Beyond Spirited

Picture yourself being the golden boy of American cycling by age 24, nevertheless, just after a fatherless-childhood.

Regardless, in next to no time, you unearth the fact that you’ve developed an affair with cancer, which conquered your testicle, forging a great empire that stretches all the way from your abdomen, through lung to brain.

Needless to say, your life does turn upside down with a guaranteed 20% survival chances. It is as if the life itself has gone astray, let alone your dreams!

Yet, someway, not alone do you live to tell the tale but you also have your dream all fired up – a record seven consecutive times winner of the “Tour de France”- A single most grueling >3600 km bicycle event that lasts for three weeks.

And.., that’s Lance Armstrong for you, folks!

Each single utterance from the Book: “It’s not about my bike” is just hope that speaks through the disease of cancer. And yes, it’s true I run out of adjectives, as I’m trying badly here to describe the potential of a human being.

When Lance was juvenile, as like every troubled-kid, he started pedaling cycle to just run away from his troubles. And a turbulent childhood always brings a distressed manhood, believe me I‘ve seen it.

“You’ve cancer” are probably the nearly all terrible sentence to experience the phenomenon called “fear”. May be the scene from the movie 50/50 could do a picture to the Lance’s words!

But the worst part in cancer is chemotherapy, as you never know if it does work until the very end of the treatment, let alone undergoing, which is far worse than the actual misery of the cancer. During the treatment, you tend to lose your appetite while the immune system is depressed out. You get your internal bleeding, vomiting, nausea, physical exhaustion, dehydration, etc.

And Life could not be pained extra in such times when you’re given a porn magazine to summon an erection at a sperm bank before the chemotherapy makes you completely infertile.

Lance writes, “Show me the dotted line and I’ll sign. I’ll do something else. I’ll go back to school, I’ll be trash man, do anything, just let me live”.

It’s the trepidation of death, which makes life clear-cut! But Lance took it to a limit, literally where, the cancer had realized itself that it chose a wrong body to live in.

Indeed, in the voice of my heart, Lance needed three combatants to prevail the malignant cells. 1) Treatment. 2) People. 3) Courage.

Likewise, I wish every “tumor-infected” body had access to the lance-sort of treatment, physically. The guilty for being such fortunate did conceive the Lance Armstrong foundation to inspire & empower the cancer sufferers because Lance thought illness is universal.

But, to progress in psychological front, you do need a few people, as the truth draws fine line between life and death, which actually describes the nucleus of friendship, family & love. After all, you would die healthier if only you know you’re going to be missed. And lance had people living the grammar of friendship & love.

When lance believed in courage, he gave him only two choices: “either give up, or Fight like Hell”. And it’s where the human potentials politely speak beyond margins!

According to him, the cancer was the single best thing that ever happened to him. He says,“When I was sick, I saw more beauty and triumph in a single day than I ever did in a bike race”.

Now, “Connecting the dots” is all I may well remember here, said by Steve jobs, as the cancer, in another hand, provided Lance enough pain & anger to live & win 7 consecutive “Tour de France” titles.

As the saying goes "When life gives you 100 reasons to cry, Show life 1000 reasons to smile". 

After all, he is such a street fighter, that one thing which all my heroes commonly share!

And so, if we think we run the toughest life here, maybe we should spare a thought or two for the millions of people like lance, living the death in the haplessness of cancer being incurable in such rare cases.

When I finished reading the book, I just told myself “fight like hell, just the way lance did”. And everybody please!

with hope,

Murugapandiyan P

Ricky Ponting. A Hero.

It was Day 2, first session of the second Ashes Test- Adelaide 2006.

Like every single unique mind that resided at my first year college hostel, I, as well, was totally behind the English cricket team simply because the team they had to play against was the Aussies.

And so, down to hell I hated watching the Aussies and you, ricky conquering the cricket world inch by inch but neatly.

To add fuel to the fire of hatefulness that blazed you always out of my mind, I was often remembered by people to judge your attitudes and character as if I was employed by the angels of truth.

Early morning on ESPN, Aussies were three down and trailing by almost 500 runs. I reckon Matthew Hoggard was in mission demolition and so was the Barmy Army.

And suddenly there was one brutal pull shot like a bolt out of the blue, at the speed as Andrew Flintoff bowled. Indeed, All I really needed was that one hit to the great Australian bight, and i realized then that I’d started loving your game, Rick. I found it very, very irresistible.

It’s all been through till this day when you eventually got dumped from the ODI Aus team, I love your athleticism all the way in spite of those hatred conversations I had to earn from my dear friends (no offense here) every time for being a fanatical rick fan here.

Rick, they say you are not as great as the little master or not elegant as the super Lara or not fair as Gilly or not good as the captain “Mark Taylor”. (But then If you were full of all these, I would probably have been bored of you, rick!)

I love the most in you, is the fighter, true as none, on the possible face of planet cricket earth.

It’s been about the confronts all the way right from the drunken Ricky with a dark eye, after being punched in a bar fight, to the fearless champion to the dumped man’s yesterday press conference!  That’s the warrior fact I loved most about you!

