I am back!!!

if you are wondering where the hell did this nandoo go? i dont know.. i wasnt that busy .. nor i was travelling ...just like that... i didnt have the mood to write... i could call it lazyness... aama namma eluthi enna aaga poguthu ... but then.. after so many days... today .. nandoo woke up again and wanted to post something here ... again this is not my sondha saraku... it is a extract of a speech... and i dont read all this englees books.. i got this as a mail forward some 3 years back... but somehow i preserve this email for so long in my mail box and read it at times when i feel bit down... so i am publishing it here in my blog.... if you have read this before... thats alright.... ivalo thooram padichiteenga.. ithaiyum ennakaga oru thadava padichidungaaaa. .... :D

Commencement speech made by Pulitzer Prize-winning author AnnaQuindlen at Villanova University:

I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know.Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walkout of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has.

There will behundreds of people out there with your same degree;there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for aliving. But you will be the only personalive who has sole custody of your life.Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at adesk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Notjust the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not justyour bank account but your soul.

People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is a cold comfort on a winter night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've gotten back the test results and they're notso good.

Here is my resume:I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let myprofession stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longerconsider myself the center of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cutout. But I call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch. I would berotten, or at best mediocre at my job, if thoseother things were not true. You cannot be really first rate at yourwork if your work is all you are.So here's what I wanted to tell you today:

Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion,the bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you'd care sovery much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon,or found a lump in your breast? Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which you stop and watch how a red tailed hawk circles over the water or the way ababy scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheeriowith her thumb and first finger. Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread itaround. Take money you would have spent on beers and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough. It is so easy to waste our lives,our days, our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again.

It is so easy to exist instead of to live.I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey,not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal,and that today is the only guarantee you get.I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give someof it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And Itried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned.

By telling them this:Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear.Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy.And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived.