Skip to main content

Values

That trickling sweat has more value than all words, words, words

The greatest tragedy of evolution is that when the ape descended from the tree its heart refused to evolve.  The brain evolved and continues to do so giving us better and better technology.  The heart remains primitive giving us more and more violence and crimes.

Contradictory as it may seem, the solution lies in making people more rational.  The plain truth is that our thoughts determine our feelings and behaviour.  Irrational thoughts produce irrational behaviour.  If I think that my religion is the only correct religion and my god is the only true god, I’ll go around inflicting my religion and god on others.  The solution is to question my thinking.  Is my religion the only correct one?  Is my god the only true god?  That is rational thinking. 

Take it at a still more practical level.  My worth depends on the appreciation I receive for the works I do.  This is irrational thinking.  People will love me only if I am fair and lovely.  This is irrational thinking.  I have to be a winner wherever I am and whatever I’m doing.  This is irrational thinking.  Yet most people are driven by such thinking.  Hence we have unnecessary competition, rivalry, jealousy, greed, and all the sins that pollute the Ganga endlessly. 

Hence the first thing to do is to develop rational thinking.  Challenge your thoughts rationally and you begin to see a different world.  Life changes.  Magic descends into life.  The rainbow begins to glitter behind the clouds. 

The conflict between the heart and the brain begins to melt.  That leads to integrity, the second value (the first being rational thinking).  Integrity means wholeness.  Reason and emotion are synchronised to create a symphony.  Life becomes as sweet as mellifluous music.  Plain honesty becomes the habit.  Masks vanish.  You are what you are.  You don’t have to pretend.  You don’t have to go around exercising your oratorical skills to hoodwink people to vote for you.  People will vote for you.  You don’t have to spend crores on publicity.  People see through you.  People see your integrity.  They admire you.  You are the real hero. 

Real heroism is driven by compassion. The real hero understands the situation with clarity.  Genuine understanding leads to our obligation towards fellow beings, towards the planet, towards even the stone on which we tread. 

The genuine hero is not sarcastic.  The genuine hero is not cynical.  The genuine hero does not need oratory and histrionics.  Propaganda is out.  Advertisement is redundant.  Words are not required.  Actions speak.  Action.  Action that emerges from rational thinking, integrity and compassion.  A brave new world emerges. 

My dream.  My utopia.  My contribution to IndiSpire Edition 199:

What are the 3 most important values that you would teach your child? #responsibleparent

Comments

  1. Hindi SudhaNovember 29, 2018 at 1:50 PM

    Your worth should & must depend only on what you do or what makes you feel happy & satisfied. Not on the appreciation of others for your work or something.
    Indeed I strongly agree that the Real heroism is driven by compassion.
    Anyways, thanks for sharing.
    -
    Thanks & Stay Blessed - Sheetal

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Break Your Barriers

  Guest Post Break Your Barriers : 10 Strategic Career Essentials to Grow in Value by Anu Sunil  A Review by Jose D. Maliekal SDB Anu Sunil’s Break Your Barriers is a refreshing guide for anyone seeking growth in life and work. It blends career strategy, personal philosophy, and practical management insights into a resource that speaks to educators, HR professionals, and leaders across both faith-based and secular settings. Having spent nearly four decades teaching philosophy and shaping human resources in Catholic seminaries, I found the book deeply enriching. Its central message is clear: most limitations are self-imposed, and imagination is the key to breaking through them. As the author reminds us, “The only limit to your success is your imagination.” The book’s strength lies in its transdisciplinary approach. It treats careers not just as jobs but as vocations, rooted in the dignity of labour and human development. Themes such as empathy, self-mastery, ethical le...
3 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Mahatma Ayyankali’s Relevance Today

About a year before he left for Chicago (1893), Swami Vivekananda visited Kerala and described the state (then Travancore-Cochin-Malabar princely states) as a “lunatic asylum.” The spiritual philosopher was shocked by the brutality of the caste system that was in practice in the region. The peasant caste of Pulayas , for example, had to keep a distance of 90 feet from Brahmins and 64 feet from Nairs. The low caste people were denied most human rights. They could not access education, enter temple premises, or buy essentials from markets. They were not even considered as humans. Ayyankali (1863-1941) was a Pulaya leader who emerged to confront the situation. I just finished reading a biography of his in Malayalam and was highly impressed by the contributions of the great man who came to be known in Kerala as the Mahatma of the Dalits . What prompted me to order a copy of the biography was an article I read in a Malayalam periodical last week. The article described how Ayyankali...
14 comments
Read more

Rushing for Blessings

Pilgrims at Sabarimala Millions of devotees are praying in India’s temples every day. The rush increases year after year and becomes stampedes occasionally. Something similar is happening in the religious places of other faiths too: Christianity and Islam, particularly. It appears that Indians are becoming more and more religious or spiritual. Are they really? If all this religious faith is genuine, why do crimes keep increasing at an incredible rate? Why do people hate each other more and more? Isn’t something wrong seriously? This is the pilgrimage season in Kerala’s Sabarimala temple. Pilgrims are forced to leave the temple without getting a darshan (spiritual view) of the deity due to the rush. Kerala High Court has capped the permitted number of pilgrims there at 75,000 a day. Looking at the serpentine queues of devotees in scanty clothing under the hot sun of Kerala, one would think that India is becoming a land of ascetics and renouncers. If religion were a vaccine agains...
8 comments
Read more

The Irony of Hindutva in Nagaland

“But we hear you take heads up there.” “Oh, yes, we do,” he replied, and seizing a boy by the head, gave us in a quite harmless way an object-lesson how they did it.” The above conversation took place between Mary Mead Clark, an American missionary in British India, and a Naga tribesman, and is quoted in Clark’s book, A Corner in India (1907). Nagaland is a tiny state in the Northeast of India: just twice the size of the Lakhimpur Kheri district in Uttar Pradesh. In that little corner of India live people belonging to 16 (if not more) distinct tribes who speak more than 30 dialects. These tribes “defy a common nomenclature,” writes Hokishe Sema, former chief minister of the state, in his book, Emergence of Nagaland . Each tribe is quite unique as far as culture and social setups are concerned. Even in physique and appearance, they vary significantly. The Nagas don’t like the common label given to them by outsiders, according to Sema. Nagaland is only 0.5% of India in area. T...
13 comments
Read more