Daily prompts are a simple yet powerful concept. They involve offering bloggers a specific topic, theme, or idea to write about each day. These prompts cover a wide range of topics, from travel and food to personal reflections and creative writing. The goal is to spark creativity, encourage regular posting, and foster a sense of community among bloggers. Daily prompts are provided by various platforms and blogging communities, such as WordPress and Tumblr, or even by individual bloggers.
Daily prompts are a valuable tool for bloggers of all levels, enhancing the blogging experience and helping them overcome challenges like writer’s block.
Which celebrity would you love to meet, and what would you talk about?
I have never felt a strong desire to meet a celebrity. I respect many people for their achievements, talents, and contributions to society. But admiring someone and wanting to meet them are two different things, and I have never believed that I need to stand before a famous person to learn from them.
The prompt asks whom I would love to meet. I would rather question the question. It assumes that inspiration is scarce, that it lives at the top, and that we must reach upward to find it. I believe the truth runs the other way.
1. What a famous person can teach is usually already given.
A writer’s best thinking is in her books. A singer’s heart is in the songs. A scientist’s insight lives in the work. A meeting rarely adds to what has already been offered freely. More often it adds a photograph and a story to tell. If I have not learned from the work, a handshake will not make up for it.
2. A meeting with fame is seldom a meeting with the person.
Such encounters are brief, crowded, and rehearsed on both sides. I would meet the public image, and the public image would meet a stranger. Real learning needs time, honesty, and the freedom to ask a foolish question without an audience. Those conditions are far easier to find at a kitchen table than on a red carpet.
3. Many traditions find their teachers at eye level.
Confucius said that whenever he walked with two others, he could find a teacher among them. He would follow what was good in them and correct in himself what was not. Zhuangzi tells of Lord Wenhui watching his cook carve an ox so effortlessly that the same blade stayed sharp for nineteen years. The ruler declared that he had learned from his cook how to nurture life. In the Tamil Periya Puranam, a temple priest is told to hide and watch an unlettered hunter, Kannappar, whose rough but wholehearted devotion surpassed all the priest’s careful rituals. [1] In each case, the lesson flows from the unremarkable to the respected, not the other way round.
4. Some of the most important teachers were never named.
In the Hebrew scriptures, Naaman, a celebrated army commander suffering from leprosy, finds his way to healing because a captive servant girl in his household speaks up. Her name is never recorded. When pride makes him refuse the simple remedy, it is his servants, again unnamed, who talk him round. The Bhagavata Purana goes further. A wandering sage tells a king that he learned from twenty-four teachers, among them the earth, the honeybee, the spider, and a playing child. [2] Wisdom, it seems, does not wait for a reputation.
5. Granted, a single meeting can change a life.
A student who shakes hands with a great scientist may carry that moment into a whole career, and I would not dismiss that. But notice what made the moment matter. It was not the fame of the one who spoke. It was the readiness of the one who listened. If we turn that same readiness toward the people already around us, we will find teachers every day.
6. The better question is whom I have already met.
A teacher who stayed back after class. A stranger who returned something we had lost. An elderly relative who repeats the same story because it is the one that matters. These people will never appear in the headlines, yet they have shaped more of us than any celebrity has.
So if the prompt insists on an answer, my choice would be the least famous people in these stories: the cook in Zhuangzi’s kitchen, or the girl in Naaman’s house whose name nobody wrote down. I would ask the cook how he learned to work without forcing. I would ask the girl where she found the courage to speak to power.
Wisdom can reach us through a book, a meaningful conversation, an act of kindness, or an ordinary afternoon. After all, inspiration is not determined by whom we meet, but by how deeply we reflect on what we learn.
What about you? Do you dream of meeting a celebrity, or do you find your teachers in the people and experiences of everyday life?
Notes for readers
[1] The Periya Puranam is a twelfth-century Tamil work by the poet Sekkizhar. It tells the lives of the sixty-three Saiva saints, many of whom were hunters, potters, washermen, and other ordinary people.
[2] The Bhagavata Purana is a Sanskrit devotional text. The account of the sage’s twenty-four teachers appears in its eleventh book.
John Britto Kurusumuthu
Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in
In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 15 October 2026: Which celebrity would you love to meet, and what would you talk about?
Ask most people whether they are good, and they will say yes, perhaps with a small qualification. Ask whether they were good to everyone they met yesterday, and the answer grows less certain. The title comes easily; the practice does not.
