Sreenath Sreenivasan

Thriving Mindfully

Tag: Responsibility (Page 3 of 3)

On sculpting your identity

April 13, 2018 / / 0 Comments

You.
Yes you, my friend.
Grant yourself a few moments of perfect stillness.
Take a deep breath.
And Imagine.

Imagine who you currently embody. Your mind, body, thoughts and soul.
This is what you represent.
You’re a being in incessant flux, becoming and evolving.

Accept it.
This is YOU in the present moment.

Now imagine the version you wish to embody.
What do you represent?
How do you ennoble the people around?
Do you shine in your own glory, and invite people to do the same?
Visualize and believe in it.

Now,
Think of your present self as a chunk of marble.
And your better self as the finished work of art, the timeless sculpture you wish to create.

Now, let me share a story about the great Renaissance artist Michelangelo.
When Michelangelo was asked about his creative process of sculpting, he simply quipped,
‘You have to see the sculpture in the block of stone and chisel out the bits that aren’t the sculpture.’

Drawing a parallel,
each adversity,
each challenge,
each responsibility you willingly take represents the chisel your stone like self has to go through to inch closer to your better self.

Then, the question remains,

Can you visualise the better version of your self?
If so, are you ready to weather adversity, face challenges, embrace responsibilities that shall sculpt you each living moment?

It is a slow process.
It takes time.
It takes mindfulness.

But it also takes you closer to your better self.

So I ask you, my friend,

Are you ready,
To begin the journey,
Of Chiseling
Your own self?

Harnessing Help

April 10, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Back in school we had a story in our textbook that I still remember vividly.
There was a huge trunk of a fallen tree blocking half of the path leading into a nearby town. Most people chose to do nothing about it. They just passed by from the other half of the road that was still accessible.
However, a little boy saw this scene and was determined to change the situation. He kept his school bag aside and started to push the mighty trunk out of the way.
The onlookers were amazed by the boy’s spirit. One by one the onlookers joined him, as did the people passing by. Before too long, the trunk started to roll. Everyone put in all of the energy that they could and soon enough, the trunk rolled out of the way. The road was clear for everyone to use safely.

Where did the energy to move such a mighty trunk come from?
It came from a little boy’s mindset.

There are seemingly insurmountable problems all around us. And we have learnt to navigate our way around these problems to live a life of compromise.
We tend to feel that people are too busy with their own lives to help fix a situation that needs collective effort.
But the parable of the little boy only reaffirms us with the faith that if you are willing to take responsibility of a mighty problem that plagues all, helpful hands will manifest around you.

So, it is never a problem of there being enough help available. There always is help around, albeit in latent form.
That help can always be galvanised.
The only question is,
‘Am I willing to take the first step?’
‘Do I have the heart to take a humongous responsibility?’

If so, the trunk will roll off the road.
It is only a matter of time.

Episode or Advertisement?

March 29, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Quite often we postpone what could be done right now to a point in near future. It’s not that we cannot do what needs to be done right now. We just give ourselves the leisure to indulge in something that could rather wait.
Relate this to how a TV serial is telecast. There’s the episode and then there’s the ads. If it were upto us, we would surely do away with the ads. They merely fill up time in between the slots we really want to watch.
If our life were a TV serial telecast, we quite often choose to live in the ‘ad space’ and not the ‘episode phase’.
If we choose to live like that then our life would carry no message at all, would it?
In the age of Netflix, when TV programming has moved past the old paradigm of ads, we should follow suit in the way we lead our lives.
We should always be mindful,
That a meaningful episode is much more memorable than a passing ad.

It’s best to do what truly matters,
what really needs to be done,
now !

What do you think ?

Name and Identity

March 25, 2018 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been preparing for my bicycle trip for the past month. One of my kind friends let me have his old bike to use for the trip. Since the bike needed quite a bit of work to be in running condition, I took it to a bicycle shop to get it fixed.
Over the course of the month I would drop in many times to check on it. The mechanics were very friendly and they helped me in the best way they could.
There was one little hang up with my interaction with them though. I was quite sure they didn’t know me by my name.
And this suspense went on till the day I left. It was funny to find them navigate their way through the conversation without having to call me by my name.

