The Present

I thought I would write about something which I have been thinking lately. I always wanted my life to be like this, I could not do anything about how it was.
I feel bad when I think I have wasted considerable amount of time trying to identify my faces of failure on the name of destiny.

I'm like every other person who believes in all our rituals glorifying it on the name of culture as we pride the left over's of our ancestors terming it as inheritance.

I started realizing that Life was a Gift and not a burden as soon as I got to read some self improvement books which largely paved ways to increase my sense of perception in everything around me and most importantly within me.

From my childhood, every night I had a dream, a dream to become BIG and strong when I will have sufficient money and not feel sorry for small petty things. I realize how stupid I have been asking for worldly things when I know people kill each other and hurt each other so much that make me feel the hidden animal within us. When I was the last one to pay my fees in tuition and I would share my dream of earning a lot of money and support my family to my only friend Vishnu priya at school. I have very good friends, but I shared many of my thoughts with Vishnu because we lived outside the town and our school was inside the town.
Our travel time in Bus passed by discussing about religion and GOD and my dreams, while Vishnu would discuss about mathematics problems in class taught during the day.

Years drifted reminding me I was growing as every birthdate left tons of memories and I grew to be fine women much to my astonishment that I became the" Bharathi kanda puthumai Penn" in my life after that. One of my friends named me because I ride bike and we always thought women and men are equal.


The Phrase "You are the Creator of your Own Destiny" by Swami Vivekananda lingers in my heart and soul as I share this with you all. I never realized that to live a happy life I need philosophy and nothing else can save me from the trenches of pain and suffering.

My understanding on philosophy is what I will be sharing with you all now.
I hope that it will be immensely helpful for each one of you in understanding your true self and applying your mind and heart and working towards improving ourselves and the society altogether.


We just long to see someone changing, if only my wife understands me and changes and we also anticipate and dream changes from each one of them, we are always eager to see people around us willing to change only for us. We cannot change anybody within a minute , we can never expect the society to change for us.

"We must be the change we want to see" - M.K .Gandhi

Yes, We Should be the first change we wish to see in this world, then the rest of the world will follow.

How many of us do that? We always blame the people or the system which is not working. What do we really do? We brood and cry and cause pain and misery and influence others also to believe what we think.

A person is formed from various chapters in their life like birth,growth,education,environment as some of the most critical ones which determine a person's growth and attitude.

Okay, Now lets see how are we?
To start with, let's take a simple test. We can hear some blasts now after taking the test.
Write down five people whom we like the most. Have you written down.Now, try to think what is that thing very special that made us like them very much. It might be your Father ,Friend,Family members or any person.

I want you to think if your name is the list? Is your name really on the list?
If your name is in the list, which place it is? If its not in the first place why it is in the 2nd,3rd,4th,5th place?If you dont like yourself who will like you?

Amazing and Very true isn't it? My friend!


Some of us always believed that we are made only to suffer and we also create an atmosphere very hostile, and such people always CRY and make others CRY with them.
We all shed tears when we are Happy but some people beleive only when they shed tears there is happiness.

I'm not arguing that we should not suffer for setbacks at all, we can make ourselves suffer by observing some fasts, and there are some variety of people who observe fasts on the name of GOD and they love to curse each one of them who would be having their food.

Now that after the test we realise and begin to start liking us more, so shall we try to find out what do we like and don't like about us? Many of us always feel that we lack so many qualities what successful people have.

We all brood that if only i was born a bit fairer and taller, my life would be even more nice . We would also find astrologers telling us if only this person was born a minute late he would become like our president A.P.J.Adbul Kalam.

We all watch cinema don't we, can you think of two people a hero and a comedian.
We must have watched senthil a comedian in Tamil films, and we all know about Kamal Hasan, for a second just think if senthil could have thought that he is not good looking as Kamal, he would never have come up and become successful. These are natural things that came with us from our birth and we cant change them largely, but we can always change ourselves, we can try to learn something which we dont know, we can try to reduce our weight if we are very bulky, these changes are under our control. Mostly people confuse about what they possess and what they want? Successful people always are happy because they know that what they want they already have and they to develop it and make sure they keep the spirit till the end even after they are successful.

Now, I can see some of you asking me when I try to learn something , people criticize me and that makes me demotivated and I lose my spirit and zeal to accomplish it.I read a small story which I would like to share with you all.


An Old Man was going for a stroll along with his pet Dog, a young boy just to have fun looked at the Dog and said, ah! So you are going for a walk with a Dog, the old man got raged and said someAnimal is talking to my DOG I Cant understand their language in which they are conversing , the young boy hearing such comments from the old man felt bad and ashamed.

Our life is also like that, the more we take things close to heart the more people enjoy.I'm not asking you to reply the way as the old man, but the point is NEGLECT such comments from people.

The only way to escape from such people and become stronger is to neglect such people.We should remember that no one can hurt us without our knowledge, we feel hurt only when we allow someone to hurt us. When we neglect something or someone, whatever they say belong to them.

