the END

- Ritvvij Parrikh
Mumbai, India

To,
Who ever is reading this…

The ideas and concepts that I m trying to put forth in this article are still in a developmental stage… They are not yet complete… They are too abstruse for me to conceive completely... So if tomorrow in a few days, if you find this article changed…. Don’t tell me!! 1 more thing… this is THE MOST complex topic I have ever written on. I would appreciate if I could get your criticisms and ideas and doubts in the comments column below. It will help me complete THE END!!

Thank you…
- Ritvvij Parrikh

This article is dedicated to my dear friend – Prince of Persia. His words - “I have achieved what I wanted. I don’t know what should I do further”. Replying to his query, I promised him an article in which I would try solving his problem. Here it goes…..

And why am I naming the article – the END… because after defining this END, I want you to begin… being your efforts towards success.

No one better states the Princes problem better than Michel Schumacher himself. Michael Schumacher at the Shanghai Grand Prix spoke the following words– “I have nothing to lose, nothing left to win, nothing more to prove.”

This article is dedicated to all those who face this question and all those others who haven’t yet known or found their goal.

I find it fascinating that most people plan their vacations with better care than they plan their lives. Your success rate increases astronomically when you set goals properly. It is very important to write down your goals!

Lets start off with the few… ready-to-use solutions given in most self-help books that you could have read.

Contrary to what many popular books, movies, and seminars tell you, you won't discover your life's meaning by looking within yourself. This is because goal of life is materialistic. I have read many self-help books before writing this… They usually offer the same predictable steps to finding your life's purpose: Consider your dreams. Clarify your values. Set some goals. Figure out what you are good at. Aim high. Go for it! Be disciplined. Believe you can achieve your goals. Involve others. Never give up.

Crap! That’s how I will define their ideas to be. The END is materialistic. The only way, you can find it is by looking outside and looking behind.

1. Why define an END for yourself?

A human alone, amongst all living beings has the choice of action. Other living creatures are denied the freedom to act apart from their inherent nature. Animals, plants, birds,… live through a choice less pattern of life. Following its determined course, an animal neither evolves nor devolves. But a human enjoys a freedom of action.

God has not left us in the dark to wonder and guess.

Exercising the choice of action you must first select a field of activity conducive to yourself. From early childhood, you display a distinct interest. These activities are consistent with your inherent nature. And again there are activities that are alien to you – your nature.

The first type of activity helps you progress and evolve in life whereas the other one is detrimental causing you to regress, devolve. People commit fundamental mistake of choosing an alien field of activity because they have inherited it or its just convenient for them to do so. This is a very basic mistake that most of us commit. Attraction or repulsion must not pressurize you to take the decision.

Don’t let your mind take the decision. Let the intellect take decisions as it is the faculty of decision. This is a grave error in letting your emotional feelings take over your life. Like and dislikes manifesting without discretion could turn out to be your worst enemy. If you feed them indiscriminately you court your own destruction.

There are so many people who live their lives following goals set by others. And still they may be successful. I call them the Moons. And again, there are those who succeed following their own goals. They are the Suns. Both the Moon and the Sun are graceful in their own ways.

The Moon gives out light from borrowed light. On the other hand, the Sun burn’s itself to give out light and heat. It is always there. Thus, don’t be like the Moon – having borrowed light. Be like the Sun – having one’s own light.

Few things that I conclude is to start off with….

Finding a goal in your life is very important, else your human life will be wasted. Even an animal gets up, sleeps, eats, marries, has sex, has kids… But only a human can leave a mark behind in this world by his activity. And that activity is directly dependent on his goal… his end.

Secondly, one must always select a field of inquiry that will help him evolve nad not devolve.

2. The 3 sides of the same coin approach

[My basic philosophy in life is called as – 3 sides of the same coin… which is best explained in articles – why 3 sides? and “The Book about everything in this world!.” Both of these articles are open to reading at in this same community as topic 1 and 2 respectively]

Finding your END - your goal is a BIG problem. For every young heart, knowing his role and destiny in life is a problem that almost every one faces.

What is my purpose in life? What am I destined to do? Will I every make it big?

These are questions that I will try to answer but again in a different way.

A few years back, lazing in my summer vacation with nothing to do, I switched on the TV – Star Movies to be precise. Mission Impossible was on. Which part I don’t exactly remember but it was about some deadly virus and some villain who blackmails….

The movie starts of with a Greek saying. I remember it distinctly! It meant the greatest hero is thou who kills the greatest villain.

And it is this line that triggered my thought process.
It’s quite true!

And so the hero is dependent on the villain to be the hero. And if there were no villain then our heroes too will cease to exist. All the capability would be of no use if there were no practical and ultimate challenge to fulfill. Arjun wouldn’t have been ARJUN if it were not for the Mahabharata. Gandhi wouldn’t have been THE MAHATMA if it hadn’t been for the British Raj. And Bill Gates wouldn’t have been the richest man if it hadn’t been the difficultly in using computers and his novel concept of windows.

So back again to the concept that I spoke about in my basics – The NEGATIVEs and POSITIVEs of LIFE.

For every growth the opposite is needed because the opposite creates tension and without the opposite, things relax into deaths. This is one of the most fundamental things in life.

Thus, find a great negative and be the positive to fill in that gap.

I call this the – Fill-the-NEGATIVE theory.

The idea is that your GOAL should be abstract and completely unachievable… a spiritual goal that you must follow materialistically. Let me explain… when Bill Gates started off would he have thought that buddy I want to be the richest man on this planet… I doubt! This thought process instead would have been – “Computers today have a great negative – user interface. I, Bill Gates will kill that negative.“ He had an abstract and virtually endless goal, which he has followed tirelessly and materialistically.

