Poor jokes? or Poor people?

Just few days ago, I was in a school to take up a session on leadership for the students. I had reached almost 45 minutes earlier and had had a heavy lunch just two hours ago. Naturally, sleep was catching up on me. I was in no state of taking up an energetic session but it was inevitable. I tried to take a brisk walk to awake myself from the day-sleep. It worked to an extent. I wasn't completely up and going. Then I entered the school and took a seat on a nearby bench. Just twenty minutes before my session was about to begin, the first grade students ran out of their classes to the quadrangle. Here comes the twist in the story.

 

I have a bad habit of cracking jokes and making people around me laugh. I started it with these young angels. I asked them, "A for ..." They replied, "Apple!" and I reverted, "A for Anna Sambar (food item in Kannada language). All of them chuckled. I asked once again, "C for ..." They replied, "Cat!" but I retorted, "C for Chitranna (yet another food item in Kannada language). Once again these first grade students laughed their heart out. This continued for few more alphabets where I was replacing their answers with food items and that too in a regional language. With each answer their laughter raised in decibel level and my energy state raised in quantum levels. Hats off to these kids who have the charm of enjoying every little happiness that's hidden around them, and who, in return, charged me up for my session.

 

If I had done the same exercise with other people around me apart from these kids, they would have neglected the humour in it and categorized it as PJ - poor jokes and not even energized me. It would have happened with you too many times when you tried to bring out humour and your friends made fun of you by calling your joke as a PJ- poor joke. As people grow, they tend to lose the fun-loving-kid inside them who can trigger happiness and bliss at every joke possible. It doesn't even matter if people aren't ready to enjoy, unfortunately they break the source person's enthusiasm also while sharing the joke and turn off his/her mood. I feel more than the poorness or richness of the joke, it depends on the poorness or richness of the ability in people to enjoy life. People have gone poor on the scale of enjoying humour. So, don't worry next time when someone condemns your thought as a poor joke. That someone might just be a poor soul on the planet. Go ahead and enjoy the nectar of life called laughter. So what say? Do poor people exist or poor jokes?

Leadership is a D.E.P

To elaborate the title for those of you who couldn't interpret it, 'Leadership is a D.E.P (Daily Evaluation Process)'. To become a leader is a never ending process. Everyone is a leader to himself. The journey of becoming a better leader never ends no matter how many years of life we scale through. A leader is not the one who leads a lot of people. A leader is one who knows and does the job of leading himself or herself. Life is all about leading ourselves towards our goals. The moment the world sees us leading our lives, it surrenders to the leaders like us who have the power and clear direction to lead the globe. But, how does one evaluate himself as a leader?

Leadership is a daily evaluation process. He never gets a chance to get complacent at any point of time or can he compromise on any of his results. A leader needs to build his work day by day while developing himself so that he notices a better himself the next day than what he was the previous day. Hence I call that leadership is a daily job. Achieving excellence in whatever one does is what qualifies, as well as quantifies to be a leader. It's not about achieving perfection that defines a leader though he never gives up on striving for accomplishing perfection in every endeavour that he is a part of. For a leader, it's one day at a time and one work at a moment. A moment wasted apart from getting invested into work is a lost moment and he loses his leadership status for that moment. The more number of such moments only undermine the name and capacity of a leader. Hence every moment counts.

While we are pursuing our academics, we have the evaluation done once a month or once in 3 months or annually once. But while being a leader in real life, every day is a test or an exam. A leader needs to perform on a daily basis on a wide variety of things that he or she is involved in. There is no one to evaluate the performance except the results that his work is going to produce. It's all about self-evaluation. How well can you win your own self-evaluation will determine how well you have lead your day. Leading persistently and leading oneself correctly have to be tested on a daily basis and only then a true leader is formed. Once again, "Leadership is a D.E.P".

You gather to give

In one of the recent blogs I had written that man gains knowledge only to teach it to others. I had decided that I would be writing a blog on the same topic. Later when I sat down to think about this concept it suddenly seemed to mean far more than what it actually meant when I wrote it a few days back. Hence I shall put down all my thoughts about this concept in this blog. We come to this earth empty-handed and shall return empty-handed too. So what happens to all that we gather in this so called  'LIFE'?

The people who do the most amount of research and read a lot of books and excel academically are generally teachers, lecturers, professors, philosophers and scientists. These are the people who share all that they have gathered throughout their life with their students either directly through classroom teaching or indirectly by writing thesis, textbooks, research papers, reference books or by recording videos and tapes. They amass all the knowledge possible only to share it back. Businessmen and the other working lot work hard to earn a lot of money. They gather all this wealth only to give it to their employees, families and further generations. Many big companies also share the amassed wealth with the poor, under-privileged and needy through corporate social responsibility projects. Politicians and people in high leadership positions work hard to earn these positions of power only to pass them on to their disciples who have followed their leadership all this time. Be it power or knowledge or money, each one is gathered only to be given back.

The world functions in such a wonderful cyclic fashion. Man thinks that he is the greatest with the knowledge/wealth/power that he holds in his hand currently. Seldom does he realise in this peak period of pride and prestige that the wheel of time continuously is ticking spoke by spoke. At the right time all that he holds shall get transferred to another set of hands and all that remains is shallow. You can write to me on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

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