Today I went to the embassy to get the response for the visa application I submitted about a month back.

I had kept a lot of hopes on this. Today was like a junction in my life. If I get the permission to work, I would get a much better financial standing, more qualifications, more experience, etc.

So I went and waited on the queue waiting for the officer to read my name.

Mean while I remembered what my mother told me before I had to switch off my phone in-order to enter this office. She told me that what ever the result could be, don’t worry because God always have a plan for you and it will always show you the best possible path even it might look not great at this moment.

So while I was in the queue, I prayed God and asked him to make me strong to hold on to what ever the result that I would get in a while.

At the end I got my response and when I opened to cover I saw the letter headed “Notice of Refusal”. Yes I felt all my dreams crashing but only for a while. Don’t think I am trying to make myself a God’s child but within minutes I could recover because I had much worst experience where initially I though I failed but later I realized it was the best path for me.

I thanked God for making me comfortable with the result I received and then I went to meet my lawyer who prepared my application. After going thorough the letter I received, my lawyer start laughing, the person who examined my application had made a lot of mistakes. Lawyer promised me that he could argue on these matters and get my application approved.

After that talk he said that he would like to talk on a different topic with me and told me about starting his dream company. The company needs reliable software to make its decisions in other words the company would operate on the software. He had tried many Indians before and even one of his friends but he has never been able to make his dream come true. So he asked me whether I could make the software for him. According to my experience I felt like it would not be a huge challenge so I agreed to do it.

I don’t say that making software would replace all my dreams I had on having a work permit in rich country but I could win his heart and make him more prone to get my work done while I am working on to make his dream come true.

So what I want to emphasize here is that we have to be positive at every times regardless of the outcome. When I got that letter, I could simply get upset and go home or I could lose my enthusiasm on everything and make me the saddest guy on earth.

I learnt from it…

If my application was accepted at the first glance, I would never know how it feels when this type of hope is dissolved and very specially how to overcome this type of a situation which is a very valuable experience.

And I am very happy for getting this experience at this age itself. Because I had my parents to back me up rather than having this type of experience when I am a parent which I assume a much harder to face.

As I said in an earlier post…,

It’s all about the way we see things…

Cassian Menol Razeek

I have been postponing things since I don’t know when…

I consider this as a major mistake that we all make and the most unfortunate thing is that we don’t feel we are going down because postponing takes us down slowly. In other words, you will not even notice that you have not checked your eyes until it’s been a year since when it was initially planned.

Yes it is that bad and even worse…

The main reason for many people to end up with postponing is the busy life most of us are living today.

Most of us are very good at work and never postpone a single office work. Then the important things in personal life get piled almost kissing the sun.

Most of us only have the weekend for all our personal life work. And the worst of all is it’s the weekend that we can sit and get a rest.

So what ever the important thing that should be done in this weekend gets LESS URGENT and easily gets postponed to the next. Of course, hoping there won’t be any new movies next week!

Let me discuss some experience of mine:

• Lat December (2007) I brought my coffee cup to home thinking I should clean it thoroughly before start using the next year. My mother washed it and returned it to me so that I could take it back to office the day after. But every morning when I get ready to go, I did not get the cup which was lying on my table because I had to rearrange my backpack to accommodate a round shape thing. Believe me it’s been a year for now and the cup still lies on my table … !
• I checked my eyes last March and I forgot to bring my old specs or any details of my previous checking of eyes and unfortunately I had to go to a new doctor from whom I had last checked when I was a kid. So he checked my eyes without any clue of previous checks. But he certainly did not do a good job and my eyes rejected the new specs. Even though he told that it was natural and would be all right in some time, my eyes kept rejecting new specs. Then I decided to recheck the specs with my usual doctor. If I go to him I have to take a leave on a weekday or have to go Saturday night. Trust me I am still wearing the same specs and my eyes are still rejecting it and I am working 9-12 hours everyday in front of computer with this pair of specs making my eyes double tired.

I can write hundreds of such experience here but rather I would like to discuss how I feel about this situation.

You may think I am a so ignorant stupid. Actually I am not (at least I don’t think so) I loved my coffee cup but I lived without it for a year… How? If anyone told me not to use my coffee cup for a year, I would fight with him. But I, by myself didn’t use it for a year…!

