i-TFTD #189: Thank You, Readers of i-TFTD

The greatest gift you can give someone is your time because when you are giving someone your time, you are giving them a portion of your life that you will never get back.

-Rick Warren, in The Purpose-Driven Life

i-TFTD was born with an email titled, “Bless You My Friends” to fellow participants of a leadership programme on 31-Jan-2005 followed by a few Thoughts for the Day on 2-Feb-2005. Arun Wakhlu and Kuku Singh (who at least once a year praises the continuity of i-TFTD) inspired me on the day that R Raghavendran expressed a desire that someone should send a few nice quotes by email periodically. What a simple thought! What a great idea!

If you have something to do that is worthwhile doing, don't talk about it, but do it. After you have done it, your friends and enemies will talk about it.

-George W. Blount

I sincerely thank each of you, too numerous to list here, for the kind words you have periodically sent that fueled my enthusiasm in ensuring that i-TFTD has continued without a break for over 212 weeks except during my annual vacation. Many have contributed to the kitty of inspiring quotes and articles. Some names deserve mention on this 300th (or 4th) anniversary of the original series of i-TFTD (new ones were started to share the same ones to those who subscribed later and the blog had not started where one could refer).

Thanks HVS, Mohan-ji, Shibu, Gopi and Santos(h) for generous and repeated praise in the initial days in 2005 that enthused me to keep this up at least once a week amidst long and hectic work days. V Shankar among others used the quotes and actively encouraged new subscribers.

Our heads are round so that thoughts can change direction.

-Francis Picabia, painter and poet (1879-1953)

Some thoughtful queries and brief mail discussions with people who had interesting interpretations enriched me. Thanks to some names I can recall: Anushtup Sett, Vinod Govindan, Goosie Srinivasan, Pranav Parikh, Loganathan Damodaran, Vivek Sathe, Amitabh Roy Chowdhury, Vijay Desai, S Ketharaman, Amol H Joshi, Ramanan Jagannathan, Uday Agashe, K Shailesh, Shekhar Parpattedar, Bhavana Mallesh, Shuja Rahman, Paresh Madani, Sheenam Ohrie, S P Aditya and Venkatesh Chetlur. Thanks to all others I may not have recalled. Thanks to Nitin Sharma and Aditya Ghanti who persuaded me to blog these.

We can't see eye to eye, but at least we can feel heart to heart.

-Anon

Quite a few individuals (who shall remain unnamed) sent touching mails about a particular quote somehow helping them with a problem situation they were facing. Such (undeserved) gratitude used to surprise me but I have come to understand it to some extent as described in i-TFTD #165 20-Apr-2007: Instant Learning also available online here. I am also grateful to the  few former colleagues who said that i-TFTD had become a habit, that it was an energizer they expected on some mornings a week, requesting to send it to their personal email IDs.

We probably wouldn't worry about what people think of us if we could know how seldom they do.

-Olin Miller

Cherry picking from a multitude of possibilities, filtering only what I find thought-provoking, guessing what might appeal to a few known and a large number of diverse, unknown colleagues, spontaneously typing a couple of top-of-the-mind comments… this is one of the few things in life that I have persisted doing more or less the same way for 4 years—and pray to be able to continue…

I wish you success in identifying your innate talents and goodness, and putting your strengths to create a better world for yourself,

RG