Find Your Purpose, Yet?

How many of you have heard the following names?

Gautam Gambhir, Manoj Bajpayee, Sunil Chetri, Prabhu Deva, Bachendri Pal, Kader Khan.

Yes, it’s a predictable answer, isn’t it?

Now, let me ask you if you have heard of the following people who have something very much in common with the names I mentioned earlier:

Daitari Naik, Jadav Peyang, Tsering Norboo, Draupadi Ghimire, Dashrath Manjhi, Saalumarada Thimmakka

Would you happen to know what the 2 sets of names I mentioned above, have in common?

Well, for most of us who didn’t know, all these people along with the famous sports and film personalities are actually Padma awardees.

What does that mean? It means that they have been recognized for their work and efforts, to such a great extent that they have been bestowed with India’s second, third and even fourth largest civilian honours. Yes, all the names I mentioned have the Padma awards in common, they are all recipients of the honourable Padma awards conferred onto them by the Presidents of India.

But if that be the similarity, how come we know a few celebs and not the rest of them.

Let me begin by giving you a glimpse into some of their lives:

The Man Who Demolished A Mountain

This poor, uneducated, daily wage earner lived in a remote village in Bihar whose wife fell critically ill one day. She needed immediate medical attention, but the closest hospital to where they lived was 55kms away. Alas! She did not survive the long journey. So, what does this man do? Weep and wallow in self pity that he’d just outlived his wife? No, instead this man sets out with just a stone breaking hammer and average chisel and decides to break down the mountain that stood in-between his wife and some life-saving treatment. Ridiculed and laughed at all through, finally this man achieves the seemingly impossible and reduces his village’s distance to the hospital from 55kms to a mere 15 kms. This man dear friends, was Dashrath Manjhi.

This grand old lady from Karnataka was also an illiterate, MNREGA worker who worked along with her illiterate, cowherd husband. Unfortunately, the couple much to their despair could not have kids. Ridiculed by the society around them, she could have sat and cursed her fate or used her meagre savings in trying to get herself treated but she did none of that. She chose to love little banyan saplings instead, which the couple purchased using up their life’s savings. A project that this lady single-headed took on, much to the amusement and amazement of other relatives and villagers has today led to a 4km shady, green stretch between Hulikal and Kudur. Today, the rest of India knows her by her sobriquet Saalumarada Thimakka meaning ‘A Row of Trees’.

Another daily wage earner in a remote location called Jorhat in Assam was employed on a 5-year government project of tree planting. He noticed a small strip of land nearby which over the years had lost all its green cover and because of it was not only eroding away but also led to the death of numerous snake species out of sheer heat and dehydration. Therefore, on the culmination of the project, while other labourers chose to leave, he stayed back. And with whatever limited resources he had, he started planting trees. Today, it is India’s largest not just man-made but one-man made forest in the whole country. This forest is now home to several species of animals, birds and reptiles. Bengal tigers and Assam rhinos roam freely here, elephants visit every 6 months and snakes propagate freely. This one man army was also laughed at and called crazy when he began, today Jadav Peyang is fondly known as The Forest Man Of India.

So what do you think is different between celebrities like Gambhir, Manoj Bajpayee, Sunil Chettri, Prabhu Deva on one hand and people like Dashrath Manjhi, Saalumarada Thimakka and Jadav Payeng on the other. The commonalities are clear, they all worked hard, they all persevered they were all probably ridiculed and laughed at when they began too. But what totally differentiates them is the fact that the celebs chose to excel at either a particular sport or a performance art or fine art form. There are others too who excel in their chosen fields of study like medicine, literature, economics etc.

But these simple people neither had the means nor the desire to excel in any particular area. They only chose simple, mundane tasks that any one of us can do and simply kept at it for years on end. And what kept them going was their single-minded determination to succeed at a cause which was larger and dearer to them than their entire life. This cause they did not go seeking out, in schools, colleges or degrees, they found the motivation through their personal trials and tribulations.

The point being,

one doesn’t have to necessarily be a gifted musician, a graceful dancer or a talented sportsperson to excel in that skill. Any of us could choose the most ordinary of tasks to pursue, the important thing is to find the motivation to persevere in that task.

To make it your raison d'etre, the core purpose of your being and then shutting yourself off from all else, the negativity, the ridicule, the doubts and simply pursuing it with a dogged perseverance that will one day yield the desired results.

To sum up, what I am trying to bring out is you don’t have to be inherently gifted or talented at any one skill or acquire a vast amount of knowledge in order to excel. What matters is picking a cause that you believe most wholeheartedly in and pursuing it vigorously even through the most ordinary task.

If you don’t find such a cause for yourself, then the next best thing would be to support someone else who has found his/her cause. And lastly, if you don’t find a cause or any other person with such a cause, the least we all can do is never ever ridicule another person who has found his ‘reason of being’ and is working towards it.