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• Reforming Women's Education in Developing Countries (Part 1 of 2)

  pred 1 letom | Komentiraj (1)

  
  

  Nobel prize winning Indian economist Amartya Sen (sadly no relation to me) once wrote a very influential article entitled "More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing". In it he argued that it is a mistake to compare Europe sex ratios with that of places like India.

  
  

  "The fate of women is quite different in most of Asia and North Africa [compared to US or Europe]. In these places the failure to give women medical care similar to what men get and to provide them with comparable food and social services results in fewer women surviving than would be the case if they had equal care.

  
  

  In India, for example, except in the period immediately following birth, the death rate is higher for women than for men fairly consistently in all age groups until the late thirties. This relates to higher rates of disease from which women suffer, and ultimately to the relative neglect of females, especially in health care and medical attention.

  
  

  Similar neglect of women vis-à-vis men can be seen also in many other parts of the world. The result is a lower proportion of women than would be the case if they had equal care—in most of Asia and North Africa, and to a lesser extent Latin America.
  

  This pattern is not uniform in all parts of the third world, however. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, ravaged as it is by extreme poverty, hunger, and famine, has a substantial excess rather than deficit of women, the ratio of women to men being around 1.02.

  Indeed, sharp diversities also exist within particular regions—sometimes even within a particular country. For example, the ratio of women to men in the Indian states of Punjab and Haryana, which happen to be among the country's richest, is a remarkably low 0.86, while the state of Kerala in southwestern India has a ratio higher than 1.03, similar to that in Europe, North America, and Japan.

  To get an idea of the numbers of people involved in the different ratios of women to men, we can estimate the number of "missing women" in a country, say, China or India, by calculating the number of extra women who would have been in China or India if these countries had the same ratio of women to men as obtain in areas of the world in which they receive similar care. If we could expect equal populations of the two sexes, the low ratio of 0.94 women to men in South Asia, West Asia, and China would indicate a 6 percent deficit of women; but since, in countries where men and women receive similar care, the ratio is about 1.05, the real shortfall is about 11 percent.

  In China alone this amounts to 50 million "missing women," taking 1.05 as the benchmark ratio. When that number is added to those in South Asia, West Asia, and North Africa, a great many more than 100 million women are "missing." These numbers tell us, quietly, a terrible story of inequality and neglect leading to the excess mortality of women."

  
  

  Since Sen first wrote the article in 1990, the economic situation in India and China has certainly improved. But the glaring disparities remain.

  
  

  The fact of the matter is being a woman in India, China or anyplace else in the developing world is very difficult. Anyone who has spent much time in India will know the monumental scale of the problem at hand.

  
  

  So what can be done?

  
  

  There is obviously no one solution. These are colossal, deep rooted problems. But this does not mean that we should despair. Indeed, I do believe that the Internet and the resulting free access to information can play a very significant role in helping to reverse this statistic.

  
  

  In part two of this post, I will describe 5 ways in which the Internet can play a significant role in reversing women's inequalities in India as well as other developing countries. I will try to discuss why online freedom is so important in this process and how the Internet can also also reduce many of the barriers that previously excluded women from full participation in Indian and global community. Finally, I will discuss some of the regional differences that we see in India between Kerala and Punjab and what role the Internet can also play here.

• Review of Yauba.com: India's Most Important New Startup

  pred 1 letom | Komentiraj (2)

  
  

  "The power of private information online is so great that the commercial incentive for companies or individuals to misuse it is huge"

  
  

  Tim Berners-Lee

  
  

  Anyone who has read my blog knows that I believe online freedom and personal data privacy are issues of fundamental importance to our future.

  
  

  Indeed, I firmly believe that as IP networks become the de facto standard for all forms of global communications, the rights and freedoms we have online will become just as important (if not more important) than the rights and freedoms we have offline.

  
  

  Unfortunately, as Tim Berners-Lee and other have pointed out, this freedom is under threat from all sides. The fact of the matter is that personal information is valuable, and as a result, companies will always have an incentive to abuse and exploit their users' trust and personal details for financial gain.

  
  

  This is why I have been very excited, both as an Indian and as a global citizen, with my beta testing of Yauba (http://www.yauba.com/). In short, Yauba is a search engine that makes privacy the very bedrock of its service. Indeed, its privacy policy is literally 9 words long http://www.yauba.com/?sttname=privacy:
  

  
  We do not keep any personally identifiable information.
  Period.

