Never alone in the Journey of Life

I remember watching a TV program with a 4 year old.  This program showed the Wilderbeast of the African Plains crossing the Savanna Region. The wilderbeast is an animal that keeps moving...it is constantly running to places where there is food and water. They move in thousands and so along with them travel their predators.  This TV program showed how a pregnant wilderbeast (I am calling her Gowri) gave birth to a child.  From the voice over by the commentator we understood that while a human child takes close to a year to start walking, a wilderbeast calf starts walking within 2 minutes of birth and running within few more minutes.  I said, "Wow...God has really fast forwarded its life by months."  Quickly, I realised that this was needed because on came few cheetahs and attacked the calf.  Gowri tried to protect her young and started calling for help. While few others came to help, it was too late and the calf was killed and carried away by the cheetahs.  The 4 year old who watched this episode with me was shocked and she was crying for almost a week feeling sad that this new born's life had been snuffed out within minutes of birth.  I was wondering as to why should this new animal be born to die immediately?  Maybe, God had provided food to some very hungry cheetahs who had not eaten for few days now and were desperate for a meal.

Gowri, after trying her best to protect her child, gave up the fight and ran away to save her own life.  I am not sure what Gowri would have felt to lose her child to predators.  Since, we dont know, we believe that Gowri was not grieving - we rationalise that animals cannot think.  She was busy running away from the predators.  Maybe, God fast-forwarded this grief in Gowri's life.  If a human loses his/her child, the grieving goes on for years. Maybe, God felt that someone like Gowri should face the same pain for few minutes only.  Or maybe, Gowri is still grieving and I dont know it because she cannot speak or express it.

As they say, the only certainty in life is death.  Yet, when it happens, we feel shattered.  Especially, when it is one of our loved ones.  There is an ancient Indian story that says that a king had gone to seek the blessings of a sage.  The sage blessed him, "May you and your siblings perform the last rites of your parents and your children perform your last rites."  The king wondered why the sage was talking of death while blessing him.  Later he came across a couple who were grieving their child's death.  When he noticed how devastating the emotions were, he thanked the sage for the blessings given.

It is only when this death happens and when it happens to someone we love very much, we tend to lose our balance. Thoughts cross our mind that this God has not stood by us.  That despite us being such a good human being, He has punished us severely...and, if this is the God that we have been worshipping for so many years, there is no point in doing so any more.  God really takes a beating in our minds.

It is precisely at this time in our lives that we should look to help from spiritual leaders.  We need to look deeply in to ourselves and bring the courage from inside.  As for Gowri, even our life needs to go on.  While we will be sad for years to come, our own life has to be lived.  We have other relatives and loved ones who care for us.  Our sorrow should not reach a stage that it puts others in to severe stress and sorrow.  In my earlier blog I had discussed as to why our Health is a social responsibility.  Likewise, our grieving is also a social responsibility.  It must happen, will happen and then while it continues to happen, we must also realise that life has to go on and get a good hold on it.

They say that time is the best healer.  This does not mean that as time passes by, you will forget the person who died.  It is only that the impact is lesser than what it was when it happened.

I chanced up on a book called "The Laws of the Spirit World" by Khorshed Bhavnagri.  This is the story of a couple who lost both their sons in a car crash.  Life came down crashing for them and they lost faith in God.  There was a message that they received from the Spirit World.  The life that they had lost interest in changed dramatically and sent them off on an incredible journey.  More than whether we believe in Life after Death, whether there is a Spirit World, etc., the book is one that shows how a couple re-built their lives around a belief.  The book shows how they reached down in to themselves and brought out that inner courage to live.  The book is about courage and fortitude as much as it is on what the Spririt World is all about.

Like for all of us, I believe that Gowri felt tremendous pain when she lost her child within minutes of birth...cruelly mauled to death in front of her eyes.  But, she knew that she had to live and her life must go on.  She summoned all the courage from inside her and ran towards her herd and joined them in their journey.  Our journey does not end with a death of a loved one. 

A new chapter begins when a loved one passes away...the Cycle of Life begins and instead of the loved one being with us physically, he/she is there in our thoughts and our memories.  I believe that this new journey is thrust up on us because Life knows that we are strong enough to handle this situation and can start off on a new mission and objective.  And, as in every other journey of our Life, we are never alone!!!

Diversity of thought...

I heard someone say, "When my grandad dug the earth, he got gold.  When my dad dug the earth, he got coal. When I dig the earth, I get landmines/bombs.  I am worried that when my children and their children dig the earth, that they would end up getting skeletons."  This makes me wonder whether this is the price we have to pay because of intolerance to diversity of thought?

We fight wars in the name of rogue countries with weapons of mass destruction, in the name of religion, in the name of terrorism, for territories that originally belonged to some country, etc.  If we analyse many of these wars, they are because of economic reasons or because of intolerance to diversity of thought (including religious ideologies).

In an organization this takes different forms.  I have noticed that if we profile members of a team, we will find people with similar skills and capabilities and orientation towards work as that of the Head of Team. This is very true if the Head has himself/herself handpicked the teams.  That is why we will notice poorly balanced teams from a work orientation perspective.  We will also notice changes happening to teams as a new Head takes over. While some of it would be due to disappointments in existing team members when a new head comes in or perceived differences of opinions, many times this happens when there is no tolerance to diversity of thought.

Many organizations try and get in diversity in to teams. More often than not, this tends to be focussed on gender diversity.  Some look at diversity related to countries, related to regions in a country and some related to languages spoken or religion.  Most organizations do not put in much effort in to handling diversity of thought.  This is probably one of the most critical aspects that many companies should look in to.  There is an excellent story that explains this aspect well.  There was a very bright and creative architect. He realised that the demand for his work was increasing and so decided to form a company. He did that and selected a good management team.  This team soon realised that they started getting work.  However, after a year, they started noticing customer problems and the number of contracts started reducing.  They hired a consultant to figure out what was happening.  When they were profiled by the consultant, their work preferences were very similar.  All of them were very creative and spent a lot of time on creating lovely concepts and buildings. However, collectively, they were poor at execution of their concepts and designs.  So, while they got contracts initially, since they could not execute these well, they started losing business.

Like this story, I have seen many stories of very good teams failing.  This is primarily because of lack of diversity of thought.  Implementing it in a team is very complex given that the needs of business are so varied and demanding.  However, a well balanced team in the only one that will produce sustained results.

At work and in life, it makes a lot of sense to be tolerant to many things and most importantly, different thoughts and thought processes.  India, as a country, has this diversity and takes this diversity in its stride. This tolerance comes out of our spiritual practices. That is why we still see the cows strolling along with the latest motor cars in our streets!!!