HAVE STORIES TO TELL, NOT STUFF TO SHOW
“Your story is the
greatest legacy
that you will leave to
your friends.
It’s the
longest-lasting legacy
you will leave to your
heirs.”
—Steve Saint
This
is my second Post on Prema. She is sixty. Presently, she comes to me to learn ‘how
to write and speak English fluently’! Right from the day she first called me to
seek my help – only by listening to her conversation on phone – I had told her,
“Ma’am, you speak English quite fluently; you do not need help there.” Then, I
had added, “You need help to overcome your self-doubts.”
Learning to
trust our thoughts, own them up and express them… Yes, this is the most
significant step towards the journey of our self-confidence. The more we do it,
the higher we grow in confidence… The self-doubts dissolve and we feel
authentic about ourselves.
So, I encourage
everyone, who is keen to embark upon this journey, to get in touch with his/her innate thoughts… trust them, own them up… and sincerely express them on paper. “They
are your thoughts,” I remind them, “If you won’t trust them and own them up, who
else will?”
How can we ever feel self-confident, till
the time we have no faith in our own thoughts, views, strengths, talents and
skills? How can we ever communicate from our true selves and feel good about
ourselves?
It’s over three weeks since Prema started
attending my ‘Patshala’. She has five
married daughters, all highly qualified and highly placed in various parts of
the globe. This grandmother keeps herself busy with several things - her
husband’s business, community work etc. But, despite all her accomplishments as
a wife, a mother and a member of community, Prema has been sensing a vacuum in
her… that familiar feeling of ‘incompleteness’ within. English was just a smoky
screen… “Ma’am, you are already fluent in English,” I had told her, “You just
need to be true to your thoughts.”
Over these
days, Prema has written on many topics concerning her life. All these writings,
as I said, were to encourage her to trust her own thoughts. Some days ago, I
had asked her to write on the topic: “Five things I want a young one to remember
in life”…
Having raised
five confident daughters - giving them the best education and helping them to
do well in life - the topic which I had given to Prema, seemed just a natural extension
to what she had been breathing day in and day out in her life. Here are her
five most important pointers to a young one:
1.
Educate yourself well.
2.
Have goals and have faith in
yourself.
3.
Have stories to tell, not stuff
to show.
4.
Choose your friends wisely.
5.
Respect your parents.
Though each of
the five points was a valuable chapter in itself, I loved the third point the
most: ‘Have stories to tell, not stuff to show’!
She wrote: “We
need to live life with experiences and adventures. The ‘stuff’ is what we
accumulate in life as our wealth, name, fame, power and position. The ‘stuff’
will perish. But, our ‘stories’ are our legacies… They will live on… They will enrich.”
Will our young
ones remember this ‘Stuff-and-stories theory’ of life?
I hope, they
will.
GERALD D’CUNHA
Pic.: Nicole Gubin-O'Ryan
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