Of course there are some eye splitting leap catches at slips, some stump broken direct hits by the cricket ball threw at some athletic velocity, some Shakespeare like written straight drives and not to forget is those thundering pull shots to the roofs of MCG. i loved it, i cherished it!

You’re truly in a league of your own athleticism and I loved it the like the rhythm of violin.

When you indicated that a yesterday’s stand-in national captain can even go to the Moubray club cricket in Launceston (Hometown) of Tasmania (an island even the Aussies sometimes forget to include in their maps) only to keep some cricketing form for your remaining test carrier, I understood what cricket means to you. So because you drink, breath and sweat cricket like no other.

"I've always been of the belief that I don't mind people trying things and failing”. it may tell you're not after some applauding fairytale finish or personal recognition in the test carrier either. But to me, it reckons how tough bloke you still are?

A tough bloke? Glad you guys asked this (thank you)!

After the 2010 ashes were blown up by the hurricane of the New England, it was the defending championship straight into the world cup.

Soon enough, you were in the news for all the wrong reasons starting with a TV smashing (a batting glove accident led to some pixel blurring in a LCD), a frustrated sign at teammate for a catch colliding and a not walking for a not given wicket (but so is 99% batsmen).

Watching all this unfolded I could not help but wondered if you would get up at all. Just a few more punches and you must go down. Surely you can’t take anymore.

But then I should have known better. Cometh the hour cometh the man!

Like a true fighter you are, you didn’t surrender but instead you did what you do best. You got on the front foot and played a game of your league in the quarterfinal against India (eventually the champions). Isn’t you, gladiator?

Isn’t the courage an unparalleled weapon for a gladiator, rick? And there's no surprise you are a big fan of Roger Federer. 

 Roger and you're the two sort of guys I love most for the kiddingly risking of a well built legacy to just get every last bit out of you because the madly love you are in.

I heard there's a heart too in every gladiator and maybe I’d ask dravid or langer how you feel like personally!

Sadly you're the man who had lost the ashes maximum number times you might be remembered for that. After all, only great people are remembered for their failures and ordinary man for their triumphs.

Somebody said,"it's not over when you're losing terribly... its over when you quit". So till then, I cheer for every cricket ball you combat with, on the grasslands.

The Staying aficionado,
MP.

“Apple” of our “i”

I really was sunken in shock when i read the news of Steve Jobs quitting as the CEO of Apple Inc. But i did find my ­­­­heart urging me to swim in it so as to pen some thoughts of him before it gets washed off from my emotional mind only because i thought it is too inspirational to let off and if there is one motive for posting this blog here, it is for drawing some inspirations which is so vital to people like me who chases their dreams from nowhere. 

In reality, sometimes success does not seem to be big deal, providing the hard work & passion. Isn’t it? But seldom in the journey of life the success does take a toll when you are asked to address more than the hard work so as to keep walk towards the success and that’s where Steve comes and fit in, very naively.

To me, Steve is by far and large, a common man who just had steered a business all the way from his garage to the status of “the most valuable company in the world”. But just to do that, He had to survive himself every time the rejections, failures and fates intervened in his life. When I say the words-“rejections”, “failures” & “fates”, I really mean it, folks.  And I guess this is what separates the men from the boys in the bloodthirsty world.  

To articulate on rejections, it is extremely shocking to see how Steve took it when it had approached his life. Nowadays I have been kept telling that I should be pushed out of my comfort zone only to make a life so as to explore the more of real “me” which does lead to a great success. And in Steve’s case, he was exactly given this opportunity the moment he was born since his young & unwed biological mother decided to put him for adoption.

Steve was adopted by a working class parents whose whole savings were being spent on his tuition fees earlier which they could hardly afford some further. Steve decided to drop out of college after six months, citing the reason that his heart didn’t find any meaning in it. According to him, it was a very nervy period of his life. Although he dropped out after only one semester, he continued auditing classes, such as one in calligraphy, while sleeping on the floor in friends' dorm rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local temple.

To me, if Steve hadn’t understood his heart well, it would have been not even easy to digest such thoughts that he was being adopted and kept for the very fighting of his basic needs. But all Steve cared about was his heart’s voice. He believed it against all odds and went on finding every complicated “event” in his early life as the “tools” that brings him near to his destiny.

In his Stanford speech, he was found saying, “If I had never dropped out of college, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of Course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later”. Fascinatingly, his heart was always positive about the way of life.

The thing I love most here is the fact that he dreamed big and bigger instead of faulting the tricky life he was offered earlier. In spite of those awful rejections, he still found himself on the cover page of TIME magazine before he turned just 27 and that explains his early success well.

But it was not only the rejections that he had to stop facing but there were some awful failures too as he opted a brash, abrasive, and rough edged path of life earlier. Apple computer was growing incredibly faster, since its dawn. But Steve was still the man of ordinary manners, it seems. In fact he was found his ex-girlfriend appearing claimed she was bearing his baby. There was a lot of perplexity around Steve’s behaviour as well. Even some of own team mates refused to work with him. At one stage, the ego and revenge taking manners of Steve ultimately led to a personnel war with Sculley, then CEO of Apple, saw Steve Job getting fired from his own company, the Apple.   

