DATED – 5th July 2014

One of my dear friends, Ashwin Shah, shared a lovely story which I thought of forwarding to all of you –

“A beautiful speech by Sundar Pichai – an IIT-MIT Alumnus and Global Head Google Chrome –
At a restaurant, a cockroach suddenly flew from somewhere and sat on a lady. She started screaming out of fear. With a panic-stricken face and trembling voice, she started jumping, with both her hands desperately trying to get rid of the cockroach. Her reaction was contagious, as everyone in her group also got panicky. The lady finally managed to push the cockroach away but … it landed on another lady in the group.

Now, it was the turn of the other lady in the group to continue the drama.

The waiter rushed forward to their rescue.

In the relay of throwing, the cockroach next fell upon the waiter. The waiter stood firm, composed himself and observed the behavior of the cockroach on his shirt. When he was confident enough, he grabbed it with his fingers and threw it out of the restaurant.

Sipping my coffee and watching the amusement, the antenna of my mind picked up a few thoughts and started wondering, was the cockroach responsible for their histrionic behavior?

If so, then why was the waiter not disturbed? He handled it near to perfection, without any chaos.

It is not the cockroach, but the inability of the ladies to handle the disturbance caused by the cockroach that disturbed the ladies.

In life, more than the problem, it’s my reaction to the problem that creates chaos in my life. I understood, I should not react in life. I should always respond. The women reacted whereas the waiter responded.

Reactions are always instinctive whereas responses are always well thought of!”

Are there times in my life too when I REACT whereas I can RESPOND –

• The traffic is stuck because a driver ahead of me seems to be struggling to get his vehicle started. I can react by honking; on the other hand, I can respond by understanding that even he is not enjoying waiting on the green signal, but there must be an issue.
• My father is shouting at me for something wrong I did at work. I can react by getting angry and banging things. Instead, I can respond by simply listening to what he has to say. After all, he is not my enemy. In his own ways, he wants to save me from blemishes.
• My wife is irritated at the series of events through the day. Add to it, I come late where I promised to come early. The moment I enter, she starts firing me. I can react by shouting back at her and saying – “Ghar mein bhi shaanti nahin hai.” (There is no peace at home too). If I really love her, I will respond by saying and meaning ‘Sorry.’ Maybe a little later hug her and ask what made her behave like this.

I strongly advocate the fact that – “REACTION always complicates; whereas RESPONSE always solves!” Every time I look back into – my life, my loved ones lives, my friends’ lives etc., this hold true everywhere. I haven’t come across a single situation where reacting has solved an issue.

Haven’t we so often gone through this – I react to a particular situation and behave abruptly. When I calm down, I realize that it wasn’t the right way of handling the situation. In various ways, then I attempt to apologize.

According to me, the best way to handle this is – to take a 20 second break before saying anything when there is a negative situation. Though they seem too less, these are magical 20 seconds! These 20 seconds can be the difference between – REACT and RESPOND.

Vis-à-vis my life –

Not to brag about myself, but I think I always respond to situations. I hardly remember an incident when I reacted and made things worse. In fact, I have more memories of times when I could have reacted, but chose to RESPOND! That is probably one reason I haven’t snapped off any relationship as such!

I wish to live by – RESPOND, and even BETTER RESPONSE!