Category: Food For Thought

Food For Thought, Myself, Writing

Not Always So/Empty Hands

Sanjay Sabarwal

Almost every day, I get the urge to blog. Yet it is not always so that I write. I  can’t remember how many blog posts  I have written in my head. I often wish for a machine that could just transcribe directly from my brain on to paper. I am pretty sure I am not the only one to fantasize about that.The worst is when I get ideas for a stories or essays, and in that one magical few moments, I can see the entire thing already completed. And then the next moment, poof, it’s gone. Sometimes my brain is smart enough to jot the idea down in my phone, but after a few days when I look at those words, it’s like they are gibberish. Yet the urge to write keeps striking, and so many days have gone by that it no longer made sense to wait. So even though life is not always so, today I am going to attempt to make sense of some of my thoughts.

So much has happened this past month. A good friend recently put together a great event called “The Empty Hands” tour.  When first approached about it, and after listening to the video that was created, I knew I had to attend. The concept was simple. A listening party at a generous friends place along with mini stories about gratitude, love, and forgiveness. The concept riveted me. Nimo Patel (formerly of the desi hip hop group Karmacy) has been living in India for almost 7 year now, and although he thought he was done with music, his experiences at Manav Sadhna struck the creative chord. I am going to admit, the old me would have dismissed all this as hokey and too New Age crap, but Nimo’s sincerity is not only infectious, it is inspiring. It is rare to find so many like-minded at the event who gave them time, attention and love all in the name of being better.

I cringe at the my inability to share the joy and admiration I felt to be part of that event, yet here I am trying. I am learning that is it not always so that life will be as one pictures it. It is not always so when the day will go as planned or the people in our life will treat us the way we wish to be treated. All we have are moments of the present to enjoy what’s out there. So New Age Sanjay says  that while sometimes it may feel or look like you are holding nothing in your hands, that is they are empty, but often than not, they carry our hopes and wishes as well as gratitude.

Food For Thought, Myself

Demanding Respect

Sanjay Sabarwal
Japji Sahib Wallpaper
Japji Sahib Wallpaper (Photo credit: Gurumustuk Singh)

As I was doing my Japji Sahib today, I couldn’t help thinking about this video that I sent to my dear friends and family.  What is it about doing my prayers that makes me want to do things for others?  Inherently, I seem to review all the things that I could and probably should have done differently.  It sometimes feel as if the words disappear on my Gurbani Anywhere app, and I am reading and thinking of all that has transpired in my life the last few days. It strikes me as almost disrespectful that I am a thousand miles away as I pray.  Yet the thoughts keep coming, and I have to work on ensuring that I am present as I pray.  It occurs to me that praying and meditating are the only times I am by myself and Him, and I this is my way of connecting with the one above.

It struck me as telling  that I forwarded the video to over 2 dozen people and I received only 3 replies so a 2% conversion rate (I am not that great at math so that could be wrong).  I have become that annoying person who constantly puts uplifting messages on his timeline as well as is always sharing wisdom that affects him. I felt a bit helpless this time around because I REALLY wanted the people to watch the video I sent. In it, BK Shivani discusses how we constantly demand respect from others while continually not giving it ourselves.  We always want people to do what we want them to do, which in turn is what everyone else wants so until we begin the process of separating from souls from their thoughts, feelings and actions, we will continue to DISRESPECT them.  We will fail to see the close people around us as emotionally disturbed. We will not see things from their perspective so we will continue to send negative vibrations to them.

These past few days. I managed to spend some quality time with one of my dear friends and his family. It really effected me to see them struggle with each other. They are the most loving people I know, yet their environment has become toxic as each of them demand respect from other. Rather than accepting each other as they were, they were embroiled in a battle to change each other.  And then there are people in my life who will go months not talking to each other because they feel they are both right. What if everyone was right in their own way? What if we, instead of wasting time demanding respect from each other, they accepted everything faults and all. To many of us, this sounds impossible. Yet, it is also that simple. If we just gave up demanding respect, and accepted each other souls with different ways of doing things, we would be so much happier.  Wish us luck! 🙂

On a totally random note, I have become obsessed with this song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5t9VdZQ6ZI

Food For Thought, Myself, Random, Ziba

Thoughts For Food

Sanjay Sabarwal
A penny for your thoughts...Dollars for your t...
A penny for your thoughts…Dollars for your thoughts – NARA – 513735 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

I have been doing the Daily Food For Thought for Ziba Beauty for almost 5 years, and I happened to read some of the old ones.  I realized that at first they started out as long one page inspirational stories that I scoured for on other sites. But now they are one liners mostly for quick digestion.  My world is slowly turning from one based on thought and reflection to easy consumption. We no longer seem to have the patience for learning through patience.  We seem to want our inspiration in 140 characters or less. As the messages get shorter and shorter, I wonder how much meaning is being retained?  Perhaps we are distilling it down to the essence of thought, yet truthfully for me, I miss the days of reading the whole story.

