Review of Robin Sharma's Who Will Cry When You Die

Before reading this book I had no idea about its genre. I didn’t even bother to check its reviews nor had I read any book of Robin Sharma before this book. I was browsing through Amazon to buy some other books and bought it just because it was one of their top 25 books. After reading it, I can surely say that it was a good decision.      

This book is a collection of life lessons. The author has profusely used quotes and life-principles of other self-help writers and philosophers. Some principles have directly been copied from other books. I read Think and Grow Rich and The Power of Your Subconscious Mind just after this book. Some content of his book matches with these books. So basically, the author has only collected teachings of some wise men in one book.  

But that does not decrease the value of life lessons this book contains. Most of the self-help books are written on motivation where the writer tells you about the power of your mind and urges you to be overly optimistic and fear nothing. This simple message is repeated all over the book in different words. This book is not entirely about motivation. It contains a total of 101 lessons. Each lesson is concise and different from the others. If properly followed, this book can make your life less 

complicated, increase your productivity, and bring joy to your daily routine.

Reading this book will make you happier and might change your perspective towards life. It emphasises on finding joy in simple stuff. I recommend you to read the full book as it will barely take three to four hours. However, if you don’t have even that much of time, here is the crux of this book. Summary of Who Will Cry When You Die

I am also giving the headings of all the lessons, most of the headings are self-explanatory. 

1. Discover your calling
2. Every day, be kind to a stranger
3. Maintain your perspective
4. Practice tough love.
5. Keep a journal
6. Develop an honesty philosophy
7. Honour your past.
8. Start your day well
9. Learn to say NO gracefully
10. Take a weekly sabbatical
11. Talk to yourself
12. Schedule worry breaks
13. Model a child
14. Remember, genius is 99 percent inspiration
15. Care for the temple
16. Learn to be silent.
17. Think about your ideal neighbourhood.
18. Get up early
19. See your troubles as blessings.
20. Laugh More
21. Spend a day without your watch
22. Take more risks
23. Live a life
24. Learn to live
25. Bless your money
26. Focus on the worthy
27. Write thank-you notes.
28. Always carry a book with you.
29. Create a love account
30. Get behind people’s eyeballs.
31. List your problems
32. Practice the action habit
33. See your children as gifts.
34. Enjoy the path, not just the rewards
35. Remember that awareness precedes change.
36. Read Tuesdays With Morrie.
37. Master your time.
38. Keep you cool.
39. Recruit a board of directors.
40. Cure your monkey mind.
41. Get good at asking
42. Look for the higher meaning of your work
43. Build a library of heroic books.
44. Develop your talents.
45. Connect with nature
46. Use your commute time
47. Go on  a news fast
48. Get serious about setting goals.
49. Remember the rule of 21.
50. Practice forgiveness.
51. Drink fresh fruit juice.
52. Create a pure environment
53. Walk in the woods.
54. Get a coach.
55. Take a mini-vacation.
56. Become a volunteer.
57. Find your six degrees of separation.
58. Listen to music daily.
59. Write a legacy statement.
60. Find three great friends.
61. Read The Artist’s Way.
62. Learn to meditate.
63. Have a living funeral
64. Stop complaining and start living.
65. Increase your value
66. Be a better parent
67. Be unorthodox.
68. Carry a goal card
69. Be more than your moods.
70. Savour the simple stuff
71. Stop condemning
72. See your day as your life
73. Create a mastermind alliance
74. Create a daily code of conduct
75. Imagine a richer reality
76. Become the CEO of your life.
77. Be humble
78. Don’t finish every book you start.
79.  Don’t be so hard on yourself
80. Make a vow of silence
81. Don’t pick up the phone every time it rings.
82. Remember that recreation must involve re-creation.
83. Choose worthy opponents.
84. Sleep less
85. Have a family mealtime
86. Become an impostor
87. Take a public speaking course
88. Stop thinking tiny thoughts
89. Don’t worry about things you can’t change
90. Learn how to walk
91. Rewrite your life story
92. Plant a tree
93. Find your place of peace
94. Take more pictures
95. Be an adventurer
96. Decompress before you go home
97. Respect your instincts
98. Collect quotes that inspire you
99. Love you work
100. Selflessly work
101. Live fully so that you can die happy.

