Day 7 - Joy of Giving!

When was the last time you felt happy? And I mean truly happy. Which essentially goes beyond the happiness euphoria one enjoys after an extensive shopping binge or eating out in a fancy restaurant with your bunch of BFF or experience of an exotic holiday or even a candle light romantic dinner with your spouse. In case you still have not got the answer, it's okay. Its not unusual.

My moment of happiness is when I give. Be it love, acts of kindness, a shoulder to cry, a patient hearing, piece of advice and many such moments when I give not with any expectations. It is unrequited acts of kindness which makes my life more meaningful and special.

Giving clothes and money to charity is good but even better is when you can gift your time. 
Time in the form of volunteering efforts to social organizations, towards your housing society, towards a cause for making the lives of those around you better.

However, the time I am able to spent like this is not as much as I would like to. So hoping 2014 makes me energized to devote much time for it.
Believe me, if everyone of us picks up at least one social cause and contribute their time and energy towards that, life will be such a wonderful place.

It may be saving a green space in your locality, being part of the Teach India initiative, or a passion which is dear to your heart. There can be no greater happiness than by giving your precious time to an initiative from which you may not even receive any monetary or non monetary benefit. But it will surely make your life more meaningful and make you content than anything else.

Day 6 - Remember to just call!

We lead very busy lives or at least we seem to a have lot on our plates nowadays. Subconsciously we get sucked in to this time vortex and then carry on with our daily routine as if that's the only way to lead a life. Such a pity!

Work, calls, meetings, messages, emails, whatsapp forwards, traffic, some more emails, some more calls and then again the virtual meetings....it never ends or does it!
So when in one of our rare quieter moments when we get time to reflect on the unfinished tasks of the day.... its mostly pending items on our personal 'Things to do' list.Sadly, they always get pushed to a tomorrow that went by yesterday.

And in that unfinished task list is one of the most simple yet important item is to make a phone call. To call on that long lost and found again friend or an ailing aunt or uncle or a back in India finally - family friend, basically people in our lives who we have not met or heard in a long time.
Somehow it not being an urgent task, it remains on to-do list for days and sometimes as long as months.

I have heard people say....oh I wish I had spoken to him before he left....but by then its too late. Sometimes they have lost that chance forever. Just a few days back, one of my favorite actors Farouque Shaikh expired unexpectedly in Dubai when on his family holiday. The next day there was outpouring of condolences in the national newspapers. Amongst them were many colleagues and friends were quoted  saying that they wished they had visited him or called him as they intended to do for a very long time and now they were regretting for not doing the same.

God forbid any such untoward incident happens. But this seemingly simple act of calling on one of your friends, family or relatives to speak a few kind words may become a reason for sending you on a long guilt trip if not done in time.
Thankfully, this has never happened to me and hope it never does. But its always good to learn from others mistakes rather than learn it the hard way.

So I ask, have you been thinking of calling someone for a long long time but have not done so yet, just pick up that phone and do so right now.

And well, you can thank me later for saving you from that long arduous guilt laden trip! :)