  
  

  
  

  All that is nice. But here is the kicker, however. Not only are all searches on Yauba conducted on a safe and secure basis, BUT ALSO, ALL VISITS TO THIRD PARTY WEBSITES ARE ALSO CONDUCTED ON AN ANONYMOUS BASIS AS WELL.

  This is huge, and this is something that I have seen on no other search engine. Anywhere.

  
  
  Why This Matters
  
  Imagine that you have a relative in Chicago who is worried about breast cancer. She feels a strange lump in her left breast, and this scares her to death. But not only is she scared about the possibility of her having breast cancer, but she is also frightened about what would happen if her employer suspected she may be sick or whether her medical insurance company may try to deny her coverage for one of the many technicalities that they use.
  
  For a person like her, the information available on the Internet can be truly valuable, even life saving. And yet, she may be afraid about what would happen if her insurance company or employers decided one day to take her to court and use her online search records as evidence against her.
  
  Can this happen?
  
  If we are not vigilent in protecting our rights, absolutely.
  
  Indeed, if we do not fight for our rights to online privacy and freedom, such a scenario is a very real and present danger. As Tim Berners Lee has stated, the temptation of companies (and indeed governments) to abuse and exploit our private data is just too strong. We all know that Yahoo has turned over search information from dissidents in China for example to the Chinese government. And as for Google, well, I will just have you look at the following link: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-evil-side-of-google-exploring-googles-user-data-collection
  
  This is why I am willing to claim that Yauba is the most important new startup to come out of India this year. It is one that can once and for all shut down the idiotic argument that many online companies give about how it is not possible to provide a useful online service without invading the users privacy.
  
  Yauba IS the Anti-Google.
  
  P.S. I found a video online describes the search features very well: http://timesavingtutorials.com/wordpress/2009/03/11/yauba-com/
  
  New Indian startups such as Yauba demonstrates that Indian created services can make a tremendous impact on the global stage. The Indian startup revolution is just beginning, and we can look forward to many more great companies coming out of India in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

• Why India Will Replace Silicon Valley in the 21st Century, Part 2 of 2

  pred 1 letom | Komentar

   
  Note: In my previous post, I presented some case studies on how the law of unintended consequences have ended up benefiting India and accelerating her ascent to a leading role on the world stage today. In this post, I will describe how the recent catastrophic events in the global economy are inadvertently laying down the foundation for an unprecedented Indian entrepreneurial revolution.

  
  THE LESSONS OF HISTORY: The Once Great German Universities
   

  It is hard to believe today, but a century ago, German universities were considered the greatest in the world. At one time, German universities would churn our one world class scholar after another and would sweep the Nobel prizes, just as Slumdog Millionaire is sweeping every movie award this year. Today, however, if you were to mention once great German universities like Goettingen or Heidelberg to the average Indian, you would just get back a blank stare.
   

  So what happened in the past 100 years in Germany?
   

  Many things, of course. World wars; the partition of Germany; reconstruction, among others. But perhaps the most profound single event that happened in Germany with respect to their universities was the mass exodus of Jewish scholars to America. They left Germany and ultimately ended up at places like Harvard, Princeton, and MIT, where they inadvertently helped create the second revolution in America.
   

  America's (and India's) Second Revolution
   

  We all know about the first American revolution. This happened in 1776 against the British. It is the one we read about in history books, and this is why I like to call it a "loud" revolution.
   

  But in fact, America has had a second, and equally transformative revolution. It was the silent, entrepreneurial revolution that occurred in the second half of the 20th century, when the US took the lead to become the great entrepreneurial machine that has since come to dominate the world.
  By the time German and other highly skilled European immigrants arrived to America, the country had already changed completely beyond recognition from its colonial days. Sure, it did not have all the cultural amenities of Berlin or Paris, and parts of America were still stuck in grinding poverty, but by that time, America had developed a solid middle class and a large domestic market with significant latent demand. And it had highly skilled workers who believed in the idea of social mobility through hard work and were therefore willing to learn new skills.
   

  IMPLICATIONS FOR TODAY
  
  Today, in 2009, we in India find ourselves in exactly the same situation.
   