The Intellectuals

                

In recent times, the dictionary definition of the word ‘intellectual’ has proved to be completely wrong. Literally, this word means a person who uses his mind to think rationally. But the society’s definition is the exact opposite of the literal meaning. In India, persons who use the most illogical arguments, endorse anything but the rational, propagate absurd theories, write ludicrous articles and senseless books are labelled as intellectuals.

The society’s intellectuals hardly have any idea of the ground realities, rarely provide solutions to problems and never speak the truth. Spreading lies, distorting facts are the key traits of Indian intellectuals. They live in a self-induced ambience where they believe that anyone or anything rational is their enemy. They scare the public by talking about the dangers of imaginary threats but ignore the real ones.

Think about the last time you saw the word intellectual written with a person’s name (it might be a newspaper article or a debate on TV). Now google that person’s profile. In all likelihood, you will find that they support Naxals, oppose any kind of development, sign mercy petitions for terrorists, hate a particular religion, and believe in hate-anything-that-is-Indian. But above all, you will find that they are shameless hypocrites who don’t have any morals and have lost all self-respect. If you don’t remember any such name, google search for “Indian intellectuals”. ‘Anti-India’, ‘hate’, ‘fear’, and ‘intolerance’ are some of the key words on the first page.

This behaviour of the so-called intellectuals is not limited to India. This breed of humans is found everywhere. The below paragraph is quoted from Atlas Shrugged. Here, some fraudsters who have expropriated governmental powers via trickery are contemplating the implementation of a national emergency to escalate their loot. One of them wonders whether the intellectuals would pose any problems. Someone answers: 

"They won't, your kind of intellectuals are the first to scream when it's safe—and the first to shut their traps at the first sign of danger. They spend years spitting at the man who feeds them—and they lick the hand of the man who slaps their drooling faces. Didn't they deliver every country of Europe, one after another, to committees of goons, just like this one here? Didn't they scream their heads off to shut out every burglar alarm and to break every padlock open for the goons? Have you heard a peep out of them since? Didn't they scream that they were the friends of labor? Do you hear them raising their voices about the chain gangs, the slave camps, the fourteen-hour workday and the mortality from scurvy in the People's States of Europe? No, but you do hear them telling the whip-beaten wretches that starvation is prosperity, that slavery is freedom, that torture chambers are brother-love and that if the wretches don't understand it, then it's their own fault that they suffer, and it's the mangled corpses in the jail cellars who're to blame for all their troubles, not the benevolent leaders! Intellectuals? You might have to worry about any other breed of men, but not about the modern intellectuals: they'll swallow anything. I don't feel so safe about the lousiest wharf rat in the longshoremen's union: he's liable to remember suddenly that he is a man—and then I won't be able to keep him in line. But the intellectuals? That's the one thing they've forgotten long ago. I guess it's the one thing that all their education was aimed to make them forget. Do anything you please to the intellectuals. They'll take it.”

Two entirely different cultures of different time periods have the same description of intellectuals: hypocrites who hate anything that is rational. The original meaning has been distorted to such an extent that it would be better to change its dictionary definition so as to eliminate any confusion regarding the type of person intellectuals are.   

बीजेपी-पीडीपी गठबंधन: समर्पण या समझौता?

एक बाबाजी की कहानी मैंने कई बार सुनी है, कहानी कुछ इस तरह है – एक प्रसिद्ध बाबाजी थे, घर-बार और पत्नी को बाबाजी शादी के तुरंत बाद ही त्याग चुके थे। अब तो मस्ती में इधर से उधर घूमते और दिन-रात बस देश-दुनिया की भलाई की चिंता करते थे। ऐसे ही एक दिन बाबाजी अपनी मस्ती में कहीं जा रहे थे, कि उसी वक्त पीछे से (यानि जिस दिशा में बाबाजी जा रहे थे, उसी दिशा में) बहुत तेज हवा चलने लगी। हवा के कारण बाबाजी की जटा के बाल उड़कर आँखों और मुँह पर आने लगे, बाबाजी बार-बार धैर्यपूर्वक बाल पीछे करते रहे लेकिन हवा के आगे उनकी एक न चली। आखिर परेशान होकर बाबाजी मुड़े और विपरीत दिशा में मुँह करके  खड़े हो गए। “अपने को क्या है, अपने को तो कहीं-न-कहीं चलना ही है”, ये शब्द बड़बड़ाते हुए बाबाजी फ़िर से उसी मस्ती में हवा की विपरीत दिशा में चल पड़े।

