STAYING INVESTED IN LIFE









Pic.: Chetna Shetty

A couple of days ago, a friend of mine pointed to some of The Dawn Club activities and events of the past and wondered if they had yielded the ‘desired results’. “Have they just gone wasted?” he was concerned.

I took a long pause before I could reply to my friend.  The question was so familiar to me; for, more than I had heard my well-wishers asking this to me, I have asked this to myself. Inside me, there had been – there still are – two voices… One, soars, dreams, trusts, embraces, laughs, rejoices… The other sulks, dreads, doubts, distances, broods and despairs…. One comes from the sphere of abundance… The other comes from the sphere of lack… One makes me walk into the world with my open arms, the other, with my guarded fists…

So, to this concerned friend of mine, I replied, “No, not at all… Every activity we did seem to me as the connecting dots… They have brought us here, today.”

Another friend of mine, who was with us, came up to support my view. “Take the case of our children… My daughter has just started working and, soon, she will be married and gone.  My son is in his final-year of graduation. Raising them up for years has been not easy… I have felt inside my heart the entire gambit of exhilaration and frustration… So often, I have wondered, ‘Have my efforts gone wasted?’... That’s the time, another thought would, always, come to console me… I would remember my own parents who were blessed with much meager resources in life and, yet, had gone about raising me and my siblings with all they possessed… with loads of trust and love. Certainly, they must’ve gone through the same kind of feelings - of hope and despair – and, yet, they had never given up on their children… If we have not been ‘wastes’ in life, our children, too, won’t be.” Then, this friend added, “How is a dream different from our children or any other investment in life… I think, we should stay invested!”

Spot on! What a wonderful way to beat our fears… What a brilliant way to convince ourselves, that no effort, done with full heart, clean intention and earnestness, shall go wasted in life. That, they all are the connecting dots, the pieces of the ‘great Jigsaw puzzle’… That, they help us ‘come home’, where we ‘belong’!

What if I told you, that this very blog post is one such connecting dot… That, it won’t be a waste… That, it will help me ‘come home’… Yes, what if I told you so, would you be convinced?

Let’s stay invested.


GERALD D’CUNHA

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