You have a choice. Either to make your life easy or to make your life hard. A mouse takes one day to build a hole, a bird takes two days to build a nest and a man takes thirty years to build a house. – Excerpts from Jon Jandai (TED Talks)

Is there something wrong in this equation? Why does man have to work so hard when life is easy?

I took my five year old friend Nazmin to the ice-cream shop. Half-way through the ice-cream, she stopped. Enough! She said. Don’t we eat ice-cream to fill our heart?

(Bongs eat rosogullahs for the heart even on a full stomach).

The five year old has the intelligence to say enough. Man has forgotten it.

To aggrandize my fortunes, I at times travel to Chennai & Bangalore out of sheer fool-hardy.

My car crawls through the congested traffic like Abhimanyu trying to wean out through the Chakravyuha.

The silkworm weaves silk around itself till it perishes. Likewise, I felt throttled inside the car (cocoon) with the lure of silk (money).

It is like the dog chewing its bone, extracting blood and gnawing unto itself.

Lao-Tse said, ‘you have to die when you are still alive.’

Often when I go to the community meetings & business meetings (once I prided myself as being a member of every group and filled my visiting card with membership details).

I would see the Higgs particle (one that gives mass to matter). He would assume importance as though the whole world revolved around him.

We would dance like fire-flies hovering around this light. Every association has a Higgs boson, fireflies and the rest. Society is a pecking order.

Buddha said, be light unto yourself. You are a Higgs particle, not a firefly that bites the dust.

The challenge of exclusion and minimalism is the way to discover your own grandeur.

Goenka shares a beautiful story to explain that I and MINE are the root of all problems.

Scene I: A professor walks with five of his students in a park. One of his students accidentally steps on a man sleeping on the grass. The man gets up and abuses the student.

The professor is happy. He rationalizes, that his student did not follow his instructions of being watchful.

Here, I and MINE are not involved. Hence professor is happy.

Scene II: Professor walks alone and steps on the sleeping man. Man gets up and abuses. Now the professor is sad.

Reason: it was a question of I. His ego was hurt.

Scene III: Professor walks alone and steps on his sleeping son. The son gets up and abuses. Now the professor is depressed. Son was MINE hurting the I.

Scene IV: Professor walks in the park with his students and steps on his son. His son abuses him in front of his students. Now professor is aghast & consternated as MINE (son) hurt ME (I) in front of my (MINE) students.

The world is on a I / MINE spree. My love, my spouse, my company, my car, my 17 bedroom house, my helicopter, my jet plane. It doesn’t seem to stop.

A man adores his wife and loves her cute nails, wavy hair and pearl like teeth.

One day a nail of her’s falls on his plate of food. Does he kiss the nail & say; I love it.

After some time he sees her hairs on his meal. Does he pick up the strand and say, what a lovely piece of hair? He says ‘Dirty hair’. When the tooth falls, he doesn’t say my pearl has fallen. Instead he says throw that broken bone away.

Moral: Pain comes out of attachment. Experiment with the 41 day challenge. Ayyappa challenge could be a great management tool to heal the world.

What do you think?

This is Shiv signing off from S & S Family First.