The Attitude of Gratitude

The first time I came across this catchy phrase, when I was learning Reiki more than a decade ago. This post can partly be considered to be a sequel on Happ-I-ness, but to consider it that way or not is left to the reader’s discretion.

The Attitude of Gratitude

Hardly anyone amongst us ever stops thinking about what we want, but we don’t have. The theists amongst us pray to God asking for those things, and all of us strive towards getting those things or positions or whatever we had wished for. Nevertheless, in this fight of never-ending wants, we forget to focus on what we have, we forget to even take a minute to enjoy the things we achieved, or simply put, we forget to count our blessings. In any language, probably the most powerful words would be “I love you”, but there is another set of words, which is probably as powerful as these, and ironically, it is also a phrase used very scarcely as “I love you” and hence there is still misery amongst us humans, and as you would have probably guessed it, the phrase is “Thank You”.

Do we really lack the quality of being Grateful?

Most of us would oppose to this fact and say, we are grateful for what we have in life. If today X get a more paying job, or a salary hike, or a new house or any profound success, X would be thankful for that. Hence X is grateful, isn’t he? However, if the same X gets laid off, someone in his family gets a disease, or if X loses a chunk of money, will X still remain thankful? In most cases X would be depressed, angry and disappointed.

Our problem is, in most cases, our gratitude is incremental, i.e. it depends incrementally on what I have today that I did not have yesterday, and not just on what I have today. If on the other hand, we can have an absolute level of gratitude, we would still be thankful for what we have. X would still be happy he has a two-bedroom flat instead of the bunglow he had yesterday, and he can still have a happy time with his family. In no way are we trying to say that X shouldn’t work hard to earn back his bunglow and just remain content with the flat, however, being grateful for what he has in had will reduce his mental stress and trauma, this will ensure he doesn’t get angry at his family due to his tensions, and more importantly, with a composed mind, he will be able to focus more clearly on how to fix the situation.

The Perception of Glass Half Empty or Half Full

The other issues about being grateful come from the perspective with which we look at things. Sometimes, it all boils down to the well known story of how we perceive the things that come at hand. Let’s consider the same story of Half-Full-Half-Empty Glass with a slight twist. Say we go to someone’s place for dinner and they serve you half glass of some new flavored drink, looking at which you may mentally think positively that they served you only half glass since you are full with the dinner, or you may smirk at the thought that how can someone serve a guest half-glass something. For the half-full guys, you are already there at the level of gratitude, however, for the half-empty people, here we fork of the story into 2 sub-situations,

Situation 1: You really liked the flavored drink and were unhappy since they served only half-glass. But then you come to know that it was the only amount of flavored drink they had, and everyone else in the house sacrificed because you were the all important person who was offered the flavored drink, would your perception change? Would you now look at that gesture of even having a half-empty glass and smirk, or would you be heartily grateful and appreciate the half-full glass.

Situation 2: You did not like the flavored drink at all, but are forced to drink the amount served to you or after drinking the half-glass you realized that the drink had caffeine and since you are sensitive to caffeine, had you drank a glassful you’d be awake the whole night. Now, would you be unhappy that it was half-full, or would silently in your heart rejoice the fact that thankfully you only got a half-glass to swallow.

Both the above situations try to move us from a negative perspective to a positive one, nevertheless, there is a subtle difference between the two, in both of them we first started with the perspective that we wanted a glass-full but we did not know whether getting the half-glass was good or bad for us. There will be incidents in all our lives when we look back at events and say, Thank God that what I wanted did not happen, else I wouldn’t have gotten so much.

This is beautifully depicted by a famous statement said by the character of “God” in the movie “Bruce Almighty”, which says, “When we say may God grant all your wishes, what we forget is that, since when do we know what we actually want?” The above idea resonates the fact; that we never know what is the best for us and hence rather than crib for what we failed to achieve, we should be happy and grateful for what we have.

