At peace at the farm~!

"Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle:When the sun comes up, you’d better be running”

Arthur Blank, President & COO Home Depot.

For nearly a year now I have been keeping a wooden block with the above quotation carved on it, hidden in one of the drawers of my office desk. 
A few years before that, it has always found a place in my office's display cabinet. That was until one morning when I entered my office and felt 'something was not quite right' with the wordings. The quotation no longer represented how I was feeling about life. That morning I removed it from the display cabinet and hid it safely in the drawer.

That morning I realized that I can't survive on animal instinct alone. I need more than materialistic stimuli. Unlike gazelles or lions, my life is dependent not on being better than the rest but on learning to co-exist and to be at peace with what goes on around me.

Today, finally, I removed the wooden block from my drawer and placed it in the thrash bin. I was at peace with the decision. I hope my African friend who had given the hand-crafted wooden block as a farewell gift when I left Unilever way back in 2007 would understand my reason. His gesture of friendship will always remain with me. It is the philosophy about life on the wooden block which I have discarded.

Life, especially my life after Unilever, is no longer a worldly race in the fast lane. I need not be so. I am happier now to go with the flow, to be able to smell the roses along the way, dictated only by my own pace. It may be a slower pace, but one which allows me to appreciate the beauty aplenty. The world seems to be more like what it should be - a wonderful place~! Everyone around me seems to be the way I wish them to be - each an amazing being with their own interesting stories. Perhaps, it is me who have changed for the better~! Perhaps, I have turned into a listener. Even the sound of rustling desert breeze brings peace and joy to my heart.

An evening drive on one of the roads at the farm!
Moments of personal tranquility .

I am enjoying my life at a prawn farm at the edge of a vast desert by the coast of the Red Sea. I do not need any quotation carved on a wooden block to remind me to run for my survival. All I need for my motivation is to wake up every morning to the call of Azan from one of the eighteen mosques we have on site, to be able to greet fellow colleagues as we walk for Fajr prayer and to see genuine gentle smiles on their faces.

Here at the farm, we co-exist, in harmony with each other and with nature~!

Here, I will find my own finishing line, and even if I don't finish first, I know I will find victory.

I am writing my own little line, "Victory, is what I carry with me in my heart~!"