Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Be the Change You wish to See in Others

Mahatma Gandhi's famous quote "You must be the change you wish to see in the world" adores the walls of Mumbai airport when you arrive. I just made a small change from "World" to "Others".

We all need a working place and home where we don't have to keep explaining ourselves for each act of us. Nothing is more tiring than having to constantly explain ourselves as it will drain us emotionally more than physically in such a non-trusting environment. We need a workplace and home where we can enjoy our freedom of trust and don't have to explain everything about our acts.

Each one of us have our strengths and weakenesses. What we desire is our strengths are seen with a magnifying glass and appreciated and the weaknesses are seen with normal glass and not exaggerated. It is the normal human tendency to seek appreciation in public and criticism in private. We all expect that.

Our biggest desire from others at the workplace and at home is, our today is not viewed with the mistakes we made yesterday. We want to start afresh everyday and be treated newly without the mask of our mistakes of yesterday. We do not want someone to maintain the database of our mistakes and keep pointing at us by referring to it despite our sincere effort to improve ourselves. We want our yesterdays to be forgotten and only our today (& the work/contribution) is valued and respected.

We need a workplace and home where we can be ourselves every day for whatever we are worth and yet respected and given our due. We do not wish to fake at these two places where we spend all our life, by putting up false acts just to impress others or to get a good name.

We need a workplace and home where we can be open and transparent with everyone without worrying about how our openness will be misused and misintrepreted against us as nothing is more constraining than constantly worrying about who is going to misuse our point of views and opinions against us.

If any of us have such a home or workplace, then we must be thankful to God as there cannot be a greater gift from life than these.

If any of us do not have one, then, we should do something about it. There is a powerful saying "Do unto others what you want others do unto you?". Can we be the one to provide such an atmosphere to others at our workplace and at home? Can we be the change, we wish to see in others? Let us make ourself worthy of being other's greatest gift in their life ...

We all have expectations from others whether at workplace or at home. But others too have expectations from us ... Can we be the harbinger of change for others to emulate us for the great qualities one needs to have?

Life will be more happier and great if we change first and then expect others to change, to make it a happy world.