That gap is where my answer begins. Being a good person is not a title we hold but a practice we keep. The moment we settle comfortably into the label, we have usually stopped earning it. Goodness is tested in five places.
1. When Nobody Is Watching
In Plato’s Republic, Glaucon tells of a shepherd who finds a ring that makes him invisible. He uses it to seduce the queen, kill the king and take the throne. Glaucon’s point is uncomfortable: give any of us that ring, and our good behaviour would vanish with our visibility.
He is not entirely wrong. Much of what passes for goodness is reputation management.
But that is exactly why the unseen moments matter. Are we honest when the truth will cost us and the lie would never be discovered? Goodness is not merely what we show the world; it is what we practise when nobody is watching. Each of us wears that ring for some part of every day. The question is what we do with it.
2. Not Perfection, but Confession
Nobody gets everything right. We lose patience, judge unfairly and let pride steer our decisions. Being good does not mean pretending these failures do not exist; it means having the courage to name them.
The Tamil epic Silappatikaram offers one of literature’s starkest examples.1 A Pandya king, misled by the royal goldsmith, orders an innocent man executed on a false charge of stealing the queen’s anklet. When his widow, Kannagi, breaks open her own anklet in court to prove his innocence, the king offers no defence. He cries out, “Am I a king? I am the thief,” and falls dead.
We are not asked to die of our mistakes. But the king’s last words show the shape of goodness: no excuse, no blame shifted onto the goldsmith, only ownership. A sincere apology reveals more goodness than a hundred flattering words.
3. Kind, but Not Merely Agreeable
Being good is not the same as pleasing everyone. A good person may have to refuse an unreasonable request, speak when silence would be easier, or oppose an unfair decision and become unpopular for it.
Kindness without discernment becomes weakness, just as honesty without compassion becomes cruelty. Yet we rarely know the full story behind another person’s behaviour; the colleague who snaps may be carrying a burden we cannot see. Goodness holds both truths: it does not excuse every wrong, but it is slow to judge another person’s worth.
4. One Rule, Two Directions
Asked whether a single word could guide an entire life, Confucius answered: reciprocity. What you do not want for yourself, do not do to others. Hillel, the Jewish sage, asked to teach the whole Torah while his questioner stood on one foot, replied: what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow; the rest is commentary. In Matthew 7:12, Jesus turned the same rule outward: treat others as you would want them to treat you.
Notice the difference. The first two set a floor: stop harming. The third sets a direction: start helping. A good person needs both. Some days goodness asks for something generous; most days it simply asks us not to add needlessly to another person’s burden.
For me, this is where faith becomes visible. Love, kindness, patience and self-control, which Galatians 5:22–23 names among the fruits of the Spirit, are proved less by what we say than by how we treat the person in front of us.
5. The Evening Ledger
Goodness grows through small decisions: listening instead of rushing to reply, keeping an inconvenient promise, declining to pass on gossip, helping without needing to be thanked.
Did I treat people with respect, including those who could do nothing for me?
Was I honest, even where it cost me?
Is there something I need to apologise for, correct, or do better tomorrow?
These are not meant to load us with guilt. They are invitations to grow, and over time small, consistent choices quietly become character.
A Final Reflection
So what does it really mean to be a good person? Perhaps it means that people leave our company carrying a little less than they brought: less hostility, less discouragement, less loneliness. We will not avoid every mistake, but we can keep choosing honesty, fairness and kindness, one ordinary decision at a time.
We may not change the whole world. But we can make a difference in the small part of it entrusted to our care.
Your Turn to Reflect
What do you believe reveals a person’s goodness most clearly: their words, their actions, or what they do when nobody is watching?
I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Let us learn from one another and keep rising together.
Note
1 Silappatikaram (The Tale of the Anklet), attributed to the poet-prince Ilango Adigal, is one of the five great epics of classical Tamil literature. The king’s cry, rendered here in English, comes from the trial scene in the Pandya court at Madurai, where Kannagi’s broken anklet spills rubies while the queen’s held pearls. Kannagi is still honoured across Tamil Nadu as an emblem of justice.
In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 14 October 2026: What does it mean to be a good person?
What’s a country that’s at the top of your bucket list?
Asked to name the country at the top of my bucket list, I found I had none, and no regret about it. A reflection on curiosity, gratitude, and the journeys that need no passport, with help from a Roman philosopher, a Tamil mystic, and a poet on a mountaintop.