  Today, in the midst of an unprecedented global economic slowdown, we are starting to see a re-exodus of Indian immigrants back to India. And when they return to India, they discover both a country and a world which in the past ten years has changed beyond belief.
  In India, not only do they find a solid middle class and a large domestic market with significant latent demand, but they find a pool of professional workers who are literally the some of the best in the world. 

  Why is this the case? Because over the past 10 years, due to the massive outsourcing of business process global best practices to India, we have witnessed the greatest legal transfer of knowledge and intellectual capital the world has ever seen. We now have an entire class of Indians who know what global best practices are in almost every single business process, from the mundane like call centres to the unimaginable like product liability litigation, creative brand design and convertible bond valuation. No other country in the world has such an asset.

   

  The Perfect Recipe

  All of this is the perfect recipe for an entrepreneurial revolution. India now has all the tantalising ingredients needed to shift up and away from our past role as a facilitator and supporter to that of a creator. And we are seeing the signs of this emerging phenomenon right beneath our feet.

  Still skeptical? I can hear the objections already: "Okay so we have helped make search engines for others, but where is our own homegrown Google for India? We know all about CRM best practices, but where is our own homegrown Salesforce.com?"

  My answer? They are coming. And you ain't seen nothing yet.
   

  
  INDIAN CASE STUDY: YAUBA

  Case in point. A few days ago, as part of my Real Life Smart Babes series of articles, I had profiled

  Janeena Basra, the first Indian Miss England finalist, a Ph.D. student in medicine, part time model, and vice president of anIndian search engine company called Yauba.

  A few days after I wrote the profile, the company sent me a special preview password for the service which will be launching at the end of this month. And since that time, I have spent at least five hours playing around with it.

  My verdict? It completely rocks.
  

  I will be posting a more in depth review of the service after I have explored it some more. But all I will say for now is that I think this is the Next Big Thing. I know they has been a lot of hype and fluff around such vaporware search services like cuil and Powerset. But this is different

  
  I think this is the only company I have seen in the past 3 years which can take on--and beat--Google head to head. It is that good.

  But what is most impressive about Yauba (and most relevant to this post) is that it has been built almost completely in India and by overseas Indians.

  If services like Yauba or Zoho are any indication, a true golden age of Indian startups is just beginning. And even if services like Yauba and Zoho ultimately end up not succeeding, many more will be coming our way. That is how entrepreneurial revolutions work ... as in Schumpeter's famous phrase, through "creative destruction." 
  
  Imagine if just 10% of all the top Indian engineers at Google and Microsoft and Facebook suddenly decided to build something in India, and you can imagine what is likely to happen. And with the slowdown in the US and European economies, such a prospect becomes more and more attractive every day.

  India will soon have an Internet population greater than all of Europe and US combined. And as US and Europe begin to tighten their regulations on immigration even more, the exodus will continue even more. 

  And in doing so, the centre of gravity for entrepreneurship will naturally shift to India.

  Just as America took over the dominant role in entrepreneurship in the 20th century, so too will India in the 21st.
  
   

  EPILOGUE: What All This Means for Indian Entrepreneurs

  All of this is good news for Indian entrepreneurs, but it also means that the entrepreneurial world in India will get much much more challenging due to greater competition.
  

  When the best domestic search engine is clunky, outdated service like Rediff, it really is not that hard to create something better. But when the best domestic search engine becomes something like Yauba, it will be a whole new ball game.

  It will indeed become a brutally competitive, brave new world.  But it is this very competition which will finally allow Indian companies and startups to create (and not just faciliate) world class companies and thereby lead the way in India's Silent Entrepreneurial Revolution.

   

• Why India Will Replace Silicon Valley in the 21st Century, Part 1 of 2

  pred 1 letom | Komentiraj (1)

   
  We are currently standing at the threshold of a new revolution in India.

  It is a silent revolution.

  But it is a revolution of such tremendous magnitude that its repercussions will be felt for decades to come.

  It is the Indian entrepreneurial revolution.

  It has been almost 30 years in the making.

  But now it is finally happening--ironically--thanks to the current perfect storm in the global economy.

  (Note to readers: This is the first of a two part post. In this first post, I will provide some necessary background to this revolution ... a revolution that is largely driven by an unexpected and unforeseen confluence of unintended consequences. I will begin by describing some other such unintended consequences in our history which have served to inadvertently accelerate India's entry into the global economy. And in my next post I will describe the full details of this new silent revolution, and explain why this revolution is happening just now.)

