31 July 2011

In your opinion what acts can be considered courageous and why?

Every opinion a person makes is not only based on who he is but also who he sees or hears about around himself/herself. So when I talk about courage here its something which I see as an act greater in consequence and thought than the average.

My mother often talks about her grandmother and how she survived in the patriarchal social order asserting herself in her own little way and not turning bitter on anyone or anything. Having eight children and a husband who was distant and living in an extremely rigid society of India, of her time, she had quite some reasons to be bitter and be like the ladies, her companions, who responded by becoming strict and domineering. But she did not. She opened her heart to her daughter in laws (something that not many women her time thought as sensible I believe) her grandchildren and, from the image that I have of her in my mind from all the stories and the tears that well up in my grandmothers and mother’s eyes when they talk about her, to everyone! My mother realls how she used to go running towards her when she came and the incident of them running with heavy luggage trying to catch a train and how she managed to take four five small kids alone in the train in a time when reservations were unheard of and they only managed 1 seat for all of them. Till date I have never heard anything bad about her. I do not say that catching a train is courage but what she did and who she was and the way she did not let the catacomb society to close in on her that is what I feel is real courage. Courage in which she rose up from the smaller insignificant things in a time like that, courage in which she did not let the unbending society to shadow her heart and courage in which she made her own stand when a few ladies would even think of lifting their veil. There are many facets to her personality which cannot be expressed in words, as my mother says, but as I figure her courage was her goodness and mental strength and a resolve not to be tied down and not to tie other down.

Another lady whom I look up to is the CNN hero 2010 winner Anirudha Koirala. She works for one cause which I feel vey strongly about human trafficking and the exploitation of women. Its not only her helping these women and rehabilitating them but it is her strength to in the process go head on against the large mafia and a circle of crime involved in this dirty “business,” which I salute. I know I would be scared to mess around with them and doing what she does she is way beyond the mess around point but she goes and does what she believes in and what she feels for and as her general demeanour says the rest just doesn’t matter. A documentary of the women she has saved from the clutches of the worst horror which I came across left me in tears literally. My words are insufficient for her and her work. I will let this documentary say for itself:

31 July 2011

Came across this on an "ideas for journal" website :p

HOW TENACIOUS YOU ARE WHEN YOU ARE TRYING TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOAL? WHAT FACTORS INFLUENCE HOW PERSISTENT YOU ARE?

I like to classify my goals as ones which I have to achieve and there are external things associated with them, like study for a test; and ones which I feel that I have to achieve for myself, like trying to read a grammar book full before college!

I feel in the first case I usually am very tenacious, like I would stay awake till late at night studying and just study study study when I believe it’s something that when I achieve everyone will see right there. I put a lot of my heart and soul into it, people could call this shallow but I think it’s mainly because once I reach there everyone will be able to see it! So I think it is this desire to be seen as a winner, an achiever that drives me to put a lot of myself in this. But then like in 10^th class when I had to make a project on the different landforms in geography, I worked for a full half month on that I think! Making borders on each coloured page and making pencil lines on those blank pages and writing so much and then erasing those pencil lines and what not! My project came out to be brilliant and I really felt good about it! Yeah there were better projects in my class but I personally loved it! So I think it’s also if I like what I am doing or not that guides me towards my first kind of goal. I can say this really confidently because in my class 11^th when I took science I completely hated it and I think as a result I did not put my heart in it while studying! I failed miserably there and I spent many a depressing night thinking that I was a failure but the truth is that I was not a failure! I can say that now that I’ve finished school with the best marks that I’ve ever got in my whole school time! I got two 95s! WOW! I’ve never got a 95 before that! And yes I think this has more to do with the fact that I made my own choice when I decided to take up humanities. So, as I write this I feel I can also say that what guides me to a goal the first kind as we are talking about here is that if I have decide to do that or has someone else decided it for me. Yes this could classify me as stubborn and yes this also puts me at a risk of doing some stupid things but then I can say that hey this mistake is mine and I don’t have anyone else to blame for it. So yeah to sum up the first kind of goal the three reasons why I move towards it is because it will be seen, I like it and whether it’s my own choice of path or not.

Now, the second kind of goal is a little bit more complicated to talk about. These are the things that I set for myself to achieve like finishing a book or exercising and eating just healthy food in order to lose belly fat et cetera. And I feel that these are the goals where I find myself drifting. A lot. Like I bought this grammar book from the bookshop a few weeks ago thinking that hey now is the time to brush up my grammar since school’s over and there is a bit of time before college i should use this extra time! But till date I've hardly done 30 pages of that book! It disgusts me that I can always come up with an excuse to not do something which I know will be really good for me, like telling myself that hey this is the vacation time and I am never going to get any more of this anytime soon so I should enjoy this! I don’t even want to talk about the very expensive French course that I bought and did regularly for 3 days and just stopped! I think I still need to strengthen myself forcing skills in these yet. I think it is because these are the goals that I set for myself in a bit of free time and the main task before I can do these is getting up!