Life is a Journey

Life is a journey filled with learning’s, fun, excitement, lessons, celebrations, and special moments, which will lead to our destination, our purpose in life. Road to our destination will never be smooth and one has to face many challenges in between. Some of these challenges will test our courage, faith, strengths, and weaknesses. We may stumble in between but to take right path one has to overcome obstacles. One needs to stay positive and overcome his fear to reach his goal.

When things are not in our favor we can do two things, one we sit back and let life pass by or another is we can take out the best from that situation and find lessons to learn. Time stops for no one, and if we focus on negative things then we may miss out many opportunities in life. We cannot go back in past and change situations. We can take out lessons from the situations and can make best out of it.

In our journey, we meet many people. Those people are destined to meet. Everybody comes in our life for some reason whether it is a friend, teacher, mentor, or any other person. We do not know their purpose in our life until it is too late. They play some kind of role in our life. Some people remains forever in our life and some stay for a short while. However, people who stay for a short period in our life can sometimes makes lasting impression in our life. We may not realize at that time but it will make a change in our life.

I meet many people in my life. Some of them remain for a short time and some become close friends. There is a bitter truth in life we enjoy companies of those people, who we may think has a purpose in our life. As a human we should thank each person we meet in our life because every aspect in life teach a lesson and that is how our life is a journey.

Memories are priceless treasures that we can cherish in our heart. They also enable us to continue in our journey. Throughout your journey in life, people will give advice, share things with you, hurt you, love you, and it is the way to reach destination. There are people in our life that will make us to learn to overcome fear and give respect. At that time, one could not realize that lesson but its effects will come later on in our life and then we will say thank you to those people in our heart. There is one of my favorite dialogues from a Bollywood movie- “kahin par pahuchne k lei kahin se nikalna both jaruri hota h.” To reach a destination it is important to get out from a situation and we should do it on time. That is how life goes on and completes a journey.

Think before you act

Before you accuse or abuse

    Ascertain the truth

Before you blame or betray

              Built the character

Before you criticize or condemn

              Clarify the doubt

Before you dispute or dissociate

               Discuss the issue

Before you enforce or eradicate

                Exchange the thought

Before you find the fault or fight

                Foresee the result

Before you gossip or grumble

                Gather the evidence

Before you hate or harass

                Harmonize the relation

Before you instigate or insult

                Improve the attitude

Before you joke or jeer

                Justify the comment

Before you kick or knock

                Know the circumstances

Before you linger or litigate

                Listen the opponent

Before you muck or misbehave

                Modify the approach

Before you negate or neglect

                Normalize the condition

Before you Xerox or X-ray

                Examine the original

Before you Yap or yell

                Earn the peace

Before you zigzag

             Zoom for the external bliss 

Kalyanasundaram – Man of Millennium

Money is not everything in life. For some people, happiness and serving society is the only concern. No one around us can donate his entire life earning to a NGO or for some other social cause but one man, Palam Kalyanasundaram did it.

Born at Melakarivelamkulam in Thirunelveli district of Tamilnadu, Kalyanasundaram lost his father at an early age and after that it was his mother who inspired him to serve poor people. One can serve poor people by donating money in charity programs or by helping poor people but no one can donate his entire life earnings. This needs a lot of courage and strength.

Palam Kalyanasundaram is a bachelor and a gold medalist in the library science. He also holds a masters degree in literature and history. During his 35-year long career at Kumarkurupara Arts College at Srivaikuntam, he diligently and willingly donated his salary month after month towards charity and did odd jobs to meet his daily needs. Even after retirement, he works as a waiter in a hotel in exchange of two meals a day and a salary so that he could continue to donate to orphanages and to children’s educational fund.

He was awarded for his service to humanity. The union government honored him as the best librarian in India. The International Biographical Centre, Cambridge, has honored him as one of the ‘noblest of the world’ and the United Nations adjudged him as one of the most outstanding people of the 20^th century. He also received Man of the Millennium award and LifeTime of Service Award from Rotary Club of India in 2011.

For him life is not just about earning money, it is serving people and help children so that they can get proper education. He always says that, there are three ways of earnings. First is through earnings, second are through parents earnings and third is through donating money for charity. He also received many awards and donated 30 crore of prize money he got for these honors. Many superstars and businessperson in India do same kind of social work. South Indian actor Rajnikanth also does social work, but he is also inspired by Kalyanasundaram Life works and adopted him as his father.

He lives a very simple life in Chennai, works in office at Adyar regularly, and does whatever he can for the uplift of the unprivileged people. His life story is very motivating and inspiring. Friends we do not know that such people exist around us but such people are there in India who wants to do something for society and country. One must learn from his story that money is not everything in life if one has decided that he will do something for his country then he can do it, no power or situation will stop him to do.