Editorial (Extra Miles For Excellence)

By  Dr. Bigyani Das

Excellence is achieved by doing a little more, by walking some extra miles. Most of us want to be regarded as excellent people, excellent professionals and above all excellent human beings. However, this “little more” confuses us. What exactly is this “little more”? How much extra effort can make my work an excellent work? Sometimes we can't assume about this little more and it makes us worried. “I had practiced my speech three times. Should I practice more? In that case I have to spend my whole time just in practicing the speech, doing nothing else. Is that good?” These types of worries are natural and thus we all stay in high mental tension until the final outcome of our effort is known. However, this mental tension is unnecessary if we evaluate our excellence standard with our present situation as the base.

In fact, the excellence standard in voluntary organizations should be judged relatively, not absolutely. If a person with an annual income of million dollars contributes five hundred dollars for a cause and another person with thirty thousand dollars annual income contributes fifty dollars for the same cause, the second person is contributing more than the first person and is doing an excellent job. In this relative structure everything is normalized to a respective base value and that normalized quantity determines the excellence standard. However, this is again not an absolute measure since the person with million dollar annual income may be contributing for many other causes. In the same manner our contribution for the cause of our society should be normalized to our base situation to be judged for excellence.

We all, who have emigrated from our own place of birth to a different country always try to keep ourselves connected to our culture. We celebrate Ganesh Puja, Kumar Purnima, Holi, Rathayatra and feel good that even in a distant country we could still enjoy the festivals and keep ourselves connected to our cultural heritage. However, there are times when we just can not. “Tomorrow is Kumar Purnima, but I am scheduled to attend a meeting in west coast the next day and I have to travel today.” Our salary comes in the priority list of everything else in the world. That's what gives us the identity. Everything else by us is possible only when we have the identity. So, how can we be excellent Oriyas in this dynamic land of competitions when we should be instead competing to be excellent in our professions? How can we still be devoting our time for our children to be able to speak, read and write our language where as our children should be competing to be excellent in Mathematics, Science, Sports, Music and many other fields? This is a challenge. It creates dilemma at times.

So, how can we contribute for making our society an excellent society (Utkarsa Samaja)? How can we go extra miles and do a little more for the society? Do we have time? Do we have energy? Do we keep this as our priority? Sometimes the answers to the above questions can just be straight “No” and we say, “Just forget! It's too much. Let me relax.” However, we do have an intricate mind, which wants to explore happiness in beauty, in literature, in cultural activities, in artistic displays and other creative ways. Because of the wants of this intricate mind apart from our salary and professions, we thus invest our time on creative exploration and other types of activities to keep our body and mind in balance. Thus we become members of voluntary organizations to achieve that balance. However, we should also think of the survival, the standard and the health of those voluntary organizations. We are busy people; we cannot contribute for the organization. Then who should contribute? Why should the other person contribute? Why should someone be always a receiver and somebody else has to be always a giver?

Hence to make our society an excellent society (Utkarsa Samaja) we should do a little more than what we are doing at present for the society. One solution that comes to my mind is “Sharing the responsibilities”. Once we decide the path for excellence, let us share the expense of that journey. If one takes the responsibility to drive for hundred miles, let another person volunteer to drive for another hundred miles. If somebody does not know driving, let him/her pay the price of the fuel and let other people take care of other needs. Can we do workload sharing? Can we do responsibility sharing? We CAN do that.  It is 100% possible. Let us keep this in mind that when we receive something from somewhere, somebody has put effort to make that something possible. Can't we produce something and give it back so that the other somebody also gets something from us? Let us always try to stay without the debt of anybody's favor on us. When all of us try to be excellent by following the simple rules of workload sharing, our society can definitely become an excellent society (Utkarsa Samaja) since the goal there will be giving more than we receive. However, our path to excellence may not always be smooth. We may also have darkness in the path. How can we move forward?

There is a wise Oriya saying:

andhAra Jetiki Aloka setiki ehiJe gahana bana
teNu tu ApaNA sankaLpe aTaLa achaLa rahare mana
Agaku paDichhi patha bahudUra Ahuri kete Je bAkI
chAlibi chAlibi na paDibi thaki mudibA Agaru Akhi

The meaning of this line is: In this deep forest, there is as much light as there is darkness. So, dear mind, stay determined and steadfast in your promises. There is a long path ahead and there is still so much distance to cover. I will keep walking and walking and not tire before I close my eyes forever.

So, we can proceed by keeping our goals well-defined, rules to achieve those goals well defined, and principles for exact workload sharing well defined. At the same time we have to also be ready to face any challenges of instances when the rules are broken, when the principles are not followed and we have deviated from the path of our goals toward excellence. By following the above guidelines and by investing more time on cooperation and compromise we can definitely walk those extra miles for excellence.