 

We are in the middle of a generation the prefers texting to talking. Leaving voice-mails seems old fashioned or just work related.  We no longer seem to feel the need to buy a CD or buy digital based entertainment.  The value of creativity based on words seems to be sinking.  I now have officially entered into the realm of the good old days.”  None of this change is bad. In fact, I love the ease and convenience of getting to music and ideas that I never could before. And there lies the lesson. It’s not really about the message or the shape or form of it. Its how you interact with it, what it does for you.  Someone who does not want to change will simply ignore a long or a short message.

 

That’s hard for me to swallow. I am a fixer. I want to fix everyone and everything. i know that is foolish and ultimately a waste of time. People will not change unless they are ready to. No matter how often I forward inspirational quotes, messages or texts, nothing will get through until they are ready to make a change in their lives. It’s hard to see people jumping over a cliff or harming themselves needlessly but as the quote goes, “until you get lost, you won’t find new ways.” Anonymous.

Touche.

 

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Food For Thought, Random

Boston

Sanjay Sabarwal
THINK
THINK (Photo credit: Erik Eckel)

I will be honest. I only know that 3 have been killed, and 147 injured. I have heard that from NPR, and have actively avoided watching TV.  I have briefly glanced at Facebook statuses which either express horror, or underscore people’s own insecurity. Muslim?  Then you go on a rant for people to be open-minded and wait for the person to be caught before blaming.  White? Silence. Because the reality is if it’s a minority, we will put you in a box. We will launch missiles, but if you are white, we will just call you mental and ask for gun control.  These types of events are so loaded that many of us struggle not to say anything that compartmentalized or sounds vaguely racist or xenophobic.And others feel free to spew their vision of the world. But as humans, that’s what we do to survive. It does not make it right, it just is.

So before we go balls to the walls on our social media networks announcing what we think, perhaps just for a moment take some time and think about those lost, and perhaps forever maimed mentally. Give a breath and a prayer to the ones who will never get to see another day.  These type of tragedies make me realize how truly alone we have become.  We only listen to like minds, and have no interest in knowing the Truth.  Whatever fits into our narrow scope of thoughts has to be the truth.  I realize that past experience forms our present prejudices, but it also allows us not to think anymore. We, as humans, can do better than that.  We owe it to ourselves to not let emotion run us all the time.  Yes, the person(s) intended to create terror, but their real win will happen when we become less tolerant, and more willing to let others do the thinking and actions for us.  We can do better than that.

We have to.

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Brownness, Food For Thought

Food For Thought for Wednesday, July 6th, 2011

Sanjay Sabarwal
There is Greatness All Around You, Use It There are many people who could be Olympic champions, All-Americans who have never tried. I’d estimate five million people could have beaten me in the pole vault the years I won it, at least five million. Men who were stronger, bigger and faster than I was, could have done it, but they never picked up a pole, never made the feeble effort to pick their legs off the ground to try to get over the bar.

 

Greatness is all around us. It’s easy to be great because great people will help you. What is fantastic about all the conventions I go to is that the greatest in the business will come and share their ideas, their methods and their techniques with everyone else. I have seen the greatest salesmen open up and show young salesmen exactly how they did it. They don’t hold back. I have also found it true in the world of sports.

 

I’ll never forget the time I was trying to break Dutch Warmer Dam’s record. I was about a foot below his record, so I called him on the phone. I said, “Dutch, can you help me? I seem to have leveled off. I can’t get any higher.”

 

He said, “Sure, Bob, come on up to visit me and I’ll give you all I got.” I spent three days with the master, the greatest pole vaulter in the world. For three days, Dutch gave me everything that he’d seen. There were things that I was doing wrong and he corrected them. To make a long story short, I went up eight inches. That great guy gave me the best that he had. I’ve found that sports champions and heroes willingly do this just to help you become great, too. John Wooden, the great UCLA basketball coach, has a philosophy that every day he is supposed to help someone who can never reciprocate. That’s his obligation. When in college working on his masters thesis on scouting and defensive football, George Allen wrote up a 30-page survey and sent it out to the great coaches in the country. Eighty-five percent answered it completely.

 

Great people will share, which is what made George Allen one of the greatest football coaches in the world. Great people will tell you their secrets. Look for them, call them on the phone or buy their books. Go where they are, get around them, talk to them. It is easy to be great when you get around great people.

 

By Bob Richards
Olympic Athlete

Brownness, Food For Thought

Food For Thought for Tuesday, July 5th, 2011

Sanjay Sabarwal
How Stock Markets Work

It was autumn, and the Red Indians asked their New Chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild.

Since he was a Red Indian chief in a modern society, he couldn’t tell what the whether was going to be.

Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he replied to his Tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect wood to be prepared.

But also being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea.  He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked ‘Is the coming winter going to be cold?’

‘It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed,’ the weather man responded.

So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood. ! A week later, he called the National Weather Service again. ‘Is it going to be a very cold winter?’
‘Yes,’ the man at National Weather Service again replied, ‘it’s definitely going to be a very cold winter.’

The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of wood they could find.

Two weeks later, he called the National Weather Service again.
‘Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?’
‘Absolutely,’ the man replied. ‘It’s going to be one of the coldest winters ever.’

‘How can you be so sure?’ the Chief asked.
The weatherman replied, ‘The Red Indians are collecting wood like crazy.’

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This is how stock markets work!!!