A Lesson in Heart

My Dear Rishi,

We could speak for about 15 minutes yesterday as you had to eat your breakfast. Important thing is  I was able to talk to you at least for 15 minutes without any interruption :)  I look forward to our conversations..I am amazed by the way you learned to spell ..I am proud of you...Next week I will teach you how to spell different countries capitals.  

I received an email from a friend of mine and he sent me following story about this little girl. It is called , " A Lesson in Heart". 

A Lesson in Heart

My little 10-year-old daughter, Sarah was born with a muscle missing in her foot and wears a brace all the time. She came home one beautiful spring day to tell me she had competed in “field day” – that’s where they have lots of races and other competitive events.

Because of her leg support, my mind raced as I tried to think of encouragement for my Sarah, things I could say to her about not letting this get her down – but before I could say anything, she said, “Daddy, I won two of the races!” I couldn’t believe it! And then Sarah said, “I had an advantage.” I knew it. I thought she must have been given a head start…some kind of physical advantage. But again, before I could say anything, she said, “Daddy, I didn’t get a head start…my advantage was I had to try harder!”

Rishi, sometimes in life we are not given all the resources or luck or gifts in life, instead of playing the role of victim, we should raise above and give it our best shot by trying little harder just like Sarah did in above story.  Never, Never Give Up!... We all have set backs in life what is important is what did you learn, what are you going to become after you have dealt with a set back or failure. A bend in road is not an end of the road Rishi.   Some people under pressure grow crutches and some grow wings, choice is yours love. You can choose to fly and I hope, pray you will.

I love you very much and miss you.

With lots of love, hugs, kisses and best wishes,

Daddy

Monkey Trap

My Dear Rishi,

It was nice to talk to you on the weekend. This weekend I got to spend time with Vishnu and Aakash, I felt at times as though you were with Honey and me. Honey and Aakash were playing just the way you used to play with Honey when you were a baby, it brought back so many wonderful memories. ....

Today's story is about Monkey Trap.

Monkey Trap

A master took his two students into a forest. There he took a hollow coconut with a small hole and inserted sweet rice. Then he tied it to a tree and waited with his student nearby.

Soon, a monkey came along, sniffed the rice, inserted his paw, and screeched in frustration when he was unable to withdraw his paw (now a fist clenching the rice) through the narrow opening.

'Let go of the rice, silly! Run!' screamed the students, amazed by its obvious stupidity... but to no avail.

'What was the trap that caught the monkey?' asked the master.

'Rice,' said one student.
'The coconut,' said another.

'No,' replied the wise master, 'The trap was greed - he only had to let go of his attachment to be free. Likewise, we are the ones who trap ourselves. We are always responsible. The real trap is always within, not out there. The causes of suffering are in us. External situations are only conditions.'

With that, he hacked the coconut open... and the unrepentant monkey ran away with a fistful of rice.


Unlike the monkey, god has given us the faculties of introspection. When ever you feel miserable or unhappy or angry,  you need to ask yourself what are you holding on to? What are you not willing to let go? Seek the answers within. Ask your heart. Once you seek these answers internally, my suggestion for you is let go and be free. I have learned this quite late and finally implemented in my life, love. It is initially very very difficult love, but once you let go you will just be and free. All your pain, sorrow, suffering will seize and you will soar like an eagle.....be free. There is a reason why we humans are called HUMAN BEINGS and not HUMAN DOING or HUMAN something else...So let's learn to LET GO and JUST BE FREE from all the drama and melodrama..BE HAPPY..The purpose of life is to BE HAPPY

Few years back I came across an interesting poem Rishi and I want to share it with you.

LETTING GO-FEAR LESS, LOVE MORE

Author Unknown

To "let go" does not mean to stop caring.

It means I can't do it for someone else.

To "let go" is not cut myself off

It's the realization I can't control another.

To "let go" is to not enable

But to allow learning from natural consequences.

To  "let go" is to admit powerlessness

Which means the outcome is not in my hands

To "let go" is not to try to change or blame another.

