Time is so valuable. I was reminded of this today as I sat in a stopped BART train, waiting for it to depart. The speakers announced, “the doors are closing,” and I could see some latecomers running furiously toward the train doors to sneak in. Some made it, some didn’t. Those who did looked amazingly reassured and breathed a big sigh of relief. Those who didn’t looked really disappointed, and almost downtrodden in way.
I often see this same occurrence at many bus stops as well. I think it’s a great example of how much people value time. Those extra 15-20 minutes of waiting for the next bus or train seem like an eternity. Perhaps the effect is magnified by being just seconds too slow to making it for the one that just passed.
But it all points to the conclusion that time is oh-so-valuable. With those precious minutes now spent waiting, you could have done so many other things.
Photo by Phil Stewart
A few weeks ago, I posted a creative video about the future of publishing. The other day, my friend Edward showed me a similar video that touches on a different subject:
I particularly like the end:
“So in 30 years, I will tell my children, ‘money makes me happy’ is a lie, and true happiness comes from within. I realize this may be a shock, but I can change the world. And I refuse to believe that I am part of a lost generation.”
I am a firm believer in every part of that statement.
Because of the poverty India faces, many people are being abandoned by their own family and left uncared for on the roadside of the city. Narayanan Krishnan witnessed this desperation firsthand and wanted change.
He was working as an ambitious chef for a five star hotel when one day, he saw a homeless man who was eating his own waste to stay alive. It really hurt him to see what this man was reduced to and he decided to shift his life goals. Krishnan quit his job at the restaurant and devoted all of his time to feeding the homeless.
Now, Krishnan wakes up at 4 in the morning everyday to prepare fresh food for nearly 400 homeless people in his hometown of Madurai, India. He works throughout the day to cook and distribute three meals a day to everyone. On his trips through the city distributing food, Krishnan also offers haircuts to the people he feeds, hoping to help them regain their dignity. He works around the clock, rain or shine, no holidays.
In order to sustain the work he does, Krishnan founded the Akshaya Trust, a non-profit through which he collects donations. But donations often fall short of the amount needed to feed everyone each month. So, Krishnan cuts costs by forgoing a salary, and chooses to live modestly instead, sleeping on the Akshaya kitchen floor.
In the future, Krishnan’s goal is to raise enough funds to build the Akshaya Home, a homeless shelter for the poor. But until he can collect enough money to compete the home, construction remains at a stand-still.
The people he helps are who motivate Krishnan to continue his work.
“The happiness I see in their faces keeps me going. I take energy from them.”
Krishnan was featured on CNN Heroes on April 2.
Today, I took an epidemiology midterm and was able to focus despite a lack of sleep.
Though I was running on just three hours of sleep, I somehow became incredibly focused come test time. I went through my regular classes starting at 9:30am and felt generally tired and sleep-deprived. But once I entered the test room, sat down, and got my test, I was ready to go.
It was as if a switch went off in my body and mind. I was no longer tired, but rather wide awake. Luckily this happened, because I definitely needed the focus today since the test was especially long.
This rush in adrenaline always seems to pop up whenever I have to take a test. I’m glad it does.
Yesterday, the beautiful and talented Marié Digby returned to Cal (where she experienced one year of undergraduate life before pursuing her music dream) to perform at Cal Do Something’s Rock Your Cause Benefit Concert.
It’s pretty crazy how much goes on behind the scenes to put on a concert like this. We had a staff of about 30 students running around all over the place all day just to put the final touches together. Communication, coordination, and focus were essential. There was little room for error, even though many opportunities presented themselves.
But I must note, it was definitely nice to be able to flash my staff pass and get access to pretty much everywhere I wanted :)
I was in charge of handling all tickets (sales, seating, will call, the whole shebang) and it was madness. Mind you, the concert venue was Zellerbach Hall, which seats 2000 people.
It was extremely complicated allocating seats individually, with many requests from people to sit with their friends, and dealing with mis-sorted and missing tickets minutes up until and after the start of the show. The ticket room was a pretty stressful place to be in those two hours when it was open before the show. And that’s not even mentioning how ticketing was going in the days leading up to the concert.
1 of 2000
I had a bowl of cereal at 9am and didn’t eat again until midnight. Busy, busy, busy all day long. The hunger sort of subsided into the state where I didn’t really feel anything at all anymore. My body just kept going… pretty much because it had to.
I was in the zone, and stuff needed to be done. It was a longgg day, starting to work at 10 in the morning and not getting home until 1 at night.
Through all of the chaos of yesterday, somehow everything got done and the concert went off without a hitch. It was a great success and I’ve heard from several people already saying that they loved it.
As all the members of Cal Do Something finally got to breathe a sigh of relief at the end of the night, I couldn’t help but feel so proud of us as a team and what we were able to put together. In just a little over a month, we pulled off an awesome concert with over 1500 people in attendance. Not too shabby. Look out for even better things to come!