Gains and pains

We all know or at least we all are taught this axiom: No pain, No gain. I was watching “Life’s six rules" by Arnold Schwarzenegger in YouTube the other day. I liked his narration on hard work, the quote from Mohammed Ali, the world boxing champion. Ali was asked “How many sit-ups do you do?” He said “I don’t count my sit-ups. I only start counting when it starts hurting. When I feel pain, that is when I start counting because that is when it really counts”.

 

Few weeks back my uncle sent me information on how to publish a book of my own. Somehow my painful blogs made him realize that my hidden agenda is to write and publish a book, and to start with, the best option will be to become an indie author (If you see yourself as creative director of your book from concept to completion and beyond, then you are an indie). I started thinking seriously in those lines to avoid pains of approaching any publishing house and working out complicated contractual terms with them!  

But what I read today made me take a few steps back. It seems on Amazon site, every five minutes one new book is getting added and most probably it is an indie book. In such a scenario, one has to put in extra ordinary efforts to make people read what he writes in the hope of making some gains. I decided to postpone that venture till my mind and body get better prepared to bare such enormous pain. Till such time I decided to continue to scribble like this - to pain a few people with some smaller gains for me!

Sometimes gain happens with no pain. There was one small-time tea vendor in our area. He never used to put any additional effort to grow bigger, he never attempted more than just making tea and selling it for a small profit. He was happy. One fine day he won a lottery, that happy news was reported in all leading newspapers. With the free money, he went all out, tried all new stuff which he was not an expert of and got tired. To state that he failed miserably in all counts will be an understatement, he resumed selling his usual tea with in a year. That gain brought him only pain during the period when he blew that money and when he didn’t make tea.

 I was traveling in the state run ordinary bus. The gain was to attend to college to learn something which I didn’t have any clue how it would help me in the future. The pain was the travel itself in the jam-packed bus for an hour. But that day I was almost at the verge of gaining something additional with no effort. 

I was enjoying sitting in the middle of two well built, over-sized gentlemen, my thin body frame only made their journey more comfortable.I was trying to get out from that tangle as my destination approached, the giant in the left growled “Why are you leaving this here? Don’t you want this?”. I looked down and was astonished. A huge bundle of currency notes was lying under my feet, I had never seen such a big bundle in my life. I was so shocked, I didn’t have presence of mind to think those lessons learnt till in class III that one should not greedily take something that does not belong to him. Luckily I didn’t have presence of mind either to think that this amount would be sufficient pocket money for next one year to do some justice to my thin body frame! Just a few words came out of me as I started walking “No that’s not mine!” .

Yes, no pain, no gain. But one needs to make sure that others don’t get unnecessarily pained in the pursuit of his gain. Also, if some gains come to us with no pain, we need to accept it whole-heartedly with both hands, if it is legitimate and with no wrong doing. But then, we need to first understand how much effort one has to put in in order to achieve that gain. And make double the effort to sustain and amplify those gains. So that we don't end up in saying "no gain, no pain".


(Link for “Life’s six rules" by Arnold Schwarzenegger video :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_299909&feature=iv&src_vid=LuJ4hbkLiY0&v=9Kg-zbJjlyA