WHAT MOTIVATES ME TO LOVE YOU?

 

Any work which we do, driven by our own self-motivation, assumes a different beauty about it. It belongs to a different league!

I was teaching my eleventh-standard students, this morning. All of them came from educated and well-placed families. All of them belonged to the best Commerce colleges in our town. Incidentally, about half of them were children of my own students, whom I had taught years ago... Life had come full circle, in a way!

It is always like this: every generation wants to give the best to the next… in terms of everything – education, comforts and even values. My own parents hardly went to school. But, they wanted me to study well… They had no means… But, they wanted me to be better off… And, now, I do the same with my own son: give him even better education, comforts, inculcate in him even stronger values… Yes, give him better than what I had received from my own parents…

This is how it has been, always, for everyone…

And, this is how it will be, always!

But, some things, in life, always will remain constant… One of them is: No matter how much our parents give to us – finally, to get the best out of our lives, we have to possess in our hearts the self-motivation. Parents’ love, support and encouragement – help. But, not until and unless we have the thirst in our own hearts… and that blazing fire in our own bellies! Some starve for lack of enough love, support and encouragement from their parents… while some get spoilt due to excess… And, some, with their own drive and passion, go about doing what their hearts want them to. Yes, with or without the support of their parents.

Let me come back to the morning batch.

Last class, I had taught them an important chapter. I had put all my passion and energy to lay the foundation for this chapter… At the end of the lecture, I repeatedly urged them to spend at home at least half-an-hour on what I had taught… As I always do, I told them to give quality time – just some thirty minutes – visualize the lesson… Think in a practical way… connect to the practical world… never ever try to forcefully memorize anything…. Just spend some quality time to arrange things in perspective, logically and practically.

 This was my brief… Yes, no homework, except this. 

And, today, in the class, before I took off from where I had stopped, I thought I would revise a bit, ask a few questions to make sure, they had grasped what I had taught them in my last lecture… So, I asked one of them a very basic thing…

Blank! 

I asked the next one… 

Blank! 

Then, the third one...

I was annoyed, by now… 

“What did I request when you went home after my last lecture?”

Blank!

“How many spent some time on what I had taught?”

None!

I stopped teaching what was in hand… and found myself teaching something more important.

“In life, to do any work, we need inner motivation,” I reminded them, “Just imagine why you have not been able to open the books at home… because, you were not enough self-motivated. My cajoling or coaxing could not help you… your own motivation could have.”

I continued, “If you do not have motivation to learn, how can I have motivation to teach?” I asked them, “Please tell me, if I have to teach you well, where should my motivation come from? I have been teaching like this for close to thirty-four years, now… I have taught your parents and thousands of students… I need to have my inner motivation to give my best; tell me, my young friends, from where should come my own motivation?”

“From the fees you pay me?”

It was a monologue… Not intended to evoke any answers from my young students… It was indented to evoke a response… To stir them, shake them off, a bit!

“If money was my motivation,” I would have done something else in my life… not teaching,” I told them, “It is the joy of becoming a partner in your success… The pride of being your teacher… the dying need in my soul to tell the world, ‘Hey, he/she is my student!’… It is this silent restlessness to be part of your growth, your success… your happiness that drives a teacher like me… just the way it drives a parent, too!”

I meant every word I spoke… Every pore of my being felt it!

“Tell me, how do you expect me to put my heart and soul when I teach you?” I asked them looking straight in to their eyes, “How can I find my own motivation?”

I was intense… overwhelmed by my anguish… But, certainly not bitter or cynical. I had faith in them… They were young… just the way I was, once… I, too, had behaved the way they had, this morning… My teachers too must have felt the same pain as I had, this morning…said the same things which I had!

So, I realized that’s how it is – that’s how it had been, always… and, that’s how it will be… yes, yes… always!

That’s how a teacher has to sustain motivation in his soul… and teach his students, always!

That’s how a parent has to sustain motivation in his bosoms… and love his offspring, always!

And, true it is: 

Love is the greatest motivator, in life. 

Any work born from it, has to possess 

a different beauty, different quality… 

It has to belong to a different league, altogether!

 

“I am going to write about it in my Blog Post, today,” I had promised my young-students, with my smiling heart, “Please read!”

This Post, therefore, I dedicate to them… with all my love, affection and a big smile!

GERALD D’CUNHA

Pics.:Manoj Nair