The emotions of those beginning an academic year are like the emotions of someone standing at the threshold of a closed door. You are not fully aware as to what lies ahead; and this rawness makes the beginnings anticipative and interesting. As you stand at this threshold may I place before you three shields to be worn as you journey on through the academic year.
1. Embrace learning with passion and curiosity
The curiosity to know the story and treatment of a newly released film creates passion to wait and when the time comes, goes and watches the film. We must enter an academic year with the same passion.
What is unknown is bigger than the known. Seeing the young Nikita looking out through the window the teacher stopped the class and asked her, ‘Nikita, what are you looking at?’ Nikita was caught unaware. Nikita thinking out a quick answer blurted out, ‘Teacher, I am looking at the horizon.’ The teacher again asked her, ‘Looking at the horizon? What do you see on the horizon?’ ‘When I look at the horizon’ taking a little time to think answered Nikita, ‘I see the horizon.’ Seeing the mischief in her answer, all in the class had a hearty laugh.
The experienced teacher did not give up. She asked Nikita again, ‘Do you know that one day you can reach that horizon?’ Students stopped laughing, the class fell silent. Nikita, and her colleagues in class, never thought of that possibility, she became interested and grew curious. She asked the teacher, ‘When I reach the horizon what would I see?’ ‘When you reach the horizon’, said the teacher with a pause, ‘you will see other horizons.’ Nikita’s face brightened up in disbelief and curiosity. The class, being seated in that tiny classroom now knew that the unknown is bigger than the known.
2. Face challenges with resilience and creativity
As the American psychiatrist M Scott Peck begins his book, The Roadless Travelled, “Life is difficult” and proves through the rest of the book, “but it is not impossible.” All of us have abilities, and we also have disabilities; some disabilities we can overcome, some abilities we have not yet explored. The choice is ours whether to allow the obstacle to overcome you, or you overcome the obstacle.
Evan was with Amazon Company when they had just begun in mid 1990s. An incident shared by Evan stuck me. The company was so very small. They literally had to sit on the knees on the cement floor and pack books. Of course the skin on the knees began to get scarred and affected. They requested the company to provide kneecaps. The founder, Jeff Bezos, came on board and said, what you need is not kneecaps but packing tables.
I am reminded of another man who one day, as he was walking on a road, stamped on a plantain skin and fell on the ground. He was embarrassed and was sad. The next day while he was walking on the same road, he happened to see a plantain skin lying on the road in front of him. He thought to himself, “O my God, today also I have to fall”. Challenges remain as challenges unless we face them in newer creative ways.
3. Use your knowledge to make a positive impact on others.
The tree that you are must not only have roots to gather things to itself and its growth; but must also have flowers and fruits. It must have shades for others to come and rest when they are weary and exhausted.
Do not live through your academic year like a garden spade which can only cut the earth and gather it oneself. Be generous; develop the character of giving. Be compassionate; develop fellow feeling with others. The word compassion comes from a Latin word, compassio, meaning, fellow feeling.
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