A small short story will illustrate this, Long time back, a saint was sitting under a tree and he had extraordinary powers , many kings visited him and people also sought his blessing, but one person brought a plate full of stones instead of bringing fruits and flowers which everyone else offered, the saint blessed the person and said whoever has brought something to give me thinking that I will be honored please take it back, I don't want anything materialistic and so the plate of stones was also taken back along with others.

I can see many of you asking me questions that im always talking/writing about saints.When has a person has forsaken everything in the world what does it matter
how much we are suffering in our daily lives. A saint doesnt need to take care of a family or doesnt own anything. Im asking you why cant we think like this, by having everything we have so many problems , if we dont have anything how many problems we will face.Lets not argue which life is better the saintly or married life.

When we do one's duty that life is the best and one can be the happiest person on earth.

So, let's be prudent and forget small things and progress towards betterment.

We all strongly must be having someone in our mind whom we long to meet in person?
They may be a very big business man, a celebrity, our president, or someone who is always been an inspiration to you.

Most of us here forget one thing, there is someone whom everyone of us should meet in our lives before we die and he/she is the person who knows you better than anyone else in this whole world , that person is none other than YOU, yes, its YOU AND ONLY YOU.
Most of us run away from our conscience our inner voice, we have been running away from ourselves from the time we silently sneaked and gulped some extra food from the kitchen in our childhood till now when we say im always loaded with work and avoid some of our Colleagues in our office.
There are some people who write articles about women liberation and dowry and yet
they will be always shouting at their wifes. They HIDE their true selves within themselves and try to pose a entirely wrong character about themselves.

I know some one questioning me , Are you asking me to tell all about myself to everybody? This is ridiculous. No , my friend im not asking you to be a open book,
im just asking you to meet yourself , dont hide yourself from you thinking its not going to work, its dangerous and its bad manners too. Talk to yourselves often, open your mind and heart and soul and communicate effectively because he/she is your TRUE SELF , You are False. Whenever we pray god, lets not pray GOD please dont let any troubles come to me, but Pray that whatever the mind boggling problem is i should find a way and win it over.



We all think and believe destiny is everything, we all are ruled by destiny. So let's talk about that now.
Some great people have said

"Habit is Destiny " - Vethathiri Maharishi(http://www.vethathiri.org/)

There lived a saint in a small village, and was adored by the villagers and people around the village, people could visit the saint and discuss their problems and get solutions , but one person in that village believed that the saint is a ordinary person like us and he cannot have extra ordinary powers when none of us have it. So he decided to prove his thinking and gathered all the villagers and told them that he will prove that the saint is a just like any other human being on earth and doesn't control anything and he cannot predict anyone's fate.

The man took a small butterfly in his hands and held it in his palm and slides his hand in to his pocket and talks to the saint, I have a butterfly in my hand.

Now he wants the saint to tell whether the butterfly is DEAD or ALIVE, the man will kill the butterfly by crushing in his hands when the saint says that its ALIVE and when the saint says that the Butterfly is DEAD , he will bring it ALIVE as he already had it holded in his palm.


The Saint replied smiling, "The life of the Butterfly is in your Hands". How true it is isn't it? Our life is also in our hands, but we always blame destiny and time and people and think that we are unfortunate.


Hard work cannot be equaled to anything, and if one does not work hard we cannot prosper at all, we all know but still many of us believe that there are people who come up without working and still believe in Good luck and destiny.





Lets see how important working HARD is to us by this small story. There is a belief that whenever it rains its because Lord Vishnu blows his Conch shell and clouds gather and we get rains. A saint was passing through a village after his meditation in forest for years and he was hungry, he noticed that villagers were working in fields and children were studying in school and women were busy with household, nobody noticed this saint and were busy in their work. The infuriated saint cursed the village that there will be no rain in this village for the next 10 years and people should suffer from hunger like the way he did and went by. The next day morning everybody in the village were lazy and since the saint told that it will not rain none went to work and one villager went to plough the field as usual in the morning, he passed by a small temple in the village and prayed God before leaving to work as usual and Lord Vishnu questioned that farmer, Because of the curse of the saint anyways its not going to rain, why are you going to plough?. The farmer replied, if I also sit at home like the other farmers in 10 years I will forget how to plough , that thought made Lord Vishnu think that the Lord has kept his Conch shell under his head to sleep over it, since he doesn't have to blow it for the next 10 years because of the curse of the saint and over a period of time I will not even know which side to blow and thinking like that he decided to take his Conch shell and blow and he blew and immediately the rain came splashing the ground.

So, the story says that if we don't keep working we will even forget what we were doing all this time. So let's get back to work.



Do Ghosts really exist? Do they really know what we don't know? Can't they tell our future, do they know what is destined to us?
I have this question in my mind until recently I read a Zen story and I present it to you all.


