What do we really need, an attitude of 'lookout' or an 'outlook'...!!

Our friend Avinash returned from abroad after a long stay over there with his family. He went there on account of his father’s service commitments 15 years ago. Being good friends, we always remained in contact even when he was away. As we friends received the news of his return, few of us went to see him and his family at his family. We were happy to see that nothing much changed in him except the accent of his communication. All of them were busy setting up and rejuvenating their ancestral house and we friends also decided to lend our helping hands. After a few tiring hours of moving up and down, here and there, pulling and pushing stuffs, the house started to look somewhat in order.

It was evening by then and we finally settled down over cups of coffee and snacks around the centre table. The calls of aunty and grandmother for snacks were just the same as they used to be when we were in school. Being the last remnants of the generation which saw the non-digitized times and oversaw the arrival of a digital era which almost overtook each and every aspect of human life, we could still cherish those days when there used to be ringing of cycle bells outside our homes which indicated calls for the evening cricket or visiting each other’s places during Sundays and vacations to watch TV together and spend good times flying kites on terraces. There wasn’t much of a difference between families of friends and our own families back then. All of those days suddenly seemed to fast forward in-front of our eyes. After crying for those good old days, we returned back to the present days of reality.

Our friend’s house has a garden on the western side and it was a pleasure to see the Sun setting from the garden. It had beautiful flowering plants of marigold, daffodils, bougainvillea and pansies. His grandmother is an avid gardener and she used to take care of the garden as one of her children. It used to be one of our playing spots. It was quite natural that after 15 years of ignore, nothing remained of it. When we went there, Avinash was quite sad to see the state of the garden and so were we. It was scattered all along with gravels and stones, the flowering plants were no more and it was filled with weeds. Anyway, we made place for ourselves to sit over there and started apprising each other of the changes that occurred in our lives. There were stories of disappointment, grudges, struggles and stress with almost everything starting from personal lives and extending up to profession. How there is job insecurity these days and how people are made to sit for long hours in offices, how there is negative competition to excel and how our parents and grandparents spent happy days dominated major part of the discussion. I realized that not many of the folks were happy with their current situation. While we were engrossed in our discussions, we didn’t notice when Avinash’s grandmother came there and started to collect the gravels, pebbles and stones. We saw that she had separated them as per their shapes and sizes and made stone and pebble formations out of them. The barren garden had by then transformed into a rock garden in-front of us. While she was doing all this she was quietly listening what we was transpiring between us.

After she had decided to call it a day, she came and sat among us she asked, “Do you people know what is the reason behind your unhappiness? Do you people know why you remain unsatisfied most of the times while we remain happy and smile irrespective of the circumstances that we encounter?” All of us answered in unison, “No granny.” She then said, “It is because you people belong to a privileged generation, you belong to the ‘Yes’ generation whereas we belong to the ‘No’ generation. You people always received what you asked for whereas we had to create with efforts what our necessities were. Our days were not less tough. Opportunities were less. While you people make most of our choices based on ‘rejection’, we chose mostly on the basis of ‘selection’. You people mostly make your choices on the basis of ‘hatred’ of something or someone whereas people used to make their choices on the basis of ‘love’ for something or someone and there lies all the difference.” She didn’t elaborate much and went inside but we received our answers.

Dear friends, it is a sad reality that most of us are unhappy and dissatisfied these days. We are unhappy with our jobs, with the people in our lives, with how we look. We are always on ‘look-out’ for something or someone better, we always remain on an indefinite search for a ‘greener pasture’, for a ‘free lunch’. We want a perfect job, a perfect suitor, perfect lifestyle, perfect home and this indefinite search for ‘perfect’ aspects does most of the damage. We don’t realize that the desire for this utopian ‘perfectness’ is an illusion of our mind and gives rise to the mentality of ‘escapism’. Dear friends, the rules of game of this life are set by nature. We don’t have any control over setting of the rules. What we have control over is to understand the rules of the game and make our choices in deciding our positions on the ground where the game of life is being played and that is what decides our fate. Consider ‘life’ as a classroom where we all have arrived to learn, prepare for tests, write exams and get promoted. We only have the freedom of choice of our actions. We may choose to study or not to study, we may play a fair game or may adopt short cuts or unfair means with the hope of getting an easy achievement or we may quit. What is not in our hands is the ‘outcome’ of our actions. The outcome will only be decided on the basis of ‘actions’ that we choose for ourselves. Whether we excel in the game of this life or get retired hurt, whether we pass the exams with flying colours, remain in the same class or get demoted depends only on our choice of ‘actions’. We may invent efficient processes at our work places to make our life easier, we may create platforms for engaging more and more people and bring about a cultural transformation in our work places, we may lend a listening ear, discuss and bring about a behavioural transformation in the people of our lives who, we dislike or we may decide to crib, the choice is ours. We must realize that ‘escaping’ or ‘quitting’ is not an option. We can only get out of the game by playing the game, we can only pass the exam of life when we prepare for it. There is no ‘greener pasture’ or a ‘free lunch’ anywhere, if at all anywhere there lies heaven, it is in our own hearts. Let me quote the lines of Amir Khusro on this which means, “If there is a heaven on Earth, it’s here, it’s here.”

"Gar firdaus bar-rue zamin ast, hamin asto, hamin asto, hamin ast" - Amir Khusro

So, instead of wasting precious moments of our life in futile search of that ‘perfect’, we must do our bit in making the best of whatever life gives us. We should not be that bad workman who quarrels with his own tools.

Dear friends it is our ‘outlook’ that makes all the difference and not the ‘look-out’. A ‘look-out’ for something or someone may prove to be a never ending search whereas the ‘outlook’ remains within us and we can make significant differences in our own lives and lives of others if we develop a positive ‘outlook’. It was with a positive outlook that Michelangelo created some of the finest paintings and sculptures under not so easy working conditions, it was with a positive outlook that the finest temples and universities were created in ancient India, it was with a positive outlook that Greek and Indian philosophers discovered the truth of life, it was with a positive outlook that an attempt was made to resist oppressive regimes with non-violent ways, it is with a positive outlook that unknown frontiers of space are being conquered by human race, it is with a positive outlook that a barren land full of stones and pebbles can be transformed into a beautiful rock garden. So friends, let us stop having an attitude of ‘lookout’, let us imbibe an attitude of ‘outlook’ in its place.

I would like to end by quoting a line from the movie Kingdom of Heaven. Have a great time…

“What man is a man who does not make the world better” – Balian of Ibelin (Character in the movie played by Orlando Bloom)