New Year Resolutions

From now onwards, I plan to blog regularly about our weekly study circles. For those of you who don’t know, I participate in (mostly) weekly study circles with other Young Adults from the Sai Group, where we discuss about various spiritual, personality related, and general topics. Last week’s study circle topic was New Year Resolutions. Darshan lead the study circle with the following questions.

1. What is important in your life?
2. How much time do you spend in trying to achieve these important things?
3. What would happen if you found out that you were to die in 7 days?
4. What would you try to do in those seven days?
5. How much time would you allocate in the day for achieving these things?

This was a very interesting study circle because the first few questions made me think about my material, career and life oriented goals (like my PhD proposal defense, summer internship, life partner, life after my PhD, etc.) but as the study circle progressed the attention shifted entirely to the character. The things I thought of when I will die in 7 days were service and life partner (quite interesting, isn’t it) unlike many others who thought about their family. The service aspect of my answer related to the research and teaching career I want to pursue and the summer campaigns I want to hold. So in order to mould myself in order to accomplish them in the end, the change has to come in my character, in terms of being more kind to people, controlling my emotions and help whenever possible. Swami (Bhagwan Sri Sathya Sai Baba) always says ‘The End of Education is Character’ and this study circle enforced the need to develop that character.