Lessons from LIFE

Sometimes I wonder that if it had not be those people who came in my life, would I have been the same person as I am, the most of the times I reached to the conclusion that it might not have been the same “me” as I am today.
One Sunday morning back in 2000-2001 during preparation for 10th exams, in one of my tuitions, my teacher told all of us sitting there, that “Observation is the biggest teacher of all and the best way to learn anything is to observe it as close as possible.”
Since then, I have been following this statement of his and observing things around that I like to incorporate within me.
I observed my fathers’ punctuality and the value he gave to time and money; I liked it and am incorporating it in me. I saw my mothers’ hardwork behind my education and I thought as a tribute to her efforts, I should work hard and make her proud. So, punctuality, hardwork and respect to money without giving it undue importance is what I got from my parents. Then the love, care and affection that my grand parents bestowed upon me, made me realize the importance of these qualities, hence I follow them with people when required.
Apart from that my uncle, my cousin, and my friends, taught me how to live life freely despite faced by tensions and disappointment. The spirit of positive competition is the thing that me and my other 2 friends from school learned while studying together during 8th, 9th and 10th standards. And this is one thing which I actually incorporated during my tenure as CSI Vice chairman in DJSCOE while positively competing with IEEE committee and with equal support from them as well, we were able change the image of CSI V/S IEEE to CSI with IEEE to certain extent (am sure Grandmother of DJIT will support me on this as I clearly recollect having this discussion with her during one of our AMAR Lunches).
But one thing I missed out on was during years before my engineering was the kind of charisma or dynamic all round development that certain people have in them. But life at its most unexpected turn got me into engineering and here I learned how to be dynamic in nature and to take initiative in all walks of life (obviously by observing people around), be it a small thing or big, you got to be decisive and analytical to take the right decision at the right times. The one thing that I have found in most of us is the fear of taking risks and the fear of being ridiculed by others while giving out an idea or making any decision. I read this statement in one of college posters of IEEE 2005 (during my tenure as CSI Vice-chairman) and it said “The thing required to have the best idea is to have lots of ideas”, I completely second this statement, as it says that brainstorming is the best way to think what to do on any occasion, as unless and until, you don’t have option, you wont have any solution. So, most people in the fear of getting ridiculed by others for their weirdest ideas shut their mouth and don’t even think about the problem.
One more thing I learned in these past 3 years was Teamwork and respect for everyone’s efforts in the team, I heard this statement just yesterday from my friends at TCS “How can you get individual attention in a team/group?” and that is exactly what one needs to understand while working in a team. Here again people fail to realize this.
Apart from all this I have learned a lot from failures that I have faced personally and academically, and those failures have given me philosophical kind of thinking towards problems and I learned to take the positive outcome of those failures, and believe me that is the best thing one needs to succeed after failing.
No doubt I have learned many of qualities from what I have observed around, but the basic sense of adjusting myself to the situation and applying brains then, is what I have cultivated with in me as I believe that there cannot be the same solution to the same problem in different situations, you have to be situationally analyze the problem as per the circumstances at that instant of time and then solve the problem.
Ya people may say that there are few qualities which is original from within you, the only thing I argue would be that humans are bound to be developed and improve themselves to achieve highest level of perfection in them, and in that process if I am incorporating certain qualities from certain people then it should not be wrong, on this occasion, I got to write one more statement “If you copy from one source then it is Plagiarism but if you copy from many then it is research and development” (courtesy of this statement is the status message of one of my friends on gtalk).
What we behave and the way we react to situations, in some way or the other, is always influenced by our surroundings, by people around, and by the kind of environment we have grown and that is the basic reason for arguments/discussions/disagreements etc. So, observing qualities if combined with incorporation in the way you originally feel is what I follow.