Home is knowing. Knowing your mind, knowing your heart, knowing your courage

A line from The Wizard of Oz has always resonated with me: Home is a place we all must find. It’s not just a place where you eat or sleep. Home is knowing. Knowing your mind, knowing your heart, knowing your courage. If we know ourselves, we’re always home, anywhere. I see a multitude of people and ideas fighting for their space in the world. And more and more believing that those who shout loudest get heard. But in this noise we often forget why it was important in the first place. In Nepal, a range of seminars take place every day. Not a single hotel of repute has their calendar empty for their meeting halls. People walk in and out of hotel lobbies with self importance marking their carriage. From economics to social issues, law and activism to the arts … we are all vying for space in the media. But are we necessarily productive and efficient because of this? Are we really walking the talk? And above all, are we making progress and delivering in a timely and functional manner? The more and more I speak with colleagues and friends in the business world and bureaucracy, the more I see us settling for mediocrity. People everywhere seem to be struggling with getting work done… with productivity. Perhaps some of this stems from the fact that we are not engaged in things that are truly meaningful to us. And perhaps some of it comes with the culture of obeisance where speaking your mind and acting against the majority is not respected or understood. We often go from one day to another drifting through day to day activities, hoping that some day we will hit upon the solution for work efficiency. Whether it is registering a new company, understanding your taxes, ensuring integrity in your team, or meeting a work deadline, or even running the country, we must understand that productivity isn’t about someone else’s systems and rules… it can neither depend on your mood or the weather… It is about knowing and caring and taking ownership for everything you do whether you are the prime minister or the peon. It’s about creating systems that nourish and support efficiency and integrity to create a culture of hard work and responsibility. And if you never know what truly matters to your heart and your mind, we’ll still have unfinished roads, incomplete projects, inefficient staff, imperfect work, corruption and mediocrity, reactive rather than proactive choices for the rest of our lives.