The famous adage goes “No one steps on the same river twice”. We change with every tick of our watch, every moment we are a new one. Not to forget as well, whatever we are now has come through smoothing against the friction of time. Time gives happiness, time gives pain and again time heals, in process teaching us something. So everything is all about learning, and in essence life is also about learning. As a child we started to babble few words, as a toddler we started to totter, as an adolescent we began to recognize letters, as a teenager we began to be attracted to opposite sex and as a youngster we started worrying about our career. Perhaps time will come when we will start thinking about our children and then their career, their marriage so and so on. So the learning process keeps going on till the extreme end of life, then we would be trying to search a peaceful place to rest our soul.

Learning for me seems to be seeing, listening, feeling, experimenting and finally deciding whether it’s right or not for me. The surrounding environment, my family, my friends and foes, my bosses, my teacher, my colleagues, my classmates, the society I belong to, the school I attended, the books I studied, the places I visited, the god I worship every body has certainly contributed in my learning. Whatever I am today is not only myself, but sum of whatever I have experienced, seen, heard and learnt put together.

So as I sit down to count today, I feel that everybody in my life taught me something. People that I meet inside Micro-Buses, those who pass by me as I walk, those who stare me, those who smile at me, everybody is giving me a lesson. Nowadays I try to find best things from the worst people I meet. I find that everybody, I shall repeat everybody, have something special, that no other has.

This doesn’t mean that whatever I have seen was always inspiring. Once I saw a selfish guy brings around 70 years old helpless woman in a tempo and leave in the midst of Sohrakhutte. Annoyed after knowing from her that the person bringing her was his own son, people gathered around brought everything they could to offer. Everyday I would get down from my micro-bus automatically go to the banana vendor, buy a bunch and offer in her shivering hand. That was all I could offer as a student, and her tearful penetrating eyes taught me what compassion means.

So that’s what I have learned, I am little bit of everybody and everything put together. We should try to see the best part of everybody and everything. That way round perhaps we will forget their darker side, only then would they appreciate us and forgiveness prevail. Only then would real peace come.