हमारे देश के नेता भी इन्हीं बाबाजी की तरह हैं, जिधर राजनीति की हवा अनुकूल लगती है, उधर ही चल पड़ते हैं, ना अपने तथाकथित आदर्शों की परवाह करते हैं और ना भूतकाल में की गई बड़ी-बड़ी बातों की। इसी हवा का नतीजा है कि कोई अपने बच्चों की झूठी कसम खाता है, तो कोई “लुटेरे बाप-बेटे” और “Naturally Corrupt Party” के नेताओं की शादी में शामिल होता है। एक नेता के  ही शब्दों में कहें तो “नेताओं का सिर्फ़ एक ही धर्म होता है – कुर्सी फ़र्स्ट, नेताओं को और कोई रंग नहीं दिखता, सिर्फ़ सत्ता का रंग दिखता है”। ये तथ्य थोड़ा कड़वा जरूर है, लेकिन है सोलह आने 

सच।

मोदी और शाह भी ऐसे ही नेता हैं, इन्हें ना शरद पवार से समर्थन लेने से परहेज है और ना जीतन राम माँझी को देने से। इसलिए जब बीजेपी ने धारा 370, अलगाववादियों और AFSPA पर अपने कदम पीछे खींचकर पीडीपी के साथ मिलकर सरकार बनाने की घोषणा की तो मुझे जरा भी हैरानी नहीं हुई, हैरानी हो रही है तो उन भक्तों पर जो येन-केन-प्रकारेण इस सरकार को अमित शाह की चाणक्य-बुद्धि का मास्टरस्ट्रोक साबित करने पर तुले हुए हैं। ढूँढ ढूँढ कर ऐसी-ऐसी थ्योरीज निकाली जा रहीं हैं जो खुद अमित ‘चाणक्य’ भाई शाह और मोदी के भी पल्ले नहीं पड़ें।
       

इसे बीजेपी का पीडीपी के आगे पूर्ण समर्पण ही कहा जायेगा, डील या समझौता तो तभी कहा जाता जब थोड़ा पीडीपी झुकती और थोड़ा बीजेपी, लेकिन अभी तक तो बीजेपी पीडीपी के सामने नतमस्तक दिखाई दे रही है। सत्ता में आनें का बीजेपी को नैतिक और संवैधानिक अधिकार है क्योंकि पीडीपी के बाद जम्मू और कश्मीर में वही दूसरी सबसे बड़ी पार्टी है, लेकिन इस कदर पीडीपी की मांगों के आगे पूर्ण समर्पण कर देना कहीं से भी उचित नहीं है। मात्र तीन दिन के अंदर पीडीपी के गिरगिटों ने, पाकिस्तान और अलगाववादियों को “शांतपूर्वक चुनाव होने देने” के लिए धन्यवाद देकर और आतंकी अफ़जल का शव मांगकर, अपना असली रंग दिखाना शुरु कर दिया है। बीजेपी को याद रखना चाहिए कि जिस प्रकार सांप को दूध पिलाने से सांप वफ़ादार नहीं बन जाता, उसी प्रकार बीजेपी चाहे कुछ भी करे, वो कुछ पाकिस्तान-प्रेमी कश्मीरियों का दिल नहीं बदल सकती। अगर मोदी सोच रहे हैं कि बीजेपी को सरकार में शामिल करवाकर वो ‘भटके हुए’ कुछ कश्मीरियों को मुख्यधारा में शामिल कर पाएंगे तो उन्हें जान लेना चाहिए कि सूअर को गंगा नहला देने से वो इंसान नहीं बन जाता, उसे तो वापस कीचड़ में ही लौटना है।