The Mobile Wave

A group of students were sitting in a training room waiting for the presenter to come in. The presenter walked in and was looking at them straight and started saying;

“Hi… How are you doing?”

The group said in chorus “hi!”

He suddenly said “Did you see the traffic today?”

The group was wondering maybe this was some sort of an ice breaker and one of them said “oh yes it was bad” and actually started having a parallel conversation with one another on how they had a tough time coming through the gullies.

The speaker said, “oh yeah it was terrible?” and then continued nonchalantly “Hey listen I’m in a training so let me… call you back…” removed his Bluetooth, looking at the crowd again and said “Hi… How are you doing?” the folks all looked blank at each other.

The presenter said, “Isn’t it such an irony that today we don’t even know who is talking to us and who isn’t?”

“Are we missing to see our own reality that’s around us? And that is what I’m here to talk about, ‘technology vs reality’ - the mobile wave”

Then he starts sharing few of the instances that he's had in his own life.

SIT - A

One of my friend walks into the restaurant the other day and while I was already at the table I saw him going towards another direction and I saw a well-dressed lady seated at the other table smiling at him. He was subtly waving his hand at her while almost near her suddenly turned and started walking towards the restroom. I looked again and saw the lady reaching out to her blackberry on the table… I realized what had happened and saw my friend looking at me with a snigger and making a gesture of hitting his head with his hand. I couldn’t stop laughing as this was very similar to the ad that came out for a mobile in tv earlier.

SIT - B

The other day I’m standing at the railway station waiting to pick up somebody and there is

this guy on the opposite platform waving frantically at me gesturing to come that side… I wasn’t sure what was happening but I understood it could be some emergency…he started using both his hands as if he was trying to tell me what happened and showing me some faster way to get to him. His gestures were… ‘go up’… ‘not too much’… ‘come down a little’… ‘get down’… ‘turn left… turn right’ and then ‘stop…’ I was almost going to get down on to the track to reach him even faster when I saw him reaching for the phone in his pocket and removing it to cut the call… he was telling directions to somebody at the other end to reach the station. Sheesh!

SIT - C

Back home, at one of my cousin’s wedding recently. It was a church wedding, they had practiced the wedding procession the earlier day as to

how the bride would be at the entrance of the church and the wedding planner would go near the crossing in front of apse and give a signal and then the bride would have to start walking along with the priest. This church had a long aisle and on the wedding day, the wedding planner had gone near the crossing in front of the apse, just to check the arrangements there and he hadn’t seen that the bride and priest had already assembled at the entrance. The planner gets a phone call and he starts gesturing while talking and everybody at the entrance start walking towards to the altar. They reach the altar and he still doesn’t notice and turns around just to see himself staring at the priests with a train of people behind them standing in front of his face. They had no choice but to finish the ceremonies from there on.

There was a lot of giggles heard inside the room as all of them were having a fun time the presenter continued, “Can you guys think or imagine some situations like this?”

One of the participant eagerly said “yes here is one... a traffic policeman on a call and he is giving directions to one of the political convoys while he is standing in some other area manning a different signal. In our country we do sometime depend on the traffic policeman more than the signal itself. Imagine they start following all his gestures, the traffic would flow from all the directions. It would be a scene to watch.” They all had a nice laugh.

Another participant while continuing to laugh shares another imaginative situation, “what if terrorists do this while getting ambushed by the army. The army is charging towards them when one of terrorists gestures while on the phone without looking. Dishkyaoon! Infact Army can start distributing free bluetooth to terrorists and then install snipers everywhere and keep calling their numbers and have a heated conversation about how the food is bad in their camp. Dishkyaoon, dishkyaoon!!” while making a shooting expression with his hand around the room. All others follow suit making funny shooting expressions.

The group had a wonderful time and presenting real situations made a good impact on the topic that the presenter had to cover. He felt pleased and continued, “so my dear folks while I do use a Bluetooth myself, as careful as we can be, let’s ensure that we are not getting too much engrossed into the conversation... and miss looking around... enjoy the technology as its been provided to you. But let’s not miss seeing our reality”

Here is my mobile wave... he wears his Bluetooth waves a bye as he walks out of the training room!!

