only nice people can be truly successful.