Preparing for the Winters

I might have titled this blog as 'Preparing for winters' or even 'Saving for a rainy day'!! Well, the essence I wanted to convey is much more important. This comes out of sheer experience of not only myself, but also from people around me. This blog is not a "Take my advice, I do not follow it anyway" kind, but it's about something which everyone has to ponder over, including myself.

Now, let me start with the 'Boiling frog' story. If a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out immediately. But, if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will never jump out. Watch the video at the following link: http://www.boilingfrogstory.com/boilfrog.htm. There are several examples to illustrate this fact. One among them, the "US Big-3" or "Detroit Big-3" viz., GM, Ford and Chrysler. The auto sales of these manufacturers was slowly eclipsed (over-shadowed) by the Japanese brands - Toyota, Nissan and Honda, for, the formers didn't notice the Japanese counterparts being threat to their existence. Today, we unfortunately see the giants in choppy waters.

Since the fallout of the Lehman brothers begun, the world witnessed significant drop in liquidity and this lead to the cyclic collapse. The supply-demand-production cycle took a major hit during the meltdown, we have seen so many good companies reporting losses over the previous fiscal. No one had ever thought the economic crisis to be so deep that it'd ruin and deprive the world. Again, this is another illustration of the 'Boiling frog'.

Ok! now, what to do? We do not have time machine to move back, have the fallouts corrected and make ourselves comfortable. Let's hit the head of the nail now, by understanding the title of this blog. As I said, I had an alternate title in my mind when I started writing the blog. Nevertheless, I'll quote some more of these idioms as we go along. These are of no use if we don't practise them in our lives ofcourse. :-)

Stock wood for the winter
Winters are severe in some countries, wherein temperatures usually run sub-zero. Now-a-days atleast, we have the thermostats in cars and houses, we won't feel the pinch of cold as long we are inside. But in the past, they use to lit fire by burning wood to keep themselves warm. The severe the winters, the more wood they used to stock for the next winter.

Save for a rainy day
This is another idiom commonly used to signify that we need to save money for difficult times the importance of which will not be felt until such a time occurs. Sudha Murthy (Infosys foundation) calls this money as "Apa-dhana" meaning, you should save this money as if it's not your belonging and keep it aside every month (in case of salaries) or everyday (in case of daily wages).

Forewarned is forearmed
Be agile and vigilant and well-read of situation around you, don't ever be in a Deep Sleep Mode (DSM - a terminology used in telecom domain :P). Things happening around us are enough good indicators for predicting or deducing what future might look like. Ofcourse, our predictions/deductions might not come true everytime, but they'll ofcourse make us more proactive. There are three types of things we can do with an action/event that occured, either React or Respond or be Proactive. Being proactive helps a lot. It's always good to be prepared for the challenges ahead of time, before the challenge actually arrives at the footsteps and starts shaking us up in which case there's every likelyhood that we'll falter and have a defeated look. But, there's another point I'd like to make here, I think I read it somewhere in rediff :-). It was "Enemies make you stronger, allies make you weaker". Even if there ain't enemies around you to fight against, have something in mind that you treat as an enemy, it needn't be persons, it might as well be the fear within you. Be brave enough.

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best
This is one of my favourites, I like going by this. Circumstances demand the actions we take in our life, and by experience, it's not just enough to have a hope that the best will happen, we need to prepare for the worst. It's something like a piece of code (a condition) that only handles the true case and doesn't handle the false case!!! :)

if (condition is true)
do something
// if you don't have an else case for the above,
// you are atmost sure that condition will always be true

It's bad to have such assumptions or pre-occupied thoughts. That's why "Prepare for the worst".