3 Months of Volunteering Changed My LIFE!

I was pressed into living a life tailored and programmed by others or rather somehow induced into me by the flow of society and the environment I was pretty much dependent on. Many unlike me are definitely fortunate to have their lives sorted and streamlined. However with a strong ambition and bull headed approach one forgets to see how the little nuts and bolts are really what keep a machine intact and running. I never thought that a 12 week excursion from my rat race would actually help me understand the race.  And, how it would go on teach me to live the next half or more of my life with a greater allocation of resources (mind, money and matters) towards the right direction.

Every car runs on its own wheels: in life we tend to impose on others our ideas and our ways way of going about things. And when we don’t see this happening we tend to create a space of unhappiness for ourselves with the belief that it is being done wrong and it shouldn’t be the way it is. But if you think about it one can’t run a BMW on truck wheels. Allowing people to live their lives the way they want to; allows for an even better co-habitation relationship. Concurrently if you do see that one is running his BMW of truck wheels then it is important to identify the anomaly and help remedy it. In life similarly and with reference to civil society we cannot look at life with only our perspective. Imagine the roads with only one brand of cars. It would be DULL.

 Matter cannot be created nor destroyed: one cannot create a life for others but you can transform lives by contributing the change that is required. Many times in our corporate life and world we think we are the masters of creation. But it isn’t so as we cannot create what cannot be created when it’s already in existence. The best we can do is transform its being. Problems and troubles are part of this phenomenon and thinking that we created them or it was created will only take us back into a whirlpool. Addressing the situation with the mindset that we are just the levers that can move it rather than eliminate it will help us understand corporate and life problems better.

Everything in life has a value attached: every piece of article you own and have has a value attached to it and that it has an expiration date to it. We need to value and maintain its existence and this could be relationships, a car, a pencil, or just about anything. When we give each article its due importance and treat every valuable article with the appropriate equanimity we ensure happiness over the passage of time. Mistreating anything leads to unhappiness. These could be deadlines, our workstations, and anything really that makes us be who we are. It’s nice to be confident to believe that things will be replaced but making it a habit will reduce your valuation of things and eventually it would become a hole in your bucket which will become difficult to repair.

Helping others is really helping yourself: it is the best thing to believe that helping someone or something is really doing yourself a favor. By helping others we actually create opportunities or fixed deposits of help for ourselves.   These fixed deposits like money banked up give you great returns. And by helping people in the right manner yields you amazing returns just as it would if you would have invested wisely. The Chinese saying that if you’d help and teach someone to catch fish; you would eventually help him feed himself. Now when things aren’t good for you; he’d be able to feed you. In life and in the corporate world practising this would actually help solve many troubles.

Virtues are really virtues one must practice: growing and learning and reading about all the time was very different from actually being in it and practising it. These great things don’t come overnight and they aren’t something you can wake up with. But it is something that needs practice and repeated demonstration to enable the growth. 12 weeks was enough for to learn and cultivate and inculcate and absorb that these virtues are something that one cannot afford to ignore or cast aside.  The greater the depth of these qualities one is able to dig up the more resourceful and fulfilling life becomes.  “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control”. Love, Faith, Hope and Patience are virtues we cannot live without and the greatest among them is Love.

Life has direction and when you lose it you become a machine. Explore the world around you and when you meet people from different WORLDS it gives you this direction.

I came out a better CONSTRUCTED human being and I’m sure and with the last bottom dollar can bet it will be the same for you.

Life isn’t a notebook one could read but a practice one must exercise everyday according to the principles one sets.