respect

Teenagers are your parent’s revenge

3 Comments / See with your Heart / By / July 13, 2020

Teenagers are your parent’s revenge on you. This is what they wished on you for what you did to them when you were a teenager. So, bear your own teenagers with a smile. Teenage is an affliction, like dotage. It can be borne with grace or without. But it must be borne.

Let me tell you, the joy of really having a friend you can depend on, who understands you, looks up to you and will carry forward your legacy, is something that can’t describe. Do it right and the day will come when you will hear what your teenager said about you to someone and quoted you as an example to be emulated. Then you will know that you did your job well and have left a legacy which will do you proud. That is what makes all the effort worthwhile. Do you agree?

Of Butler English etc.

3 Comments / In a Teacup / By / June 25, 2020

Life was simpler in those days. We had less technology and more time. People were more open, warm, and less complicated. People looked at commonalities and bonded on that basis. If I think about how many differences there were between me and some of my dearest friends, I can tell you that we differed on many things. But what we had in common was enough to keep our hearts together for now over forty years. That is the real meaning of respect. Not to demand that everyone becomes vanilla flavor; one ‘official, approved version’. Real respect is to respect difference and the right of everyone to live that difference without demanding that they change or even explain why they are the way they are. Real respect for each other is to accept our differences like the giraffe accepts the elephant’s trunk while the elephant accepts the giraffe’s long neck. That’s it for now. Vanakkam!

The Great Slide

5 Comments / Where are the leaders / By / June 9, 2019

The 80’s sound like ancient history today in 2019 going on the magic number 2020. What do we have today? Hatred. We hate each other and that sells, that gets you elected, that gets you followers, it is chic, it is fashionable, and it works. That is the only thing that counts. So, our world has shrunk. We meet people like ourselves, who talk like we do, eat what we eat, like what we like and dislike what we dislike. We hate the same people and in each other’s rhetoric, we find solace. We live in our echo chamber and that has become our world. There are those among us who were born in this echo chamber. They don’t know anything else. But there are those who were born and lived in a world that was very different from this one. A world where there were no echo chambers, like there were no mobile phones, laptops, social media and even television. A world that was real. Today in our echo chamber, we sometimes ask ourselves this question, “What happened to that world?” Then we correct ourselves and ask, “What did we do to it?”

Committing matrimony

5 Comments / See with your Heart / By / April 15, 2019

Truth, Caring, Mutual respect are what I call my three Cardinal Principles of happy marriages. Please notice that I am not using the word ‘love’. Love comes out of these three things. What is called love is usually physical desire. The shape or size of someone’s body is not the inspiration for love; it can be the inspiration for infatuation and lust but not love. For love to happen, the lasting kind that is, the kind that grows with age and the longer you spend time together, you need truthfulness, caring and concern for one another – putting the needs of the other before your own; and mutual respect. Without respect there can’t be any love.

Guyana, cross cultural boot camp

5 Comments / See with your Heart / By / April 18, 2019

“So, Comrade Baig, you have been living here for two years. What are your impressions about our country?” The interviewer was from Guyana Chronicle, the main English newspaper. I was being interviewed because I was there. Comrade was a gender-neutral term used to address anyone because Guyana was a socialist (communist) country ruled by an …

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Respect earns respect

Leave a Comment / In a Teacup / By / July 7, 2020

There are ocean people and others who are mountain people; and yet others who are city people. I, am of the forest people. Wildlife, open spaces, mountains and forests have always been a very significant influence in my life. There is an instant connection that I find with forests. And every once in a while I rejuvenate myself by spending time in forests, listening to them, watching animals, and simply being.

Never try to change your spouse

5 Comments / 55 Life Lessons of 55 years / By / April 2, 2019

Go look in the mirror and tell yourself that the only one in the world who thinks that you are an unqualified blessing is perhaps your mother and that too, perhaps. Tell yourself that you married your spouse because you liked them, not because you found them when they lost their way to their shrink. They didn’t come to be changed. They came to be friends, to share their lives, to slog their butts off to keep you in the style to which you have become accustomed. Surely that deserves a ‘thank you’? Look at their good side. The side you married them for.