Life Management: My Exotic Dream

I Saw a Colorful and Glamorous Dream.....

I woke up after seeing a wonderful dream and it remained so vivid in my mind that everything I saw in it looked absolutely real. Suddenly I was feeling very happy to remember and re-remember all that I had seen and experienced in my dream. I was literally floating light imagining the contents of my dream and wondered if my dream could ever come true?

Good Bye Earth

Normally I sleep well. Yesterday night too, it wasn't any different. Yet the night was very different for I dreamt after a long gap. Then, I remained in the dream and lived in the dream for an unknown length of time- it was a huge dream, like a four and half hours long mega movie. Also, I felt as if what was going on in my dream was translation of my own thoughts and imaginations that I had been thinking and imagining about throughout all my life. Seeing them coming true in my dream was exhilarating. Yet, as I wake up now, I wonder if my dream could ever come true in real life as well?

I am still excited about my dream and I must write about it. Let me recall how did it start?
Yes, let me recall; yep, in my dream, I was a traveler by profession. But I was not the ordinary traveler; I was in fact a voyager- an explorer, an adventurer and in that too, somewhat extraordinary one again, since majority of my travel was beyond the limits of the earth. My expeditions extended into the space. Therefore,

I would be away for several weeks and several months, even years.

This time I was away to an un-known planet in the universe and it was an unusually long journey. It was close to five years or so that I was out of earth. This was the longest time that I was not in touch with what was happening on the earth- sort of totally cut off with the goings-on of the earth.

Normally I used to carry very sophisticated and technologically highly developed communication equipment with me in all of my travels but they were not of use at all during this last trip of mine. I was prepared for it and so, it wasn't really a problem for me; in a way I was mentally prepared to remain totally secluded from the earth.

It gave me a sense of complete holiday- nothing to do with the daily chores of life's small and big duties like what story to fabricate to take leave from the office or filing the most dreadful income tax return form or watching the television with tons of spam advertisements which were thrown at me every couple of minutes making me utterly sick, receiving tons of spam direct mailers and SMSs from all kinds of so called reputed and not so reputed companies throughout the days and months and years (and we all know as to how everyone makes such a hue and cry about spams on the Internet?) or making rounds and rounds of visits to city's corporation office to get my birth certificate (the staff at corporation office made me feel as if they had sure doubts about my birth since every time I went to them they would say. "we are checking; come again after few days"), reading about the bloody wars, big and small, taking place in every nook and corner of the world without even knowing as to why were they fighting and why they wanted to get killed knowing pretty well that they would be killed (pretty absurd) and lots of such elementary things.

Wow, I was relieved of all that now that I was to be away from the earth for good five years with no possibility of any contacts with this planet with which I had gotten a bit too familiar and you know the expression- "familiarity breeds contempt".

I Was Disenchanted With the Goings-on of the Earth

I shudder whenever I am reminded of my recent telephonic encounter with a customer oriented after sales service and customer relations executive of a call center (variously called as BPO, KPO, help desk, customer relations department, customer service center etc) of a highly reputed multinational (or is it international or transnational or global, a bit confusing) firm boastful of having their presence in 167 countries, having 4133 offices around the globe and employing 102,000 employees (of which they have chucked out 22,425 employees (?) recently due to their miserable failure to run the company properly due to recession).

The encounter also included dealing with the ever half and half tested, incapable, full of bugs telecommunication, electronic and computer hardware/software technologies which I had to manipulate before hearing the over trained, sophisticatedly neutralized voice (why is that needed, why cannot they speak in their original accent? very funny?) of the rare of the species called call center customer service/relations executive (obviously with a fake name- outright cheating the customers; why the hell one has to use fake names??).

The whole episode was an arduous drill which I wish to forget forever. It took me 46 minutes 12 seconds to get through all the hurdles to reach the call center executive and the worst of it all, the poor guy had no clue as to how to solve my problem except for repeating to me a few polite, courteous sentences he was reading from his call center service manual. All that experience sapped out all of my energy and it was so tiring that I really needed a long separation from the very familiar planet of mine, my earth. I was glad that my long five years journey to another planet came about at the most appropriate time when I needed it the most.