It is to make the " is not to "care for".

But "care about"

To "let go" is not to "fix"

But to be supportive.

To "let go" is not to judge

But to allow another human being "to be".

To "let go" is to not be in the middle arranging all the outcomes

But to allow others to affect their destinies

To "let go" is not to be protective

It is to permit another to face reality.

To "let go" is not to deny

But to accept.

To "let go" is not nag, scold or argue

But instead to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.

To "let go" is not to adjust everything to my desires

But to take each day as it comes and cherish myself in it.

To "let go" is not to criticize and regulate anybody

But to try to become what I dream I can be

To "let go" is to not to regret the past

But to grow and live for the future

To "let go" is to

FEAR LESS and LOVE MORE

Rishi I love you and miss you very much.

With lots of love, hugs and kisses,

Daddy

Keep your Dreams

My  Dear Rishi,

I was looking forward to talking to you but we could not talk as you were going to temple. Hope we can talk tomorrow.  Love you Rishi...

Rishi we all have dreams. Dreams are precious they give us the blue print for future. Even before you were born, even before I met your mother I always dreamed of you. When I moved here I used to always hope one day I will take my child to a baseball game, carry him around on my shoulders to watch the sunrise and sun set by the lake and so on and so forth. Once you were born I was so excited realizing I was one step closer to making my dream come true. It will be five years since your mother and you moved to Singapore and me I am still holding on to my  dream of almost two decades.  I was sharing this recurring dream with a friend  of mine last week. Today, I received an email from him sharing the following story.  He was particular that I also share this story with you.

Keep Your Dreams

 

I have a friend named Monty Roberts who owns a horse ranch in San Ysidro. He has let me use his house to put on fund-raising events to raise money for youth at risk programs.

The last time I was there he introduced me by saying, “I want to tell you why I let Jack use my horse. It all goes back to a story about a young man who was the son of an itinerant horse trainer who would go from stable to stable, race track to race track, farm to farm and ranch to ranch, training horses. As a result, the boy’s high school career was continually interrupted. When he was a senior, he was asked to write a paper about what he wanted to be and do when he grew up.
“That night he wrote a seven-page paper describing his goal of someday owning a horse ranch. He wrote about his dream in great detail and he even drew a diagram of a 200-acre ranch, showing the location of all the buildings, the stables and the track. Then he drew a detailed floor plan for a 4,000-square-foot house that would sit on a 200-acre dream ranch.

“He put a great deal of his heart into the project and the next day he handed it in to his teacher. Two days later he received his paper back. On the front page was a large red F with a note that read, `See me after class.’

“The boy with the dream went to see the teacher after class and asked, `Why did I receive an F?’
“The teacher said, `This is an unrealistic dream for a young boy like you. You have no money. You come from an itinerant family. You have no resources. Owning a horse ranch requires a lot of money. You have to buy the land. You have to pay for the original breeding stock and later you’ll have to pay large stud fees. There’s no way you could ever do it.’ Then the teacher added, `If you will rewrite this paper with a more realistic goal, I will reconsider your grade.’

“The boy went home and thought about it long and hard. He asked his father what he should do. His father said, `Look, son, you have to make up your own mind on this. However, I think it is a very important decision for you.’ “Finally, after sitting with it for a week, the boy turned in the same paper, making no changes at all.

He stated, “You can keep the F and I’ll keep my dream.”

Monty then turned to the assembled group and said, “I tell you this story because you are sitting in my 4,000-square-foot house in the middle of my 200-acre horse ranch. I still have that school paper framed over the fireplace.” He added, “The best part of the story is that two summers ago that same schoolteacher brought 30 kids to camp out on my ranch for a week.” When the teacher was leaving, he said, “Look, Monty, I can tell you this now. When I was your teacher, I was something of a dream stealer. During those years I stole a lot of kids’ dreams. Fortunately you had enough gumption not to give up on yours.”

“Don’t let anyone steal your dreams. Follow your heart, no matter what.”

Rishi, I hope you dream big and make your dreams come true, love.  I LOVE YOU......

