Every Son's Dream

He told me once..."Behind every pretty girl there is a boyfriend who is fed up. So never give up!" He brought me my first beer and said “You will drink anyway, even if I stop you. My father stopped me too...But I did start drinking. So the first one, you will drink with me because you will have to learn how to drink”. Every big party he would tell me “It seems like there is too much blood in your alcohol stream.” Then just before my marriage he told me “By all means marry, but always remember it’s a bloody tough job. It’s the biggest test of being a man. We can go to war and conquer nations but marriage is a different ball game my son!”

It’s difficult to explain in a few hundred words what this person is or what he means to me but there are two things that I can write in blood – Firstly, every son should have a father like him and secondly, he is strongly responsible for whatever I am today. Superbly charming, great storyteller, fantastic cricketer, brilliant singer, avid reader, absolute believer of truth & honesty, hard worker with a never say die attitude and fifty years ahead of his time. If all of this is not good enough to measure the success of a person, I guess most of us will fail very easily. After all, money is not the end of everything in life. Times were never easy when I was growing up but he never gave up. Today if I have a life that I am enjoying, I am not ashamed in accepting that it would have not been the same if he would have thought or done things differently 20 years back. If I am ever born again…I will for sure want to be born as his son. 

  

Of all the great things that I have tried to learn from him, the following stand out as most significant:

Always give your best, no matter how difficult the situation is. Do not worry about how you will be evaluated because that is the only thing that is not in your control. As long as you are true to yourself...you have succeeded.

Never run after money because you will never have enough of it. Look around and you will see so many people who have so much less than what you have. Give as much as you can and somehow, somewhere, someday you will get something in return. It may not be money but it will be a lot of satisfaction or happiness.

Everyone will give you pain. The idea of life is to figure out whose pain is worth it and you will always be happy.

You will never be able to prove if there is God, but you will always get opportunities to prove that within you is somebody called you.

Forgive and forget. There are too many good things to remember. 

Finally, don’t take life too seriously…because life for sure does not take you seriously either.