Besides these sad experiences, couple of more things also saddened me lots. One was the incident a friend of mine narrated to me. His father recently died from heart ailment. My friend had admitted his father to the intensive care unit of a hospital run by the most reputed heart specialist/surgeon of a big city of a big country of the earth. His father had the second heart attack and was in an extremely critical state. The heart specialist/surgeon confirmed that his father was very critical and chances of survival were less and he insisted on an immediate operation and emphasized the need to install a pace maker if he wanted his father to be alive and recover. Accordingly, a pace maker was installed in the body. Yet, the things did not work and he died. When the dead body was being taken away from the hospital, my friend requested the attending doctor (different from the heart specialist/surgeon) to take out the pace maker from the body and hand it over to him, after all it was hardly used. The attending doctor checked up and mentioned that there was no pace maker in the dead body. My friend was shocked; he couldn't believe. He told the attending doctor about the operation performed the day before and also told as to how the heart specialist/surgeon had emphasized on installing the pace maker. The attending doctor once again confirmed that there was no pace maker in the body. Immediately, my friend spoke with the heart specialist/surgeon about it and the heart specialist/surgeon gave him enormous amount of money to keep his mouth shut.

I was also quite shaken up with the news of a CEO of a big country (much married and having children) having got mixed up in a physically intimate indulgence with his junior female colleague in the corridors of his office and its graphic description all over the place on the Internet and in the print media etc.

Racial and religious discrimination all around me was also appalling. It involved hatred by some people of some races and religions towards the other races and religions. It also involved mental and physical torture by some people of some races and religions on the people of other races and religions. It involved insults and degradation of some races and religions by some people of other races and religions. Why? Were these people of some races and religions who thought of themselves as superior human beings as compared to others, the self appointed judges and gods?

Another dismal scene was denial of education, medical facilities, clean water and fresh air to the poor of the world since the industrialists, manufacturers, marketers, doctors, insurance agencies, politicians and bureaucrats had taken illegitimately legitimate control over these essential human rights by ganging up together and jacked up their prices which were way beyond the reach of poor people or even those people whose earnings were moderate. Already they were selling water, education and healthcare at enormous prices and I thought that the day was not far when air to breathe would not be available freely to all and would be sold just like they sell packaged water (and people buy them without even questioning despite the fact they pay enormous amount of tax to the city and town corporations who are supposed to supply potable water to them and who have the responsibility of keeping the fresh water lakes unpolluted and clean).

Rampant corruption in high offices of government and private organizations of most of the countries was yet another day-to-day scene that was giving pain to my soul somewhere. Peoples' money was being siphoned off systematically by the thugs in the high offices- the day-light legalized dacoity.

And not to talk of wars!!

All this made me run away from the earth.

So, in my dream, I was taking up this journey to the other unknown planet, far far away from my own planet earth of which I was pretty much tired due its gross mismanagement by the people who are called political, diplomatic, economic, industrial, business, financial, stock market, banking, social, educational, judicial, environmental, technology, healthcare, religious etc leaders (?) who are supposed to set the things right in each one of these departments for the people of the earth but who have largely screwed them up. The results: recession, unemployment, terrorism, wars, racism, religious disharmony and hate, environment deterioration, global warming, pollution, deaths, AIDS, exorbitantly expensive heath care and education, drinking water scarcity, drug traffic and what else.

So, that day I bade good bye to earth (to return after five long years).

Return to Earth

Spending five years away from earth was not much difficult for me. I was in the space on an interesting, new and different planet. There was so much to see, learn and enjoy. It was an opportunity of life time for me.

During this period I hardly thought about earth or felt home sick. There wasn't much of nostalgia left in my mind about the earth. So, I had total peace of mind away from earth.

And now I was returning to earth. I had lived on earth after my birth for such a long period and yet, there were not many fundamental changes in the life in general. People envied, people struggled, people became greedy, people loved when convenient or otherwise became extremely cruel and fought and killed and so on.

Everything was so predictable. I had not noticed or experienced anything that was really exciting. From time to time there were sparks of excitements of pretty minor nature like some new gadgets like computers, cell phones and iPods and so on. Of course, there were disastrous wars caused by lack of education, poverty, envy, greed, selfishness and revenge but apparently justified under the garbs of lofty but utterly illogically and nonsensically mad principles of religious or political or racial supremacies and righteousness etc. Now, I do not call them very exciting because they are disgusting.

