Small things that shape me

Today as usual I was standing in my balcony and just as usual I noticed the plants that my flat mate has planted. About 3 months ago, I noticed a Tulsi plant that was growing between the tiles and thought it is better if it goes into a pot which was empty for a long time. I carefully plucked it from the root and placed it in a small pot. I or my flat mate used to water it along with all other plants we had every morning/evening and the Tulsi I planted started to grow; it made me happy to watch it grow. I go back to my parent’s place every weekend and somehow got busy over the week as well and didn’t get enough time to go out to the balcony for about two weeks and my flat mate also was busy with her other hobbies over weekend and could not water those plants. I went out today and noticed that all plants that were close to healthy are on the verge of death. This triggered a thought in my empty mind and I contemplated over it for a while and extrapolated a pattern.

Whatever needs to live needs to be nurtured, if not – it will most certainly die. Even after we had watered those plants for 3 months or more; it couldn’t go on without being nurtured for mere two weeks. This is exactly what happens if we don’t nurture things in our life.

Health or intelligence or relationships, if we do not put an effort to make it grow, it simply dies – amazingly so, it takes a shorter time to kill it. If we do not make the effort to maintain the sustenance of our edge over others, it simply becomes extinct. If one does not do anything after a year of hard physical training to get in shape, that person will most likely sink back into being out of shape in lesser time than a year. If one keeps on doing the same work day in and day out, s/he will be stuck in the loop and never make any progress. Maybe, this is how the ten thousand hour rule worked*. Deliberate practice is important for sustaining and improving. If two individuals do not put an effort into keeping the relationship alive it becomes stale. If we stop expanding our horizons, we stop growing.

Anything that is worth keeping alive needs constant nurturing, be it a hobby, your passion or just a bunch of plants in your garden. On the scale of time, we have very limited span to walk towards success, defined mostly in our own terms – on the way if we take a break, we do not just stand still but we go backwards rather quickly than what it took of us to reach the heights in the first place.

 “If you don’t move forward, sooner or later you begin to move backward.” is probably true in all of its sense.

PS – The rule is being overruled by another recent research - Princeton study