I had a good hearted friend who used to call me every morning and talk to me for about an hour or so about the issues, challenges and the plans he intends to deploy in the future. Since he is a good gentleman, I kept on listening to him for years. One fine day I awakened and realised that he is discussing the same aspect over and over again in different flavours, nevertheless he has not changed nor deployed any of which he discussed with me. It was quite evident that he had simply immersed my precious time, which I could have easily invested on something more productive for myself and my family. Sometimes you come across passengers in your life who are nothing more than those who waste your resources, especially your time, without you even knowing it.

I have spent unaccountable hours of my time on my friend, thus I have decided to drop him off the bus in my life with immediate effect so that I can invest that time in a productive undertaking. I recall the days when my grandmother used to purify rice in a kitchen utensil known as the ‘nabiliya’to remove the stones in the rice. During those times there were not very many sand and stone free rice. To tell you precisely, this is exactly what we need to do in our lives if we desire to conclude this race victoriously. I suggest that all of you dig deep into yourselves and identify such resource eaters who simply destroy your time, space, peace of mind as well as your wealth.

The day I dropped that friend out of my bus, I felt as though I was freed from a blood sucking leach. My mornings became so productive. Just as breakfast is vital for a person's wellbeing so is the first person you speak to in the morning. You obviously would not eat a stale koththu roti (A Sri Lankan street food) for breakfast, as you are certain that it is going to be a bad start that will affect the rest of your day. I have had some bad days as a result of consuming unhygienic awful meals from thosai boutiques. This is what I have been doing during the last two years. I have been listening to this friend of mine who is merely a talker and not a doer. Just as you would hum a few lines of a song that you have been listening to continuously for over a hundred times, these resource eaters may influence your thoughts and push you away from your originality.

This is the reason you need to have a better understanding of the people who are with you in your bus, as they hold a direct impact on your life. One of the biggest mistakes we make in our lives is getting carried away with what people talk about instead of focusing on their actions. Many people make decisions based on the commercials they see on the television screen rather than gathering real life experience from those who have consumed the product. We need to fathom the reality that there are only very few people who would walk the walk they talk. The majority of people who talk about white are black from within.

However, the problem is not with them but with us, we need to understand that we cannot convert a poisonous plant into a good plant. Yet, we can certainly identify it as a poisonous plant, thereby you can refrain from giving ear to it. Think along with me for a moment, are you a person who decides about people based on their promises or do you focus on what they deliver which is known as his ‘actions’. Another mistake that we make at times is that we do not enter into life’s situations with a conscious frame of mind. In many occasions both the real gold and the imitation gold look alike from a distance which is why the pawning centers check the jewellry before they are accepted to be pawned.

Therefore, it is time that you analyse the people in your circle, evaluate if they are truly productive or if they are time wasters, peace eaters and those who occupy junk in your mind. You are not a guinea pig for such resource eaters, are you? My grandma used to collect a lot of plastic bags, bottles and such similar garbage at our house. When we ask her to throw them away, she says it will be important someday. The day she was no longer with us, we had to get rid of loads of plastic she had underneath her bed and many more unnecessary wastes which had not only consumed a lot of space in her room but it had also made her room a mess. Isn’t this the exact thing we do in our lives, we keep on initiating unproductive, single sided relationships on a daily basis.

Sometimes we are so blinded that we think many of our relationships are two sided simply because of the power of the speech of many. How many duplicate products have we bought thinking that they are original? or that they might at least perform similar to the original? The only way you can smell a fake person is to take away your focus from the very showy words he uses in their day to day actions. Even though a fake could act as the original for a brief time, yet, he cannot continue to represent the original for a longer period. This is why I said that we must focus on the behaviour of the fakes, if we are to identify them in order to drop them from our bus in life.

Some of these passengers are similar to my friend, they are nice people, no harm, not evil but they are simply talkers who destroy your time and peace. The next problem we face is handling our emotions at such times when we decide to keep away from such people, for instance we tend to think “will they get hurt”, “will I need them in the future for some help”, this sort of anxious thoughts are based on our insecurity. If you think you will succeed because you are surrounded by a lot of people, then you are indeed mistaken. When I started my life for the second time, nobody except my father wanted to come forward to help to find a job. Leave aside being helpful in finding a job, people were even reluctant to be a reference in my CV, due to my extremely dreadful history and the vagabond appearance I had when I started life for the second time.

Yet, one gentleman by the name of Sanjiv Keerthiratne, a CEO of a leading financial company stepped forward and told me to use his name as a referee in my CV. I applied to a countless number of jobs and found a good one without the help of a single human being. Therefore, if you are living in insecurity, you will never be able to grow personally. Don’t you think it is always better to have your own foot cycle instead of driving someone else’s car with pride. It is always better to live in your own small hut and develop yourself later rather than living a showy life in someone else’s rented house.

Hence, you must challenge your insecurities and make a bold decision that is beneficial to you and your loving family. There are two types ofendings in life. There are those who start life badly yet they end up being victorious and then there are those who had a very good start but they end their lives so miserably. If you closely observe the set of people who started life well yet ended it badly, it is quite evident that there have been some disastrous relationships midway.
For comments: philipnehri@chandanlepa. lk / voice – 0779 526 496