What If I Have No Country on My Bucket List?
Have you ever been asked which country you dream of visiting most?
Many people have an answer ready. Some long to walk the historic streets of Europe, others to experience the cultures of Asia, and some imagine standing before the natural wonders of distant lands.
Today’s prompt puts the same question to me. My honest answer is that I have none.
This is not indifference to the world. The world is vast and beautiful, and I am glad of every travelogue, every photograph, every friend who returns with stories. But appreciating the world is not the same as needing to collect it. I do not believe a person must have a dream destination in order to have dreams.
Here is why.
1. A bucket list measures distance. A life is measured by depth.
A bucket list is, by nature, a map of places not yet reached. There is nothing wrong with that. But it quietly suggests that the best of life lies somewhere else. Many of the richest things I know have never required a boarding pass: friendship, learning, faith, the chance to be useful to someone.
2. We take ourselves wherever we go.
Nearly two thousand years ago, the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote to a friend who complained that his travels had done nothing to lift his spirits. Seneca reminded him of Socrates’ reply to a similar complaint: why be surprised that travel does not help, when you always take yourself along? What the friend needed, Seneca said, was a change of soul, not a change of sky.
3. The inner journey has its own geography.
The Tamil mystic Tirumular, in his Tirumantiram, calls the heart the great temple and the body its shrine.[1] In a land rich in pilgrimage routes, he turns the seeker inward. Centuries later, the Bhakti poet Kabir offered an image that stays with me: the musk deer roaming the forest in search of a fragrance that rises from its own body. Two traditions, one insight. What we go looking for is not always somewhere else.
4. Even a summit can point inward.
In 1336, the Italian poet Petrarch climbed Mont Ventoux in Provence, as he tells it, simply to see the view. At the top, he opened the small copy of Augustine’s Confessions he carried. His eye fell on a passage about people who travel far to marvel at mountains, seas and stars, yet pass themselves by without wonder. Petrarch closed the book and said nothing more until he reached the foot of the mountain. He had climbed to the top only to discover that the harder ascent lay within.
5. In fairness to the travellers.
Travel does change people. It loosens prejudice, humbles assumptions, and teaches us that our way of living is one among many. For many families, a long-saved journey is an honest and well-earned dream, and I would never belittle it. I must also admit a risk on my own side: “I am content where I am” can become a polite cover for a small and incurious world. Having no country on my list is a virtue only if curiosity still travels freely, through books, conversations, new skills, and the stranger who sits beside us.
6. So what is at the top of my list?
Not a country, but a direction. To keep learning. To keep friendships in good repair. To be of some use to the people around me. To grow a little wiser, a little kinder, and a little more grateful each year. None of these needs a visa, and none is ever quite finished, which is perhaps why they belong on a list meant for a lifetime.
If one day I do find myself before a great mountain or an ancient city, I hope I will receive it gladly. But I hope, too, that I will not pass myself by on the way.
Must every dream involve going somewhere? Perhaps the longest journeys, and the most rewarding, are the ones we make without leaving home.
Note
[1] Tirumular was a Tamil Shaiva mystic, counted among the sixty-three Nayanar saints and traditionally placed in the first millennium CE. His Tirumantiram, a work of over three thousand verses, forms the tenth book of the Tirumurai, the canon of Tamil Shaiva devotional literature. The verse referred to here (numbered 1823 in common editions) opens “Ullam perunkoyil, oon udambu aalayam”: the mind is the great temple, the body of flesh its shrine.
John Britto Kurusumuthu
Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in
In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 13 October 2026: What’s a country that’s at the top of your bucket list?
SEO is not just about attracting clicks. It is about helping the right readers discover something worth reading.
An old English proverb, quoted by Shakespeare in As You Like It, says that good wine needs no bush. In the past, taverns displayed a sprig of ivy at their doors to indicate that wine was sold inside. The proverb suggested that something of genuine quality should need no advertisement.
When I started Rise&Inspire, I quietly believed the same. If a reflection was honest, meaningful, and useful, readers would surely find it. Often, however, they did not. A good post that nobody can find is a letter that was never posted.
That is how I came to understand Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO. I no longer see it as a collection of technical tricks, but as the bush at the tavern door: a modest sign that helps people discover what lies within. Yet the sign is useful only when the wine itself is good.
So, how do I approach SEO on Rise&Inspire?
1. How Do I Choose the Right Keywords?
I begin with the reader’s question, not my own vocabulary.
