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  • A Man Who Carries a Cat by the Tail Learns Something He Can Learn in No Other Way: Mark Twain

    When I first came across this quote, a short film started playing in my head:

    Someone (not me, I promise!) is carrying a cat by its tail; the cat, seeing that its upside down, is understandably confused and angry, violently lunging to attain a normal posture. After several attempts, it finally manages to strike the person with its paw. Tables have turned and now the man is angry and confused.

    And the cat, well, it’s beaming with pride. It has had vengeance.

    A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

    I couldn’t help but draw parallels with our lives and the challenges that they entail.
    Challenges, problems, opportunities- whatever you might want to call them.

    Should we or should we not carry a cat by its tail?

    There is no one-size-fits-all answer here.

    What does this quote mean?

    Learning cannot be complete without making mistakes.

    Agreed, it is much wiser to learn from mistakes that others make and avoid making them. But that is not always going to be the case.

    Individuals are unique, and so are their environments and their learning mechanisms.

    Your mom tells you to stay away from the kitchen. You, thinking that you know better, march right in and have boiling water fall on your feet.

    You were warned about the cat, weren’t you?

    But, you still wanted to hold it upside down by its tail – you wanted to make your own mistake.

    When I was a kid, I used to come home with all sorts of cuts and scrapes from all the running and playing around. I would come home crying. My mother would tend to the wounds and tell me that wounds make children grow faster and stronger.

    I would believe it and feel proud of the imaginary centimeter that I would add to my height after every scrape.

    We all have to carry the cat by its tail at some point to understand that persistence in the face of adversity is what eventually makes us stronger.

    Braving difficult circumstances prepares us for ups and downs that life subjects us to. We know we can do it in the future, because we have done it in the past.

    And history, as they say, repeats itself.

  • Many People Die at 25 and Aren’t Buried Until They are 75: Benjamin Franklin

    Did you understand the meaning of this quote when you first read it in the title?

    To be honest, I didn’t.

    In fact, when I first read this famous quote by Benjamin Franklin (an American scientist, inventor, politician and the man whose face is printed on the US dollar), I thought I read it wrong.

    So, as a reflex, my eyes quickly glanced over the sentence again to understand what exactly did it mean:

    “Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five.”

    My immediate response to understanding its meaning was wondering if I died at 25 or if I am dead now. I thought about it as long as my impatient soul would permit and I quickly rang my best friend to ask her opinion on the matter.

    After failing to get a convincing answer from them, I turned to a few other friends, but strangely enough, no one seemed to understand this at the first glance.

    Why would people die at twenty-five and be buried at seventy-five?

    Does it mean that people die at 25, but live on like zombies and then finally die when they’re 75?

    Living like a zombie for such a significant period of life does not seem very intuitive. Or anyone’s preferred method to live, for that matter. Plus, you and I both know that Mr Franklin was most assuredly not referring to zombies in this quote.

    The more I thought, the clearer it became to me: death is the absence of life. And this ‘life’ could mean different things for different people.

    It could be professional success, loving relationships, being able to give back to society or a sense of purpose in life. The society is made up of people that aim for some or all of those things.

    We all have some ‘drivers’ that motivate us – and the time when we lose them is when the decay begins.

    It’s not just the bodily decay that defines death; it is losing the drive to live.

    Of all the reading that I have done over the years, wisdom all around the world prescribes life with a purpose as the best antidote to stagnation.

    A life lived savoring every moment- happy or sad.
    A life full of meaning and love.
    A life full of childlike excitement for life.

    Kane Tanaka, the oldest living person on the planet recently celebrated her 117th birthday in January this year (2020). After having a piece of her birthday cake, she is said to have remarked – ‘Tasty! I want some more.’

    That is saying ‘Yes’ to life.

  • You Don’t Drown by Falling in Water; You Drown by Staying There: E.L Cole

    If the same analogy is to apply to the situation that the world finds itself in, what’s the next step?

    COVID-19 has affected everyday lives of people around the world. We are all drowning in the news coming from all directions. We are drowning in depressing news of people dying, doctors having to make choices on who to prioritize caring for, people being skeptical of the world ever being able to recover from the aftermath.

    Certainly not a nice place to be for anyone.

    But there’s good news.

    Whether we drown or not is totally up to us. Regardless of where we are, and what we like, there is something that this pandemic-enforced confinement can do for us.

    Here are 5 things that we can do to fight this battle against this pandemic.

    Let’s start with a no brainer….

    1 – Stay home

    Regardless of how much faith you have in your immunity or your ultra-pristine neighborhood, this is something that you need to do; for yourself, your family and your community. This brings you guilt-free sleep and the satisfaction that you did your part to reduce the length of this battle.

    2 – Stay sane

    With the abundance of negativity all around, it’s perfectly normal to feel low, every once in a while. All we have to do is to make sure that we keep it limited to just that – once in a while.

    There are things we all like, things that make us happy, things that make us laugh, and this is the time those things are going to be our best friends. Finding time to listen to the music that we really love, watch movies that make us pee our pants, and hold our little kid for just one extra minute.

    Love and humor will sustain us through this.

    3 – Stay fit

    With this sudden remote work arrangement this Pandemic has brought us, every routine that we had went straight out of the window. Fitness, unfortunately, being one of them.

    We all have heard the old adage – Sound mind lives in a sound body.Exercises do more than just keep our bodies healthy- they keep our mind healthy too. There is plenty of research that supports that.

    It boosts the production of serotonin- the happiness hormone. So, in addition to ensuring that you get your little spurt of happiness, you are also ensuring to show off a slim you at the end of it all.