Therefore, re-entry into earth was to be a totally plain affair, I supposed. I would be drawn back into the same things which I had seen earlier and had got used to them.

I landed on earth and as expected, earth was not any different.

But Earth Was Different......

As I landed on the earth, at the first sight, everything appeared to me more or less the same. There were some marginal additions and deletions in terms of buildings, roads, shops, vehicles, crowds of people, composition of mix of people of genders and age but not of any significant order. It was quite expected in five years.

Yet there was something that was significantly different. I wasn't able to pin it down, though, immediately. I was feeling a bit uneasy with this feeling that though there were some changes but I was not in a position to understand them. What was it? What was it?

I had no clue of it on the very first day after return from my space voyage. I kept scratching my brains but no luck. Finally, I said, "Just sleep over it. You are really tired. Take rest and get over your mental and physical sluggishness. In next few days you may be able to figure out and solve the puzzle that is bugging you. And all you know that there is nothing amiss really". So, I listened to my inner voice and went to sleep. And would you believe, I slept like a log that night.

Next day I woke up fresh. I came out of my house. I saw my neighbor Peter Thomas, an elderly gentleman. He was busy watering his garden. I was pretty excited to meet an earthling after a long time. So, with my manners and etiquette gone with the wind, I shouted, "Hey, Mr Thomas, how are you doing?" But he did not pay any heed to my shouting. I thought, may be he is too engrossed in his work and may be I am quite far away from him and my voice may not be reaching him. So I walked towards him and once again addressed him, "Hey, Mr Thomas, how are you doing?" I was quite surprised since even after calling him the second time, he did not look at me at all. It felt as if I was mistaking him for Mr Tomas and he was some one else.

So, I went near him and touched his shoulder and said again, "Hey, Mr Thomas". He turned his head to me alright but looked at me quizzically though he did show that he recognized me.

He said, "Hey, where were you all these days? No see, what? But, why are you addressing me as Mr Thomas? You seem to have forgotten even my name- must be due to your long absence from the neighborhood. Don't you remember I am Peter".

"No, I remember pretty well that you are Mr Peter Thomas", I quipped, "How can I forget my great neighbor's name?"

"Well, you are partly correct. I am Peter alright but not Peter Thomas. This is queer way of addressing another person; none of us have this kind of two names jointed together. Don't you remember that we all have one single name. Like you are Ram and nothing else".

"No, why I am Ram Bhide- that's my complete name".

"You must be joking. I remember very clearly that your name is Ram and not Ram Bhide".

By this time another of our neighbor joined us and he addressed me by calling me just Ram though earlier he always used to address me by my second name Bhide. During course of our conversation, I found that Peter Thomas was addressing this another neighbor of mine also by his first name though earlier he used to address him by his second name or surname (or family name) since they were quite formal with each other.

All of this was a big puzzle to me which I thought I must sort out.

Solving the Big Puzzle

From that day onwards I started looking around for clues to solve this quiz. In the next couple of days, I spoke with many people around, people who were intelligent, responsible and sensible. I talked to the people not only in my city but people of other cities in my country and other countries also. From the information they poured out to me and by way of my own observations, I started understanding as to what all changes took place in my absence from earth. And mind you, for the first time I came across the changes on earth which I could call very substantial, real mindboggling.

I gathered that following things happened during last five years:

Some strange phenomenon which no one knew what it was, struck the earth the day I started for my long journey to other planet.
All the people on earth lost some part of their memory. They totally forgot their own names except for their first name. The memory of their second or middle name and the surname was totally wiped out. They also totally forgot their religions and races and consequently the religious commandments and religious rituals. But they did not know that these changes really took place.
Computer memory in respect of these items of information- people's second names, surnames, religions and races and related information was also totally wiped out. Along with it various numbers like social security identification numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers etc were also totally wiped out from the all types of computer memories and other hardware devices of all the computers of the world and also from the related hard copy directories. All the people could clearly sense this change painfully as they found themselves in great difficulties; they were not able to carry out day-to-day banking and financial transactions, they could not buy or sell things, they could not carry out their businesses, commerce stopped all over the world.
This entire memory loss was of extremely permanent nature and the people did not remember anything of the past on these issues.

After this phenomena took place, people realized that they could not transact in the banks. They could not buy things in market places through their credit cards. They could not withdraw cash from ATMs or over the bank counters. Computers just would not respond. They checked with each other. They checked with each other all over the places. They found that it was the same thing in every country. There was something uniformly wrong and disastrous everywhere.

