WHEN DEFINITE GOAL IS PROPELLED BY BURNING DESIRE

 

“Plant the seed of desire in your mind

and it forms a nucleus with power to attract to itself 

everything needed for its fulfilment.”

Robert Collier

 

Some years ago, when I was chatting with a friend of mine, I found myself corrected by her. “We shouldn’t call them ‘maid servants’, they are our life-supports.”

I had, casually, referred the lady who came to do sweeping and mopping at our place as our ‘maid servant’, even though I hadn’t meant to demean her in any way. But, when my friend tried to correct me, I really paused to see the depth of that term she had just toyed – ‘Life-support’.

For last few months, we have a new ‘life-support’ at our residence. This woman – probably in her early forties – is so full of enthusiasm, so full of ‘Go-the-extra-mile attitude’, that, both my wife and I like her when she is around… She seems a part of our household. My wife and I both were unanimous about giving her the Diwali bonus, irrespective of the usual haggling over whether she was with us for a few months or few years…

It was the Bonus for her happy approach to work!

“What are your children doing?” I enquired with our ‘life-support’, today.

“Sir, I have three children. The eldest one is a daughter who is in her final-year of Hotel Management. The second daughter is in twelfth standard. The last one is a boy who is in his tenth.”

“How are they doing in studies?” I asked.

“The eldest one is bright in every respect, except her fear of communicating in English. She scores well in college, she has done well in her internship, but she is dreading to face the upcoming interviews because of her fear of speaking in English. I, always, wanted to talk to you about it,” the mother said.

“What about the other two?” I asked.

“They, too, have the same problem; but, the eldest girl’s problem is immediate,” the concerned mother said.

I narrated my own story: how I was dreading with fear when I was a teenager due to my poor English and low self-confidence, and how things started improving once I sat in Prof. B. S. Raman’s class (during three years of my graduation) and dreamt of becoming like him - a fine teacher and a writer…

“It becomes easy once your daughter has a definite goal, backed by a burning desire to achieve it. I will guide her and give some books to her,” I explained, “ask her to call me today.”

The mother thanked me profusely. Then, she added this, her face turning quite sad, “Sir, can you believe, that I am a graduate? I was married off early to a household, when all my years went in managing the joint family alongside my husband and children. Today I am reduced to do this work. But, I don’t want my children, especially girls, to end up like me.”

“They won’t, trust me,” I consoled. “All they need is a definite goal backed by a strong desire to achieve it…If, coming from a village, I have done it, they will, certainly, do it.”

Will they, really?

Why not?

Are you reading my daily bogs in English?... There are thousands and thousands of them? Have you read my books?... There are about thirty-five of them!

“Whatever a man can conceive and believe in his mind, he is can achieve.” This promise had come to me as the Manna from heaven when I had found a used copy of Napoleon Hill's ‘Think and Grow Rich’ on the footpath near Churchgate station… I was new in in this city, incredibly weighed down with the same anxiety as this young girl is weighed down with: “Can I, too, think and grow rich?”

Hope you won’t ask me -  ‘What’s being rich?”

 

GERALD D’CUNHA

 

Pic’s: Pixels: 1. Josh Hild  2. cottonbro studio

 

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