A BETTER DAY

At our home, the bathroom mirror doubles up as a writing board. Birthday wishes, ‘welcome back’ messages, ‘things to do’ are penned down using colourful markers. It works very well as the wishes and important messages get seen at the right time – at the start of the day, in the morning!

One morning, the mirror showcased a line written by Sonia, my 12-year old daughter – ‘Make today better than yesterday!’ When I complimented her for the lovely words, she instantly told me that she had read them in a children’s magazine. Then, I asked her as to how could one make today better than yesterday. Her reply was simple yet significant, ‘by being happy!’

Surely, it as uncomplicated! It is said so well that life is less about how we make it and more about how we take it. Never mind the mishaps, never find the hurdles and never mind the regrets; it all boils downs to how we respond to the stimuli and the situation. Nevertheless, an affirmative attitude cannot be a postscript reaction. We have start every day with a resolve to make it a better day.

A better day is a matter of choice. We can choose a make a better day or we can choose to make it worse. We can opt to be happy and proactive or we can opt to be unhappy and reactive or inactive. But it is pertinent to note that being happy does not mean being oblivious of or indifferent to the situation. Instead it is about taking every challenge and situation head on with a positive willingness that is reinforced with an attitude of tolerance and contentment.

If a resolve to be happy is chosen every day…

Surely, today will BE BETTER then yesterday!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

MARATHON

Months of focussed zeal and marathon efforts bore fruit for Goan architect, Sunil Sardessai as he successfully completed the half marathon at Mumbai. The event put on display the inspiring spirit of the marathon reflected in the body language of the thousands of athletes, recreational runners, enthusiastic elders and the physically challenged who took up the test in various categories of the Mumbai marathon.

The marathon celebrates the legend of Pheidippides, the Greek soldier, who ran non-stop to deliver a message from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens and then collapsed to his death. Ever since its launch in modern Olympics, the foot race has become popular. In the 800 marathons organised annually all over the globe, the bulk of the runners are recreational athletes like Sunil who run many lessons for us.

It requires daring to choose a worthy challenge and perseverance to train and prepare for it. It involves disciplined practice sessions as well as significant lifestyle changes. The focus is to BE BETTER… to lay greater worth to the ability to improve personal performance with reference to a previous effort. Most do not run a marathon to win; they find success in completing it! Let’s embrace the lessons from the marathon: to dare, to persevere and to be better than the earlier effort!

To BE BETTER is the lesson from the marathon,

Let’s persevere to complete the challenge song!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

DEAD OR ALIVE

Yesterday, at a youth leadership development workshop organised by Goa Sudharop, the Chief Guest, Fr Maverick Fernandes was at his innovative best. Instead of speaking from the podium, he walked to the whiteboard and wrote about a person born in 1976, dead in 2000 and buried in 2006. Then he asked the young participants about whether such a situation was plausible.

The interaction that followed threw up many suggestions. Some opined about a possible delay in finding the body after death. Others imagined that there was some sort of dispute over the dead body. Fr Maverick led the discussion to consider that the death was actually referring to a disconnect with real living by the person. A situation where the person was technically existing but not living in the real sense!

We need to ask ourselves the questions that Fr Maverick queried of his listeners… Are we akin to such a person whose living purpose is only to exist? Is there meaning and purpose in our lives? Does our existence mean anything for the world that we live in? Are we dead or alive to the challenges that loom beyond our existential needs?

So easily we insulate ourselves from being alive and responsive to the situation that surrounds us. So often we are dead before a real death. So often we bury our heads in our comfort zones and ignore the real reality out there. Let’s be better at choosing to be alive and proactively responsive to every challenge that comes with life.

To every trial that comes with being…

Let’s BE BETTER at responsive living!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

COLOURED MOON

On New Year’s Eve we witnessed a blue moon in our skies. Blue does not refer to the colour of the moon that night… it was the rare incidence of a thirteenth moon in the year. Hence, we use the phrase ‘once in a blue moon’ to single out rare happenings. The occasion triggered the connect to a visual that I use during my unlearning unlimited workshops.

It is a photograph that is widely circulated on the net to demonstrate the illusion of sight. The visual is about a lady sitting before a dressing table mirror, but it appears like a human skull. On stretching our observation, we notice many more possibilities… a bulb, a sailing ship, a wedding, a fort, so on and so forth…

Whenever somebody suggests that they can see a moon, I immediately ask, ‘Is the moon yellow in colour?’ Most persons laugh and instantly declare that it actually looks like the yellow sun. I repeat my question till somebody answers that the moon is quite often yellow in colour, especially when close to the horizon.

