Secret Of Staying Young

Penelope Cruz

Once I read an interview given by Penelope Cruz, a famous Spanish actress and model where the interviewer asked her why she wanted to go back to university despite having a promising acting career at her disposal. I still remember her response to this question; she said that if she went to university for her studies, she would feel young because learning makes one feel young and energetic.

One of my cousin brothers who is a university professor also has a similar view. He told me that he never feels old as he needs to deal with a young bunch of students on a daily basis and in their company my brother has to be one of them to fit into their discourse, to learn about the contemporary topics or to get a membership in their group. His position will be renewed every year with a new set of students. This makes my cousin more enthusiastic and eager to deliver his lessons in a new manner too.

I also think that as long as one is ready to learn things which keep changing regularly, they do not feel old or one’s growing age does not determine his fading youth, instead a lack of interests towards learning indicates that the person’s growth has stopped as well.

In this context, I remember one of my workmates who had spent more than two decades working in different fields. His extensive work experience may have been a reason behind his reluctance to learn new skills or knowledge that his new position would demand. To encourage him, one day I said, “Sir, this office provides us with a lot of learning opportunities, so we should learn new things which help us to produce quality work.” Contrary to my expectation his response greatly surprised me, “How long should I learn? I have spent all these years in learning and what to learn now?”

It was as if he had learned everything he needed or he knew all the things in this vast universe. At that time I thought he did not want to grow further now, meaning he got old. Soon after that, it became clear that he could not cope with the challenging office environment and he quit his job.

Doubtlessly, a positive attitude towards learning is one of the major keys to success. If one wants to fit in this globalised and dynamic world they should never say “No” to learning. The concept of ‘lifelong learning’ also justifies this fact. In the simplest of terms, lifelong learning is defined as, “the provision or use of both formal and informal learning opportunities throughout people’s lives in order to foster the continuous development and improvement of the knowledge and skills needed for employment and personal fulfillment.”

Therefore, in my opinion learning is an essential part of life. As long as you are a passionate learner you will feel lively and young but once you start feeling unwilling towards learning you stop living purposefully too. Learning helps you keep going.

(Published in an English Daily The Rising Nepal on Friday, Sept. 1, 2017 ) 

[The pictures on this blog are posted here with permission from their owners or have been gathered from various sources on the Internet. If you are the copyright-holder to any of the photographs herein do not hesitate to contact me. They will be swiftly removed if desired so.]

Everyday Heroes

Usually, we see heroes as special people who do incredible things and win people’s hearts. So, they must be a celebrity. A simple dictionary definition of a hero is “a person who, in the opinion of others, has special achievements, abilities, or personal qualities and is regarded as a role model or ideal.” And obviously they must be popular.

However, it is not always necessary that one should have special qualities to be a hero. Everyday heroes are just as ordinary as any one of us but they do something extraordinary and get noticed. Even if they do not get noticed it does not matter to them.

Photo: The Kathmandu Post

For instance, a couple of weeks ago a school girl grabbed the public attention by her genuine gesture towards humanity. It was a rainy day and the streets of Kathmandu Valley were flooded. Sujana Gole, a ninth grader, was returning home from school when she saw a man in a wheelchair, who was stuck on a flooded street in Bauddha. Without losing a second she rushed towards the man and started pulling him out to rescue him. A photojournalist was there right on time to capture this moment with his camera, and this photo created a ripple on social media. Regardless of whatever people commented on her great deed it was not a big deal for Sujata. She made it clear in an interview, “I was just doing what I felt was the right thing to do at that moment.” 
Similarly, there was a recent news story about a 24 year-old-girl, Sarita Maharjan, who happily donated her liver to her father who had serious complications with his liver. Sujata and Sarita were lucky as the media noticed them and publicized their inspirational stories. On the other hand, there are many other people in our society who do great things but such things never get acknowledged. For example, a mother in a family performs a lot of duties to make the family happy and functional; she takes care of every member’s needs without expecting any reward, praise or fame in return.

Everyday heroes possess some fine traits. They do not have any hunger for publicity; it is their instinct which pushes them towards helping others; they think they are doing ordinary actions to express kindness, courage or love but these actions wind up having an extraordinary impact on other people’s lives.

A Stanford University professor, Philip Zimbardo, conducted a study on 4,000 adults and found that 20 per cent of them qualified as everyday heroes. For him, such heroes had helped others during a dangerous emergency, taken a stand against injustice, or sacrificed for a stranger. According to Zimbardo, “Heroes are ordinary people. You become a hero by doing an extraordinary deed.” 

As humans we all have the capacity to be an everyday hero. Looking at our current situation, for instance, several parts of the nation are suffering from flash floods and landslides. All the volunteers working to help the victims are heroes. They choose to travel to the flood affected areas in order to try and make a difference in others’ lives, even though they are putting their life at risk by doing so.

(Published in an English Daily The Rising Nepal on Friday, August 18, 2017 ) 

[The pictures on this blog are posted here with permission from their owners or have been gathered from various sources on the Internet. If you are the copyright-holder to any of the photographs herein do not hesitate to contact me. They will be swiftly removed if desired so.]

Reality Bites

Although this incident dates back to 2009, it always haunts me. It was the time when I was preparing myself to apply for a prestigious scholarship at Monash University, Australia to continue my PhD which I started in 2008. Along with academic excellence, the publication of two articles in renowned scholarly journals was a prerequisite to get that scholarship. Since I had a good academic track record and two articles of mine were published in the NELTA Journal, the only scholarly journal available in Nepal at that time to publish the articles related to English teaching/learning, I was confident about getting the scholarship.

My dream was shattered when the scholarship committee refused to consider the NELTA Journal as a “scholarly journal” according to the criteria the university had set. Although my faculty (Faculty of Education) tried hard to negotiate with the committee to make the committee members understand the value of the NELTA Journal among Nepali English teachers, the answer was a big “NO” to give the scholarship on the basis of the articles published in the journal. At that time I was very sad and furious. I could not do anything except for turning to other ways to find other scholarships.

I only realised the flaws of the NELTA Journal when I came into contact with the international journals in relation to publication of my articles later. As I said earlier, my bitter NELTA Journal experience is more than half a dozen years old. I hope the journal has improved up to the international level by now. If it has, I heartily congratulate.

The most important thing a scholarly journal must have is some common criteria for an article to be published, such as, word-count, contribution the article makes in the related field, research-based, literature review, language use, referencing style and so on.

Secondly, the article in question must be peer-reviewed. Basically in peer review, the journal appoints two independent reviewers who review the article following the given criteria. To make their reviews unbiased the writer’s name is withdrawn from the article. There are many chances that the article can be rejected after going through the review process. In other situations, it is almost impossible for any article submitted to get accepted without being revised addressing the reviewers’ comments. A second, third or even fourth rewriting is needed to eventually be accepted and published.

In a nutshell, to get published in a scholarly journal is an extensive process, which may take a couple of years (particularly for novice authors) from the first submission to publication. With these experiences when I go back to my NELTA Journal articles I feel embarrassed. Let’s forget about peer-review. Those articles could be much better if I was given some sort of guidelines to follow. Then perhaps there would have been a possibility of me receiving the targeted scholarship. All I want is for the contributors to the NELTA Journal to not have to face the same predicament that I once had to. If the Journal claims it is a “renowned and scholarly” it must be regarded as such around the globe.

(Published in an English Daily The Rising Nepal on Friday, August 4, 2017 ) 

[The pictures on this blog are posted here with permission from their owners or have been gathered from various sources on the Internet. If you are the copyright-holder to any of the photographs herein do not hesitate to contact me. They will be swiftly removed if desired so.]