Learning to appreciate trade-offs in life

I have always been asked for my views on what constitutes fate. In fact, on several occasions, my closest of friends, many of whom are highly placed in life, believe that fate is something that will anyway happen to us, no matter how we think of it, or perceive it.

I beg to differ. There is absolutely no free lunch, anywhere in life. I sincerely believe that efforts make a lot of difference, no matter the circumstances which one gets to face in life. Here is my take on what I call as fate, as it is commonly understood: it is something that happens to you inspite of all your efforts, not without them.(that is, the efforts).

Let us now come to the topic of this piece: trade-offs. What is a trade-off in life? It is simple. It just essentially means that you and I have choices in life, and we will squarely face the consequences of doing or not doing something. For example, a negative trade-off in this dog-eat-dog world, is to not become multi-skilled. This is all the more so, for any educated man or woman. So,if you would like a positive trade-off, you would have to build special skills and arm yourself with these very same skills, almost on an everyday basis.

For example, if one is an IT professional from a non-English medium background, one would have to really pick up good communication skills in both written and spoken English, not to keep up with the crowd, but for sheer survival. And then later on, when one progresses very well in his or her career,command over the English language will take him or her places.

So, the choice is essentially within each one of us. What about entrepreneurship for instance? I know of several young men, and women, in an excellent city called Coimbatore, who have it in their blood. The average Coimbatore citizen has it in him what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur. The largest number of individual entrepreneurs in the whole of South India, can possibly be found here.

How is this possible? Simple. Each Coimbatore person considers life as a risk-taking one, where success would come to him or her, only through hard work.

Look at anyone who has succeeded in life, and has made a mark for himself or herself.

They would all have had positive trade-offs. They would have taken some risks, some chances, but nothing has ever happened to them through sheer luck. In my opinion luck is a mere sugar coating on a chocolate. Nothing more, nothing else. If only we can discover that natural talent in each of us -- at least one would come to us so naturally -- we can exploit it to the maximum extent possible.

I have interacted and met with some good Carnatic musicians for example. Each of them have always trained themselves through so much of hard work. The single-minded devotion towards mastering all the nuances has always been their obsession. So, the trade-off is centered around making a success of whatever opportunities come their way, at various points of time in their lives, and making a success of the same, to the fullest extent.

The more we interact with such people, the more positive energy will flow within us. We can appreciate the trade-offs far better.

What happens if we choose not to do something, and just relax? Well, yes, we would enjoy those moments, but we should remember someone else is wide awake, looking at the very same opportunity that we have set our eyes on. The emerging opportunities would be exploited by them with the greatest vigour, and they would be rewarded for not relaxing and taking life easy, when we did exactly that.

So, trade-offs in life is what we choose to do at some point in time. The knowledge that comes to us through our postive experiences should be passed on to all others we see around us, so that they will prosper to the maximum extent possible. I firmly believe the world will be a better place to live in, if we could do just that.

After all, since our lives are so short, we should try to do the maximum, with all the opportunities that come our way, at any point in time.

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