THE MISSIONARY ZEAL








Pic.: Malabika Ganguly

If I can figure out from where my own motivation – to keep doing what I do in my life – comes, probably, it would be easy for me to figure out from where others get their motivation to do what they do.

I keep finding it difficult, many a times, to make my students understand the need to work hard, long, and, work on their own.

I was talking to a small batch of my eleventh-standard students, this morning. “Have you figured out what you want to do after twelfth?” I asked them. That was their immediate goal, I knew.

Almost all of them were lukewarm in their response… “Maybe this… or, maybe that.”

Yes, not sure…

“If you cannot connect the work you are doing now (Accountancy, in this case), to your goal, then, how can you find motivation to do this work… work hard and long, and, above all, work on your own, without being told or coaxed?”

“You have to love it, dear,” I told them, “You need to have a strong reason to invest your heart into it.”

I gave them my own example. “I teach Accountancy subject, not because I love the accounting process… I love the teaching process.”

I added, “If someone wants to employ me as an accountant, even with a very hefty salary, I won’t be willing to take up that job, because, I don’t like the accounting job. But, if someone wants me to stand before young-ones like you and teach – accountancy or whatever it is – I would simply jump on it!”

Then, I told them this: “It is not even the process of teaching accountancy that excites me, gives me the fuel to keep going, it is the process of empowering and impacting young lives like yours that motivates me to work hard, long and work without being told, coaxed or supervised….

“The moment the heart comes into your work, you will work with that proverbial missionary zeal,” I told my young-kids, “You need to be fired by the vision of your ‘promised land’… which would keep calling you and provide you with the strength and courage you would need.”


So, if I know, that I cannot be motivated by anyone to work hard, long and without being told, except by my own personal goal – my own desire to make it to my Promised Land… , yes, if I know from where my own motivation comes, then, I can easily know from where my students’ motivation comes, too…

God calls a missionary…

Goal calls us…

The call is the same… The name is the same: THE MISSIONARY ZEAL!



GERALD D’CUNHA



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