Just wanted to share something that was posted on the Microsoft intranet by a Microsoft SDET, Jay Prakash Govindaraju. If you can overlook some of the awkward sentence structures and typos, there are definitely nuggets of wisdom to digest and consider.
Why We Give
Every successful individual or company with the goal of long term success respects a "give to the community" law. Apart from the principle and self esteem, for a company it is next generation educated workers and for an individual it is creating better place for their children. More importantly, community has brought us up whatever we are today; hence it is essential to giving back to the community.
'Give' is one of the social responsibilities for every individual. It is a service to our society. One of our purposes in life is to help other people and to give back in any way that we can. Giving to causes will make a difference.
Since our birth to life as an adult, we have already created few debts in our life (it is referred as Runa in Sanskrit). Parents debt, master debt, family debt, and community debt. These fundamentally commitments to give back. These commitments are essential in nature. Some of these commitments live with us until we take last breath. The moment a baby is born it owns debt to his/her parents. As child grows, he or she learns knowledge for its survival for rest of life not only from its parents but also from the teacher and from the society. That creates debt to give back to master and community. When child grows and becomes adult, his or her responsibilities begin to give back. Anthropologically it is in our DNA.
Whatever we are today, society has a major influence on us not only from our parents or from school. We learn a lot from our community for the rest of our life at whatever age. It is not enough if we give back to our parents, family, children, and grand children. We know for certain that our children will pick up much of their knowledge from the society and community we are creating. We definitely have some roles to play make our community for a better place for our children. Every one of us wants to have good relationship with people. Every individual wants to connect to another.
It is everyone's choice. The key is be committed, be diligent, have patience, make the environments created for our self and for our children. It is our value, self pride, and esteem. It is ultimately it’s our true enjoyment. It is all our choice to enjoy being responsible and worth of our lives.
Personally I have decided to pledge my donation to Ekal (http://Ekal). Which is volunteer organization helping the deprived children in India. It helps the children in remote regions who are not getting basic education. Education is vital in every life; it is one of the essential survival aspects of life.
--Jay Prakash Govindaraju, SDET
12 MAR 2009