When the student is ready, the teacher appears

It took me quite some time to soak in this philosophical statement. Replace ‘student’ with recipient/receiver and ‘teacher’ with giver/master/expert and you will get the feel. No matter how many well advisors out there in the wide world dole out pearls of wisdom for you, you will never accept it unless and until you are ready.

I am a teacher of Finance and guess who motivated me to save money…. my maid. She made me fill out a recurring deposit form (she was illiterate) and then it struck me that while she is saving a part of her meagre salary, I was spending mine ( I called it helping the economy). This was the defining moment… I became open to the idea of saving money. I was the student and my maid the teacher.

The teacher does not necessarily have to be a designated master or superior or expert. The teacher can appear in any form and at any time. However the condition is that the student will have to be ready to recognise and accept the master. We talk of opportunity knocking at our door and also of missed opportunities. We also talk of a turning point in our lives. Those are the defining moments.

There is no end to learning and no learning goes waste. But we learn what we want to and when we want to. As you sow, so shall you reap. If you wish to be a slow learner, take your time. If you wish to be a fast learner, then be smart enough to understand that the onus of learning is on you. You can see for yourself that siblings raised in the same manner do not turn out identical. Similarly in the class, the same teacher can enthuse a few and create defining moments for these students.

Never let layer of arrogance cover your divinity. It will clog your pores of thinking and your receptivity. The teacher will never appear in your life.