A man's wife died and he married again and the wife ghost would come everyday at night and cause misery to the man telling him how can you marry another women after I have left you? One day the man decided to get rid of the wife ghost and said I will certainly leave the women whom I married if you could answer my question, and said if you don't answer my question you should never come and disturb me and the wife ghost agreed. He asked his wife's ghost, how many beans do I have in my hand?



The ghost wife said "I really don't know" and it disappeared and never returned back. Ghost doesn't know anything ahead of time as we know only when the time comes. So, why believe in such things? There is no future until we create one.


Learning to grow as we fail, most of us drown in the sorrows and live in the past, we never fail to realize that Present is a like Gift and that is why it's called PRESENT.

There was a business man who lost all his business , having no where to go he feared how he is going to feed his children and take care of his wife and family and future, with all the thoughts in his mind he closed the shop and instead of going home he went to the river bank and sat there in the moon light thinking how his fellow business men cheated him and how he was duped and started throwing stones one by one which lied on the ground, night passed he was still thinking and the day dawned . When the sun came up with the bright rays, he found one single diamond was found near the place where he sat and he was throwing diamonds all night, it seemed that a bunch of robbers dropped the stones sometime back on the rive bank and this fellow got the last one and went home happily and lives happily.

The story above will make many people think that we will get diamonds if we were lucky but the story says that instead of having our worries on the top of our head lets put it on the ground and kick it away and try to analyze the faults which we committed and learn from our mistakes .

Only when misery strikes our all our five senses wake up and we begin to start thinking sharply, we cannot be questioning why this is happening only to me and not to anyone.We cannot make the river flow in opposite direction and there is no such river with only one bank, there are always two banks, life is a mixture of happiness and sadness and we should learn to treat both equally. Why can't we think that sorrows only make us think more about the solution and approach?


Lets follow the 10 step approach to a problem, list down all possibilities when you have a problem and think of the best way to solve it.Analyze the pros and cons of every solution listed down. Try to think what the end result is when your problem is not solved and prepare to face it all by yourself.


You become what you think. Is it really true? Yes, my friend.

In a college a peon questioned himself and the professor later, why is that I m a peon and you are a professor, the professor answered we become what we think I wanted to become a teacher from my childhood and finally I became a professor, so you must have thought of doing something like the way I thought or you just allowed yourself to pass through the years doing nothing you have become a peon.


Everybody has to DREAM, a person without a dream and aim does not know which direction he is going and what he is doing? So teach every child to dream of something which the kid likes every night before they go to bed, bed time stories are told because of the fact that we develop good thoughts when we are young because as we become old we are hard to mend because we think if we change ourselves people will think we are weak minded and make fun of us , or some people just think that they know everything and they need not change anything about themselves, no one can be a paragon of all virtues and a epitome of all goodness, after all we are humans we can always try to become good by changing ourselves for betterment.

How do you know you have won? Only when you set GOALS and try to chase them.

We all blame on opportunity, like the story of a professor and peon we talked about earlier, both the professor and the peon had to go through the same grades of education while some people are successful and some are not. Every human being has a potential in them and it's our responsibility to identify what's is the unique gift we have from others and try to develop it, so lets stop blaming opportunity and try to create one by ourselves.


We all know the story of King Harish Chandra who always spoke truth, everyone must have read about it or listened about it or watched a play in TV, but how many of us follow? Gandhi also happened to watch the play and he didn't wipe off from his memory liked we do, we keep changing channels in TV often or after having finished reading the story we just forget it in a day or two,but gandhiji he thought about it, he believed that he has to become like King Harish Chandra and he decided to be like he king, he always spoke TRUTH.
We really become what we think.



To define mind we have to employ mind, mind becomes both as a matter of object and subject and the very existence of what we are and what we will be.


There are only two kinds of people in this world, one who has won over life and one who wins life. The first category of people are Saints, they forego everything on the name of GOD and they have won life like Ramana Maharishi, we all belong to the second category who wants to win life. There is no greater sin than a person who takes a SANYASA and yet thinks how his wife & children would live. To win life, we just have to remember simple things I have learnt.

The universal language which is spoken,written,understood by everyone crossing all barriers of faith and myths, uniting people as a whole world together in one single existence "LIFE".
This four letter word describes efficiently,effectively all the phases of every one's living be it anyone. Happiness is a CHOICE, Just Decide which one we want to be? Whether to win life or become one among those who WON LIFE. The first one is a easy choice i would recommend because you are my friend.


So my friends, lets RAISE, AWAKE AND STOP NOT TILL OUR GOAL IS REACHED.

Im not writing to boost me off, but I honestly dont mind sharing my thoughts with you.
And so I hope you really enjoyed it as I did; let's name this small piece of writing as The Present. My next blog will be on RELATIONSHIPS.

"Strength is life; Weakness is Death " - Swami Vivekananda.

Yours Anita@Grace [Anii(Dreamer)].