BE THE CHANGE THAT YOU WANT TO SEE

Most of us must have started our learning process in the lower classes by hearing the story of the tortoise and the hare. It is all about the slow and steady winning the race. Decades had gone by since we heard the story but it is still very vivid in the memory. The story has a special place in our knowledge repository in spite of the fact that the world had evolved a lot thereafter.

Today, we see and feel that everything around us moving so fast. We are dwelling truly at the beginning of a new century that is seemingly based on nanoseconds. To most of us, activities go at high pace. Many of us are in multitasking mode. With so much happening, still we end up every day, worrying that lots of activities are still pending. And that makes us restless as we realize that it is not the way to end a day.

It is here that we need to understand the fundamentals.

From its genesis, the earth is spinning on its own axis. Also, at a specific velocity, it is circumventing the sun. If everything around us had acquired higher speed, are we then, not allowed to think that the self-spinning speed of earth as well as the circulating speed around sun also have increased. Don’t worry, nothing of that sort had ever happened. And, that is not expected to happen either.

What does that point out? It shows that most of the speed that we experience is in our mind. That perceived speed disturbs us. The feeling is more prominent with people on their right side of life. Actually they were not expecting some of the changes to happen. And when it happened, they were caught unawares. Yes, computers, satellites, Internet, palmtops and mobile phones had indeed boosted up the speed of activities, which an ageing man was not prepared to face.

I was talking to my sixth standard son the other day. I asked him, with so much of gadgets around us, whether he genuinely feels any increase in the pace of activities. He thought for a second and replied that may be, but it has not affected him. That set me thinking, why did he say so? When these gadgets had made me feel restless with so much of activities happening around me, my son is feeling cool about it. Then I realized that it is my ‘conditioned mind’ that is the culprit. For him, it is an open mind with capacity of acquiring and analyzing much more input. It is not that my mind is not capable of doing as much as he can, if not more. But it is a closed up mind. Therefore, it abhors the speed at which things are happening now. And that made me restless and disturbed.

Human mind is capable of acquisition, processing, retention and retrieval of information and knowledge. With old age, may be there could be a dent in the capabilities. But, is not as bad as we feel. We need to be aware of our mental capabilities. We need to train and manage our mind. We need to make our mind open and un-conditional.

Necessarily, the speed that we feel makes us restless is a part of the change that is happening around us. So, more than speed, it is the change that upsets us and makes us restless. Fundamentally, the capability of change management is that we ought to acquire and practice.

Mahatma Gandhi said, ‘be the change that you want to see in the world’. It is very clear without oneself changing, he cannot experience the changes around.

‘Change alone is eternal, perpetual and immortal’, said Arthur Schopenhauer, famous German philosopher. How true it is. Look at the world, the Universe, the Galaxy, the Milky way, everything is spinning and moving. Yes, every thing is changing. We have to accept the fact that change is the only constant. The earlier we understand it, the better it is for all of us. If we do not change, we do not grow. If we do not grow, we are not living. And when we are not living, we are dead and decaying.

When changes are happening around us, we need to figure out how these changes will affect us. If you feel that it is not going to affect you, you could work your way around it or even ignore it. But if the change that you observe is going to affect you, then you have to prepare yourself to face it, make yourself comfortable with it and learn to live with it.

It is often said that change that is mostly unknown, makes us afraid. And that makes us unhappy. Ask this question yourself, do you want to be unhappy? No, everyone wants to be happy. If it is happiness that we seek, then we should learn to set aside the fear of the unknown. From unknown, we should move it into the known and when it is known, we would have many ways to deal with it and therefore we could live with it. The fear will no longer be there. Positive feelings such as hope, happiness etc should prevail and from there, progress would ensue.

We need to realize that to achieve progress, we need to change. It is important to understand the change and thereafter, we need to include it as part of us. Manage the change in such a way as to make a successful living.