Thanksgiving 2009

This has been severly overdue but one of the things I believe strongly in is that everything in life happens only at THE RIGHT TIME, not before or not after. So for this post to happen on the night of Sunday the 29th of Nov, the last day of the long THANKSGIVING weekend, I think is at the right time, so here goes.

I have a lot to be thankful for. This wonderful life, a family that will do anything for me, great food and the first real holiday I have taken this year (all play and no work). Life has been busy with the MBA but the last 3 months have been something else. I don't know if my boss was just waiting for me to complete my PMP (which I think is my most significant achievement this year), but that same week I completed the PMP, I was loaded with 6 projects to manage in parallel. Six has grown into 10 as I write this on 29 Nov 09, exactly 80 days from the day I got my PMP.

First, I need to thank god for giving me the commitment to complete my PMP, given my MBA. I was not the first in my company to complete it, but given that I did it having a full time job and a very demanding MBA was something. I do not know how my company considers it, but I consider it my most significant accomplishment. And I could not have done it without GOD! Thanks to my MBA, I have certainly realised how I have additional capacity and I belive that I have even more that I have still not used. So the fact is true that I have planned my work better for my 10 projects and have truly put in a lot of hard work into it. But despite all that effort, things can sometimes go wrong. It has happened to me in the past and those times are vivid in my memory. But this time, touchwood, nothing has gone wrong so far. Things just magically seem to fall in place. Crises appear every now and then but solutions follow sooner than later and people rally around me to help me, support me and resolve issues. I find it hard to explain this any better than this but all I can say is that I am juggling several balls in the air and it is like someone above is controlling them, bringing the right ones back to my hands at the right time.

Like I said, I am working hard, but I am also praying. I am pryaing to God that I will put in every ounce of energy I have got and that he take care of me and boy, is he taking care of me?

I feel God, not just at work, but just in my sheer instincts too. For instance, my belief that everything has a RIGHT TIME also stems from the fact that God seems to be guiding me every minute. It seems like I just know what is the right time to do things and I am also able to expect a certain outcome from my actions, good or bad. Sometimes, I want to do some things and I seek his approval to do it. I feel like it's not the right time or that what I am about to do won't really work and just out of pure adrenaline, I still go ahead and do it (I am human, after all!) and clearly, it does not work. And then I start thinking about why I did what I did, even though I had felt strongly that it would not work. That only reinforces another belief, that whatever is bound ot happen will happen and whatever happens, happens for the good. So though I felt something was not going to work, my intellect does not stop me from doing it and facing the consequence. It is easy to reduce such action to the state of wishful thinking, but it points to the fact that pure intellect does not control everything that happens. There is something external to it and I prefer to call it God.

I can sit here all night tonight and talk about several instances that come to my mind as examples of how God is with me and is guiding me. But I will quote one that is fresh in memory because it happened today. My family and I had gone to Albany, which is a 4 hour drive, assuming one stop, from our home. We were returning today from the holiday. We left there just before noon and the plan was to take a break at Edison, which is the Indian capital of the USA and have lunch at Saravana Bhavan. Thanks to traffic delays on I87, we found ourselves at a state where we had another 40 miles to get there and just 40 minutes to get there before the scheduled close of the restaurant at 3 PM. My wife called the restaurant to see if there was any scope of a delayed closing today (given it was a holiday weekend) but the message at the restaurant was clear that it closed after lunch at 3 PM. I decided to still give it a try and drive into Edison, for I was sure we would get some form of Indian food even it was not to be Saravana Bhavan. I just made my little prayer in my heart to God that I would not race or drive rashly, but if he thought we deserved a meal at SB, so be it. I kept pace with the traffic and at the average of 60 mph, we just got off the highway exactly at 3 pm. My wife was busy calling some other restaurants and trying to find ones that were open beyond the 3 pm mark and she actually found some. I told her that we would drive up to Saravana Bhavan, in case they would take some last minute customers, and if they refused, we would try the other options. Turns out that we did get accepted at Saravana Bhavan and had a hearty meal. We not only enjoyed the meal but also gained the energy for what became a gruelling journey after, with further traffic jams and delays. Several questions can be asked here. Why did SB stay open well after 3 PM. Was it just good business sense that led them to stay open a little longer on a holiday and was it just my common sense to believe that it would be the case? So was I betting on something where the odds were very high? I like to believe not, given that not more than a couple of weeks ago, I eagerly went to Saravana Bhavan in New York city one afternoon, not having eaten anything that day and so waiting to eat their delicious food, only to find them shutters down just a few minutes after 5 PM. I ended up eating a decent meal at Madras Cafe or something, but I believe that was meant to happen and it perhaps happened for the good.

It is 11 PM and time for me to hit the bed because I need to wake up at 4 AM and the next 60 days promise to be extremely demanding, but all I am going to bed tonight with is the BELIEF that I will continue to give it everything I have, and I will still need God to help me through this phase. I will need to excel in my job, I will need to get good grades at school, I will need to spend quality time with my family and if God is with me, I will also get to do something more.

And by God, I mean Shri Sai Baba of Shirdi.

Glory be to Baba. Peace be to All.