   

  PROLOGUE: Case Studies in the Law of Unintended Consequences

  A. British Imperialism:  

  When The British East India Company first began its imperial rule in India, its motivations were far from altruistic.   In its trafficking of such narcotics as opium throughout Asia, the British East India Company (under full knowledge and authority of the Queen) engaged in practices that would be associated today with the likes of Colombian drug cartels. Its motivation was, to it crudely, to exploit India's resources as much as possible.

  And yet, despite all the shameful activities of the British East India company (and it successor, the British Empire), it did unintentionally spread English in the Indian subcontinent. This would have significant unintended consequences later on for India. It would later allow India to enter into global service industries with relative ease, and it would later allow Indian educated immigrants to more easily adapt to, and find success in, places like the UK and the US. 

  B. The Hijli Detention Camp:

  When the British found themselves increasing under siege by masses of Indians fighting against Imperial rule in the early 20th century, they resorted to increasingly violent reprisals, killings, and torture.

  The British Government established harsh detention camps throughout India, including the Hijli Detention Camp in 1930. But this detention camp did not last for ever, and once again, the law of unintended consequences struck again.   In May, 1950, Prime Minister Nehru established the first Indian Institute of Technology at that very site and at that very building with the goal of educating India's best and brightest so that they would lead India out of poverty and into a great world power. The construction of the Hijli Detention Camp would indeed also have significant unintended consequences for India later on. It would later create a class of engineers, scientists and mathematicians that have become (and remain) the envy of the world.  

  C. Technology Crash, Year 2000-2002:  

  When the first Internet bubble crashed in the year 2000, very few investors or companies could see a silver lining in the dark clouds which had cast their gloomy and lugubrious spectre over the entire technology industry.   Technology companies had invested hundreds of billions of dollars in Internet technologies, but had destroyed an even greater amount of shareholder value in the process. Investors lost massively during this process.  

  But once again, the law of unintended consequences reared its head.

  There WAS one major winner.   India.  

  As a result of all this investment, the world was now equipped--for the very first time--with an incredible global Internet communications infrastructure.   And it was this infrastructure that enabled the Indian offshoring industry to truly take off. For the first time, IT work could be conducted half the world away with cheap, real time, and seamless Internet communications technologies.

  And the pressure on costs brought on by the technology bust made the Indian offshoring value proposition even more appealing than ever.

   

  TODAY'S CONTEXT: The Perfect Storm  

  And now we find ourselves in 2009, in the midst of perhaps the greatest global financial calamity of the post world war era. And there is no shortage of pessimism, both around the world and certainly in India.

  • Companies are laying off employees by the tens of thousands.
  • Banks are failing left and right.
  • And as a result of significant political pressure, governments such as the US and the UK are severely cutting back on immigration into their respective countries.
  • The gloom over Silicon Valley and Wall Street is perhaps the worst most people have seen in their lifetimes.
  • And as a result, many of the professional employed in the Indian IT offshoring sector are finding their careers and livelihoods at risk

  But just as the British East India Company, the construction of Hijli Detention Camp and the first Internet crash ultimate ended up unintentionally benefiting India, this perfect storm will also end up benefiting India.

  Indeed, all of this global economic turmoil and dislocation will have the completely unexpected and unintended result of turning India into the Silicon Valley of the 21st Century.
   

  All we have to do is open our eyes to see this happening already. We are now at the beginning stages of India's great silent revolution, one which will catapult India to the very forefront of the global technology industry for decades to come.
   

  And for domestic technology startups, it will mean a true golden age unlike any we have seen before.

  
  Why do I feel this is the case? In my next post, I will describe the early signs of this silent revolution, why they are emerging right now, and what all this means for us Indians everywhere, both in India and abroad.  

  (to be continued in part 2)

• 2nd Tier Social Network Valuations Collapsing Down with a Crash

  pred 1 letom | Komentiraj (1)

  

  I read on Techcrunch today that a Spanish Social network www.wamba.com was just sold for 4 million euros.

  This is a company with an Alexa rank of 299 and 8.4 million registered users in relatively affluent markets (Spain and Latin America).

  This means that a registered user in these markets is worth less than 50 euro cents in terms of valuation.  And the fact that wamba's investors will willing to sell out at a significant loss seems to suggest that they see very little hope for social networking as a viable business model.

