My childhood friend has just returned from Apollo hospital, Chennai after undergoing a thorough checkup for the persistent heaviness and uneasiness in stomach. For quite sometime he had been experiencing irritability, Nausea, vomiting and heightened tendency towards dislike for food.
All these were clear pointers that there is something wrong with that vital organ of the body which has its own moods. To rule out the possibility of psychological stress, he was also counseled during his brief stay there. No serious flaw could be diagnosed. Among many others, the significant change in his life was to move away from his house in the main town which was dismantled and settle down in a nearby place, where a recently constructed new house was already ready for occupation.
Even before he had shifted his house from main town to the suburb, my frequency of visit to his place had declined. For this, I cannot have any rational explanation. It just happened. Perhaps I didn’t want to burden him with my problems as I had done in the distant past. Moreover each has his own life to live amidst all kinds of chaos and pleasant events. In the last four years my administrative positions and the seriousness with which I took it as also the conditions at home hardly made me to think about my close friends although they are closer geographically. This is one kind of absurdity in life. We hardly realize the value of Social Capital.
The day after his arrival from hospital, I visited his new house and spent some time, more than two hours along with another friend who also studied with us since First standard. In our younger days given the proximity of my house and of course the chemistry, I was the closest and nearest to him. But in the later part of the adolescence, I was away from my region and parents most of the time and the other friend provided all emotional support and warmth, but for which he would not have studied Law and evolved as a good advocate, practicing ethics. Furthermore they had spiritual orientation, a common bond to connect which I could not internalize despite influenced by them for a short while.
We reassured him that unmindful of any residual physical problem, he must feel mentally free from any kind of worry arising out of any real or imagined problems. We recollected and ruminated over many things. While we were absorbed in conversation, his mind was effortlessly focused on us and not on the problem or ailment which had been afflicting him for quite sometime. He felt immense relief I could see. Indeed he did not have any trace of pain excepting the belching which was trying to reveal itself. Two days after, while speaking over phone, he breathed the air of hope and optimism, as he felt relaxed.
In our circle of friends comprising of Four, the other individual is well settled at Chennai. Of all the four I was the only one who used to always ventilate all the problems and the rest of them had the balance and fortune to be matured with their complaints. I didn’t have that maturity. With the ageing process I continue to pour out atleaast to a select few. I don’t know whether that virtue or vice has saved me from my emotional turmoil, given rampant chaos in the campus politics as also the welcome storms and thunder showers including occassioanl pleaseant drizzles at home . My two grand daughters have lightened my burden and anchored me well. They are attentive, demanding and talkative, more important fluent in Tamil.
Instead of bottling up all the pressures and accumulating them, I had always allowed them to wander through the casket and I didn’t find myself into any pressure cooker type of situation. Even now at sixty plus I have not changed my style of functioning .The greatest treasure I have earned is that, I am always blanketed by a protective suit of good will of student community, not just in the campus, but spread all over the world. Perhaps this simple, natural connectedness with others, my emotional involvement and commitment to address the problems of others, regardless of whether I could find solution or not have made me to forget my problems . But in the process I have not streamlined both my academic and administrative matters .They weigh me down and cause wrinkles on mind, unnecessarily. I know, I must be worried and address the problem and not get anxious. I have already become pro active and positive in sorting out my pending administrative issues.
I know if the call comes from above and many pending administrative matters do remain unsolved then I may have my own uneasiness at that time .But I am confident, some good souls would take care of my residual issues and sort out the matter. There is some optimistic faith in the goodness of the Universe not withstanding all round deterioration in all walks of life: the wise and benevolent destiny can’t just abandon its shadow.
All our problems arise out of stress caused by a host of factors; a few of them at least are like ghosts which do not really exist. I have understood from my little experience that money does not buy happiness. Affluence, like poverty also has its own train of suffering. But there are quite a few, who have struck a delicate, favorable, balance between material living and peaceful co-existence in family. We shall salute them for their smartness.
The current flat world of Thomas.L.Friedman, Alan Greenspan’s world of stock market socialism , made possible by low interest rate regime and faith in self regulation of banking and financial institutions for long and our own Manmohan’s shining India, but shrewdly not advertised like erstwhile BJP, will not and cannot provide emotional security and peace. Family, comprising of individuals with all their egos, gross misunderstanding, refusal to listen to others, the perennial tendency to accumulate all kinds of riches by all fraudulent means under the Sun and so on must be replaced by honest prayers and begging by all stake holders at home, to buy peace by practicing love , and also seeing virtues in frugal living and high thinking.
Warren Buffet’s son preaching values as wealth in his new book, “ Life is what you make it: Finding your own path to fulfillment,” merited my attention very recently, rather accidentally, coinciding with my line of thought. I feel proud and humble, like this great son, I am also being lost, but trying to find myself as a person and also as a student in economics.
Buffet, 52, teaches the rewards of self respect and pursuing one’s own passions and accomplishments rather than burying into society’s concepts of material wealth.