The Direct and Indirect Benefits of this Approach

The direct can be considered from the fact that the attitude of gratitude makes us thank people around us for whatever good they have done for us. Everyone likes to be appreciated for their hard-work and sincerity and if someone takes time to just thank the person for his efforts it just makes the work seem tireless. In fact, I bet most of us would work full nights out for people who take that one minute to appreciate our hard labor. The same holds for our superiors and subordinates as well. Thus if we sincerely and heartily thank them for what they have done for us, irrespective of the fact that it is our group director or the security guard who stands in front of the office, a difference in their attitude towards us will be visible.

The indirect may be a little hard to prove, but if you have learnt “Reiki”, read the BestSeller book “The Secret” or plainly known any religion, all of them preach that “Whatever vibrations you send out to the Universe get echoed back to you in a long run”. By taking the time to acknowledge our blessings each day, we become a magnet for further abundance because we are placing the energy of our thoughts into further manifestations in our life, rather than in what we do not have. As Reiki puts it, this works simply because, like everything else, thoughts are energy. The level of the vibration of our thoughts determines what we experience in life, what is drawn to us and what isn’t. If we are constantly focusing on lack and attuning to its vibration, that is what we will attract more of, in your life. Conversely, if we recognize and are thankful for the abundance and blessings in our life, many more will follow.

Final Verdict:

As is depicted in good movies like Pursuit of Happyness, Shortcut to Happiness, Bruce Almighty and many more, it boils down to the line said in Kung Fu Panda, “Yesterday is History, Tomorrow is a Mystery, but Today is a Gift, and that is why it is called Present.” So if we have a gift in our hand, the least we can do is be thankful for the gift. While we open the packet and realize that we haven’t got what we wanted, it’s time we remind ourselves of another dialogue from the same movie “There are no Accidents”, and then remain thankful for what we have today.

Before ending this post, I would sincerely like to “Thank the Universe” for the wonderful family and friends it has bestowed to me in this Journey called life. A special set of thanks to all my friends who give me critiques on my blog posts and point out my mistakes since “If someone points out your mistakes, be happy that at least someone is interested in what you have done” and a special thanks to a special friend who reminded me to write on this topic. Last but definitely not the least, a sincere and heartfelt thanks to You, my dear reader for patiently and painstakingly reading my blogs.

Quoting something I read somewhere, “God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say 'Thank you'?” -William A. Ward

So as a parting statement, take some time off to count your blessings; you will be surprised to find many things which are small or so routine that they go unnoticed every day till you list them down. Remembering the 4-line prayer we used to sing in A.G. (my Primary School)

Thank You God for the World so sweet,

Thank You God for the food we eat,

Thank You God for the Birds that sing,

Thank You God for Everything.

Like in Happiness, the word Grat-I-tude also has “I” in the middle, so start counting your blessings and I know for sure that many more will follow.

Happiness - The Most Elusive Emotion

Over the last couple of months, I have been mostly blogging reviews of movies and books, and so I wanted to blog on a topic, which is more deep and different. However, the problem with this approach is it takes a lot of time to research and form an opinion to write about something. I almost felt like being in a writer’s block, even though I was writing regularly. The thought to what I would blog in the next weekend kind of persisted throughout the week. Though I have some thoughts, philosophies or musings, I never post at this blog, since I think this blog is in a different genre. And then, it struck to me, since the blog is rushinspeaks, why can’t I blog what I perceive and hence this blog-post.

The idea of this post came from the very thought, why do I want to blog every weekend, what does writing give to me (except the funny feeling to see the small virtual amount of money in Adsense, which will never cross the needed $100 to give me any real money), and the answer was “Happiness”, hence the topic.

Disclaimer: This is a type of topic I don’t generally blog about and hence the flow may not set correctly, please bear with the same.

Happiness

For those who don’t know, the above clip is taken from the Famous Movie “The Pursuit of HappYness”, which is based on the life of Chris Garnder. The emotion on the face of Will Smith is the one of the best portrayals of this complex emotion we call happiness. True and pure happiness is the feeling when you, even in a crowd and when you cannot stop yourself from celebrating and feeling the bliss around. What is beautiful in this movie is a line, which Chris in his musings thinks of, a line for which we can all relate to, “It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that?”