Look around you!

Just open that closet and really look at each shelf one after the other. Take all the things out and put them back.

You will be surprised at the various things you may find which you may need at that very same time or had looked for it just a few days ago.

When you had those friends come over the previous weekend and you were trying to play that song, you were very sure you had recorded it in the Moserbaer CD, but that has got stashed along with some bank envelopes without your knowledge.

You are trying your best to find that dentist’s number which you wrote on a piece of paper and kept it in the diary. The diary is right there but the paper is not, because it slipped out of the diary and safely found a place in-between in the newspapers which you were clearing the other day and stacked it amongst the rest of the pile.

Beginning from here, all that we are searching for is with us in some form already.

Here, I’m reminded of a scene from one of the old NS Krishnan movies, a legendary actor of the yester years in Tamil cinema who is well known for his simple life quirks teaching us important life lessons.

In one of the movie a person approaches NSK and starts talking ill gossip about someone, Kalaivanar stops him and asks, “I have a question for you, can you tell me what you have in your pocket?”

The guy says “what will be there in my pocket, some change and some pieces of paper, that’s all!”

NSK asks “Can you tell me how much change you have”
The guy puts his hand in his pocket...NSK stops him
and says" without seeing tell me how much you have"
The guy says "hows that possible? I can only see and tell how much I have"
NSK quirks "you cant say how much change you have in your own pocket without looking but you are very sure about the gossip that you have about another person! A person who doesn’t know this about himself should not talk to me about somebody else’s life”

While this has a very civic sense to it, something that I got present to was do we know what we have with us, what is around us, have we given enough attention to what we have?

You are trying your best to find a new way of making that simple process plan which your boss gave and there amongst Granpa’s old books in the attic you may find even a better plan written by his favorite business authors.

You are trying to break your head on that great recipe which you read online, but Granma’s old recipe notes maybe right there sandwiched amongst her old saree box in the attic with a better flavor idea written there.

Consider even things that you might have done yourself, with full josh you may have brought those dumbbells couple of years ago which is safely wrapped in an old towel in the utility area in the back of the house. While you are looking at that brand new gym ad in the newspaper for a 15000 worth 6-pack regime with the 15% discount on a protein shake.

Ok this might not be true with you the meticulous business leader or you the health conscious mother or you the OCD daughter. But the situations complement each other for all of you and I’m sure you may have one of the situations true to your way of life. Isn’t it?

So look around you and let me know what you discovered today that you have already always had! :-)

Life has a Shape - Geometrically Speaking!

Yes, I believe so!

This has been a splinter in my mind for heaven knows how long but in my philosophical searches of how I define life, I guess I have found this shape that defines it.

It’s funny as to how I never understood Geometry in math classes but now I seem to be using it as a reference to represent something to tell you all :-)

Life for me… is a rhombus!

For a long time, I would say during my conversations on such topics that “life is a spectrum” and was even convinced  with that because people used the phrase “the other end of the spectrum” , which told me that there are 2 ends to a spectrum.

But reading more on Spectrum I found that it’s not a shape, wiki says, it’s a condition which is not limited to set of values. It means ‘image ‘or ‘apparition’. When white light was dispersed through a prism it emitted range of colors.

But I wasn’t wrong in my assumption either; it’s actually a combination of both, a spectrum and a rhombus and it would look something like this.

(The above is a pictorial representation which I created from other pictures I found in Google and I would like you to view the colors going till the end of the sides, you may ignore the arcs and black spots)

In human being’s existence of life I would ideally say that we move anywhere inside of this area at all times based on the experience we are facing at each time. Each color would represent the various emotional states that we are in and as the palette represents it could be combination of any of these states.

So your question could be, ‘what about it?’

More than the colours I think the ends are the most interesting part, I find the ends to be representing the extreme points of the human behavior. The good and bad, on and off, zero and one, God and devil, black and white.

