Gratefulness, Generosity and Giving Back: Venkata Chakrapani K (Transcript)

Read the full transcript of Venkata Chakrapani K’s talk titled “Gratefulness, Generosity and Giving Back” at TEDxVishnu Institute 2024 conference.

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TRANSCRIPT:

The Complexity of Life and the Search for Meaning

Wonderful to see you all. Life is difficult, right? That too being in the spotlight. Life is complex, but that is interesting also, majority of the times.

When? Life would be interesting when we count on our blessings and discount the areas where we don’t have any control. Understanding the framework, understanding the right framework, the right composition in life is the magic. If you see, there would always be many questions on us trying to understand what is the right framework in life.

Do we have any such magical framework which defines success in life? Any magical performance monitoring system at the end of anybody’s life so that it will automatically calculate and give some numbers to establish what kind of performance that person made in their life? Do we have any such one system which fits everybody and monitors them and gauges them, gauges their success, their fulfillment, their well-being, what it is that they gained? Very difficult questions, right?

The Pursuit of Purpose and Legacy

Yes, in fact, all of them are very difficult questions for everybody, and certainly, they are complex. As humans, we always strive to dissolve complex threads of mysteries in life. If you see, the majority of those times, those mysteries are injected around understanding the purpose, defining the path, creating a legacy, and so on and so forth, right? If you see any successful person, they normally run behind understanding what their purpose is, what their lives are, what kind of legacy they can leave to society and all at some point in their life, correct?

So that’s how it goes, and so we all need to understand a few basic concepts.

What is fulfillment? What is well-being in life? What is fulfillment? How does it look like? How do we get it? Lot of questions, so we need to pose every time.

Fulfillment is about living a deeply meaningful life, a life with purpose, life with satisfaction.

Well-being: More Than Just Health and Happiness

If you see the other concept, in addition to fulfillment, we are all running behind, we are racing to catch well-being. What is well-being? As per the dictionary definition, well-being is being healthy, happy, prosperous. So that may be true, but that may not be complete every time because well-being is the combination of feeling good and doing well in various aspects of life. So there are aspects connected with emotional aspects, physical aspects, social aspects, lot of perspectives in life.

The Three Pillars: Gratefulness, Generosity, and Giving Back

Today, I would like to share my experiences around a few concepts. These fundamental concepts have a profound impact on how we improve well-being and fulfillment in our life. There are three concepts I would like to touch base on today: gratefulness, generosity, and giving back. These are three interconnected threads, so they help us in upbringing fulfillment and well-being in our life.

Gratefulness: Appreciating Life’s Blessings

Let me start with gratefulness. What is gratefulness? Gratefulness is a sense of being thankful for somebody. That is the first thread today I wanted to talk about. Gratefulness teaches us how to appreciate the blessings we have in our life, how small or how big they are.

Let me ask you a question or let me request you to look back on a particular point of time in your life where you felt a memorable gratefulness in your life. Everybody will have a bundle of such memories because we are dealing with people, we have multiple associations day in and day out, so definitely we all have those bundles of memories. Normally, those memories of gratefulness are connected with some kind of small help from somebody, sometimes who are around us. Great help from somebody, majorly loved ones, who know us very well, so help us sailing through challenging times in our life. Everybody will have such memories.

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A Personal Story of Gratefulness

I would like to share a story today with all of you. It goes back to 25 years ago. There was a student from a town called Guntur. I think the majority of you know Guntur, so that should be as big as Bheemavaram now. The student completed his graduation almost 25 years ago, then tried looking at his life and tried getting himself improved, and so he started his journey from town to downtown, that is city, so he tried his level best to be there. He tried getting employment with multiple organizations, and I think he was not very successful in initiatives because we all know students from town backgrounds, so they will have their genuine challenges and difficulties in life.

Even though they are pretty good, conceptually strong, they have their problem with their communication, their confidence, and all. So this student also struggled with those parameters. What happened on a wonderful morning, he attended an interview and one of the hiring managers really tried understanding what kind of genuine problem this guy is facing and tried understanding the capabilities of this person. That hiring manager took a courageous decision. As a courageous decision, organizations wanted the ready-made people to get on to the job.

So every time they wanted the heroes and heroines on the job, they won. But this hiring manager took a call and made a conscious decision to hire that student considering his academic capabilities and technical background and all the confidence the hiring manager got during that interaction. And so he got selected, he got into the organization, and I think he is doing very well in his career, so no look back for him. Just to mention to you, that is the same student who is standing in front of you today.

And I still remember, after 25 years, I still remember the face of the hiring manager, the expression of the hiring manager, what kind of gratefulness that was shown by the hiring manager at that particular point of time. Those are the memories, memories of gratefulness. We all have such grateful moments in our life, so we need to understand.

Generosity: The Outcome of a Grateful Heart

Then moving back to the second thread is generosity. Generosity is an outcome of the grateful heart. Generosity is giving your knowledge, your time, your resources for somebody without expecting anything in return. At the cost of repeating, I am saying, generosity is an act of contributing your knowledge, your time, your resources to somebody without expecting anything in return. The acts of generosity will have a ripple effect, so that would be very helpful for society.

I think we heard about what kind of foundations are made in this world. People are being generous, their legacy is flowing on, that is multiplying and so that is helpful for the society and the world at large.