Is it not true? Happiness, the emotion we seek, we look for it here, we look for it there and more often than not, we find that it completely eludes us. All our activities, the dedication and efforts we put in at our work, the meaningful relationships we have with our family and friends, our nature to seek growth and glory, from the biggest of actions to the small activity like reading or writing this blog-post, all of it happens in us trying to attain this momentary state-of-mind, the feeling we call happiness. And yet, ironically, the minute we reach there, in-a-wink, the feeling disappears and we begin our adventure once again. What is more disheartening is the fact that in transiting from one destination to another goal so focused we are on reaching the next milestone that we completely forget to enjoy the journey.

There is so much of a power-struggle in life, it’s almost like driving on the Express-Highway and focusing only on the road, trying to overtake the other cars in front of us, but what we fail to see is the beauty of the nature beyond the edges of the road. What is more sarcastic is the fact that we think we are moving towards the next hill station, the next pinnacle of happiness, but what we fail to see is that the trees, the lakes, the farms, the mountains, they are all right there, just by the sides of the road, when we are driving through. “But Alas! We have no time to stand and stare”.

Let’s think for a minute about a situation when we are truly happy. Let’s assume you wanted something badly and you got it, and you are happy briefly, only till we think of getting something else. So did the actual happiness come because of getting the first thing, actually no, if we dig deeper, we became happy because we became free from “Want”. For that one minute of happiness, we were at peace with the Universe, we were so contented with getting what we desired, that we had no other wants. So, in that sense than, Happiness is a feeling, which doesn’t depend on what we want, it depends on how we can keep ourselves contented with what we have. Ideally, this is the real reason of happiness, but unfortunately, we attribute to the success of getting what we had aspired and move on.

I took my own-self to test and came up a list of things which will make me happy. When I did a reanalysis, I found things like fame, glory, understanding family and friends, good health, interesting work, decent money topping my list. Nevertheless, if I look beneath the surface of what truly made me happy, I realized, most of these things are needed only to gratify my ego. Getting the above things will also not keep me happy forever; I will demand more once I get these. The problem with all of us is that the society has groomed us to think that our achievements define us, and to be “successful” means to be “better”, but is that really true?

Honestly, if we look at what things would have made us happy, say during probably our 12th Standard and the first few years of college time-frame, we would have things like higher education from a prestigious university, good stable job, decent salary, some growth and recognition, and probably an understanding spouse among other things on our list. Looking back today, we would have achieved some, if not all, of those things, but are we really happy, or is that list of “things which make me happy” changed now with a hundred other things? Moreover, when we have demands from others, we put some expectations in people beyond our control, and hence the outcome of their action defines our happiness, while actually since happiness is our-state-of-mind, it should only depend on us.

If we look at the Research done by Psychologists, Silvan Tomkins and Paul Ekman, I came across some part of their research in the book “Blink – The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” by Malcolm Gladwell, they came to a realization that just like our emotion and state of mind determines how our facial expression will be, i.e. we smile when we are happy, and frown when we are sad, but astonishingly the exact opposite of the above is also true. If we keep smiling forcibly, we are bound to become happy and if we keep frowning forcibly, we will become sad, angry and cranky. What the above discovery reinforces is the fact that happiness comes not by actions and their outcomes, but can be generated from within.

By saying the above, I am not saying we should not put effort to achieving anything, but we shouldn’t let the outcome affect ourselves. The simplest way to put it in one line, and yet probably one of the toughest thing to implement in our life is, “Enjoy truly what you have. Strive fully for what you want, but strive with the understanding that the joy is in the striving, not just getting what you wanted. If you succeed, enjoy it again, if you don’t, still enjoy the striving.”