If someone asked me to use wrong specs for more than 8 months 10 hours a day, I would kill him because I love my eyes. But I just did that by myself…!

How did I do this?

Yes, I found how I did it, I never painted the big picture nor had even an idea of what I was drawing, I always drew a tiny pixel at a time.

I never wanted to lose my cup for a year; I only wanted to take the cup on the next day. Everyday I thought that I would only lose it for a day and I could live with it.

I never wanted to hurt my eyes without which I don’t even want to try living. But I could live with it for a single week. Every time I was postponing my checking only for a week.

So as we can clearly see we always have calm and quiet reason to justify the single unit level postpones which alone does not make any visible impact on us. But together, as the time go, it’s those tiny pixels that makes the big picture which is once drawn can never be re-painted.

So how could we get rid of this?

Well, I would like to get the lesson from my first great teacher, yes my mother.

She does a job and also does all house work without a servant.

Every night she prepares the need to make tomorrows cooking which she start doing in the early morning around 4.00 am.

If I was her, I would postpone the preparation for tomorrow morning. But she never does that because she knows that she would never get enough time to finish cooking with quality and dress-up for the office before 7.00 am.

Even if she is sick, she never postpones a single task…

Yes she has the will that I don’t have. She has the power in her heart which I need to develop within my heart.

I think one should make his/her heart strong to stand against those tiny evils which suggests to postpone tiny things to make it comfortable for a small span of time but make the life worse long term.

Cassian Menol Razeek

Today I went to a party at my dad’s office. There I met this wonderful person who is 57 years old now.

Let me tell something that I found about him:

He’s 57 years old now and married. His wife still works abroad as a house maid and his all sisters are abroad in Australia.

Even though he’s married since a long time ago, he was not blessed with children. His father has already passed away and his mom is healthy but she lives in Australia with his sisters.

His sisters have tried many times to take him to Australia but at all those times authorities had rejected him due to his age.

Once he was even rejected to visit his sisters EVEN for a short period!

From this smal job he gets a very small salary about 100 US $ and his sisters sends him 200 Australian dollars once a month by which he manages to pay his bills and get other needs.

Even though he’s getting a very low salary, he bears a great deal fo responsibilities. Once, as he explained me, he had to go and buy things for few Indians who were hired to assemble a automatic plant.

When he was going to attend that, the waste removal truck has appeared which is also his responsibility. So he has waited for that to finish before go for the other work. But a manager has told him to go and get things while the truck was doin its job.

While he was away, the truck have accidently dumped a large amount of trash on a pipe which then made a huge leak in the glue storage tank making a loss of 40,000 Sri Lankan Rupees (Like 400 US$). Since the manager did not accept he instructed my friend to go, my friend had to pay the loss! 400 US $ may be not a huge some for you but for his salary this was huge.

And I forgot to mention that he once have also had a heart attack….!

So ….

When he was talking like this, you may think that he was a poor guy with a very unhappy life, just the way I thought.

But for my surprice, he was the most happy guy there and there was a genuine smile in his face all the time and it was very pleasent to talk with him.

The best thing is….

He told me that he beleives a lot in God and told me that he has a secret prayer which keeps him so happy and makes lord give him a very successful life and told me that since we are friends, he’d send that prayer to me through my father.

This reminded me a lesson on PARADIGMS….

It’s all about the way we see things that keeps us and people around us happy. He did not complain about those countless problems he had. He told those as challenges that he has faced and he told those things to me in a way as giving a lecture to a younger person.

He did not say God let him get an heart attack, He said, God saved me from that heart attack while many people die from their first heart attack…!

He did not worry because he had to pay a large sum of money for another guys fault eventhough he was upset for that guy’s dishonest behaviour. He was happy because his prayers had been answered and God has tought a lesson to the management though a huge loss on the company (in millions of rupees) due to another irresponsible decision work of the same manager.

What I learnt…

We should not see the worst side of anything that happens to us. Doing that does not solve that problem but only puts us to a even worse level.

We should change our lenses and try through different angles and I do think that we certainly can win the main objective of our life…

which is … HAPPINESS!!!

Cassian Menol Razeek