Make a goal that is abstract and infinite with a social cause to it… and follow it tirelessly and materialistically.

But again here… don’t make random and TOO abstract goals in life too. Hehe… I indirectly try interrogating a lot of people, testing my theories. I asked this friend of mine… buddy what is your goal in life? He replied back – I want to be successful.

What rubbish!!!

That’s too abstract for even God to achieve. Define something… abstract and infinite but NOT that abstract too… target a negative in this world.

3. The root of failure: Desire VS Need!

Before you decide your goal, I want you to keep your eyes open for a potential tar pit. The tar pit is one of that of desires and needs.

We all have desires and needs. And there is a very thin line that differentiates them into two.

I was thinking… I have always earnestly felt… I can do anything! No goal is too far away from my reach. But then again… I screwed up CAT and GATE!!!!! Why?

Coming back to me… I had a try at GATE… then followed by CAT. People have asked me, why don’t you focus down? Don’t you know what you want to do – technical or management? And I have always shied away from the answer. Well my answer is… I know where I want to reach and by when. About the route to reaching there... I can have my pick… GATE, CAT, GMAT, GRE, Amdocs… each one of these routes takes me to my final destination. So its hardly that big a problem.

Thus CAT wasn’t exactly a need… It was just a desire! See, the thin line of difference.

Everyone has needs. Everyone has desires. How should one go about getting them?

If you deny your needs, trust me there is surely something wrong with you. How can a person deny himself his needs… Needs are as basic as air, water and food. They are inherent to your existence.

And again if you die-heartedly follow your desires, you’ll surely kill yourself. Desires are those needs which you follow but without your heart. You are after it but again you are not. Desires generate pseudo-tension that again fills your mind with Chaos. In trying to achieve desires… we tell our minds that I will everyday do this for two hours. I will pay more attention to this and that. These actions are coming from the mind, out of duty and not from the heart. We lock ourselves in these self-imposed duties; and try to follow them tirelessly. The result of this tireless monotonous work without heart is nothing but suffering and sorrow. Clinging on to your desires will make your life mundane. A time will come when you will become pale from the thought of work. You will start looking forward to inaction in the form of vacations, breaks and weekends. This is not the way things are supposed to be.

So for all of you who want to achieve something… make it a NEED and not a DESIRE. And at the same time be aware of your mind and its shrewd and cunning ways of terming desires into needs.

Only a GOAL that is a NEED is worth fighting for!

4. Scared whether you will be able to do it?

Two armies are facing each other, eyeball to eyeball in the battlefield of kurukshetra. War is eminent. The mighty Arjuna, one of the most able and skilled warriors of all times is leading one of the armies. And at the last moment, looking at his relatives, guru, cousins on the battlefield standing right against him… he withdraws from the battle field. He steps back.

The human psychology is one of action and one of facing challenges. We want face challenges every now and then. We detest that monotonous work. But again seen again from another angle – The challenges that we are eager to face are but well within our reach lest we use our intellect. You want to do something that you can do, you are capable of doing… This is not a challenge but a pseudo-challenge. It isn’t a challenge at all. Very rarely have I seen people take challenges that are completely beyond their capability.

Don’t fight with anyone… don’t compare with anyone else…
Your greatest competition with yourself… Keep on improving yourself… Keep on competing with yourself… there is no greater challenge than that… no greater achievement than that…

A time will come when you will saturate… You will be the best… your drive will be over… But keep on fighting on and on… REMEMBER Michael Schumacher’s statement above… He would not have said it if he would be comparing his timings with his own!

5.Wat do selfhelp buks mean wen dey say–luk inside

All books cannot be wrong. I had to negate them to make my point first…
Now that I have told you how to decide your GOAL, your end… to ensure that you will achieve it… you must look inside.

Everyone whom I meet, I tell them just one thing… Dude, you are under-performing. We humans barely use 20-30% of our true capabilities. Our minds are like computers with computing powers upto zillions and trillions of calculations per nanosecond. But we don’t have the appropriate CONTROL to harness that energy.

To support this, I would like to tell you a true story. The Russians had developed the PJ-10 rocket… a supersonic rocket that was supposed to be implemented into the world’s first supersonic cruise missile. Cruise Missiles are one of the most deadliest and most accurate missiles on the planet. They can hit targets right into an error factor of a few inches from 100-200 miles away. But the Russians couldn’t control this powerful PJ-10 rocket. They approached the Indians. A deal was signed and project Brahmos was formed. The Indians developed its control unit to harness the rockets true power. And voila, India and Russia are the only countries on this planet to have supersonic cruise missiles. It is India’s premier most sea-ground and air-ground missiles today, increasingly being inducted in to the Navy.

Getting back to us… the idea is to harness our powers. Something that very few have been capable of doing.

Patanjali is the world’s only scientific yogi, the only scientist of the inner who lived nearly 5000 years back. Patanjali states – “Breathing is deeper than thinking. Change your breathing and change your thinking.” In this sutra, Patanjali tries to explain how controlling your mind can help you achieve an excellent thought process.

Have you ever thought – why did the yogis and sanyasis who wanted to achieve God, left their materialistic life and went to the Himalayas. Because society, family, relations, relative, friends… your desires… everything are nothing but road blocks on your road towards the END. We don’t want to find God, so we needn’t leave ur society… but necessarily, I would like to say – Learn to be undisturbed by anyone’s ideas, comments, views and support. Let that anyone be your family, friends, foes, relatives, society… anyone!

If you believe in yourself… Back your dreams, capabilities and yourself till the last drop of your energy… no matter what price you would have to pay for it!

Back yourself!!!