As like anybody, Steve was left devastated as he was ousted from the business what had been the focus of his entire adult life. He tried hard to find what he was going to do next. His life was in so much chaos that he even asked NASA if he could ride the space shuttle! He was struggling to save his public image as well. But it seems that Steve still loved what he did, though he had been fired. He decided to start over after a much of self discovery.

Soon afterward Jobs started a new computer company, NeXT Inc., and then slipped from public view for next five years. But at last fall he re-emerged as the NeXT was taken over by Apple Inc. and Steve was back for ever. But there were a handful of embarrassments and hard work there in the journey to overcome. Not to forget in this period is the Pixar animation studios, started only as his­­­­­ hobby, failed at least over nine times before becoming the single most successful animation studio in the world. And Steve never regretted for his mistakes as he once said, “we'll make a whole bunch of mistakes. That's what life is about. But at least they'll be new and creative ones”.

Though there were such big business successes afterwards, but the best possible thing that still happened due to his early failures were the crucial evolutions in Steve’s personal life. During these times, He found his biological family and happily started accepting his 9year old girl publicly. It sounded he became more stable in his relationships finally. There were some happiest times in his private life finally due to his change in attitudes, as he got married to his girlfriend what was a love at first sight which even cost him a crucial business meeting!

And the best thing is the Steve returning to the apple, when the deteriorating apple decided to take over the Steve’s NeXT. The optimistic Steve said in his notes as “Joining Apple full fills the spiritual reasons for starting NeXT”

Totally, it seems that nothing could stop him from trusting his heart in his life. And he started working like crazy in his second innings at apple to put the company back on track. With his rejuvenated attitudes and a lot of great team works, he made some “insanely” great products starting from iPod to iPad. According to Steve, hadn’t been he fired from apple, he would not have achieved the NeXT, the Pixar and of course, “the family” in his life.

It’s really hard to believe when Steve said that it’s only those “failures” that paved the way for these incredible successes of his life. But I guess it’s worth believing it, if you are a big believer of your heart. And that explains his upbeat approach of his life.

Steve still needed to outdo one more thing on the way to his destiny. And it was not the legal one, but medical one. It was the “fate” to pass next in line as if Steve had not had enough trials in his life from the masters of the “rejections” and “failures”. This time though he was sentenced to death by the incurable pancreatic cancer. So he had been given a limit of six month time to live for once and all in the character of Steve jobs.  But it seems nothing could subdue him in front of his desired heart which dramatically cured him from the kiss of death just through a surgery. And people called it as a miracle.

But yet again the fate extended its arm to stop Steve by pushing him for a liver transplant in 2009 afterwards trying very hard to bang him for once and all resulted in pushing him to leave the duty of iCEO. And this time Steve is fired by the “fate” itself as if the human beings will ever not be daring enough to oust him again from his empire. And it seems Steve still wanted only to learn from the fate rather than cursing it. In his Stanford speech, job said, “Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life”. Yeah! Honestly he made some big choices such as the one “the walkman of the digital age” iPods which has changed the way we all listen to music.

According to him, the death phenomenon actually helped him to avoid the trap of thinking that he has something to lose. The inspirational thing is he has done many wonders which made millions of lives so much easier by making technology that is seamless, intuitive, exciting and beautiful, though there was an aching fate he had to deal with. But like before, this time too his heart did its part very well to prevail in.

I am going to get personal here.  It’s really hard for me to put into words how much inspiration I draw from Steve. What make Steve so special for me is not his achievement in his carrier but the handling of those great glories and worse shames of him, all in one life perfectly. i love the fact that he did give respect to his heart even when he was diagnosed with cancer. The only & most valuable gift Steve got was of finding what he loved to do early in life. For him, all it matters was just listening to his heart only which helped him to achieve whatever he wanted.  And this is where the people like me are really struggling, to figure out what makes us truly happy. And some of us do find our dreams but don’t have the courage to follow it till the very end unlike the Steve who has just spent his life only through following his heart and intuitions which had been proved dead wrong many times in his life as well.

The message is loud and clear- all that matter is keep listening to our heart since it already knows what you will become in future. And there is no reason why we can’t dream bigger, saying that we have nothing to lose in this life as Steve said in his notes, “I think the things you most regret in life are things you didn't do. What you really regret was never asking that girl to dance”. And for him, it doesn't matter if you are a richest man in the cemetery but it is always going to bed at night saying you've done something wonderful that you love to do heartily. 

To end with, i am proud here to call Steve only as a humble human being so that the rest of human community in the planet earth will be honored by saying so and the rest is well explained with the tagline of the Apple Inc- “Think Different”.

With longing heart,

murugapandiyan p

P.S. It would be great if we can able to share our heart’s burning desires here so that we will add up more fuel in it with a lot of support and motivation from each of us. 

References:

http://allaboutstevejobs.com/blog/

http://www.lifeofexcellence.com/audio/SteveJobs_StandfordConvocationSpeech.pdf