A Passion For Calmness

The word passion has made a fair presence in management literature in recent years. It is a must, say the gurus for any entrepreneur as he or she embarks on the journey into the unknown. It is a must say the Counselors to the young graduate  seeking a job. A passion to achieve , a passion to excel and a passion to succeed. The word does pump up the adrenalin for a while, for sure. There is hardly a  "pick me up" book or one on a successful business person that does not have this word on the cover.

I wonder whether  passion alone holds the key to success in any endeavor  How about another word "calmness"? Which one is more relevant , or are they both equally important? What do you do when as a "passionate" entrepreneur in the IT sector wakes up one more to find that his geek has jumped ship?Would his "passion" overcome the cold sweat of fear  or the surge of anger at being let down? Many a time the person tends to turn his back on the "traitor" and look for other solutions. The passion to succeed prevents the recourse to a calm assessment of the development. Perhaps there is a merit in  reviewing the situation calmly and attempt at a solution that retains the resource. Too often this route is missed as the negative emotions are suppressed under a "passionate" belief that there are other avenues to take. 

Or take a situation where a job  one was "passionately" seeking , did not materialize. Would a passion to succeed resolve the deep disappointment and frustration that sets  in the first few minutes of the realization of a failure? Or does it prevent an introspection of the reasons that led to the failure. That requires an equanimity, a calmness to analyze the failure and perhaps derive some useful pointers.

A calm introspection of an event is critical and in my view, more so than a passion. Passion has a tendency to overwhelm, to mask out all emotive feelings that deviates from the goal. That could be counter productive.There is a need to take passion cautiously and add a fair dollop of calmness to it !                        

    

Just Another Day!

Many many moons ago , I recollect the annual Vijayadashmi day ... the six of us waiting for our Father to finish the prayers , all of us bathed and dressed ( in new clothes ? I do not recollect). Once the Lords had been paid obeisance  to and His prasad taken, we kids gorged on the Vadas and the Polis. The Polis I remember vividly for I would wince at the ghee streaming down the  fingers and the brown filling scattering in the plate . I never could get to like this dish.

And ,therefore, the Lord saw it fit that I should prepare the Poli for Him this Vijayadashami day- 23rd October 2012. J seriously unwell with a breathing problem , yet determined that the rites must not be missed. So the deal was that I being ready and bathed and all that would make one Poli for the Lord and she being sick and not ready would make the rest for ourselves. So Goddess Durga ( I realised that we had no image of her in our sacred room) was offered a Poli and a Vada cooked by me. 

Vijayadashami is the annual occasion when we take those resolutions , make those beginnings. A rational way to acknowledge and forget past failures and attempt anew. Like all resolutions they hardly last and we are back to reflecting upon them a year hence. As Osho so brilliantly puts it if you need to "resolve" it is not in our internal system as yet . If it is not within the the system than it is unlikely to ever succeed. Osho suggests being "aware" of this reality and let the realisation move one to action. 

Take the desire to write. All long as I was stuck to a job , entwined by the daily grind of activities ( Deepak Chopra calls them routine in a recent blog), I yearned ( and resolved) for the future date when I could manage time by myself and set apart hours for writing. Now I have a convenient label of  "writers blog" to rationalize my failure. Along comes a Vijayadashami and I am at it now, though J is unwell and grumbles at my lack of attention. However I persist just to get this one blog through, as a commitment to a daily hour of writing, This one has hardly taken 20 minutes, disturbed by an order to set right the mess I created in the other bedroom. 

So thank you Microsoft and all the other tech powerhouses who have created the blog ecosystem . I make another start at writing from today