This is why I feel we learn a lot about being “balanced” in life, to be in the central axis at all times in whichever colour we are in. Looking at these colours, you would be able to feel the exact state you are in at this time while you are reading this and you can pinpoint it, like on a map.

From the time we learnt about colours, one colour becomes our favorite well we might actually stay in the colour at all times, that’s our home state of existence, and that’s innate. But, imagine all of us were to stand in our favorite colour on the balanced central axis, you would see an array of all of us in all our hues but we would all be balancing our entire existence.

You know something interesting? Wiki says, the word "rhombus" comes from Greek (rhombos), meaning something that spins, which derives from the verb (rhembō), meaning "to turn round and round”. 

The word was used both by Euclid and Archimedes, who used the term "solid rhombus" for two right circular cones sharing a common base. The “spin” for me is attributed to the spinning of the world, how apt isn’t it? we are spinning inside our own rhombuses :-)

However, today we seem to be rocking this rhombus too much. I don’t think it’s going to hold for too long if all us choose to move to either sides. So let’s see if we can live a balanced life in the practical world taking some cues… sorry ‘hues’ out of this theory! Let me know your thoughts.

Intruder Alert - (Prelude to the Tail ended War)

Of the greatest movies in cinematic history, Malayalam cinema I believe has churned the most classic and critically acclaimed masterpieces. Innumerable state, national and international awards have been won by them even when other movie industries were just coming of age.

However with all due respects to the appreciation of such cinemas, it was very difficult for a large group of people to see and appreciate such movies as the underlying technical aspects of how they have been made could not  be perceived by them. This is your everyday ordinary masala movie watcher who has only one agenda in watching any movie. Kill time!

So, once during school we had this group of masala watchers who had huddled in the class as one of them was talking about how these ‘master piece’ Malayalam movies usually are;

“It’s an old tile roofed house inside of a coconut tree farm. An old man is sitting in his rocking chair in the front porch and you can hear the faint creaking sound of his chair. In the background was a very low sound of a moving pulley wheel of a well... in the backyard. His aged wife is slowly taking water from the well. The camera zooms through the front door, passing through dimly lit hall and then through the backyard door just showing the frail woman’s hands pulling the rope. Suddenly, the camera turns to the front side of the house and you can see a cow walking into the front yard to graze the long grown grass as it moos ‘Mmaaaaa’.

The camera turns around again to the backyard and the lady stops pulling the rope and slowly turns around and says ‘arriii’.

The camera runs to the front of the house as if it’s following the sound of ‘ari ‘ going through to the front of the house. The camera stops at the legs of the rocking chair and the rocking stops. The man’s face is zoomed in as he slowly opens his eyes looking straight at the camera. He inches forward from his backrest and with a suppressed emotion opens his mouth slowly and utters, ‘shoo’ ‘shoo’”

The entire group just burst out guffawing to that presentation. My sister used to enact this with her friends from the neighborhood too and would have a hearty laugh session. 

While the above scene can never be surpassed in real life, back in my school days it used to be an almost a similar scene in my house especially when the whole family used to sit together while watching DD2 on tv. The lights are off and you can see all the faces showing the nava-rasas while the flickering light of the tv screen is on their faces.

This is the time when all the well known intruders with their tails/ whiskers/ soft squeaks scurry along the edges of the wall. The only thing that you would see is all of us very slowly moving our eyes... simultaneously... towards the direction of the squeak and then very slowly moving back the line of sight...simultaneously... back to the flickering tv screen. 

This is our masterpiece of being dead ‘Alert’ for an ‘Intruder’.

- A Citizen

                    *Contd in… Tail ended War!

To Say or Not To Say

The title may give you a perception that this might have something to do with concepts of communication; well it does have a link to that but let me come to that a little later. Let's go to the basic nature of communication, it's about sharing. But what I would really want to broach today is, what do we share?

