If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

A gift from Priya from Chennai.. thank you! :)

MAY BE…

Maybe. . we were supposed to meet the
wrong people before meeting the right
one so that, when we finally meet the
right person, we will know how to be
grateful for that gift.

Maybe .. . . it is true that we don’t
know what we have until we lose it,
but it is also true that we don’t know
what we have been missing until it
arrives.

Maybe . . . the brightest future will
always be based on a forgotten past;
after all, you can’t go on
successfully in life until you let go
of your past mistakes, failures and
heartaches.

Maybe . . you should hope for enough
happiness to make you sweet, enough
trials to make you strong, enough
sorrow to keep you human, and enough
hope to make you happy.

Maybe . . . the happiest of people
don’t necessarily have the best of
everything; they just make the most of
everything that comes along their way.

Maybe .. . . the best kind of friend is
the kind you can sit on a porch and
swing with, never say a word, and then
walk away feeling like it was the best
conversation you’ve ever had.

Maybe . . . happiness waits for all
those who cry, all those who hurt, all
those who have searched, and all those
who have tried, for only they can
appreciate the importance of all the
people who have touched their lives.

May be . . you should do something nice
for someone every single day, even if
it is simply to leave them alone.

Maybe . . . there are moments in life
when you miss someone — a parent, a
spouse, a friend, a child — so much
that you just want to pick them from
your dreams and hug them for real, so
that once they are around you
appreciate them more.

Maybe … giving someone all your love
is never an assurance that they will
love you back. Don’t expect love in
return; just wait for it to grow in
their heart; but, if it doesn’t, be
content that it grew in yours.

Maybe .. . . you should dream what you
want to dream; go where you want to
go, be what you want to be, because
you have only one life and one chance
to do all the things you dream of, and
want to do.

“Life is only traveled ONCE,Today’s MOMENT becomesTOMORROW’s MEMORY.
Enjoy every moment, good or bad, because the GIFT of LIFE is LIFE itself….”

Sometimes.. when things are bad..

It seems like you are the example of all the ‘bad’ things. i.e. like for those who have had a bad few years at school, teachers tend to pull you out as the bad example – the idiot, the screwball.. all of that!

that’s actually a great sign, atleast the teachers care enough to tell you you don’t work hard etc..

as we grow up, nobody does – our ego gets bigger and we tend to reject any other feedback that comes our way as we are out of practice. So, if it does come our way, lets make sure we smile, accept it and move on.. and then work hard on improving it.

Not the time to feel bad about yourself.. :)

RealAcad’s Impact on a Life

Nash(RealAcad Stanford’07), a great friend, said this story perfectly described RealAcad’s(www.realacad.org) impact on his life.. Great story.. :)

There was once a young reporter that was hired by a big national newspaper. He was very ambitious and extremely eager to build a reputation as a well-recognized journalist. In doing so, he went inquiring to each of the head journalists at his newspaper, asking how they got their first big break. Without fail each one of them said that they got their big break by going out and finding a story that no one else was able to get.

After some questioning around, the young reporter discovered that no one had ever been able to get an interview with a man that was believed to be one of the richest men in the whole county, who also happened to live nearby. So the young reporter set out for the country, turning down dirt roads and gravel paths in search for this man. After many hours, the sun was beginning to set and the young reporter finally admitted he was lost. He pulled into a long, dirt driveway and as he came up on a modest farmhouse, he happened to see an old man sitting on the porch. He approached the man and began describing his hopes to locate this farmer in hopes of landing an interview with him. The farmer told the boy to sit down and that he had indeed come to the right place.

The young reporter was so surprised; he couldn’t imagine that such a wealthy man would be living on a farm in the middle of nowhere. He proceeded to eagerly ask the man, “So how did you get to be one of the richest men in the country?” The old farmer began to explain to the young reporter that his parents had come over from the old country and spent every dime they had to purchase a very small plot of land, the very spot on which the house now sat. His parents worked hard to take care of the land and as soon as he was old enough, he too would wake up at the crack of dawn and feed the animals, run the tractor and help plan new crops.

By the time he was a young man, not much older than the young reporter, his parents had passed away. He had grown tired of working day and night on that farm and had his sights set on a more exciting life. So he sold the farm, took all of the money and headed west in search of adventure. He soon came across a town with flashing lights, shows and casinos. Consumed by the excitement, he soon found himself placing one coin after the next into slot machines, sure that he would land his fortune.

Before he knew it, he dropped the last coin in the machine and to his dismay, lost. Completely broke and utterly depressed, he quickly became sick to his stomach. He flew as fast as he could to the bathroom. As he approached to open a stall door, he realized that they were pay toilets and required ten cents to enter. Barely holding the sickness down, he began walking from person to person begging for change. People waked by without even giving him a glance, as if he were not even there. Finally a man walking by, without even looking in his direction, flipped a dime in his direction. He grabbed the dime and made a b-line for the bathroom. Just as he was about to drop the dime in the coin slot, the door came swinging open and the man walking out held it open for him.

After finishing his business, he was on his way out of the casino, dejected and upset that he had lost everything that his parents had spent their entire lives to earn, when he dropped the coin in a slot machine and kept walking. A few seconds later, he began to hear bells going off. When he turned around he saw the lights from the machine lighting up and he realized that he had won. Money began pouring out the machine and after counting it all, he realized that he had won the exact amount that he had sold his parents farm for, almost to the penny. He took that money, went back to the farm and bought back his parent’s land that he had sold. He spent day and night working that land and as soon as he had saved enough money, he bought the lot of land next to him. He kept working hard and when he saved up enough he bought more land and then hired workers to help. Until one day he had bought up all the land the eye could see in every direction and more.

With his jaw dropped, the young reporter was completely captured by the farmer’s story. When he was able to gather his thoughts, the young reporter asked, “So I bet if you ever found the man that gave you that dime, you would give him half of your fortune?” The farmer paused for a minute and then replied, “Nope. I would probably just give him his dime back. But if I could find the man that opened the door for me, now I would give that man half of my fortune.”