Feel, Think and Do Good for Self and Others

And there was a sudden panic. It dawned on them that something unknown to them and something extremely unexplainable had taken place. They better steer through it together and with lots of care, systematically. All the people of all the nations agreed with one voice. There was a strange kind of unity among the people for the first time. They forgot about all of their differences with each other. They did not understand why were they fighting all these days with each other and even now. That was already troublesome and now on top of that they had no way to buy, they had no way to transact their businesses. The whole commerce came to a standstill. As a consequence of this, new wisdom suddenly dawned on them, all the battles and wars were stopped- every one was damn scared.

People from all walks of life started meeting in small and big groups within the countries and across the countries to discuss the problems and to find out their solutions as fast as possible. The first and the foremost thing they had to sort out was the most fundamental principle on which they all would build up their thinking, analysis and implementation for getting over the problems created by the huge loss of human and computer memories so that everyone's interest all over the world was taken care of in equal measures. This fundamental principle had to be very simple and uncomplicated- it must be understood by every human being equally well.

After rounds and rounds of discussions all over the world and after a few thousand drafts, following principle was unanimously agreed and documented as one single fundamental principle of human beings of the entire earth. It read like this:

"Feel, think and do good for self and others".

It was decided that here onwards every solution to every problem in the entire world was to be worked out on this basic value structure. While interest of others was important, equally important was to preserve the self interest too; both the interests were of equal importance. It had to be an ideal win-win principle. And one had to feel "good", think "good" and do "good" and there was no place for "bad". So, wars and battles were out and civilized discussions and mutual collaboration were in.

One More Fundamental Decision: We Are All Human Beings

People were shattered at the turn of the queer events that had wiped out all the data on the computers that was required in order to deal with each other, to carry out the businesses and commerce, locally and globally. They were scared and worried whether all this was done by some extra terrestrial forces. As the peoples' memory on their religions, creed, caste, races, colors, sects and factions was completely wiped out and about which they were not even aware, they tried to understand that since they were staying at different geographical locations on earth which they remembered as their countries, were they really different from each other? They tried to understand this because of the enormous common danger they were suspecting had befallen on all of them at the same time in the same manner. They really wanted to unite against this common threat.

Everybody agreed to get and remain united. They concluded that all the people of earth were the same species and they decided to call themselves as human beings. A resolution was passed saying that though we live in different locations on earth called different countries, in essence, we are the same species and we are all human beings.

System for Putting Local and Global Commerce Back on Rail

With all the data regarding the social security identification numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers etc having been totally wiped out from the all types of computer memories of all the computers of the world, it was impossible to carry out any kind of communication, manufacturing, commerce and financial transactions etc. Whole system in the entire world had come to a total stop.

Experts from all the countries got together and formed a number of inter-national groups to work out a solution quickly. Having forgotten about their second names and third names and about their religions and races etc and since all of them now called themselves only human beings, it was getting very easy for them to form very cohesive groups to solve these problems. They were wondering as to why were they fighting with each other all along- they just won't be able to fathom its reason now. They started thinking as to why they had never come together earlier like this? What were the real problems? Why? But, got no answers. The answer they got was that there were really no reasons for the extreme differences to occur among them to the extent that they had to resort to fighting wars with each other and to start killing each other. They felt that they had really indulged into utter stupidity and utter nonsense all these days and years.

Giving Numbers to Human Beings Is Dehumanizing

The computer specialists and civil authorities of all the countries recalled that they used to allot and assign a unique identification number (called severally, different name in different country) to each and every person who lived in that country. This number was also put on the computer databases.

Similarly numbers such as bank account numbers were allotted by the banks for bank accounts, PIN numbers for withdrawing cash from ATMs, credit card numbers to credit card users by the credit card companies, telephone numbers to people by the landline and cell telephone companies, car numbers and such umpteen numbers were thrown at people by umpteen companies and governmental organizations.

Since all these numbers were no longer available as they were wiped out from the computer databases, the computer and systems professionals and other related professionals from all the countries debated whether they should use the old concepts and rebuild the data and systems by reallocating all the numbers once again which was a Himalayan task or should they reengineer the whole thing.

