We all came to this world, gifted with innocence. Life was so joyful being a child. We smiled more than 400 times a day. We reveled in the simple pleasures of life, be it indulging ourselves completely in a cone ice cream, dripping down in our fingers, or insouciant trails with nature, where we counted the number of stars in the sky and followed the moon running behind us. What on earth went wrong while we were growing up? While we began to acquire intelligence, we parted ways with innocence. Life has never been so joyful since then. We gradually added baggage to our identity, identifying ourselves with all those we began to look upon. All those which mattered to our life started sketching an image of ourselves with its inevitable, robbing us of the ineffable pleasure while living in the unmistakable lightness of our being. Is this intelligence so precious to merit a trade off with our innocence? Such ruminations often arise whenever I see kids playing around happily in the SIC campus, while I am strutting anxiously across the stairs for my next lecture with my mind filled with thoughts for the upcoming quiz. My mind, however finds its original voice. The truth emerges amidst the clutter. We were born with silence and as we grew up, we lost the silence and were filled with words. We lived in our hearts and as time passed, we moved into our heads. As management students, we can learn so much from our children. The foremost being the simple art of forgetting things. While we were children, we fought with our friends. Such enmity and bitterness was so fugacious, vanishing in thin air whenever we move on to next thing. Once we had expressed it, we were exhausted. We never used to carry residues of anything and we were able to smile so blissfully the next moment. Why did we forget this beautiful skill?
Taare Zameen Par
Life after recession: The beginning of a new world order
With recession fizzling out after its catastrophic spell on the world economy following the collapse of Wall Street, experts across the globe are introspecting over the scarred remains of the global financial system. Barring a few prescient financial sages, majority of the lesser mortals have realized the futility of their beliefs only after enduring through the most painful part of the financial karmic cycle, the bust.
Recession, in a broader sense, is similar to the pralaya metaphor of the Hindu mythology. Pralaya signifies dissolution and cosmic flood, with its ambit expanding far beyond Joseph Schumpeter’s creative destruction. Creative destruction refers to a revolutionary idea destroying an old idea, changing the rules of the game, whereas Pralaya decimates the playing field and we are let with no option but to start the game afresh. Every Yuga (unit of cosmological time, equivalent to 1000 years) comes to an end with a pralaya signifying the end of the most cherished philosophies of the times. Just like the early nineties busted the bubble of communism with its utopian ideas of equality, 2008 has laid bare the flaws of capitalism.
I would be living in utopia if I were to assume that recession would never occur in the “new world”, with the vast expanse of information that is being disseminated across the world through summits, documentaries, et al. We will do mistakes again, although not in the immediate future. I earnestly hope that we don’t make the same mistakes again (although history has several contrary evidences to offer). New bubbles will be created, burst and there are chances that we might have to be awakened again with another pralaya.
My spiritual guru’s words, “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” resonates well for markets and individuals alike. Rather than hoping against hope that such cataclysmic events will never occur, it will be wise to look at how we are going to respond towards them. I am optimistic enough to believe that with proper sadhana (read as prudent financial actions) and commonsense wisdom, financial nirvana isn’t difficult to achieve.
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