For which, I would like to trace back to a situation I was in with my friend maybe in 9^th grade, we had just finished our quarterly exams and happened to discuss about how we wrote our papers and the topic came to what score were we expecting in the paper. My friend just stopped the topic and said ‘I would not like to share anything more as I feel saying it would have an effect on the score itself’. Truly, I didn't go further on that topic; what was even more surprising to me was I seemed to totally understand what he meant and felt the same way.

From then on I have been facing this phenomenon all my life, across groups of people that I have come across, friends, family, acquaintances, anybody, I see them having a similar perception about holding on to share about something that might be happening in their lives till the end of that instance. I can even safely say that almost 50% of those groups have displayed such a behavior as if it was a religious fervor in their lives.

My take is, in any occurring there are only 2 possible outcomes “I knew this would work” or “I knew it wouldn't work”. What’s interesting in both these outcomes is the common word is “knew”, indicating that the person knows the outcomes all along subconsciously.

However, there seems to be a better way of handling that knowledge at the end of the situation compared to the start of it. It's interesting to know how such a thought is ingrained in us somehow, that it may not happen the way it we intend it to, just because it’s been 'said', isn't it ;-)

So looking at similar scenarios in an office atmosphere, most of the time we do need to keep all the things informed as a process or a project does need information on a regular basis so we end up sharing that in the form or reviews and presentations. But, in a closed room when a similar question is posed by a colleague, peer or manager, we actually end up not telling them about what is really happening and would wait to tell them all about it after things are done and complete. Familiar? 

Out of sheer curiosity how do you explain this human nature? Let me know, and see how many such unsaid things you have at this time :-)

Tail ended War!

The scene was almost straight out of the most realistic war movie that I have seen, Saving Private Ryan, when Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) barely able to stand up, picks up his red coloured sea water filled helmet and slowly moves to a steel barricade and there suddenly the sounds in the scene dies down and what you can see is Tom Hanks rolling his view around the beach. There is a rain of bullets, bombs exploding and men screaming but he can’t hear a thing and then slowly the sounds come back where his team is asking him for the next command… (here is a feel of the scene)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaS1Jq_DPzs

I was in such a place, I couldn’t hear a thing, my hearing was numb in fear as I grasped the scene, my eyes rolled around looking at all the 4 fierce commanders who were standing in front of me, they were alone, frightened, focused, I could see the fierceness in their eyes. They were sure, they were ready, and their weapons were locked tight in their hands, armed and ready to kill.

My eyes glanced on them individually, the first commander was fearless, did not look like needed a sophisticated weapon to destroy but a blow would kill tens of them at once and maybe a stomp of the leg would raze an entire battalion. The second commander was the strategist, you could see the mind making a million scenarios of how the enemy might show up and how every designated path could be blocked and barricaded. The aim was to wait, corner and destroy. A brief moment I stared straight into the eye of the 2^nd commander and I could hear the breathing, sound of a 100 tonne steam engine. 

The third commander’s war cry itself could vanquish an entire army, and this commander happened to be the commander of all the others, the armed forced and the civilians (like me), who was giving precise information of the enemy’s movements for the others to do their part. The 4^th was the analyst, was overlooking the entire mission, was right behind all 3 of them, was the most experienced of them all and hence had the skills of all ready to unleash even if one fails.

The entire armed forces were in front of me and I was this citizen dragged into war. I couldn’t bare to see the holocaust that was about to happen. Also, selfishly didn’t want the energy and the power of such commanders to be used in a simple mission as this, a “seek and destroy”. The enemy was anyway cornered and only had to be lured for the final kill, I called in the SWAT and asked for one specific commando who was anyway a specialist in S&D missions. He came, he saw, he cornered, he hit, mission accomplished! The tail end of the enemy was in the hands of the commando.

Mission Status:

1 Kill – A mouse

Commando – Veeresh, building caretaker

Commander 1 – Mother in law

Commander 2 – Sister in law

Commander 3 – Wife

Commander 4 – Ajji

Weapons Locked and Loaded – 2 brooms, 2 slippers. 1 plastic broom called for, but unapproved

Weapon status – All unused ready for next mission

The Catapult Theory

Ok! before I even start this, let me inform you that I had a strong feeling that this may not be the first time you may have heard of this so I wasn't sure if I was writing something new. I did my research; google's average search speed is 0.2 seconds and I gave the exact word search as the title above and guess what! Google returned results about only the physics of the contraption called "catapult" but not on a life theory which I had to explain about. So if it's not google then the only option left is... (take a pause here and think for 2 minutes and guess)… 

...it is?