He says :
“I am my own person and I know what I have accomplished in my life…. This is not about wealth or fame or money or any of that stuff, it is actually about values and what you enjoy and finding something you love doing.”
All these were clear pointers that there is something wrong with that vital organ of the body which has its own moods. To rule out the possibility of psychological stress, he was also counseled during his brief stay there. No serious flaw could be diagnosed. Among many others, the significant change in his life was to move away from his house in the main town which was dismantled and settle down in a nearby place, where a recently constructed new house was already ready for occupation.
Even before he had shifted his house from main town to the suburb, my frequency of visit to his place had declined. For this, I cannot have any rational explanation. It just happened. Perhaps I didn’t want to burden him with my problems as I had done in the distant past. Moreover each has his own life to live amidst all kinds of chaos and pleasant events. In the last four years my administrative positions and the seriousness with which I took it as also the conditions at home hardly made me to think about my close friends although they are closer geographically. This is one kind of absurdity in life. We hardly realize the value of Social Capital.
The day after his arrival from hospital, I visited his new house and spent some time, more than two hours along with another friend who also studied with us since First standard. In our younger days given the proximity of my house and of course the chemistry, I was the closest and nearest to him. But in the later part of the adolescence, I was away from my region and parents most of the time and the other friend provided all emotional support and warmth, but for which he would not have studied Law and evolved as a good advocate, practicing ethics. Furthermore they had spiritual orientation, a common bond to connect which I could not internalize despite influenced by them for a short while.
We reassured him that unmindful of any residual physical problem, he must feel mentally free from any kind of worry arising out of any real or imagined problems. We recollected and ruminated over many things. While we were absorbed in conversation, his mind was effortlessly focused on us and not on the problem or ailment which had been afflicting him for quite sometime. He felt immense relief I could see. Indeed he did not have any trace of pain excepting the belching which was trying to reveal itself. Two days after, while speaking over phone, he breathed the air of hope and optimism, as he felt relaxed.
In our circle of friends comprising of Four, the other individual is well settled at Chennai. Of all the four I was the only one who used to always ventilate all the problems and the rest of them had the balance and fortune to be matured with their complaints. I didn’t have that maturity. With the ageing process I continue to pour out atleaast to a select few. I don’t know whether that virtue or vice has saved me from my emotional turmoil, given rampant chaos in the campus politics as also the welcome storms and thunder showers including occassioanl pleaseant drizzles at home . My two grand daughters have lightened my burden and anchored me well. They are attentive, demanding and talkative, more important fluent in Tamil.
Instead of bottling up all the pressures and accumulating them, I had always allowed them to wander through the casket and I didn’t find myself into any pressure cooker type of situation. Even now at sixty plus I have not changed my style of functioning .The greatest treasure I have earned is that, I am always blanketed by a protective suit of good will of student community, not just in the campus, but spread all over the world. Perhaps this simple, natural connectedness with others, my emotional involvement and commitment to address the problems of others, regardless of whether I could find solution or not have made me to forget my problems . But in the process I have not streamlined both my academic and administrative matters .They weigh me down and cause wrinkles on mind, unnecessarily. I know, I must be worried and address the problem and not get anxious. I have already become pro active and positive in sorting out my pending administrative issues.
I know if the call comes from above and many pending administrative matters do remain unsolved then I may have my own uneasiness at that time .But I am confident, some good souls would take care of my residual issues and sort out the matter. There is some optimistic faith in the goodness of the Universe not withstanding all round deterioration in all walks of life: the wise and benevolent destiny can’t just abandon its shadow.
All our problems arise out of stress caused by a host of factors; a few of them at least are like ghosts which do not really exist. I have understood from my little experience that money does not buy happiness. Affluence, like poverty also has its own train of suffering. But there are quite a few, who have struck a delicate, favorable, balance between material living and peaceful co-existence in family. We shall salute them for their smartness.
The current flat world of Thomas.L.Friedman, Alan Greenspan’s world of stock market socialism , made possible by low interest rate regime and faith in self regulation of banking and financial institutions for long and our own Manmohan’s shining India, but shrewdly not advertised like erstwhile BJP, will not and cannot provide emotional security and peace. Family, comprising of individuals with all their egos, gross misunderstanding, refusal to listen to others, the perennial tendency to accumulate all kinds of riches by all fraudulent means under the Sun and so on must be replaced by honest prayers and begging by all stake holders at home, to buy peace by practicing love , and also seeing virtues in frugal living and high thinking.
Warren Buffet’s son preaching values as wealth in his new book, “ Life is what you make it: Finding your own path to fulfillment,” merited my attention very recently, rather accidentally, coinciding with my line of thought. I feel proud and humble, like this great son, I am also being lost, but trying to find myself as a person and also as a student in economics.
Buffet, 52, teaches the rewards of self respect and pursuing one’s own passions and accomplishments rather than burying into society’s concepts of material wealth.
He says :
“I am my own person and I know what I have accomplished in my life…. This is not about wealth or fame or money or any of that stuff, it is actually about values and what you enjoy and finding something you love doing.”
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