THE TINY PIECES AND THE THIN THREADS
















“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap,
but by the seeds you plant.”
-     Robert Louis Stevenson

Anupam, a dear friend of mine, is a young and energetic trainer in Soft Skills. It’s a delight to watch him involve his audience, mostly young ones. I know, from my own experience of over four decades, how difficult it is to keep them awake and alive. Unwittingly, we all – teachers, trainers, coaches, preachers and so on – devise our own methods of involving our audience, especially the young audience. There is no single method that suits all of us… We discover and settle for the one that suits us best…

“Yes… No… May be?” Anupam throws the stone in the pond… And, instantly, you see the ripple effect… Invariably, it is ‘Yes Sir”!

Your audience is made up of minds like your own. The attention span is short… Mind is fickle, it drifts. So, you need to keep tickling them, keep prompting them…

“Hello… are you with me?”
“Are you getting me?”
“How many of you eat fast?” (Ask this, raising your own hand up, first.)
“Yes… No… May be?”
“Be alert… I am going to ask you questions?”
“Interesting?... Boring?... Funny?... Can’t say?”
Whatever kind of stone it may be, it’s fine. But, unless you keep throwing these stones in your pond, you will not see the ripple effect…

Well, this Post is not about the effective Public-speaking skills… It’s about how the ‘small things’ bring about the ‘big things’. Just as a teacher, trainer or a preacher, who is ‘boring’ or ‘lifeless’ because he/she did not bother to ‘test the water in the pond’, yes, just as that – other things in life, too, are!

It’s only the small steps, which we take one at a time, that help us complete our journey of thousand miles… The Mount Everest is conquered in this way… The Pacific Ocean and the Sahara Desert, too…

One step leads to another, and another step leads to yet another…

In Life, the choices that we make have the same ripple effect… And, when we make those choices ‘consciously’, they help us shape our desired destiny…

Now, let’s not argue here, just for the sake of an argument – “What is the guarantee that we will succeed?” Or, “What if a cyclone or Tsunami comes?” Or, “What if a war breaks out?”… “What if….?”

Yes, equally powerful those “what ifs” are, Sir… They, too, have the same ripple effect… And, they, too, end up shaping our destiny…

“Yes”… “No”… “May be”.  Yes, each one of these has the power to shape our destiny. This is how it is… whether we like it or not, and whether we believe it or not. We have the power over our choices… And, our choices have the power over our destiny…

Call it the ripple effect, or call it the butterfly effect… Or, call it simply ‘Karma’…

It’s, always, the tiny pieces and the thin threads that complete big puzzles and the beautiful blankets of life…

Wish, the boring speaker knew this…

Wish, we all!


GERALD D’CUNHA

Pic.: Rekha Srikar Shenoy


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