The Tree

Feed the poor. Provide them healthcare, vaccinations, and clean rations.

Shelter the homeless. Opportunities should be provided to the deserving.

Clean the surroundings. Clear the dust.

Vehemently endeavor to uproot Graft.

Plant and grow Trees. Reduce the Carbon footprint.

Educate the illiterate. Unlearn the unnecessary. Expand your vision, your outlook. Petty squabbles, ego battles, thirst for inconspicuous instant-gratification victories will all be relegated to the gutters in the course of time. Is not the Earth itself tremendously minuscule even in the smallest of all the Sun Spots?

Obtain the Big Panorama.

Enhance yourself. Self Improvise. Become an Autodidact. Learn self control, self restraint, mastery over the Senses.

Stop making mountains out of molehills. Stop wasting time, energy, resources, fuel, thought, that which cannot be regained.

The Tree will stand. The Tree will endure. The Tree isn't dumb, it is and always will remain a silent Spectator.

What will the Tree do? It sheds its leaves. Glorify it, decorate it, uproot it, you are only encroaching upon its serenity accorded to it by the Forest. In solitude the Rains will water it. The Elements will offer it sanctuary.

Its Fruit might take years to be reaped, but it should be accorded the solitude it so verily craves for, to repay the debt incurred due to its growth on the Mountain of Gratitude.

The Internet is fun!

I grew up with the Internet, trawling it, crawling it, surfing it, assimilating it and unsuccessfully eschewing it.

You trawl it.

You crawl it.

You surf it.

You assimilate it.

You begin to live in it.

You, unsuccessfully, eschew it.

It's the digital wormhole,

The wormhole which can be a Time-Sink Black hole or,

An information disseminating Supermassive Black hole.

         Tim Berners-Lee named it the Internet. The reason you are reading this article penned by me thousands of miles away partitioned behind a cornucopia of electrical and digital complexities.

             You might be viewing this piece of avant garde Internet lingo influenced literature on the now archaic desktop computers, or their slimmer sleeker contemporarily ubiquitous counterparts - handheld devices with enough digital brains to call them Smartphones.

The Internet is fun. Fun in unfathomable ways. The Internet has now transformed to become the Digital Mirror of Man.

Regime changing, World influencing Fun

                 Internet Activism finds the internet to be fun when entire tyrannical regimes oppressing millions of people are brought to light and toppled overnight thanks to trending tweets on Twitter and chilling status updates and photos shared on Facebook, the Internet's reigning sons. Twitpic your grievances from your smartphone, and voila! The World observes and comes to your rescue.

The Window to Sociability

                      Desperate People craving for Social acceptance and connectivity with long lost ones find the Internet to be fun when it allows them to interact with people over the internet with ease and aplomb instantaneously. Tweet your status, Facebook your emotions from your smartphone, and voila! Your network listens and engages in digital social contact with you. 

Pedantic fun!

                    The inquisitively curious student finds the Internet to be fun when it grants him access to treasure troves of educational resources hitherto locked away in obscure libraries inaccessible by him. Online courses, people willing to educate curious minds over the internet all transform the Internet into a gateway to endless education for the eager student. Educational applications on smartphones, supplemented by cognitive enhancement applications all transform today's internet ready phones into life defining tools which set the student on a career trajectory replete with success. 

Find-what-you-are-looking-for fun!

                   People desperately seeking information on any topic conceivable by the human mind find the Internet to be fun when Search Engines present what they are seeking for to them in a silver platter. Appearing as tiny dashboard widgets on the user interfaces of today's smartphones, information is literally a few taps away for the curious searcher. The internet makes the arduous process of finding exactly what you want to be seamless fun! 

The Island of Connectedness 

                    Today's Internet denizen finds the internet not be fun, but to be of pure Bliss. Perched from his location, armed with Internet connectivity, he has everything at his disposal: from ordering food to books, to even buying shelter, with the added perk of earning for this sustenance through the same Internet itself! The possibilites are endless with the Internet. Yes, the Internet can translate the notion of "Fun living" into a reality. 

Cartographically speaking..

                    Smartphones armed with blazing speed Internet connectivity are making modern day Cartographers of their owners. Gone are the days when people resorted to outdated maps to find their way through the sprawling metropolises. Geo synchronous maps with street level real time accuracy abound in the Internet which transform finding your way around intricate locations sheer fun! 

           With umpteen avenues and endless channels of information available for the eager consumer, the Internet is what you make it out to be for yourself. It is a connected realm of endless possibilites for fun in so many unfathomable ways. 

