Unpredictability of life

Yesterday I was reflecting on Yuvraj Singh’s life over last one year. He was on top of the world after receiving the Man of series title in World Cup 2011.  He had the whole world at his feet and everyone was raving about him. Nothing seemed to going wrong with him. On February 5^th, disaster struck and he was diagnosed with lung cancer. The world had turned upside down. From the epitome of success, he slipped to the lowest depths of misery. I just wondered about the unpredictability of life. You don’t know what’s going to strike you next – fortune or misfortune.

One of my friend’s dad had a paralytic stroke and has been bedridden for 5 years now. My friend was in a state of shock as his dad was hale and hearty when he left for work that morning. Now he has been seeing his dad motionless on the bed for past five years without any improvement. He told me yesterday that he has developed such a physiological fear for this unpredictability of life that he was considering consulting a physciatrist.  As I was trying to console him, one thing struck me – unpredictability of life has its own pits and falls. Though it shocks us sometimes with extreme grief and happiness, it also emphasizes us that life is short and to live it 100% each moment.  

Now what is living 100%? A commitment to wear a smile on your life even during the most turbulent times is living 100%. A life without any grudges or complaints is 100% living. A life spent on bringing smiles on people’s faces around you is 100% living. Unpredictability dawns a sudden realization that we need to keep unnecessary emotions at bay and work on priorities in life. We realize life is too short to cry and crib over trivial matters.  It encourages us to give our best effort on every job we do. With death we realize that we can be remembered after our death with our good deeds not by our bank balance.

I would like to quote one of my favorite guruji’s (Sri Sri Ravishankar) quotes

The realization that life is very short brings dynamism in your life. Unwanted things will fall off as well as distractions. When you have to be acting or putting out effort, know that life is short. When you are expecting a result, then you are often frustrated. The ignorant person does it the other way: He hurries for the result and is impatient. Impatience goes away when you know that life is eternal. When you are looking for a return of a favor from someone or a result from your good deed, you want it quickly. When you realize life is short, procrastination falls away. But when you know that there are many lifetimes, you realize that if you don't get it sooner, you get it later. Wake up and see your life is too short. Time is running so what are you doing with your life? Is it being useful to you and the world around you? Realize life is too short. WAKE UP! LIFE IS ETERNAL!

Run with your mind, not just your legs

Sometimes a single line you have read somewhere or a line said to you by someone spurs you to do some extra ordinary things in your life. Similar thing happened to me when I had been to NES college Bhandup to organize “Yogathon”. I had read an article of Prakash Iyer – the author of Habit of Winning wherein he recollects a story his friend from army had narrated to him a few years ago.

His friend had just completed engineering and was in his first week at an army school. He was joined by fit and healthy young men who had just come from the National Defence Academy.  During the morning warm ups, they were assigned a stiff task of running 10 miles.  He started the task rather enthusiastically but was exhausted only halfway through. He started feeling a strong pain in his knees and felt he would collapse. Seeing his condition the commanding officer said a famous line that shaped up his life ““Come on, young man. Up till now you’ve been running with your legs. Now run with your mind!”

These lines worked like a magic when I was doing the Yogathon challenge at NES College.  When I started the challenge I was unsure of even doing 20 rounds. The maximum I did at home was 15 rounds.  I had come to the event wearing a jeans pant – the most uncomfortable attire to be in to do Suryanamaskar.  I was first in the mindset that I would be only demonstrating a few rounds of Suryanamaskars to the students. The atmosphere in the auditorium in which we were doing namaskars was so charged up that it spurred me on to continue even after the initial rounds.

When I reached the 30th round I knew I had broken my barrier. Now everything I was doing was pushing my body beyond limits. Whenever the thought of giving up arrived in my mind I said to myself “The accomplishment of this task would be reference point for me that anything is possible for me if I am ready to stretch a little extra”.  I tried to keep negative thoughts away from my mind. The number of counts were discouraging me and just reminding me that there was a long way to go, so I stopped listening to the counts. I kept concentrating on my breathe and my body. I took some deep long breathes to keep myself energized. 

The lines from Prakash Iyer’s article kept ringing in my ears. I could see some people giving up and complaining about the humidity in the room. I stopped looking at them. I could see some people doing the asanas rather effortlessly. I looked at them and gave them a bright smile. They smiled back and that gave me lot of confidence. Finally the teacher announced it was 90 rounds and only 18 rounds to go. Now I said to myself no use of giving up. I have reached so far now I have got to get to the shores. I started to think that so many of friends will be shocked to see me complete the challenge. That urge to see shocked faces on my friends faces egged me further. I reached 108 and I fell bang on the floor. The satisfaction I felt when I fell on the floor was unbelievable. The feeling that you gave it your all is so relishing. 

This experience I realized that mental strength plays a key role in defining success. It also proved that refusing to give in to negative-minded people (like in this case who started complaining and gave up) and following your goal with one-pointed focus is the only way to success.

Yogathon 2012

http://www.yogathon.in/

On 7^th April, on account of World’s Health day, the Art of Living foundation had organized an event “Yogathon” to create awareness about Yoga – an age old Indian practice. Similar to the Marathon where the participants have to complete the challenge by running a fixed number of yards, the Yogathon made the participants execute 108 Suryanamaskars to conquer the challenge.

Though the event was happening on a large scale in Thane, me along with a teacher and 3 other volunteers were entrusted the responsibility of conducting this event in Laxmibai school in Mulund. The thought of handling kids in school sent shivers down my spine. I started thinking “When I was in school I never listened to my teachers, why the hell will these kids listen to me?”

Expecting a lot of chaos we reached the venue at around 6 o clock in the morning. The event was supposed to happen in the auditorium. We met the physical trainer of the school who told us that the students where in the classroom and would come down as soon as the arrangements were done. I saw the empty auditorium and said to myself “is this the lull before the storm? Oh God save me from these children!!” 

Me and couple of other volunteers finished arranging the sound system and told the trainer to bring in the children. Down walked the children amidst lots of noise and chaos. Arranging them in a row according to the height was a herculean task. No student is ready to believe the other one is taller! Then started the usual cribbing the students do “Sir he is kicking me, Sir he is pushing me, Sir he is beating me”. It was fun to listen to their complaints though.

Before starting the event, the trainer had told us that it would be impossible for children to complete 108 namaskars .It was then amicably decided that students would be doing only 10 rounds (20 Suryanamaskars). I was assigned the role of a photographer. That role gave me lot of attention from the children. Whenever i held the camera near my eyes, students would pose unknowing that they are not even the frame. It was quite funny to watch children push each other to get into the frame. 

As soon as the trainer blowed the whistle, suddenly there was pindrop silence in the auditorium. Then the teacher started giving the count for suryanamskars. The students looked with curious eyes as me and couple of other volunteers demonstrated the entire exercise. The students picked up the exercise quite quickly and completed the intitial rounds quite easily. As soon as the number of rounds increased, the grimaces on their face and the moaning started exponentially increasing. Finally after 10 rounds, when they were on the verge of giving up the students gave a sigh of relief after the teacher told them to relax and lie down on the ground. The torchure was over!!!

After relaxing for a while, the students gleefully told us that they were feeling energetic much to the joy of our organizing team. The trainer congratulated and thanked us for organizing such a great event in their school. He told us that the Yoga is skill that originated in India and we are slowly losing it to the Western countries. He was happy to see us take initiative to make people aware about the power of Yoga.

When I started the day, I was kicking myself for getting up so early on a weekend, but when I saw student’s faces and heard such good things from the trainer it really made the day worthwhile.