An afternoon w/Lena Tamizhvanan

Those of you who are from South India, particularly from the State of Tamil Nadu, will probably know of Mr. Tamizhvanan, who founded the Kalkandu magazine and was a prolific writer in his days. I got a chance to spend a couple of hours with his son, Mr. Lena Tamizhvanan, this past weekend. Mr. Lena is a prolific writer in his own right - having published about 67 books thus far and is currently carrying the editorial responsibilities for a couple of leading magazines in South India.

Among the things that Mr. Lena talked about, there was one thing in particular that really caught my attention. He said that "problem --> worry --> solution --> happy" is a 4-stage process that most of us go through. In other words, when we encounter a problem our first reaction is to worry about that. Then when we start working on a solution and solve the problem, we tend to be happy. He then went on to say that if we can eliminate the "worry" phase because usually it ends up wasting energy and time and doesn't really help anybody, we can get to a happy stage that much earlier. 

That seems like a simple, straightforward and intuitive thing but one that I personally know is harder to implement and follow on a day-to-day basis.

Namaste!