What We’re NOT Going to Do This 2016

There’s much to be said about a ‘New Year’ and all the resolutions that go with it.  The huge liability of having to fulfill every (ok, at least one) wish you made for yourself at the end of the last, and the need to feel like you’ve accomplished something at the end of the new.

This 2016, however, we at The Ashoka Tree have three things we are ‘not’ going to do.
  • We are not going to sweat the small stuff.  Miracles happen when you least expect it, so we’re not going to worry about getting tiny things done.  More than ever, those things somehow get done on their own, with no extra help.  Like we learnt at the onset last year when we couldn’t find a donor for rice for our school in Wynad, or even at the end of the year when we couldn’t find somebody to transport our packages to Chennai - people turned up.  There are still people in the world who wouldn’t mind giving a small amount out of their salary every month to feed needy children elsewhere and there are still unnamed (genuinely nice) gentlemen manning counters for transport bus offices who are willing to take packages out to relief centres free of charge.
  • We’re not going to fret that each day has just 24 hours and not 32.  There are times, every once in a while, when it starts to get too much.  When everything feels terribly exhausting and doing what we do starts to feel like we’ve probably taken on too much.  Take yesterday, for instance.  Here we were slogging away at our respective desk jobs, not sure if facing looming deadlines and blank
    screens was what we signed up for to begin with (this aside from the fact that our homes that are starting to look like war zones – one strewn with a walk-in maze of Lego across the floor accompanied with sticks & stones brought in by the 6-month-old retriever), and all of a sudden we realized we hadn’t made that visit to the one Anganwadi we had already decided to work with in the first week of January 2016.      All it took was a second’s decision to close that laptop, grab those car keys, and get out of the office.  What happened at the Anganwadi of choice, made that decision the best thing we’ve done all year (at least all 7 days of it).  The two hours there was worth every nanosecond.  Not only did we come out happy about the time we spent with the children there, but we also managed to learn a little more in the way of origami from a seriously creative Anganwadi teacher. 
  • We’re not going to build bonfires.  At The Ashoka Tree, we’re not a huge enough team to afford a better marketing or donation strategy, but what we’re going to do is start small.  There are still people who call wanting to donate, having ‘heard of us’ out of the blue.  Some of these people do turn up to volunteer or donate, but most don’t.  What matters is the one person who actually does turn up to help.  We’re going to start small until it catches, and hope that some day our bonfire is big enough to create a change.
Here’s to a 2016 where we inspire one another!  Here’s to a 2016 filled with more smiles!  Here’s to more flames that catch in a year filled with hope, love and happiness!

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