As I start my bicycle trip today, I got wondering about this situation. It would be nice to be called by my name. But do I want to be remembered just by my name?
Or by my physical appearance?
I wish to be remembered for my human qualities. I would like to embody the best of me in all the interactions in daily life.
I’d strive to be kind, compassionate and helpful in the small everyday things that pass by as trivial to us all.
It would be enough for me to be known as a kind and helpful person.
Thinking like this also relieves me of the anxiety of not being remembered by my name. It encourages me to take the responsibility to represent the best version of myself.
I remember someone wise once remarked, ‘What ‘s in a name ?’
Indeed I say.

Love and Responsibility

March 24, 2018 / / 0 Comments

There are big tasks and there are small ones. But there is one thing that should not be compromised in the guise of big and small. It is the act of being responsible.

We have a tendency to attribute more respect to someone who does a big task and think lowly of the person who does the small stuff. Say, a white collar manager gets much more respect than a blue collar floor worker in a factory.

With how much love do we do what we do matters much more than big and small after all.
We can do small things with great love.
Think of a gardener tending to a resplendent garden. It brings joy to every onlooker!

Responsibility can only come when you have love for something.
It is the reason men become more responsible once they have a family.

And that’s why it is of paramount importance to do what you love.
Love and responsibility go hand in hand after all.
How else would we build a responsible global community !?

On privileges and responsibility

March 13, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Morning. My friend’s two year old nephew, brimful of unbridled energy is running around. He is wearing a warm sweater and a rabbit shaped winter cap on his bobbing head. His dutiful grandma is chasing him with delicious food fresh out of the kitchen.
Witnessing this wonderful moment of his childhood my brother turned to me and expressed,
‘ What an amazing life this little boy has. He has all that he needs, food, clothes, a home, plenty of toys, a loving family and all the time in the world. And he doesn’t even know about his privileges and won’t even remember this idyllic period of his life! How blissfully unaware he is !’

I smiled, and couldn’t help but wonder,
Back home, we have all the food we need, good clothes, a loving family and the time to do whatever we want. We have access to technology and the freedom to create what we want. We are just as privileged as the kid and our freedom of thought and action could emancipate us even further.

Yet, we choose to be unaware of these privileges. And unlike the blissfully unaware state of mind of a child, our unawareness makes us anxious.
From another person’s point of view we are extremely privileged. If you are reading this right now, you are more privileged than 80 percent of the world who does not have the means to access this information.

So the question is, are we sentient enough to realise our privileges and brave enough to take up the responsibility to make something out of the opportunity we have.

There are enough problems to fix, ample opportunities to make our world a better place. The onus is on us !

The bird of your choice

March 10, 2018 / / 0 Comments

The morning was made mellifluous by the enchanting birdsong. We have more and more birds in the forest these days and the airwaves are brim with their curious chatter.
Since it was morning I couldn’t help but think about the rooster. We always think of a chicken waking us up with its cock-a-doodle-doo singing. But we don’t like this bird so much. It mostly ends up on our plates after all ! Also it has a bad metaphoric reputation. When someone is being cowardly, we called them to be ‘Chickening out’.

Then there is another bird. One that most of us would never see with our own eyes. The penguin. We associate them with a friendly and sociable demeanor. They’re seen as cool headed, relaxed and calm creatures.
I recollected an interesting metaphor about penguins.
When the water is cold and there is fear of predators lurking in the ocean, there’s always that first penguin who dives in the water braving all these fears. Once he jumps, everyone else follows.
Being the first penguin,
taking initiative ,
a leap of faith in the face of uncertainty.

In life we face challenges all the time. And it is then that we choose what we want to do. Do we ‘chicken out?’
Or do we become ‘the first penguin?’

It is our choice,
To choose the right bird.

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SREENATH SREENIVASAN

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