Final Verdict:

I am so used to writing the “Final Verdict” title in all my blog-posts that I have put the same title here as well. I wrote this post because it made me happy, I hope reading it would have made you too. I am leaving all of us (even myself, when I forget what I preach) with the above picture to remind us that “Happiness lies in our Own Hands”.

Last but not the least, a thought that suddenly struck to me, I as in the person in contention, is so very closely related to this feeling called happiness, that the way the word is spelt, in itself tells us, Happ-I-ness. The "I" is at the center of the Happiness and we cannot gain this supreme state of bliss, again spelt with "I" at its center, unless we indulge ourselves fully with this emotion.

Do drop in a comment on whether you liked the post or not. If you did, that is great, if you did not and you reached this sentence, I sure am happy you strived to reach the till the end.

Right Ya Wrong - Is it worth Watching?

I know I have been writing movie reviews a lot these days. I guess that can be blamed to my otherwise busy life in Synopsys Hyderabad, where I can’t have much time over the weekdays. The weekends, I generally watch a movie (though honestly, I am not a movie buff), and end up writing the review at the blog. Have got responses both-ways to carry on with this and to move back to the Current Topics, but with current less time at hand and movie at the Multiplex, I am writing yet-another movie review, with a promise that I will also write about the other things (when time permits ;-) ).

So here goes nothing, and in fact, on a fun note, the overall rating of this movie also matches the Overall rating of the last 2 movies I reviewed. If you do check the movie out, you can comment on whether the ratings are “Right Ya Wrong”.

Right Ya Wrong

Cast: Sunny Deol, Irrfan Khan, Isha Kopikar, Konkana Sen Sharma, Deepal Shaw, Aryan Vaid

Director: Neerraj Pathak

Overall Rating: 6.5 / 10.0 (A good thriller, slightly predictable, but a refreshing movie to watch, if there are no other plans)

The movie “Right Ya Wrong” starts with a climax scene and suddenly it moves back in a flashback. It is a story about a 2 friends Ajay Shridhar (Sunny Deol) and Vinay Patnaik (Irrfan Khan), both working as brave and valiant cops in the Goa Police Force. The movie starts of by showing them battling the bad guys together, each in his own style, while Vinay is a cool-headed cop, who analyzes the complete situation before taking any action and believes Justice is everything, Ajay on the other end is hot-headed and spontaneous, and he is also a risk-taker who also looks at the crime committed from a humane perspective and makes his own decisions.

The movie starts with Vinay and Ajay trying to catch the dreaded criminal Boris (Aryan Vaid), but then moves to a web of conspiracies, which involve Anshita (Isha Kopikar), who is Ajay’s wife and Sanjay, Ajay’s brother. The plot gets deeper with the post-interval entry of Lawyer Radhika (Konkana Sen Sharma), who also happens to be Vinay’s younger sister. Since the movie is supposed to be a thriller as per its genre, and there isn’t much that can be written without revealing the plot, I am directly moving to the “Rights and Wrongs” of the movie.

The Rights

• Sunny Deol and Irrfan Khan, both have acted very well to portray the characters they were supposed to project. Their on-screen chemistry keeps the movie go on very smoothly. All the other actors, Isha Kopikar, Deepal Shaw and Sanjay plays her part well.
• The script and the story-line keep the viewers excited and hence even though the movie becomes predictable at time, it never really gets boring. In fact, so evident is the climax, that I had a hard time finding a picture for this movie, which wouldn’t reveal the plot.
• The first half is a bit slow and drags on, but the second half sweeps on pretty well. Also since the movie is about 2 hours, it doesn’t seem to be too long at any point.

The Wrongs

• There seems to be a disconnect with the exact portrayal of Konkana Sen Sharma’s character, which doesn’t completely blend with the story-line.
• Last but definitely not the least, like a lot other movies, this movie is also inspired from a Hollywood movie called “ABOVE SUSPICION”, so much so, that if you check this movie’s plot on IMBD (contains Spoilers, so don’t check it unless you want to know the plot), you will say it is an IMDB page with a Plot-Review of Right Ya Wrong.