"Rajnikanth". :-)

...but he would have experienced this theory for ‘1nce’ which would be equal to 100 times, so that may not really work for mere beings like us, so who am I kidding! :-)

Anyway, this all started with one of my colleagues who spoke to me about this ever eluding promotion at work. I know him, he is one of those hard workers who has a tough time presenting his work “smartly” which does not give him the edge on his projects when it comes to the Seniors noticing him. The tips and tricks of accomplishing it has been given to him so many times by his mentors, friends, relatives and even the next door seven year old who happens to be a living Calvin saying “Uncle, reality continues to ruin my life, so what’s the big deal with you!” :-)

Before me or my colleague could accept that, I had this best friend of mine who spoke about his ever eluding wish of getting his own home due to mounting commitments from unknown quarters thwarting that very idea just when he was ready with the down payment, my aunt who speaks of her daughter's ever eluding marriage with her meeting that right alliance and getting to the 5th time Coffee Day meeting and then the phone stops ringing or the messages stop coming from the alliance for reasons unexplained.

It's a space of giving up and resigning to the situation... however I feel it need not be!

I see a example to adopt in all this, like the catapult or the sling shot;

(courtesy wikipedia) 

The only way to make these things happen is to have our backs firm against that “leather pad”. When you hold and pull, what you are doing is “storing tension” of the rubber band that is tethered to the pad. The same tension, stress, and anxiety, you are bearing inside you, while waiting for the things to happen the way you want it to. Every instance of that wait only multiplies the “storing tension”, its ok, why? Because this would only mean that you will have, more time to aim accurately at the target, you have more hold on the tension, you are even more settled in the pad before the launch. For, when the launch happens, you are propelled with maximum thrust, with highest velocity and land right in the center of that target, where you actually want to be.

One of my favourite quotes that explain this theory is in a short scene in from the batman series ‘Dark Knight’ where Alfred tells the Batman.

Bruce (Batman): People are dying, Alfred. What would you have me do? 
Alfred: Endure, Master Wayne. Take it.

Well the Batman does it for a entirely different reason on screen, but for us the word is so apt.

Endure!

Just endure that every moment of that wait, which feeds into the tension of the rubber band, without losing the aim, which has been designed only to take you bang on to the target.

“Relax, and enjoy the ride” that’s old.

“Relax, and enjoy the launch” the new :-) 

A Full Moment:

Yes! A picture is worth a thousand words and there are innumerable instances that exemplify that adage. Yet, how many times have you come across a moment captured by you which depicts your entire inner self with the outer world.

Here is mine.

This was in Aug 2011, me and my friends were on a trip to a place called Chikmagalur a city located in the foothills of Mullayingiri Range in the state of Karnataka, India. The city is known for its many hill stations surrounding it and we had been to a couple of them before we came to this city as part of the last leg of the tour. Well this was according to me the most planned trip ever as it happened with not 1, 2 or 10 but 72 email exchanges between 5 of us planning every inch of the road that we would drive on and every sq ft of the cottage that we would stay in :-)

One of them, the Woodway Homestay in Chikmagalur. It was the morning of the fourth day and after a long night’s sleep I had just stepped out of the homestay at 7am with my morning coffee and my inner soul was experiencing this stand still moment in my life, I wasn’t thinking, there was no past and there was no future. It was a ‘this is it’ moment. I was present to “now”.

I was experiencing tranquillity, chillness - that was warm not cold and my life was full, complete and holistic.  

I looked up and couldn’t believe the sight I was looking at, I captured it with my eyes and my lens.

My experience was right in front of me, the colour green depicting tranquility, the misty morning provided the chillness and my life was full as the gleaming cauldron filled with rain water from the last nights drizzle. My inner self and the outer world were in harmony.