  2009 will be a very bad year for companies without business models.  The only real business in this space appears in Linkedin, and it seems like they are actually benefitting from the global economic downturn.

• Smart Babes Profile 3: Janeena Basra

  pred 1 letom | Komentar

  
  My next smart babe profile is Janeena Basra. I think you will agree that she is definitely one of THE sexiest young businesswomen in India today.
  
  Her personal website is http://www.janeenabasra.com/.
  
  Janeena was the first Indian to become a finalist in the Miss England competition. While in high school she received 11 A+/A scores on her college entrance exams.
  
  She holds both bachelors and masters degrees in medicine from the U.K., and has put her Ph.D. studies on hold to become the Vice President of Yauba, an Indian startup company based in Delhi that has been getting quite a lot of attention in the Indian Internet industry recently.
  
  Janeena is a highly successful model in both Europe and in India and has appeared on the BBC as well as countless Indian newspapers.
  
  
  She is passionate about science and technology.
  
  And she is Indian.
  
  Smart.
  
  Beautiful.
  
  Sexy.
  
  India does not have many women executives in business.
  
  Janeena Basra shows that being female should not be an obstacle to achieving your dreams and that it is possible to be smart, sexy, and successful.
  
  Proof once again that smart babes are sexy.

• Sean Carroll: Dark Matter and Dark Energy

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• A Metaphor is Not a Business Strategy. Save it for Literature Class.

  pred 1 letom | Komentar

   

  We will become a financial supermarket.

  We are capturing strategic beachhead.

  We are giving away the blades to sell the razors. 
   

  Over the past 5 years, businesspeople and entrepreneurs have evoked numerous such bad metaphors to articulate why their ventures will become successful.

  
  Well, I have some very unfortunate news.
   

  A metaphor is not a business strategy. It is a literary device that belongs in the high school classroom.
   

  And the next time you hear someone evoke a metaphor to describe their business, you should run for cover.

  Because it usually means that business is headed in one direction. And it's not up.

  Take for example, the idiotic metaphor of the financial supermarket. This single metaphor has been responsible for possibly the greatest shareholder destruction and economic crisis the world has known to date. Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, UBS all justified their catastrophic strategies on the quest to become a financial supermarket, without even asking what this metaphor meant.

  Well guess what ... people do not want to go to a supermarket where they get constantly ripped off. If you look at history, people shifted from mom and pop grocery stores to supermarkets because these supermarkets offered every day low prices on virtually all of their items. Compare this to banks like Citibank who try to foist ridiculous products and services onto you just because you signed up for a checking account. A supermarket who tried this on their customers would soon go bankrupt.

  Or take the metaphor of strategic beachhead.

  If you know anything about war, you would know that most attempts to capture any type of beachhead ended in enormous casualty for the attacker. Not that different from many Internet companies who have no business model but think that they can create one after burning millions of dollars of venture capital.

  A metaphor is not a business strategy. It is a literary device that belongs in the high school classroom.
  
  A business strategy is an articulation of how you will consistently make money.

  So how can a business make money? Let me tell you a secret. There are only four ways to make money

  1. You can grow your revenues. You can do this by selling more stuff, selling to more people, having these people buy your products more often and selling at higher prices
  2. You can lower your costs. You can lower your fixed costs or your variable costs.
  3. You can play around with your capital structure. You can try to get cheaper financing, and you can try to leverage your capital and take oversize bets. Of course this can come to bite you big time.
  4. You can pay lower taxes.

  That's it. There is no secret formula. No fancy metaphor.

  Just 4 main levers you can pull.

  So the next time you read on Techcrunch article after article on companies with no business model, you should ask yourself, is this a real business, or just a bad literary device?

• Smart Babes Profile 2: Corina Tarnita

  pred 1 letom | Komentiraj (4)

  

  My second smart babe profile is Corina Tarnita, a Harvard mathematics genius from Eastern Europe.

  Corina holds Ph.D., Masters, and Bachelor's degrees all from Harvard.
  
  Her publications include "Verification of the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture for Specific Elliptic Curves", "On Dynamic Bit-Probe Complexity" and "Computing Order Statistics in the Farey Sequence".
  
  She was the top mathematics high school student in Romania, where she published two mathematics textbooks and won the 1st prize in the Romanian National Mathematical Olympiad for three straight years.
  