Rishi, hope we are together some day live in Toronto so that daddy can take you to all the great places which I love to hang out, starting from back yard.

With lots of love, hugs and kisses,

Daddy

P.S.: I love you

The Prayer

My Dear Rishi,

I really look forward to speaking to you every weekend..This week we did talk but not for very long but the important thing is I got to hear your voice.  I am grateful for whatever time I get with you. How do I say this, I am learning to accept and adapt to the reality. Recognizing nothing in life is a permanent condition. This separation shall too pass....
I love you very much Rishi, that is the only constant in my life...
This week's story is called The Prayer.

The Prayer

By Paulo Coelho.

Late one evening a poor farmer on his way back from the market found himself without his prayer book. The wheel of his cart had come off right in the middle of the woods and it distressed him that this day should pass without his having said his prayers. So this is the prayer he made: “I have done something very foolish, Lord. I came away from home this morning without my prayer book and my memory is such that I cannot recite a single prayer without it. So this is what I am going to do: I shall recite the alphabet five times very slowly and you, to whom all prayers are known, can put the letters together to form the prayers I can’t remember,” And the Lord said to his angels, “Of all the prayers I have heard today, this one was undoubtedly the best because it came from a heart that was simple and sincere.”

 Rishi, you are always in my thoughts, prayers love. There has not been a second, minute, hour, day, weeks, months and years without thinking about you. I love you very much and miss you sweet heart..Here is my prayer for you sweet heart....

A Father's Hope, Prayer and Wish for his child

May you always be a BETTER person and not a BITTER person

May you always be the LIGHT wherever there is DARKNESS

May you always be LOVE wherever there is HATER ED

May you always be KIND wherever there is CRUELTY

May you always bring JOY wherever there is SADNESS
May you always bring PEACE wherever there is CONFLICT

May you always be HAPPY and realize that HAPPINESS is within you and the purpose of life is to be HAPPY!

Rishi, where ever you are, where ever you go I am always in your heart and you are always in my heart.   I love you and miss you very much.

With lots of love, hugs and kisses,

Daddy

Response vs. Reaction

Dear Rishi,

I really enjoyed talking to you on the weekend..You were playing when I called, your voice, your excitement with life just made up for all the week's exhaustion  Your mom is so lucky to have you..she has you to come to..God bless her.

This weekend I am not going to share any story with you but share a personal reflection. The past week I was contemplating on Response versus Reaction.  What is the difference between Response vs. Reaction? Why do we choose to react when we could respond? Why reaction is so quick to surface than response?

Response in very basic terms is something positive. Now why do I say response is positive?  Let's further explore my definition of response. Now let's imagine a doctor is treating a sick patient and giving her or him medicine and the patient is improving. The first thing the doctor would say is the patient is responding well. This is where my perspective on definition of response comes from...i.e "A response is something positive".  Similarly if the patent's condition is getting worse, the doctor will say the patient is reacting to the medicine, we need to stop or change the medicine.  Hence, "A reaction is something negative"

These two simple definitions helped me to clarify the difference between response and reaction. Now from this vantage point, when I look at response and reaction what I found that both respond or reaction are triggered due to a situation. When you respond to a situation, you respond from within a positive space .  You reflect and than choose usually from the highest place of your wisdom within you. However, when you react, we choose to react most of the times because we feel we need to act immediately because some person or thing offended you or hurt your ego. When you react to a situation you are reacting from a place of fear or ego, a negative emotion. The result of reaction will invariably will lead from bad to worse situation.

The longer I live Rishi, I am learning response is positive, reaction is negative. Remember two wrongs do not make things right. Let your behaviour not be fanned by forces from outside, but be born out of  from within you, your heart, seat of your highest place of wisdom and goodness within you. How other people behave is none of your business, you have no control over that. You have control over on whether you respond or react.  In your choices, let your  highest wisdom shine, that is my prayer and hope for you love.

I love you and miss you Rishi..

With lots of love, hugs and kisses,

Daddy