Few leaves from the branches above were sliding away their tiny water drops into the cauldron creating the most symmetric tiny ripples on the brimming water. It was bliss!

Every second there is a picture like this passing by.

The moments of the “now”.

Engrossed we are in our worldly pursuits that we let them pass by.

Do you have your full moment… share your harmony here!

Three Faces

"Look Around you…
What do those faces tell you…
Faces faces everywhere…
Faces all around
Different faces I see…"

One of the first ever dance music band… '2 Unlimited' had sung this song titled 'Faces'. 

I had heard this song on MTV in the early 90s when MTV used to air for 2 hours in the afternoons. This song left a permanent mark in my life where I actually sat up to notice how in the 7 billion population of the world, you actually see 7 billion unique faces. How can human beings have so many variations of the face. After that thought the way I looked at the world completely altered.

Out of those 7 billion we have come across thousands but there are a few who leave us breathless and inspired. I would like to illuminate 3 such faces that we may all know… Faces with characters who have created profiles of themselves as they walked, talked, played, acted, mesmerised the entire world, yearning for them, looking up to them, starry eyed as if they were descendants of God. These 3 faces, I'm not sure how they may have impacted all of you, but for me, as a sailor looking to sail the seas of life, they became my compass permanently.

First Face:
I was born… short. To a Brahmin family in Mumbai, India. My mother was working in the Insurance industry and my father was a novelist. I was named after a music director who was my father’s favourite. I attended school at Sharadashram Vidya Mandir and I was as normal as any other kid you would have seen. I loved to play… but there was only one game that I could learn and it was cricket. I wanted to become a fast bowler and even joined the MRF Pace foundation but I was outright rejected as I was unimpressive. I was instead asked to focus on my batting. I learnt the game same way as any normal kid learnt but what I learnt a little different than the others is to be challenged and not be afraid of failure. To believe in me.

The fact that I was able to score a century in every game I played in 1988, did not matter, the fact that I had made 326 runs in a single inning when I was just 13, did not matter, The fact that when I became 14 I used to be the ball boy for the Indian cricket team, did not matter, The fact that I scored my 100th century that no man has ever achieved, did not matter. But 25 years on when 11 of my team members got the ever eluding world cup to the country, made me, who I'm, what I'm.

My Name is Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.

Second Face:
Knock Knock… woke me up, I was staring at my computer screen but the screen was blank. I was very sure that my computer was actually speaking to me trying to tell me something… but all I remembered was it had asked me to follow the “White Rabbit” and I did. I meet Trinity who takes me to Morpheus who tells me what I have believed till now is not true and there is something beyond it. He asks me to make a choice, Red Pill or the Blue Pill and I learnt that my world is always made of choices and its left to me to make the right choice every time  all the time. I took the Red Pill and there I was freed from my make believe world that I was living in to the Real World. It wasn't a fancy place but it will remain the only place where I learned to breathe for the first time the feeling of Freedom, freeing my mind.

I was Thomas A Anderson a software engineer, with a respectable software company in the so called make believe world called the 'Matrix' and transformed to Neo, a character who had only one power "belief".
To make the whole world know that all vices of fear, anger, frustration that happen are part of a make
believe world called the Matrix and you have the choice to rise above it by knowing your "real world".

Free Your Mind.

Third Face:
I studied law in London and became a Barrister. Not knowing that when I was born in Gujarat to a Diwan serving the government which was ruled by the British, one day I will be instrumental in leading a 350 million strong nation to oust such a government and provide Freedom to the people. I was born Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and later knew to be fondly called as 'Bapu'. While I witnessed the oppression that my fellow citizens of the country were experiencing I was not concerned about what they are going to do about it but yes I couldn't bear to see the pain that they were going through physically and mentally getting treated as slaves. If a human being can suffer so much of pain when inflicted by someone he will never learn the pain he would cause if he was to hit back in the form
of revenge. 