  She won both the 1st place individual and the 1st place teams competitions in the International Mathematical Contest.Her research interests are in evolutionary dynamics (in particular, evolutionary game theory); Her other research interests are in algebraic geometry, number theory, theoretical computer science, cognitive psychology, behavioral economics.
  
  How much better would the world be if young girls looked up to people like Corina Tarnita as role models instead of Paris Hilton?

• The Forgotten Virtue of Simplicity

  pred 1 letom | Komentar

   

  One of the simpliest ways to beat your competitors is by being just that. Simple.

  Not simplistic.
  
  Simple.

  Take a vexing problem that people face and ask yourself,

  a) how can I make the solution as simple as possible and b) how can I make the business model as simple as possible.

  Unfortunately, too many companies take the opposite approach. They seem to believe that complicated problems require complicated solutions.

  Take airlines.

  Over the past 20 years, most American airlines have invested billions of dollars in yield management systems and complicated hub and spoke systems which were designed to wring out the last possible penny from the traveller.

  This is why 

  • two people on the same plane sitting next to each other almost never pay the same price for a ticket
  • if you don't have a Saturday night stay, you have to pay three times and much, and
  • one way tickets costs twice as much as round trip tickets.

  Has all this complexity succeeded?

  Not at all.

  These airlines have failed to realise that complexity comes at a great cost ... both to the company and to their customers. These airlines have basically yield managed themselves to death.

  Companies like Southwest Airlines and Ryanair now are worth more than most of the traditional airlines combined.

  Part of the reason is that their business models are much simpler. They don't need to pay Accenture billions of dollars per year to run their CRM systems. And their customers know exactly what they are getting.

  No, they do not provide the best service in the world, and you do not get in flight meals included with your price.

  But as an example of business success in an incredibly difficult industry, they cannot be beat.
  
  Perhaps we should all rethink how we can simplify our solutions and business models?

• Smart Babes Profile 1: Natalie Portman

  pred 1 letom | Komentiraj (4)

  

  First of all, I wanted to thank all of the followers of my page who have left comments! I am very grateful and flattered that you find my thoughts worth reading. Thank you!
  
  Today, I begin a new section of my blog dedicated to profiling real life smart babes.
  
  For the next several weeks, I will highlight women from various fields: media, entertainment, academic, business, philanthropy, etc. who I think you will agree is incredible sexy.
  
  And a large part of their (and anyone's sexiness), I will argue, come from their intelligence.
  
  First up is Natalie Portman.

  Natalie is fluent in English, Hebrew, and French and has studied Japanese, German and Arabic.

  She graduated with honours from Harvard University.

  She has taught at Columbia University in March 2006 as a guest lecturer on a course on terrorism and counterterrorism, where she spoke about her film V for Vendetta.
  

  She is passionate about math and science.

  While still in high school, her 1998 high school paper on the "Enzymatic Production of Hydrogen" was entered in the Intel Science Talent Search.
  At Harvard, she co-authored two research papers that were published in professional scientific journals.

  In 2002, she contributed to a study on memory called "Frontal Lobe Activation During Object Permanence".  

  She has said, "I'd rather be smart than a movie star." 

  Fortunately, she shows that you can be both.

   

• Desiderata: A Wonderful Poem

  pred 1 letom | Komentiraj (4)

  

  Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
  and remember what peace there may be in silence.

  As far as possible, without surrender,
  be on good terms with all persons.
  Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
  and listen to others,
  even to the dull and the ignorant;
  they too have their story.
  Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
  they are vexatious to the spirit.

  If you compare yourself with others,
  you may become vain or bitter,
  for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
  Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
  Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
  it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

  Exercise caution in your business affairs,
  for the world is full of trickery.
  But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
  many persons strive for high ideals,
  and everywhere life is full of heroism.
  Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
  Neither be cynical about love,
  for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
  it is as perennial as the grass.

  Take kindly the counsel of the years,
  gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
  Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
  But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
  Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

  Beyond a wholesome discipline,
  be gentle with yourself.
  You are a child of the universe
  no less than the trees and the stars;
  you have a right to be here.
  And whether or not it is clear to you,
  no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

  Therefore be at peace with God,
  whatever you conceive Him to be.
  And whatever your labors and aspirations,
  in the noisy confusion of life,
  keep peace in your soul.
  

  With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
  it is still a beautiful world.
  Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

   

  Someone sent me this poem from early last century, and I thought it was wonderful enough to post in its entirety.

• Naslednja stran