SRK: Failure is your fiendish friend

After watching half of the movie A Dangerous Method, and listening to some of the interesting conversations of Freud and Jung's characters I wanted to collect some of their talks have have them recorded here for reference. As the day began today, I as usual on internet, spent time seeing some news and unrelated things and came across, the transcripts of Shahrukh Khan's (SRK) talk at Yale during his acceptance of Chubb Fellowship for 2011-2012. I haven't ,uch heard of this fellowship in contrast to knowing about the person in context here.

I seem to like the oratory skills of Shahrukh and like the way he puts his thoughts together before others. Its definitely a skills that gets honed by practice (just like acting) and observing the world around. After reading though the transcripts, I felt its worth some time to jot down his thought here instead. Here it goes, taken from this place.

SRK mentioned a apparently unrelated story about a dying man:

A dying man, gasping for breath, desperately gestured to the priest by his side for a piece of paper. With great effort, he then wrote a few words on it, handed it to the priest and passed away. The priest kept the paper in his pocket and forgot all about it until the final service. Here he suddenly recalled the dead man's last scribble. Unfolding the paper, he told the funereal congregation that he was about to read great words of inspiration to them. The piece of paper had these words on it....

"You are standing on my oxygen tube...fool..."

From the context of the story its not apparent how this story is connected to the inspirational talk that SRK plans to deliver in his fellowship acceptance speech. It just takes a few more minutes to understand the relevance of this story to the people living and encountering real world and lastly helping the listener to survive this life. And if one can do that... to survive... other things like happiness, creativity, and success follows on its own... AND if life seems to offer lemons at least one tries to live this live nevertheless rather than not recognizing that it is one's life that might have gotten spent without even recognizing.

The seemingly irrelevant story was meant to give an enough insight that one can tell the world (if necessary)... "hey guys you are standing on my oxygen tube... move over and let me breathe".

Talking about destinations of a journey called life: It perhaps is very certainly uncertain but certainly very interesting and exhilarating (at the end, perhaps) to have a life experience without knowing even one predisposed destination. One walk and runs to ones wishes, in the direction of their dreams (at that phase of life-journey). Accepting the certainty of the fact that: exterior (out of self control) things change along the way, people change, self changes, the world changes, even ones aspiration and dreams change. One need not have to think ( a milder way of putting "worry) about not arriving at an already decided destination as one does not have a place to arrive (at the beginning of journey), one just keeps doing what one knows and learns about how to do the best that one can do it. And probably picks up new skills about things that one never knew before the journey began. Life is always interesting and teaches you a lot of things and enriches the journey. Whats the point in being the same person after the journey ends. What did such a journey achieve for the self? apart from reaching a pre-decided place. Proving the tenet that a person can achieve what was carefully planned and executed. At the end, ending up a deluded vintage in a wheelchair, waiting for ones flight out of this world. In this talk SRK sums up that he seems to have understood that the measure of his life lies in the expanse of his heart's experience and nothing else matters.

I was reading a book by James Higgins, "101 Creative Problem Solving Techniques" that mentions that US economy is being transformed from an industrial economy to one based on knowledge and information. I would add that this statement is valid for the entire world and it is an information age that we live in. By information I also include the knowledge base developed by us. The same thoughts were mentioned during one of the visits of Dr. Kalam to my alma mater SSSIHL. It all does make sense that I look back at the common thread that proposes human knowledge as a precious resource rather than material things that occur as a consequence of using this knowledge. In this talk, SRK also seems to be of the same thought as he mentions that his life has centered around creativity and he appreciates that the world through his creative expression. The world will always uphold creativity as the most honest feeling possible. SRK further dwells on why one uses creativity as a means to express one self? why does on do that...? Because sometimes it allows us to feel better than the creator (if there is one, I am not sure if SRK refers to the creator from his subjective conviction or his need for creator's existence) and sometimes, it fills a void within us that comes about by being in awe of the creation. In either way, ones creativity enables us to quantify one's engagement with the surrounding world.

Learn to laugh at yourselves too. Never become cynical about yourself and your life. Becoming cynical about your life is the single most destructive thing you can do to it.

I did not want to dilute the spirit of the talk and instead decided to paste some of his speech transcripts instead.

For you have to remember.... Creativity is your gift to the world. It was never meant to be barter for anything, not even appreciation. You have to dig deep, I do it while drinking vodka after vodka... listening to self pitying, loser songs... you should find a less destructive way... however you do it... but you have to believe... that you create only because this is the biggest gift you have to give to your world. Maybe that's we even say God is a creator.

It's not about the cars or houses...it never was... those are peripherals. They never come about because of your talent or your creative outpourings... they come out of a business that people around you do. Those people are in the business of barter -- not you. Yours is the business of giving and learning. Your work of art may never be complete in your lifetime. Your fulfillment will always lie in your creative expression not in its products.

You always have a choice between barter and creation. Life as a creator will always be a tight rope. So...

• Do not try to feed your stomach with creativity, it is food for your soul, not your stomach.
• Do not be afraid to defy conventions.
• Do not be afraid to destroy systems that kill art and your souls.
• Do not be afraid to be hungry.
• Do not be afraid to walk alone if necessary. Because on a tightrope we all walk alone.
  
• Remember....if you are a creator you are a artist and not very many people know that word...let alone be it.
  

If you are smart, if you want to survive life's relentless onslaught of challenges, you will sooner or later understand that the things that made you happy ten years ago will end up being the ones that make you happy when you hit the geriatric superhero stage. Kids...start collecting your action figures, now! Happiness, in other words, lies in the things you will never be able to count.

• Firstly, it's not the absence of failure that makes you a success...it is your response to failure that actually helps to buffer the reverses that you experience. I personally have one response to failure... pragmatism... a recognition and belief that if one approach does not work...then the other will or might.
• Failure also gives me an incentive to greater exertion... harder work...which invariably leads to later success in most cases.
• Repeated failure has taught me to stop pretending I am someone else. Its given me the clarity to stick to the things that really matter to me instead of distracting me from my core...
• Failure also gets you to find...who your real friends are. The true strength of your relationships only gets tested in the face of strong adversity.
• Overcoming some of my failures has made me discover that I have a strong will...and more discipline than I suspected. It has helped me have confidence in my ability to survive.

You have to know and learn that life is a not just a check list of acquisitions, attainments and fulfillments, your qualifications and CVs don't really matter. Instead life is difficult and complicated... and beyond anyone's control. The humility to know this will help you survive its vicissitudes.

My hope for all of you is that you retain a lifelong love of learning, that you never cease to dream exciting and inspiring dreams, and when you fail, you fail well enough to succeed the next time. Don't be afraid of being afraid, be afraid of not facing your fears and failures.