Give your anxieties and worries to God

Why be anxious in life? Problems come to each and every one of us sometime or the other. The important thing to remember is to have faith that you are never alone. God is with you through your problems. Just as we read about in the Bible when there was a storm in the Sea of Galilee and Jesus slept in the rear of the boat as the disciples got scared and thought they were going to sink. They woke him up and said, "Don't you care?" (Mark 4:35-41). Jesus rebuked the storm by saying "Peace. Be still." Immediately, the storm calmed. He then asked his disciples, "Why are you so afraid. Do you still not have faith?" 

There are many things in life that we need to be thankful for. But yet, every time we worry about little things that mostly never happen. While there are some more serious events in life that we face where we can get hopeless, worried, anxious and scared about. But this is the time to have faith in God and surrender our worries and problems to Him. Remember that God loves you and will never leave your side. Sometimes we have problems in life, but take this positively. It is only in our problems and how we face them that we learn and grow. Cast your care upon God and have faith that He will be at your side through the storms of life. You have to just weather these storms and learn what you can. No storm is permanent and neither are your troubled situations. Things will always get better. Smile. 

The Difference In Doing And Being

(published in The Speaking Tree, The Times of India - August 29, 2013)

The simple art of passive observation is something that is becoming a rarity. In today's world we are many times obsessed with 'doing' something. In the car, we are either driving, listening to music, reading or talking on our cellphones. Or we are thinking about yesterday and tomorrow with our minds totally absent from the herenow. An experiment was conducted where instead of always trying to do something, the passenger in the car was instructed to just look outside the window and observe. No thinking, no worrying, no communicating, just observing. The result was amazing!

The daily route to work taken more than one thousand times over the years revealed many surprises unnoticed before. The observation yielded new alleys, lanes, signs, trees, structures and other things never before seen. The simple but not easy task of eliminating all thoughts from our minds during the observation also yielded strange results. Suddenly from the silence within came forth a form of communication with the Divine hitherto heard but rarely. A feeling that asked, 'Have you never observed these things before? You pass by here every day but have seen these never before. They have been here all along, but you have seen them not.'

The observer then realises that though he had travelled on this route perhaps thousands of times earlier, he had never noticed so many of the things he saw that day. The fact that he could even hear the Divine voice talk to him could also be an indication of the same phenomenon – that sometimes the mind has to be still from the thoughts of yesterday and the hopes or worries of tomorrow and just be in the here-now. The Divine voice itself could be calling out to us all the time but perhaps could never be heard because of this same lack of observation of what is. Our minds are now caught in a virtual web that comprises constant communication with other people, constant bombardment with information, constant worrying or thinking about yesterday or tomorrow but very often never with just being in the here-now.

But there is another aspect of the experiment that needs mentioning. After a few minutes of observation and the hearing of the Divine voice, it continued further, ''All these things you see – love them and you love me!'' God wants us to see the world and observe it. From that will come the lessons that need to be learnt and the love that needs to be loved.

With all this constant race and pursuit of material things, we forget the simple things. The butterflies and flowers, the leaves swaying in the trees, children playing in the park, the setting sun, the wind blowing through your hair, the joy of seeing a baby laugh or simply sit in the rear seat of a car and observe the world as it passes by…there are so many things you will notice if you just look and see. It is not a 'waste of time', for at the end of the day, what are we really here in this world for? Sure, it is important to do also. It is important to work and play and laugh and cry and love and hurt, but it is also very important to process all that information. It is important to feelthe moment. It is important to live in the herenow and just be! After all, we are all human beings not human doings.

-----------------------------

To read this article on the Speaking Tree, Times of India site, click here

To read a scanned version of this article, click here

Studying Is Not Mugging

(published in Millennium Post Edit page August 27, 2013)

Education in India needs to be more learning-oriented and less examination-centric.

It is the children of any nation that are the biggest resource of the future and India is no exception. The population of India is around 1.22 billion and more than 50 per cent of the population falls under the age of 25 and around 65 per cent under the age of 35. Among the hundreds of millions of children in our country, some could be the next Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci, Gandhi, Newton, Bill Gates or Abraham Lincoln. Somebody out there amongst the children of today are the national leaders of tomorrow. But what are we as a nation and as a society doing to gear them up for the challenges and opportunities ahead?

