Life's Not Fair..!!

When ported to this world, did we know the difference between being born in a hospital with 5 star facilities and being born at a government hospital, with no doctor, and maybe 50 miles from your home. But now that we know, do we ever spend time celebrating the event, a luxurious birth or cry over a rather modest one? I doubt! ..

Who said Life was/is fair, or it will ever be? 

My belief is, no matter what the problem is, there are always ways to deal with it!

Many of my friends and acquaintances are software professionals. Every single time we talk, they would ask this: why have I been working for the same company for 4 long years?(that's not the trend right? :-) ). I had and have always countered them, politely of course, saying, ‘Why don’t you suggest me one where employees are fully satisfied, have no complaints about system being partial and unfair.  Next reaction: “Oh yeah, you work with SAP, a great company, why would you even consider switching. It's a product company, nobody is on bench, great work culture, flexible work timings, you don't have an inhumane manager”. I almost always smile at this and think "My dear friends, nothing in the world is perfect. It’s all about perception. And we need to crush that. That's point no. 1. Accept your situation, accept that life is biased/partial. Accept that the circumstances for you and I are not same and they will never be. And that we don't have the same start and finish lines." 

Not that I am saying, SAP is not great, it is, but there are always pros and cons, and you need to prioritize & choose among options, with things you really need and things, you may ignore/put on halt, those you can manage to live without. So, that brings me down to point no. 2: Prioritize & Choose. For me it's important to have something that drags me away from any comfort zone, much before it gets built, have my time for experimentation/exploration, challenge me, with enormous opportunities to connect/collaborate with and have smart people around etc.

Instead of weeping over your luck conspiring against you, look the difficulty straight into its eyes and give it a hard time. This takes me back to college days. It was the advent of 5^th semester exams, I felt unwell. Well, who doesn’t ;-)? I thought it’s just viral and managed to get done with 2 exams. A day before the 3rd one, I felt really weak, so decided to see a doctor. Typhoid was diagnosed. He prescribed some medication and asked me to take rest and not study hard enough (since I did sound like a broken record with "it’s exam, it's exam, it's exam the next day). It started taking a toll on me that night, at around 10:00 pm, high fever, fluctuating between 105-106 degrees. That was it, it numbed me. My friends called up the doc. He suggested further medication. I took those pills (my friends managed to get them from somewhere at 2:00 am), but temperature didn’t come down, only added to weakness and caused drowsiness. Friends called the doc again. Poor guy, got frustrated and said "forget exams, if life continues, she would be able to face lots of them". That was deafening, not appearing for more than 50% exams meaning, repeating an entire semester, and in engineering terms, an entire year.  That’s unfair, while everyone else was studying hard to score more or pass, and I was stuck with “If I would be able to make it.” Next morning, I was unable to stand on my own till 7:45 am(all thanks to my doc, who gave tranquilizers to pacify me, without letting us know), 8:30 was exam, at a place 15 mins away.  That was the tripping point. I decided to go for it, what did I have to lose further. I managed to scribble something on the answer sheet, god only knew what and almost fainted as soon as the bell rang. Not to say, I topped that semester. So here comes the next point. “It's hard to fight when the fight ain't fair and easy/tempting to give up. Choose to Fight. Fight Back through the darkness because there is always light at the end of the tunnel.

A wise man once said(tweaked by me a little bit ;-) ), when life gives you lemons, you may either curse yourself for being unfortunate or life as it picked you or envy people who got “sweet lemons”, else you can make some lemonade, sit back, relax & enjoy it with your favorite movie. And if it gives you way too many lemons, then I would suggest you to consider a lemonade stand business and of course make some money.

Life isn’t fair, unfortunately it's a knock-out game. It does not matter whether you're up or down, feeling high or low, what matters is how you play the game of life. So embellish it and relish it but don’t give up. To ease the journey you may use this 3 point mantra: 

1. Accept your situation

2. Prioritize & Choose among your options 

3. And of course, Fight Back!

PS: This was the content of my second speech at Toastmasters club at SAP. I like to discuss philosophical topics, so it is one from that bouquet. I never could get enough words to thank all of you, my friends(you all know who you're), who made every effort possible for my ship to sail through difficult yet critical times. Thanks is too small/less a word, so I rather choose not to say that. Cheers! :-)

Feedback(about content) would be a great help!