On the occasion of SPJIMR Day, the Dean, Dr. Ranjan Banerjee, expanded on “Courage.Heart”, which is a part of the SPJIMR branding, and what it means for the Institute and its rich family comprising participants of various programmes, alumni, faculty members and staff.
As Dr. Banerjee put it:
It does not take courage to follow the herd. To gossip about people behind their back. To change yourself to be more like the herd to fit in. To do ‘whatever it takes’ to be liked by peers and colleagues. It takes courage to realise that being respected is more important than being liked. It takes courage to demonstrate respect for others, when the herd instinct says that shared vices and pulling down people who are ‘different’ is the quick road to popularity.
It takes courage to accept your mistakes. It takes courage to ask yourself what you enjoy, and continue asking that question even it makes you uncomfortable. It takes courage to struggle and improve, when things seem terribly difficult at work.
Courage and heart go together.
You do not get hurt if you do not care for your work, for your colleagues, for causes that matter, for your friends and family. However, if you do not care, you are less likely to experience the special moments – an employee reaching beyond his limits and thanking you for it, a special, shared moment with a family member, a shared experience where you take on real issues and change things in small but noticeable ways, the warm feeling of increased self-belief when you overcome a fear and surprise yourself.
Courage and heart implies that you retain the dream – not just today, but for the rest of your lives. It hurts when our dreams crash, but there is a worse feeling – the feeling of numbness and cynicism that accompanies the desire to be practical and stop dreaming.
At another level, courage and heart also implies bringing your passion to whatever you do, and not making premature judgments about what you are good at (or not good at). For talent emerges from struggle, and it is ‘courage and heart’ which allow you to persist in the face of negative judgments which society will throw at you from time to time.
I know that you will find ‘the courage to dream’ and ‘the heart to chase that dream’. Sooner or later, you will then find:
‘The seen world is no longer a reality. The unseen world is no longer a dream’.
We stop dreaming when we stop believing in ourselves. I know you will not let that happen.