What kind of education system are we giving them? And how much of a priority is education to the national leaders and governments of the day? The education ministers and education secretaries of all Indian states may not be the most powerful or even well known amongst their peers, but one thing is for sure – for the long term welfare of the Indian Republic, they are the most important people in this country. For in their hands lie the future development and growth of India's most precious and important asset – its youth. They also have the power to formulate and implement new policies that will improve the quality and quantity of educational institutions.

So now we are in 2013, 66 years after the British left our shores and left us with the responsibility and destiny of governing our own land and preparing our own youth for the challenges of the future. But let us examine our own selves and ask how have we really changed the education system that the British left us with? It has been said often that the British system of education was designed to create a nation of clerks amongst the Indians and perhaps that is true. All of us remember the anxious nights we had cramming for an examination the next day. We all remember trying to memorise dates in History, formulae in Physics, Chemistry and Maths, trying to remember important latitudes and longitudes in Geography, trying to remember all the Latin associated with Biology and so on. But is that the right way for youngsters to learn?

The system needs an overhaul and fast. We have to move far away from the system of clerk creation that the British left us with and introduce a much more interesting, fun approach to education and we also need a totally new approach towards examinations.

Education in India needs too be more learning-centric and less examination-centric. At the very least, it needs to have a completely different approach to examinations. Instead of having voluminous textbooks that are meant for purely cramming information into the minds of our youth so that they can go and take an exam, there needs to be a much more practical research based approach to education. Children at a certain age need to be able to choose their subjects according to their interest and capability instead of according to a pre-defined curriculum.

We live in a rapidly accelerating Information Age. Can we possibly keep stuffing all this information into our brains? And why should we? The very term Information Age implies that we have access to information of all kinds accessible instantly through the Internet and other digital forms, yes also physical books and papers as well.

But in such an Age, is it not more important to know how to access that information quickly and easily and to be able to use it as and when needed. Research needs to be encouraged where children will be encouraged to actually research something and use whatever information tools are available for the task. This is how our youth will learn how to learn and think. Education is about learning and thinking and not memorising! When are we going to understand this simple fact.

Examinations should also be such that children can have access to their research materials and use them so that their answers will be more accurate. But of course within a prescribed time limit.

Evidence of this lack of thinking and innovativeness is seen around us. Just think of how many Indian products or brands are available globally. Products that were invented in India. How many inventions and discoveries in general are made in India? Very few. This is because of this lack of research approach in education and a lack of research and development of science and technology in general.
Children will learn more when they experience things and do things on their own. In the US, schools regularly take their students to zoos, museums, planetariums, aquariums and such places. They have outdoor excursions to the forests where kids can experience plants and certain animals face to face.

I remember as a child (I studied in the US as a kid) in class 2, we were taught about the Mayan civilization. I remember that we hardly read anything in a textbook. We were shown a Discovery channel type documentary in our classroom and were shown and physically held artifacts of the Mayans. We were explained things through maps, diagrams, etc. Generally, the information was portrayed in a very interesting and meaningful way, so much so, that I remember everything clearly even now 34 years later!

But there is another thing that needs to be highlighted. Education is not only about science, social studies, etc. It is also about morals, ethics, civics and ideas. Imagine a subject called 'Ideas' where children are encouraged to think and try to discover and invent new concepts. This is how a nation will grow into a great nation.

Our children are tomorrow's leaders. They are the only hope for this country. If they learn to have respect for society, for country, for women, for environment, for rule of law, for research, for entrepreneurship, for poverty reduction, for education, for lofty and noble thoughts and ideas, for honesty, for truth – then we have an education system that is worth it.

We need more schools, colleges, adult schools and adult colleges, more museums, more libraries, etc. The private sector's participation is needed more. Allow schools, colleges, museums, libraries, etc. to be profit making bodies. Let them be run by companies listed on stock markets and pay teachers well. Why not? Which is better – that a company provides quality education and makes a profit in the process? Or that governments continue to allocate budgets to education and yet not be able to provide quality classrooms, teachers or teaching.

Just like we had an economic liberalisation process that started in 1991, we need an education revolution starting now!


-----------------------------------
To read this article on the Millennium Post site, click here
To read a scanned version of this article, click here