After great degree of deliberation, they came to conclusion that in fact, with powerful computers available all around them, giving numbers was not at all necessary for any purpose. Powerful computers with large capacities could perform word processing very effectively, accurately and fast. So, where was the question of giving numbers? Therefore, they decided that no numbers would be given to people by any one in future, say by government departments, banks, credit card companies, telephone companies, schools or anyone else etc. They remembered that with so many numbers to manage earlier, people were becoming sick of all those numbers- there were hundreds (or was it thousands?) of them with everyone and people just didn't know how to manage them. Every Tom, Dick and Harry was conveniently handing over the numbers to everyone else.

The question was raised as to how to give the unique identity to a person then? Also there was question of security of transactions and accounts etc. They discussed a lot and came out with this solution: name of the person (now only first name was available), correctly spelt read along with the person's mother's name, date of birth, place of birth, time of birth, secure question and it's secure answer etc will give unique identity to each person.

These data items are in any case required for several purposes and they need to be captured on the centralized computer database. Most of this data was already there on the computers (except that peoples' family names or surnames and religion details were erased permanently from computers and now they were really not required). With computer and word processing being powerful, the entire processing will be done on the basis of these data items of information about each person and the best thing was that everyone always remembered that much information about oneself. Despite this, the old school professional could program their computers to generate their internal numbers for each person if necessary and if they want to do so but they will not hand over those numbers physically to any person.

The major premise of this decision was: Giving numbers is dehumanizing. This way the human beings are treated as numbers and not as human beings.

It was concluded that giving unique numbers was not important and not necessary. What was necessary was a foolproof system of capturing the names and the few other data items listed earlier, of all the persons on computer, just once (and most of it was already there). And the system to add more persons should also be intact and foolproof.

World Unity and Better Humanistic Systems and Zero Wars and World Peace

They say that sometimes we receive blessings in disguise. This entire episode brought the people of the earth together for the first time. For the first time, they decided to solve all of their differences by talks and negotiations on the basic principles that "we are all human beings" and "feel, think and do good for self and others" and not by killing each other in the wars thus making way for world peace. Also, together they started building up more humanistic and simplified systems instead of binding the people with red tape and complicated systems.

I Woke Up with Priority Agenda for a Beautiful World

Around this time, there was some noise in my home and I suddenly woke up. As I was waking up, I had just finished seeing the last scene of my dream where the people of earth meet together and decide to take up all the other problems of earth and its human beings on a systematic and disciplined basis and solve them in the light of the two basic principles mentioned earlier. Early on their agenda, were following items:

Make sure that everyone on the earth gets unpolluted air and potable water free of cost.
Every human being gets the medical treatment at very reasonable price without the involvement of insurance companies (it will be only between the doctor and the patient and no one else).
Every human being gets education up to graduate level at an absolute minimum cost (no profits will be made on giving education. Education will not come in the category of business).
Every human being gets some reasonable employment (good enough for at least minimal level of survival befitting a human being).
Earth remains environmentally protected all the time.
Men and women are treated absolutely and really equally.
Corruption in high offices and elsewhere is eliminated.
Justice is given to everyone absolutely impartially and expeditiously.

Also some more items of different nature were also on agenda as given below:

The vehicles on the roads are either driven on the right side of the road (as in USA) or on the left side of the road (as in UK) everywhere in the world. It should be uniform. It will help a great deal to reduce all kinds of varieties and improve standardization, costs, ease of driving anywhere in the world and safety.
Computer keyboards are simplified by arranging the keys on them in serial order of alphabets like A, B , C , D.... (as is already there on key pads of cell phones) and not as at present Q, W, E, R, T....

For More of the Author's Work

For everything you wanted to know on building leadership and management, refer Shyam Bhatawdekar’s website: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com
Writings of Shyam Bhatawdekar: http://writings-of-shyam.blogspot.com/
For various other management topics, refer: (Home Pages for All the Management Topics) http://management-universe.blogspot.com/, http://management-universe-enotes.blogspot.com/ and (Alphabetic List of All Management Topics) http://management-enotes.blogspot.com

For More Guidance, Assistance, Training and Consultation

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Also refer: http://prodcons-group.blogspot.com/, http://training-development-function.blogspot.com/ and http://productivity-consultants.blogspot.com

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Friday, April 20, 2012

Life Management: My Exotic Dream