WELL, WHAT KNOWLEDGE DID I SHARE TODAY?

    















 Pic.:  Kamlesh Gurnaney


Some days ago, I received a call from a very energetic and articulate young-lady. Her name was Rieth. She had heard about me from one of her relatives and she wanted me to give a short talk during one of their weekly Rotary meetings. Her husband was the President of the particular chapter.

I immediately agreed.

Today was the session…

I had been invited twice earlier by some other chapters of Rotary Club. The Rotarians meet every week, and they invite a guest – anyone who has something positive, constructive and helpful to share – to share ideas close to his or her heart. They call it – ‘Knowledge-sharing’.

Rotary Club was founded by an ordinary businessman by the name Paul Harris. The year was 1905… and the city was Chicago. It was his idea, his vision… to start a club where professionals and businessmen like him would meet with the primary objective of serving the society at large. They had no office of their own… The first meeting was held in the office of one of Harris’ friends, an engineer. The next week, it was held at another friend’s office… like that, they kept rotating…

They called their club – ‘Rotary Club’!

Today, there are about 32,282 Rotary Clubs around the world with approximately 1.2 million members… regardless of color, caste, class, language, nationality and their political or religious affiliation. It is a totally secular and service-driven organization, where the leadership, in sync with its name, ‘rotates’ like it does nowhere else!

So, I had been a huge fan of Paul Harris. Maybe, I just say ‘maybe’ with tremendous amount of humility – he had unwittingly inspired me to found THE DAWN CLUB in 1989… I know how tough it is to give life to an idea and keep it alive and growing for years on… Harris is a huge hero for me… The Rotary Club he had founded has been my lighthouse!


Well, what knowledge did I share, today, with Rieth and other Rotarians (and some of their young children)? I had titled the sharing session as ‘SEEING THE EXTRA-ORDINARY IN THE ORDINARY’… I wanted to share with them the beauty we could see in the wayside flowers… the daily, mundane events… How, by remaining open, alert, curious, childlike and earnest… yes, how, by seeing those ordinary events with new eyes and a thirsty heart… how, by accepting all our feelings and emotions as a medium for our self-growth… how, by remaining ever grateful and ever giving… and, above all, how by believing in the great Law of abundance… we could go about life creating our best… giving our best. 

 “Everything we do, is done by so many around us,” I reminded them, “But, we can do it in our own – special… God-blessed way… There is place for each one of us, and there is enough for each of us… That’s the Law of Abundance… I am a great believer in this law… It makes me feel confident and zestful… It helps me wake up, each morning, with trust… There ‘is’ great beauty in everything that unfolds before us… There ‘is’ extraordinary wrapped in the ordinary.”

I showed my audience, today, some amazing videos… each one had brought home the same truth: ‘Embrace life with open arms… You have nothing to fear’!

I showed them the Google ad – ‘Help your mother Discover a New World’… To me, it was the epitome of ‘Knowledge-sharing’… Why look outside our own homes?







And, yes, I gave away plenty of books I had written… and said:
“What goes around, comes around.”



GERALD D’CUNHA


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