Friendship - Punita Chouhan

A person can share his happiness, sorrow and every kind of thing that he can share. Friendship can come from anyone and in any course of life. A father can be a friend of his daughter; similarly, a mother can be a friend to a son, a husband and wife can be friends.

True friends are always caring, loving, loyal, passionate, mildly critical and most importantly, trustworthy to their friends. Friendship is a relationship where friends listen to each other's problems and try to understand. These qualities make a friend a good friend. The person who cheats you talks behind your back and laughs at you can never be your true friend.

Friendship is never tied to the financial status of people. A king can be a true friend of a poor beggar, and a poor labourer can be a good friend of a rich industrialist. Lord Krishna was in an unconditionally true endearing friendship with poor Sudama. The friendship between Krishna and Sudama is a milestone for all of us. They were like soul mates. Their friendship was at a level where if someone hurts another one feels pain.

Friendship is good for your school-age child's self-esteem. Friendship helps children develop important life skills, like getting along with other people and sorting out conflicts and problems. Children with these skills are less likely to have social and emotional difficulties later in life. 

Friends can help you celebrate good times and provide support during bad times. Friends prevent loneliness and give you a chance to offer needed companionship, too. Friends can also increase your sense of belonging and purpose.

Punita Chouhan 

The Fabindia School

pch@fabindiaschools.in

Simple Living, High Thinking - Swabhi Parmar

The concept of simple living high thinking is something that every person should adopt. This concept is also called as minimalism, where a person owns bare minimum items in his house. Your lifestyle will be totally different if you own just the essentials. We have seen what is happening around the world when people are buying just the essential commodities. The COVID-19 pandemic has thought us that all we need to survive are the basic essentials like a house, a vehicle, food and medicines. All others are luxuries that we don’t actually need in reality.

The urge of a human being to gain materialistic wealth is beyond control and has a significant impact on our economy. Companies market products that are actually not needed and add no value to our lives but the branding of the products is done such that it is made to create an illusion of value addition in our lives when in reality, all it does is add problems to our lives.

The concept of simple living high thinking is not just about a clutter-free closet or a cleanroom. To have peace of mind and live a truly blessed life, we need to follow this simple living high thinking theory in life. Some of us have money, some of us don’t, and some of us have that in plenty, and still, our peace of mind is not as much as that worker who sleeps on the footpath with no worries. We, as a society, look at them in wonderment and pity, but in reality, it is them that should pity us.

The sense of joy, fulfilment and satisfaction you get when you help someone in need is far more than the joy you get when you buy a branded shoe or a costly phone. The COVID-19 pandemic has thought many life lessons to us and one of which is the joy of helping others. It is not just about the joy, we should do it as a responsibility and gratitude towards our privileges that God has granted us. The entire economy of the world is crumbling just because all of us are buying only the bare minimum and essentials. More than 90% of our economy is surviving because of the consumer’s spending on things that they don’t really need.

Minimalism is a term that is used to refer to a lifestyle which is minimum in materialistic point of view, but maximum in peace of mind and tranquillity point of view. We are always frustrated and agitated whenever we come home looking at a closet full of clothes, a kitchen full of utensils, a refrigerator full of food and a table full of useless things. Get rid of it all. Yes, the minimum lifestyle will give a sense of direction and purpose in life. Instead of spending that one lakh rupee on iPhone, buy a phone that is cheaper and use the rest of the money to feed the poor and the hungry. Try this one day, and you yourself will be addicted to that joy. The smile that you see when you feed someone who is in need is enough to have a sense of purpose in life.

Swabhi Parmar
The Fabindia School
spr@fabindiaschools.in