The lesson is obvious. Our minds are conditioned to pick up white and silver colours when we seek to colour the drawing of a moon. But it can be seen in many colours… if we would only look to see! We must be better at keeping an open mind… for it is only an open mind that can see the spectrum of possibilities... and the many colours of the moon!

Let’s BE BETTER at searching the skies to see

The visionary moon is as coloured as it can be!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

KYOSEI

‘Kyosei’ is a union of two Japanese words: ‘kyo’ means together and ‘sei’ means to live. The term was first used in academic biology to refer to symbiosis. However, the concept of ‘kyosei’ is also increasingly used in the social context as ‘living and working together for the common good’.

In an increasingly competitive, highly individualistic world, so many of us work only for our personal good. Yet we complain about the negative impact of self-centered attitudes and actions by other persons like us. The kyosei philosophy is based on the fundamental belief that only a harmonious coexistence with nature and the environment can help society achieve sustainable development.

The core tenets of kyosei are universal principles of common sense and morality This include the tenet of reciprocity and the golden rule of treating others as you would like to be treated. It also implies an understanding of our primary interconnectedness and the fact that our actions have an impact both in local (visible) and far-reaching (invisible) ways.

It is about valuing the “middle path”... like practicing moderation in personal habits and the need to find a healthy balance between self-interest and altruism. It involves the crucial preference for simplicity. After all it is the elegance of simplicity that will be better at connecting us into harmony with others and the planet.

To deserve quality of life, we have to look beyond

Let’s BE BETTER at being part of the kyosei bond!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

PEZ!

On 6 December 2006, a meeting was convened in Goa to discuss the then impending danger of the proposed SEZs (Special Economic Zones). During the deliberations, somebody suggested that the alternatives to SEZs were PEZ (People’s Economic Zone). And thus was born a highly stimulating slogan in the local Konkani lingo – “amka naka SEZ, amka zai PEZ” (We do not want SEZ, we want PEZ)

It is pertinent to note that ‘pez’ is also another Goan word for kanji – rice gruel.It is an integral part of the meals of the poor. Yet, others too opt for the ‘pez’ diet whenever confronted with illness. The elders recommended ‘pez’ as a healthy habit. Clearly, ‘pez’ is more than a tradition… it is a fundamentally simple yet highly nourishing meal of Goans and so many who reside on the coast.

Similarly, PEZ as People’s Economic Zone remains a fundamentally simple yet highly sustainable concept. SEZs and all their other avatars are essentially land grabs and their development brings along destructive, irreversible impacts on lands, lives and livelihoods. Thus they are at best an oxymoron of destructive development and are invariably fuelled not by the stated need of the stakeholders but the ravenous greed of a few.

Any so-called development that deteriorates the land, lives and livelihoods cannot be accepted as real development. Development is not about creating newer things and situations. It should be about enhancing value of existing resources and conditions. It is all about trying to be better, not worse! But like pez, PEZ should not be about solutions to be chosen after a problem happens… it should be the basic prevention of the problem’s occurrence.

Not just when the situation gets worse and toxic

Let’s BE BETTER at choosing PEZ as a practice!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

THE STORY OF STUFF

Every summer when Annie Leonard’s family would drive out to camp, she would look at the landscape. She noted that the stores reached a bit further and the forests started a bit later every subsequent year. She wondered where the forests were going. Years later, while walking to her college, she would see piles of garbage line New York street’s every dawn. In the evening, she would walk back to her dorm, staring at empty sidewalks. She was increasingly intrigued with this microcosm of materials flow. She started looking into the trash to see what was in those never-ending piles. It was mostly paper. That was where the forests were ending up!

Annie took a trip to the infamous Fresh Kills landfill. Its volume was described as greater than that of the Great Wall of China. In every direction, she could see couches, refrigerators, boxes, used clothes, stuff… Annie just couldn’t comprehend the massive mountain of materials, reduced to muck, by some system obviously out of control. She knew this was terribly wrong. She vowed to figure it out. And 20 years later she did!

Annie created THE STORY OF STUFF - a 20-minute web-based documentary about the life-cycle of goods and services. She presented the critical connection between a huge number of environmental and social issues. Her thesis, "you cannot run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely" is supported throughout the documentary by statistical data. It can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8

Annie explains, “Our current ways of making, using and throwing away stuff is largely based on unsustainable and unjust systems yet, as a society, we’ve got this big collective blind spot about talking about this. Let’s raise the issues, let’s ask the hard questions, let’s get it on the table and examine it and debate it and figure out together how to move forward towards solutions.” As she says in the film, one of the good things about such an all pervasive problem is that there are so many points of intervention. The world will be better if we find that intervention that matches our skill set and our passions. Like Annie did!

First we must understand and then intervene to change the story

Let’s BE BETTER at taking on stuff that makes our world gory!

- Pravin K. Sabnis