 Endlessly, infinitely, fascinatingly and intriguingly, the Internet is fun!








This blog post is my entry to the Internet is fun! Vodafone contest. For more details, please visit www.Vodafone.in/fun

The Ingredients of Success

What are the basic ingredients that are required, for a person to be successful?

Now, aside from limiting social factors, and financial difficulties, if an individual wanted to set his mind to succeed, no matter in what aspect he/she wants to succeed be it financially, academically, or even socially, what kind of a mindset should he/she have?Let's first get the definition of Success correct. In contemporary parlance, Success means Financial security in a massive scale, fame and other glitz and glam associated with a famous person.

But that doesn't necessarily be the only definition of Success.

If you try to mend a broken relationship, or even set yourself a goal and want to attain it, then if you end up accomplishing it, it can also be translated as Success. It's all dependent on your mindset. Remember, Business principles need not always apply to business ventures. They can also be applied with resounding outcomes to everyday events in daily life. And the same goes for everyday experience being applied to succeed in business.

That said, its time to begin analyzing What is Required of you to begin succeeding in whatever you do.

Goals and a Burning Passion

Now before you set a goal for yourself, you should first have a faint vision of what you want to achieve. Be it delivering a simple speech before your colleagues, or a new project at work, only if you have a clear picture of what your end result should be, you can work towards it.

Why has the word "Goal" become associated with setting objectives?

In Soccer, the ball has to be kicked inside the goal post after having been tacitly passed around the enemy's defenses, and the goalkeeper, for the kick to count as a goal.

Picture the defensive players as the obstacles in what you're setting out to achieve, and the goalkeeper as Yourself, the one person you should have complete control over, in order to succeed.

Now why should you have control over yourself? Doesn't that sound ridiculous? Aren't we sane, steady thinking human beings? Yes, we indeed are. But, the Human mind is a complex organism unto itself.

Temptation is anybody's prima donna enemy. Temptation can be in the form of alluring casual activities, those that provide instant gratification, or temptation can be in the form of Slumber itself, giving way to procrastination, another great foe in working towards your goals.

So only if you have control over yourself, you can allay temptation, and therefore master procrastination and instant gratification compulsions.

How can you have control over yourself?

This question can have a lot of different answers for different people.

Its not easy for people to control themselves after they cross a particular threshold in their lives. It may be easier in the case of youngsters, but for those people who have seen a lot of emotional stress and other travails today's world has to offer, it is indeed a mammoth task.

So how can self control be inculcated when it cannot be done by self?

You can resort to a lot of mind-soothing activities. Meditation. Yoga. Breath Exercises. But, there's a catch.

The only person who can cure yourself is you, and yourself alone.

Medication doesn't help. Counseling doesn't help. They do, but what they ultimately do is activate your conscience and ultimately open your reasoning eyes.

So why go to the extent of so many long hours of counseling and medication that might run into thousands of dollars when you, after a few days of self pondering can counsel yourself and set things right?

You can argue with me that self counseling sounds good on paper but is not practically possible. But what if you had the willingness to actually change yourself, have you not heard of the proverb : Where there is a will there is a way?

All these will help in granting you a firmer determined self with which you can set achievable goals and work towards achieving them.

Passion

How can you define passion?

I'll try to explain it in a easy way. Have you seen the look on the faces of Olympic Athletes when they win a Gold medal? That's real satisfaction. How were they able to achieve real gratification?

They achieved something that was an extraordinary thing to do. They set in tremendous mind boggling hours into what they wanted to accomplish. They were determined, didn't swagger from their path towards their goal.

And when they finally outlast tons of competitors from all the other countries in the world and stand on the podium and have the medals hung over their necks, the look on their faces betrays whatever turmoils they underwent, to achieve their objective.

Instant Gratification is not satisfaction. It is a hurdle actually. By gratifying your ego for an instant everyday, you actually diminish your desire and your passion for working towards your goal. Your resolve gets weakened. Your Passion for life also gets weakened. Scoff at me, but this is the truth. By delaying instant gratification for prolonged periods of time, far greater gratification can be obtained.

Gratification is permanent satisfaction, and gives contentedness of the soul.

I have just given a glimpse into what Passion really means. It is just the tip of the iceberg.

So, Having seen how Goals and a Burning passion make a few of the ingredients of success, its time for everyone of us to sit down and ponder whether we're giving fuel for long term satisfaction or instant gratification.