The unrecognized teachers

by Dr. Madhav Prabhu

Happy teachers day to all, teachers are great influences in life, we never know the true extent to which they touch our lives till we leave them behind. We are because they were. Teachers have shaped us, turned is into our present forms. We may have ridiculed them, we may have loved them, we may have hated them, but today I am sure all of us miss them.

But it’s not only these teachers that teach you lessons, there are some we don’t realize too. It’s not lectures that they give us but its mostly life lessons. We never realize these lessons until we decide to learn from them. Everything and everyone is a teacher, we should only not stop learning. Each one of us has a teacher in him/her self, most don’t get him/her out of the box.

Let me share a few lessons that I learned in the last few years, lessons that may seem silly yet were something important in perspective.

My first teacher was my dual SIM mobile. Yup important life lessons learned when I am lonely and have nobody to talk to. My phone taught me that ” I AM A FANTASTIC PERSON “, yes unbelievable right but it did. Somehow in our schedule, we forget the most lovely person we have ever met and that’s ourselves. We forget to talk to ourselves, we forget to acknowledge the great heart that lies within. We don’t talk to ourselves, don’t focus on what we really think and what a really want, we don’t introspect and down the line, we lose the wonderful companion that we are to ourselves.

The dual SIM is something you should try when you are alone and feel lonely, just message on one SIM and reply on other, it’s a nice thing to do, you can tell yourself what you as going through and find solutions for yourself, you can discuss problem when you have nobody to tell and will never be judged for it. Tell me who else gives you that liberty, and at the end of it you are sorted with yourself.

The best thing it does is, it builds for yourself your own image and that is excellent for your self-esteem, you think for yourself where you are heading and if that’s what you aimed at. If you went to a counselor to do this he will charge you a bomb. I can tell myself how high my regards are for myself and say a few rewarding words for all the hard work I do which my boss never does. And while I chat with myself I know what a fantastic person I am and then I stop feeling lonely.

HESCOM is the company which supplies electricity to us, it adds sparkle to our bulbs and tubes, there is no life without power, there is no charge in cell phones and no soaps on the screen without HESCOM. But for a good student, HESCOM gives important life lessons “BE PREPARED FOR THE DARK TIMES “. This is a very important lesson in life and should be remembered especially when you are in the bright of your life. The lights can go off suddenly and you will be left with no alternative. Lights can go off anytime, it could go off in peak summer or even in heavy rains. Power can go out for no reason at all and there is no timing for the light to come back, it never keeps time and you don’t expect punctuality. Problems in life are also the same they can come anytime and make you go dark, they can take away all your comfort and leave you without the pleasures you enjoy the most.

But this unpredictability forces you to fight back, find ways and means to keep our cell phones and televisions work. You buy generators and inverters and you keep them charged and ready always waiting for a darker day. Life is like this too, we have to anticipate a dark day and while we are enjoying the life we need to keep our generators and inverters backed up so we have an uninterrupted power supply. Enjoy all you have but always plan for a cloudy day that’s what I learned from HESCOM.

I learned a lot from potholes too, potholes appear regularly after every rain, they cause so much inconvenience, they spoil the road they spoil your plans and they ruin your vehicles. Pot holes come in different sizes and shapes and you have someone to blame for them always. Potholes can be managed in two ways, just patch up and do a temporary job or reconstruct and do the road again. Whether or not a pothole is developed depends on how well the road has been laid and the material used.

Potholes taught me about failure, failures can be big or small, it can be of different nature and kind. Failures can ruin your life, they can break you forever or they can take away your will to succeed. Failure can come after every rain of success. We always have someone to blame for our failures. There are two ways of correcting our failures either do a patch up of compromises or change the way we approach our target and when we do that what material we use, to success matters, the hard work we put matters and this determines whether we will succeed. So potholes, taught me the mantra to success “HARD WORK, QUALITY EFFORTS, AND NO SHORTCUTS “.

There are so many things which teach you and there are so many situations too. These teachers teach you the hard way unlike in school where we are spoon fed, loved and cared for.

Lastly, there is another teacher from I would like to remember today, the super fuel petrol. Petrol prices fluctuate a lot sometimes the price is very high and sometimes a little less, its actually not determined on the ground, it is determined in the commodity market, its called Satta, an inflated economy, its an assumption and is based on no solid foundation. High prices can burn your pockets and break your back. Petrol can give you the pleasure of driving for some time but ultimately it will burn away and leave behind carbon and smoke. Petrol if saved for yourself it best for your pocket and country. The more you use petrol the more you burn your pockets, the more you damage your engine.

Petrol is like your ego, it’s there in everyone, sometimes more and sometimes less, its price is also based on no reality it’s based on your own perception about yourself, there is so much inflation for no reason. It takes you a little high, you can get happy satisfying it sometimes but ultimately it will burn you down and leave behind only the sort of hatred.

Ego kept to yourself or used a little less it best for yourself and your relationships with the outer world. More the ego more the damage you do. So the raising prices of petrol should remind and teach us the effects of inflated egos. There are plenty of teachers out there all you need is a good student.