I put my belief in Ahimsa and I vowed that I will not let another human being harm any
other human being. I preached Non-violence and the entire nation agreed and abided. When my
mother taught me the story of Harischandra I promised myself to abstain from lying and I have acted
Harischandra to myself over a million times.

Truth prevailed and my country got its Freedom, August 15th 1947.

My fellow human beings, its a start. I have now 3 faces to begin with. I learnt that there is one power that all of them have possessed which is the lifeline of their characters; common to all of them - Belief. I have now 3 faces to believe, to be inspired, in living my life completely. 

Do You?

(Written adaptation of my speeches from Toastmasters)

There is no spoon

It's interesting to observe how various lessons about life comes from different sources which may be from anywhere. For me it was from a movie... well who am I kidding! for me mostly its from a movie :-). So here is one such lesson which I would like to share and illustrate. 

"There is no spoon" - is a famous phrase from the movie 'Matrix'. The script goes like this;

Spoon Boy: Do not try and bend the spoon; that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon Boy: There is no spoon
Neo: There is no spoon?
Spoon Boy: Then you will see, it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.

(You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAXtO5dMqEI)

The above conversation if seen in the movie and undertsood a little more you can actually relate to your everyday happenings of life which we see like that of the 'spoon'. A spoon is made of metal and its rigid and it does not change, like the happenings/situations of your life. For you to bend it, it will be you who has to change the way you see it and adapt yourself to deal with it.

Here is that lesson which I 'manipulated' a bit to drive the message across to a group of audience :-)

Illustration: I handed over some common objects (Pen, Pencil, Bag, Book) to 4 random people in the audience (without the knowledge of the others) and I went and stood facing myself to the wall, blindfolded.

While still facing the wall I started speaking,

"I see that A has something with him... please hold it up for others to see... it's a Pen... right?

I hear "yes"


I see that B has something with him... please hold it up for others to see... it's a Pencil... right?

I hear "yes"

I did the same with C and D

The I turned around and said "Wow!! I was right...! Can you do that?" I heard no's from the audience. 

"No You can’t, only I know this trick."

"What you witnessed here is my trick which I have designed and only I know the outcomes of it."

"However what I have demonstrated today is no trick but the greatness of who we all are… men and women and the power that is innate within us. We have these powers for us to use every day, every moment, every second and I want to make you realize, persuade and feel this power today."

"What did I do? I knew I was going to come here today and stand here and tell you what you guys were
holding after giving them to you. I had thought of this when I started preparing for this meeting and
started penning it down as this flow of idea came to me."

"But this right here is my future to the past that I had already thought… imagined."

"I was able to see this future happen as of yesterday and I have made it happen right in front of you
today!!"

"We all have that kind of power to see the future and make it happen as we wish to. Isn't that awesome!"

The above was an illustration to prove how we have the capacity to see beyond us and understand that "preparation" is nothing but already knowing the "future".

You change the way you look at things and you will see that every occurrence has multiple dimensions to it and in those dimensions you will see various new set of actions that you can take. 

Let me illustrate more with 2 more examples;

Do you know that your eye has physical muscles to completely change the way you look? 

If you remember, there used to be this picture game which used to come in various magazines before. There is a colourful picture design in front of you and the instructions would say that you need to stare at the picture for sometime and slowly move you face away from the picture and voila!! You see an image of a beautiful horse or a flower or a car emerging in front of you, in 3D view. Such pictures are called Stereograms. 

You look beyond the design and you can see beautiful images appearing in front of you, such are the experience that lies in little changes that you can do to look at things differently. 

Another simple example; 

Just raise one of you hand in front of you so that you can see the back of your palm. You will see the hand and 5 fingers. Now as you keep the hand in front of you try seeing beyond the hand at any object… now you will see as if more fingers have been added on the palm. A visual illusion yes, but still a compelling point that drives the message that you can see things differently by just altering the way you see it.

So, what we see may not be what we see and we just have to see it in a different view', you may
come to realize, as I did, that you may actually end up seeing only the best things in life.

“There is no spoon”.

(Written adaptation of my speeches from Toastmasters)