Kanan Jaswal's Thoughts for the Days of June 2021

 01 Jun:     If we do not honour our own words, the others could even be mopping the floor with them, putting them to perhaps their best use.

02 Jun:     Firmly defend yourself against wrongful criticism because if you don't, your critics and detractors will soon be walking all over you.

03 Jun:     When you find your energy draining away, just remind yourself of your purpose in life, and experience a flow of  energy back into you.

04 Jun:     By taking an offence, instead of being grateful, on being corrected, you are demonstrating to the world that your growth as an individual has stopped.

05 Jun:     To be worthwhile, our life's purpose has to be much bigger than ourselves. To realise it, therefore, necessarliy, we have to involve many others.

06 Jun:     The greatest gift that we can give to ourselves is the gift of enthusiasm.

07 Jun:     Generalisation is useful because it saves us time but the problem arises when we start confusing it with the whole truth.

08 Jun:     Right-leaning liberals are more than a match for left-leaning ones because, not surprisingly, the former turn out to be right most of the times.

09 Jun:      In India, after a very bad fiscal 2021 due to COVID-19, this year too seems to be going the same way, yet, the stock market is booming. Can we, therefore, say either it is just a gambling den or people there are suffering from mass senility?

10 Jun:     Is it some unwritten rule in India and in the US that to be a rightist and nationalist one necesarily has to be obscurantist and anti-science?

11 Jun:     Unable to differentiate between two and one, the arithmetically challenged equate India's still-in-the-works two-child policy to the failed one-child policy of China.

12 Jun:     Enthusiasm is the cause, energy is the effect.

13 Jun:     The organisation where leaders expect and reward sycophancy and obsequiousness has no present, what to talk of a future.

14 Jun:     Before putting our best foot forward, we must make sure that we are not standing at the edge of the precipice.

15 Jun:     Exhortations work better where those making them are themselves part of the action.

16 Jun:     Life is not exactly a game of snakes and ladders because in it, even if we fall back almost to the starting point, we now have the experience of climbing ladders and, hopefully, the knowledge how to avoid snakebites. 

17 Jun:     After being helped by someone, instead of waiting to help them back, help forward whenever you can.

18 Jun:     Lying can never be a prerequisite for success in any profession, including politics. People who profess to the contrary are only advertising either their gullibility or their wickedness.

19 Jun:     For India's long-delayed rise as a strong and prosperous nation, reforms in many fields are essential, and making the top of the list are judicial reforms.

20 Jun:     Procrastination does not help us, it only saps our confidence in tackling tasks seemingly tough and unpleasant but which, in reality, are important for our growth. 

21 Jun:     Exaggerated claims of greatness can not make a nation great, for that at least one generation of its citizens has to have a common vision of greatness and then work really hard to achieve it. 

22 Jun:     Unless we have curiosity and an urge to learn, even the best teacher in the world can not teach us anythig.

23 Jun:     We continue to grow as a person as long as we keep challenging our capabilities.

24 Jun:     Declaring defeats suffered at the hands of foreign invaders as victories or at least non-defeats is not going to make us strong or even look strong.

25 Jun:     Anyone, be it an individual or a community, playing the victim card too often can never rise.

26 Jun: If you don't want to do something or are incapable of doing it, you can seek refuge in excuses, but not for long. Sure enough, you will be exposed soon.

27 Jun: Choosing between happiness and enthusiasm, always go for enthusiasm, because that would readily lead to happiness but the reverse may not be true.

28 Jun: Giving up is easy but it is habit-forming, a habit which sees to it that we won't amount to much in life.

29 Jun: Suddenly losing an otherwise healthy friend or relative to COVID reminds us of the limited time we all have on this planet.

30 Jun: When we have no option to living in an atmosphere not of our liking, we should create a space within ourselves to which we can repair for peace and comfort.