The Nirvana Juncture

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and in life. Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to the coffee. When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, theprofessor said: "If you noticed, all the nice lookingexpensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, and that is the source of your problems and stress. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups and were eye-ing each other"s cups. Moral: Life is the coffee, and the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to h...

A teenager lived alone with his father, and the two of them had a very special relationship. Even though the son was always on the bench, his father was always in the stands cheering. He never missed a game. This young man was still the smallest of the class when he e ntered high school. But his father continued to encourage him but also made it very clear that he did not have to play football if he didn't want to. But the young man loved football and decided to hang in there. He was determined to try his best at every practice, and perhaps he'd get to play when he became a senior. All through high school he never missed a practice nor a game, but remained a bench warmer all four years. His faithful father was always in the stands, always with words of encouragement for him. When the young man went to college, he decided to try out for the football team as a "walk-on". Everyone was sure he could never make the cut, but he did. The coach admitted that he kept him on t...

We sometimes do not get what we want or desire, it could be the promotion we were promised or we deserved. It could also be the dream job or admission into the preferred college/course or may be the most desired assignments/projects we desperately wanted. Or in a personal front may be the girl friend or the spouse we liked or loved the most. But on retrospect these things might be happening or not happening for good. Sometimes when we look back, we can connect the dots. Read the amazing speech given by Steve Jobs in Harvard which remains all time favourite and relevant even today. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college, and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today, I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The First Story is about Connecting The Dots. I dropped out of Reed ...

There was once a scientist. After a lot of practice & efforts, he developed a formula & learned the art of reproducing himself. He did it so perfectly that it was impossible to tell the reproduction from the original. One day while doing his research, he realized that the Angel of Death was searching for him. In order to remain alive he reproduced a dozen copies of himself. The reproduction was so similar that all of them looked exactly like him. Now when this Angel of Death came down, he was at a loss to know which of the thirteen before him was the original scientist, & confused,he left them all alone & returned back to heaven. But, not for long, for being an expert in human nature, the Angel came up with a clever idea. He said to the scientist addressing all thirteen of them, "Sir, you must be a genius to have succeeded in making such perfect reproduction formula of yourself. However, I have discovered a flaw in your work, just one tiny little flaw." The sc...

A letter from a Doctor who's dedicated his profession and work in AFRICA for FREE. One night I had worked hard to help a mother in the labor ward; but in spite of all we could do, she died leaving us with a tiny premature baby and a crying two-year-old daughter. We would have difficulty keeping the baby alive, as we had no incubator (we had no electricity to run an incubator). We also had no special feeding facilities. Although we lived on the equator, nights were often chilly with treacherous drafts. One student midwife went for the box we had for such babies and the cotton wool that the baby would be wrapped in. Another went to stoke the fire and fill a hot water bottle. She came back shortly in distress to tell me that in filling the bottle, it had burst (rubber perishes easily in tropical climates). "And it is our last hot water bottle!" she exclaimed. As in the West, it is no good crying over spilled milk, so in Central Africa it might be considered no good crying ov...