    4 – Stay helpful

    You might know Edward de Bono for his powerful technique: Six Thinking Hats. Another equally important thought of his, albeit lesser known is H+ (plus). In his book, he provides a thought-framework for achievement in life through daily acts of help and contribution.

    It has been scientifically proven that people feel good about themselves when they help someone in need. Volunteers have lesser aches; kind people live longer and happier lives.

    Come to think of it, helping others does make us happy!

    This will not come as a surprise when you reflect on your own life: making a child giggle, helping a colleague solve that one problem they were stuck at for weeks, consoling a spouse when they feel bogged down, all of these things make us happy, don’t they?

    Luckily, our willingness to help people is still under our control, despite in these challenging times.

    5 – Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

    Having a clear goal keeps us on our toes.

    I’m sure you can remember that one time when you were so immersed in your work that you didn’t care if you ate or slept.

    Having a clear target in front of our eyes keeps us focused and driven. And if that target is related to our passion (or something that we absolutely love doing, like a hobby, vocation), then it’s like hitting the jackpot! Not only it motivates us, but it also fills us with immeasurable positivity.

    A clear vision has a number of advantages: we are less likely to be distracted, we are more engaged, we live in the moment and we enjoy it!

    Having a vision in life does not just make our life better in the future but it also makes the journey worthwhile.

    “You Don’t Drown by Falling in Water; You Drown by Staying There”

    We are in the water now. Yes?

    We better not stay there long enough to drown.

  • Wound Is The Place Where Light Enters You – Rumi

    Sadness, disappointment, anguish, hopelessness…

    We, being humans, are prone to feeling these emotions more frequently than we would like to admit. The triggers that could lead us to this pit are too many to count.

    Loss of a loved one, struggle with a chronic illness, a crippling disability, lack of financial resources, one or many toxic relationships in life, the list just goes on. It’s very difficult to see the light at the bottom of that pit. And humanly so.

    But, like they say, darkness and light cannot co-exist. And thankfully the words of the wise bring much needed respite in our hours of struggle.

    “Wound is the place where the light enters you.”

    There are examples scattered all throughout the history of the world – where amid abject misfortunes, people not only came out victorious in their own life struggles beating all imaginable odds, but inspired thousands of others to look beyond the limitations of their present circumstances – emotional or material.

    Imagine a world where Hellen Keller resigned to her disability, Oprah Winfrey gave in to the negativity of her early childhood and adolescence, JK Rowling gave up on her writing dreams on receiving a flurry of rejections, Steve jobs gave up on his dreams of creating exemplary tech that the world would eventually come to adore.

    The pain they experienced going through those unfortunate circumstances would have been excruciating, but thankfully they braved the odds stacked against them and showed the world that if it’s imaginable, it is possible.

    And this victory was not just theirs. Think of the hundreds of thousands of lives that they touched and inspired. The world certainly is a better place following their triumph. A world that now has sign language, Macs, iPads and Harry Potter!

    That’s the power of a wound. It can pivot our lives towards exemplary achievement or a depressing abyss.

    The direction that our life goes in, post-misfortune, depends on our own resilience in face of hardships.

    Light can enter our wounds and heal them.

    The catch is for us to see it and let it do its work.

  • I Like Work; It Fascinates Me. I Can Sit and Look At It For Hours: Meaning and My Take

    Jerome K Jerome is known for a lot of things. And being funny is right on top.

    I was surfing the web randomly one fine day – I chanced upon this quote by Jerome K Jerome:

    “I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”

    Mind you, this was one of those days where I started off searching for a newly-launched flavor of ice-cream, only to see myself desperately looking for life advice from Epicurus precisely five minutes later.

    The journey from ice-cream to Epicurus was of the speed-of-light type, and I would certainly not bore you with the chain of search terms that led me there.

    Anyway, coming back to the topic, when I read this quote by Jerome this time, it did more than just make me smile. Of course, I relate to the quote, I do find myself staring at the huge pile of work, frozen, from time to time.

    But the “staring at the amount of work that I need to do” thing does not happen frequently enough for me to take a spiritual trip to rethink my life.

    Then I started to wonder: what’s the frequency that would actually raise red flags?

    I wanted answers. So naturally, the place I went to is Google.

    Turns out there is no definite answer to this complex question. The answers that I found on the internet were more like “42” to the “ultimate question of life, the universe and everything” (this is a reference from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy).

    Disheartened, but now with a purpose of the day, I went back to Jerome’s quote, looking for clues that I might have overlooked.

    I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.

    Hmmm…..

    Was he promoting mindfulness? Totally immersing himself in the moment? Enjoying looking at the work, deeply immersed in the moment and deriving inexplicable pleasure in the process?

    I can easily imagine why doing that would be fascinating. And somewhere in the world, Thich Nhat Hanh, would take pride in having another illustrious figure (Jerome of course!) join his Mindfulness movement.

    Was he a ninja planner? One of those ‘Type A’ personality people that absolutely love breaking down their work in a series of measurable milestones, so that they can derive immense satisfaction when they check them off upon completion?

    You and I both know many people like that.

    This definitely makes sense.

    So, he was a mindful planner. He derived immense pleasure staring at his huge pile of work.

    Darn! Now we have even more reasons to look up to him.

    He can make us smile.
    He can make us laugh.
    He can make us laugh very hard (trust me , I have come close to peeing my pants reading Three Men in a Boat)
    He was mindful and enjoyed every moment.
    He was a Ninja Planner!

    Phew! Too much inspiration from one person for a day. We need a reward. We need an ice-cream.. right this moment!

    By the way what’s the latest flavor of ice-cream that Ben & Jerry launched recently?

    I know whom to ask.

    *picks up the smartphone

    “OK Google”