Merry

This old fashioned word for ‘happy’ is popular in December when people say, ‘Merry Christmas.’ To be merry is to be happy, especially in a fun, festive way. Parties and celebrations are merry, and so are the fun people who attend them.  

To be merry is to be happy and ready to frolic. A group of people laughing as they walk down the street is a merry gang. Anything merry is festive, often involving games, celebrations and parties. 

 

A merry-go-round makes kids happy as it spins them around. Smiling and laughing are signs of being merry. If you go along your merry way, you walk away happily, maybe even dancing.

Festive wishes are two things. Firstly, it is a choice triggered by the occasion: a choice to be happy. Secondly, it is a wish for others to be happy, too! Festivals are about collective happiness.

 

For everyone to be merry, we must share what we have with the ones who have little or none. We can share love, concern and little gifts that we can afford to give. The biggest gift is to spare and share our time. 

 

Sharing is not just about giving, it is also about receiving. Being merry, is about being together and sharing joy. That is the spirit of Christmas and every festival that seeks to bring people together in the happiness loop.

May everyone be merry and full of cheer

May the festival bring us closer and near!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

 

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Make It!

When Steven Spielberg was 10 years old, his father gave him an electric toy train as a gift. He would have fun creating train wrecks by ramming his miniature trains into each other and eventually they would break. 

 

The first time, his father repaired the trains but warned him that if he broke the trains again, he would take it away from him. 

 

The young boy had the idea of using his family’s home video camera to shoot close-up shots of his trains crashing so that if they eventually broke, he could relive that moment by watching it over and over again. 

 

He became increasingly ambitious in his productions and eventually started filming narrative movies that he would show off in school. As an established director and producer, he would say, ‘You shouldn’t dream your film, you should make it!’

There are many who conceive what they want to do, but often do not cross the stage of ideation. We must implement the idea we conceived. We should make the film, we dreamt about.

 

Not ‘making it’ can have many excuses but there is no reason to hold back the act of implementation. We must move beyond imagination to ‘make it!’ 

Don’t be at ease after you ‘Think It’

Tre success is when you ‘Make it!’ 

- Pravin K. Sabnis

 

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Greed

To arrest marauding monkeys who invade homes, a bottle with nuts is used. However the opening at the top is just big enough for the monkey’s hand to slide in.  

The lured monkey grabs the nuts and forms a fist which cannot pass through the small opening. The monkey has a choice to let go of the nuts and escape. However it continues to hang on to the nuts. 

The monkey gets captured because of its greed. So often, we behave like the monkey. We grab beyond our need. We grab without bothering of the implications of choices fuelled by greed. 

 

The lure of grabbing blinds us from the consequences of such actions. We hang on to what we grab, even if it results in our freedom being compromised. 

We hold on to old things and ideas that can no longer help us to succeed. We refuse to change. We are comfortable with where we are and what we have, so we prefer to be held hostage there. 

To be unfettered in life we have to let go of greed. Success does not come by grabbing possessions. It is realised by securing liberation from unreasonable greed that blinds and eventually binds us in a bind! 

To be truly free, do not grab more 
Ignore greed and learn to let go! 

- Pravin K. Sabnis

 

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Encore

Once, there was a man who visited foreign lands. When he returned, all he could talk about was the wonderful adventures he had and the great deeds he had done.

 

One of the feats he told was about a leap he made in a city called Rhodes. ‘The leap was so great,’ the man said. ‘No other man can make such a leap. Many persons in Rhodes saw me and can prove I am telling the truth.’

 

‘No need for witnesses,’ said one of his listeners, ‘Imagine that this city is Rhodes, and show us how far you can jump. Encore!’

 

Encore is a French word meaning ‘again’. Audiences often yell, ‘Encore!’ if an act has been particularly good. The request to repeat is actually a confirmation that the performer has the capacity to replicate the performance and often make it better.

 

So often, so many of us take pride in past deeds, but cannot repeat the act. It’s the deeds that count, not the boasting words. Yesterday may have been the best… Today we must be as good or better. We must be deserving of the Encore call.

Do not boast of deeds done yesterday 

Be worthy of the Encore calls of today!

- Pravin K. Sabnis