Final Verdict:

I almost seem to be writing paradoxes, when I say the movie is a thriller and yet predictable, but then, this is one of those movies, where you can very easily suspect what will happen next, but still look forward to how the movie portrays the same. Thus, in spite of the movie being predictable, the movie is pretty enjoyable and can be watched once.

The movie also in some parts, puts some questions about ethics and justice, which the viewer can answer to himself, based on his own value system. And like any genuine ethical question, the review of a movie depends a lot on what the person who is reviewing liked or disliked in the movie, but all in all, if you ask me, whether seeing this movie on a normal care-free day (when you don’t have anything much to do), would be a “right or wrong” choice, I’d say:

Right Choice, just go with less expectations and enjoy the flow of the movie.

Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge?

This weekend, I had a trip planned for Bangalore and so had been thinking of what I would blog about. However, the joke turned out on me, since Synopsys Bangalore took us out for a Movie, which was ironically titled “Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge?”, a question, which was asked repeatedly to me by my colleagues in the Bangalore office, though, hopefully, not with the thought of sending me away. ;-)

Nevertheless, to give justice to my Bangalore trip, and make the expensive Inox ticket feel worthwhile, here’s a review on the same movie.

Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge?

Cast: Ajay Devgan, Konkona Sen Sharma, Paresh Rawal

Director: Ashwini Dhir

Overall Rating: 6.5 / 10.0 (A good movie to watch, if there are no other plans)

The movie begins in the Metropolis of Mumbai, depicting a typical nuclear family, trying to survive the hardships of the competitive cosmopolitan life. Welcome to the home of Puneet (Ajay Devgan) and Munmun (Konkana Sen Sharma) and their kid, comprising a family, who has never ever welcomed any guests, since they never had time to keep contact with people, owing to their fast life.

Things are going smooth in some sense, till Lambodar Chacha (Paresh Rawal), a distant relative from Gorakhpur suddenly drops in uninvited at their home to pay a visit. For the first time, the family has to make small sacrifices to accommodate this guest in their home and they still try to cope up with the situation maturely. However, pretty soon they realize that Chachaji has no immediate plans of returning back and this is when things start getting topsy-turvy.

The story shows beautifully how the inclusion of a person from a small village or town can impact the lifestyle of the modern urban family. Munmun has to wake up early in the morning to make breakfast for chachaji, thus adjusting her routine, which can impact her productivity at her job. Puneet, called Pappu lovingly by Chachaji, also falls prey to the illiterate Chachaji’s rural gambits. To make matters worse, Chachaji with his loving and inviting nature also brings home, friends and neighbors, who tag along with him, adding to the woes of Puneet’s family.

“Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge” mirrors a reality of the new generation, where the family being victimized by the perils of the guest feels that their privacy and happiness is threatened. The ways in which the family reacts to the guest and tries to send-him-off is what makes the movie funny. On a comic sense, Chachaji also has some gastric problems, which adds an element of laughter. And yet, the movie shows the upsides of this rustic guest, who lovingly installs good “sanskaar” in the kid of the family, teaching him to be ethical and more responsible.

Final Verdict:

The movie is a synthesis of satire in the new-age urban life and strong virtues of traditional Indian family system. The movie though is about 2 hours long, seemed to comprise of various parts, and atleast some of these chapters, weren’t really needed and were probably added to drag the movie along. Paresh Rawal acts his beautifully and Ajay Devgan and Konkana also do well for their respective roles, and yet the movie isn’t a real pleasure.

Nevertheless, the movie does have some parts which bring giggles, and also tries to convey a good message. But this makes the movie a combination of “Hera Pheri” and “Baghban”, which though is nice and watchable, cannot have the humor, seriousness or the charisma of either of the movies.

Last but not the least, it is watchable for all the people who want to relax and laugh with a packet of popcorn in their hands after a hectic week of hard work, and carry home a good message as well. Reminding the viewers of the traditional movies of 1980s timeframe, the “Atithi” will probably settle in the guest-room of your heart.