Giving Back: The Culmination of Gratefulness and Generosity

And the third point I’m talking about, giving back to society. This is the culmination of gratefulness and generosity. This is a more organized way of generosity. As a citizen, you understand, you are accountable to deliver, giving it back. It happens with a more organized approach. We see a lot of those kinds of giving back initiatives happening in the world.

A Personal Story of Giving Back: Setting Up Isolation Centers

Let me share a personal story here today. This is the story of how a small thought developed into a wonderful framework. This is predominantly connected with setting up isolation centers across the nation. I believe you all still remember those ambulance sirens and pathetic stories, fearful stories during pandemic times.

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We still remember all those. What happened during that season, my entire family including me, we had the brunt of the infection those days. Fortunately, I am with great organizations. Organizations helped us in many aspects.

The organization set up a team called COVID Warriors at that particular point of time. Their job is getting connected to the impacted people on a day-in and day-out basis and understanding those requirements, helping them and roping in the necessary support, necessary medical support, guidance, and all. Thanks to all those efforts, so thank God we are all doing very well today. Fears are a function of our organization.

Corporate social responsibility function of our organization started looking at how we contribute as an organization to society. So what we thought about is how do we reduce the stress on the existing medical system. That was the priority at that particular point of time.

So by that time, I have also recovered. I started working very closely with this particular group of people. What we tried looking at is how, so why can’t we set up these isolation centers. There were a lot of isolation centers in the country.

And so that too, setting up an isolation center from a private corporate is very difficult at that particular point of time. So there is no support from the government and nobody knows what to do and all. So I have got a chance to work with many people across Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. What we tried understanding is how do we quickly set up an isolation center sponsored by private organizations.

That is very difficult because of the restrictions, you all know. So then, yeah, so we set up one such center. I have got an opportunity to put on standard operating procedures of how a private organization can run a pandemic isolation center. That may be useful for tomorrow as well, if at all any such unnamed or new pandemic comes.

I did put on the document and I have got a chance to share with Hyderabad Software Enterprises Association and shared with a couple of other private agencies and all. I think as an organization, we have also set up almost 17 isolation centers across the nation. I think that kind of effort provided a sigh of relief for so many people who are actually eagerly waiting to join those centers to get the required medical support, guidance, and all. Right?

The Power of Individual Contribution

Probably you may be wondering today where we are talking about it after three years. So that is not just to boast about anybody’s contribution. That is just to tell you, every one of us got the power to make the change in society. Right?

To ignite any spark of thought process which is connected with generosity. You don’t need to be a billionaire, you don’t need to be starting a foundation, you don’t need to be a celebrity, you don’t need to be an influencer. Right? Even anybody, right? CEO of an organization or an employee in the organization and a student like you who is studying hard also can contribute to society if you embrace the mindset. Right? If you embrace, you understand the basics of generosity and giving back. You also can contribute.

That is what my intent to share that story with all of you. Gratefulness, generosity, and giving back, they form a positively infectious cycle. Right? Somebody started understanding dependent mindset and started embracing the gratefulness and generosity so they can create ripple effects in society.

And that would be a wonderful world, right? If everybody, so they started understanding dependence, right? So they started practicing gratefulness, so generosity. So that is the world, ideal world we all should be looking at.

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Correct? So look at the ways where you can contribute to society. Try taking up some time, understanding what kind of challenges we have in society and try contributing so with the authorities. So getting on to a charity, right? Working with an organization or association or a committee. I think take out some time, a bit of time.

The Benefits of Giving

Why we all need to do is, so it would not be only helpful for society. So any kind of act of giving would be helpful for the person who is involved in doing it as well.

Anybody who is on the journey of giving to society, they will definitely experience happiness and health for sure because they only look at what they have, they do not bother about what they lack. Right? That is the kind of mindset that will help them to prevail, abundance in their own lives as well. And acts of generosity, so they will trigger feel-good chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins.

They are good for health. And the process of giving, so that would be helpful for everybody who is involved, helpful to build great connections in your life, right? And helpful for the environment, helpful for you to understand how resilient you can be when you have such challenges in your life. The process of giving, who are involved, are all who are there in this process, they would be benefited.

Conclusion: The 3G Framework for a Fulfilling Life

So at this point, I would like to come back to my question, so where we have started this discussion. So do we have any such magical framework which is available to gauge the success in life? So do we have any such performance evaluation mechanism to understand how at the end of somebody’s life, if I feed all the information into a data system that will say, so your life is 70% successful, 100% successful, do we have any such mechanism? Do we have any such one-size-fits-all to gauge a person’s life’s contributions?

Yeah, so we don’t have any such mechanism exactly. What I see is, I see the package of 3G, so not 3G, 4G, 5G, so not that. So 3G is, the package of 3G is about understanding gratefulness, understanding generosity, understanding giving back. So this is a holistic framework.

We all can adapt to ensure that we live our lives to the fullest and we live our life with abundant well-being. So what we all can do, so we all can do, so we can ensure that this world is going to be a great place to live. This is already a great place, we just need to ensure. So this is going to be a great place, we should not be disrupting it too much.

Alright, and while we are all leaving today after this session, my request for all of you to take back the convictions with you. Each one of us has the power to contribute. Each one of us has the power to help the world. Each one of us can be a brand ambassador in good days.

You don’t need to be a celebrity, a multi-millionaire to do that. Remember, power of giving is positively infectious. I’m leaving it here. Thank you all.