On the same day while returning home, I got a cab near to my office which was going directly to my suburb. Unfortunately there was a hectic traffic jam. As the cab driver was in a hurry to reach his destination, he took diversions into various side streets to avoid the traffic jam. One route he had taken was very close to my apartment and so I got an opportunity to be dropped off just in front of my door. I felt relieved and my bad mood dissipated altogether.

This was a simple instance of the duality that punctuates our existence. While experiencing a stressful situation in the morning by having to walk 3 kilometers to get to my office, in the evening I regained my balance as I was dropped off just in front of my apartment and arrived home very early.

Morning it was a pain; evening it was a gain.

This simple experience reminded me that life is about cycles and we must experience complementary opposites in every facet of existence.

Within every 24 hours we have bright daylight and dark nights. Dark nights are automatically followed by sun-drenched days and vice versa. We have gotten used to the cycle and never doubt that one will follow the other.

Similarly our life cycle is about phases of success and failure, happiness and sorrow and so on. But the only difference is that we do not know the time frame for our personal cycles; it is not fixed like the 24 hour day and night rotation so we all tend to get dejected during our down cycles. However we must remember that although we may not know exactly when one cycle will end and the next cycle of our lives will begin….we do know it will happen….It is a fixed law of the universe and in this fact we must find solace and wait patiently for the season to change.

Simply stated, traditional marriage is grounded in a legal association between a male and female who agree to honour prescribed vows with an understanding to share their lives and care for each other until one passes away.

The legal obligation underlines the need for constant commitment and it helps to bring significant stability and meaning to human relationships. It motivates both partners to stay committed to their relationship through the happy as well as the challenging times.

A marriage is a lifetime investment of love, hope and aspirations.

A day begins at home and ends at home. Everyone possesses unique personal habits. Our daily activities may be a simple routine but it will change as we grow older. Also as human beings, our temperaments will also undergo transformation across the years. Nothing in life is constant. We evolve with time and our partner must be able to understand, recognize and appreciate these changes that come with time. We too must be emotionally mature and and mentally accommodating to allow our partner the space to grow into a completely self-realized individual.

Moreover, life will always present us with financial, health, emotional or spiritual challenges as we grow older and our partner should be understanding and supportive during the best and worst of times. Much care and sensitivity must be factored into any marriage to build up the trust and reliability factors. A marriage should be based on more than physical attraction, a desire to have children, or to please parents. There should be emotional, mental and spiritual compatibility or else both partners will be sentenced to a lifetime of alienation and bitterness.

Much care, and time should be taken before agreeing to exchange marriage vows and both parties should be apprised of the fact that marriage while bringing many joyful moments is also fraught with disappointment and tears. A successful marriage is like a good recipe whose main ingredients are love, commitment, understanding, concern and togetherness.

Ask any couple that has been married for over ten years. They will reveal that a happy relationship or good marriage takes hard work, patience, devotion, sacrifice and at times, heartaches in order to last a lifetime. For that, we need to find the right person and to be the right person. Martin Luther was correct when he wrote, “There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.”

But in these times of instant gratification and self-indulgence, how many of us are willing to work that hard?

Success comes with a price of failure. We were meant to grow and learn from our mistakes. How much we have paid for the lessons of failure determines our next step to success.

Generally we do not wish to face failure because we get depressed. But without knowing the bad thing how can one appreciate the good thing? We take a lot of precautions to avoid failure but at one time or other every one is certain to face it in one way or other.

Every achievement has a very big failure story woven in it somewhere. The only thing we need to understand here is that we should be ready to face failure with resilience while waiting for the right moment to convert it into success.

God has already given this determination to all of us the moment we born. Every child possesses an inner impulse to develop beyond limitations. This could be observed in his or her first attempts in learning how to walk. Toddlers fail many times while learning how to make those first steady steps but will learn from their errors and keep trying until success comes along. Walking is the major achievement of kids. As their mobility improves, so does their ability to investigate new areas of interest.

Abraham Lincoln said, “Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”

We all know this very well and yet as we grow up we forget our childhood enthusiam and get depressed the moment we face failure.

Let us persevere with conviction when seeking success, the seeds of which are usually waiting to sprout from our first failed attempts.

From this statement we can infer that even God, the Almighty Creator who is omnipotent and omnipresent craves appreciation (a kind of motivation).

Therefore….. when God our Creator is craving appreciation, it is no wonder after all that we as mere human beings would need appreciation and motivation in our real lives.

God created Man with knowledge to recognize His talent & appreciate Him.

Therefore…. With the knowledge endowed by God, we as human beings should want to put forth our talents to appreciate and enhance everything around us including ourselves.

To put the above in practice:

Let’s learn to start appreciating our Creator first while worshipping Him to fulfill our wishes.

As human beings are the only ones who can appreciate themselves, let us appreciate each other wholeheartedly without reservation, in our short span of life.