Someone struggling with setbacks may not search for resilience frameworks. Instead, they might type how to overcome challenges or how to find peace in difficult times.
These everyday phrases help me understand what readers are looking for and how they express their needs.
I use relevant keywords naturally in titles, introductions, and headings. I never repeat them merely to make a post appear more relevant to search engines. The aim is to communicate the subject clearly while keeping the writing natural and useful.
My principle is simple: write about what matters to readers, using words they understand and recognise.
2. Why Do I Pay Attention to Blog Titles?
A title is often the first thing a potential reader sees in search results or on social media. It can influence whether someone decides to read an article.
Compare these two titles:
The Importance of Hope
How Can Hope Help You Overcome Difficult Times?
The second title identifies a question readers may genuinely have and gives them a clearer idea of what the article offers. That is why I often prefer question-format titles for Rise&Inspire.
However, a compelling title must remain faithful to the content. A headline that promises more than an article delivers may attract clicks, but it can weaken the reader’s trust.
I want my titles to awaken curiosity without misleading anyone.
3. How Do Meta Descriptions and URL Slugs Help?
A meta description is a short summary that may appear beneath a page title in search results. I aim for a concise, informative description, often around 150–160 characters when practical. This is a useful writing guideline, not a guarantee that search engines will display the description exactly as written or rank the page higher.
For example, an article about personal growth might use this description:
Discover practical ways to develop a positive mindset, overcome everyday challenges, and build a calmer, more meaningful life through personal growth.
A URL slug is the descriptive part of a webpage address. I prefer short, readable slugs that reflect the article’s main subject.
For example:
how-to-develop-positive-mindset
These details help readers understand what to expect before opening a page. Search engines may rewrite titles or generate different snippets depending on the search query, but providing clear and relevant information remains worthwhile.
4. How Do I Structure My Articles for Easy Reading?
An article may contain valuable ideas, but readers can struggle to follow it if everything appears in one long block of text.
I therefore use meaningful headings, short paragraphs, and lists where they improve readability. Clear headings allow readers to locate the information they need without having to read every sentence.
Each section should contribute to the central message rather than simply increase the article’s length.
Rise&Inspire serves readers with different interests. Some come for motivation, others for spiritual reflection, and many seek practical ideas they can apply to everyday life.
Good structure respects their time and makes the reading experience more rewarding.
5. Why Do I Link New Posts to Older Ones?
One strategy I value is internal linking: connecting a new article to relevant articles already published on the same website.
For example, a new post about morning routines can direct readers to an earlier article about making the first hour of the day meaningful. A reflection on peace can lead them to related posts about gratitude, faith, or personal development.
These links help readers explore a subject more deeply. They also help search engines understand how different pages on a website relate to one another.
I add links because they offer readers something useful, not merely to satisfy an SEO checklist.
Over time, individual posts can become a connected library of knowledge, experience, and reflection.
6. How Do I Optimise Images for My Blog?
Images can strengthen an article’s message, but they also require careful attention.
For my article headers, I choose images that reflect the central theme of the post. I consider their dimensions, file size, and contrast, too.
Large image files can slow down a webpage, particularly on mobile connections. Compressing images while maintaining acceptable visual quality helps reduce unnecessary loading time.
I also provide descriptive alternative text, commonly called alt text, for meaningful images. It helps people using screen readers understand visual content and can help search engines interpret images.
For example, an image showing someone watching the sunrise might use this alt text:
A person watching the sunrise, reflecting hope and the promise of a new beginning.
The description should accurately represent the image rather than simply repeat keywords. Decorative images that convey no additional information may not need descriptive alt text.
For me, an image should enhance the article’s message, not distract from it.
7. How Do I Know Whether My SEO Strategies Are Working?
Publishing an article is only one part of blogging. I also want to understand whether people are discovering and reading what I write.
Website statistics help me observe visitor numbers, page views, and popular articles. Google Search Console provides additional information about search queries, impressions, clicks, click-through rates, and average search positions.
These indicators can reveal opportunities for improvement.
If a post receives many impressions but relatively few clicks, I may review its title and search snippet. If an older article continues to attract visitors, I may update it or link to it from a newer, relevant post.
I also recognise that traffic fluctuates. One day’s figures rarely tell the whole story; longer-term patterns offer a more useful perspective.
SEO requires patience, observation, and a willingness to learn from the available evidence.
8. Does Good Wine Still Need a Sign?
Other traditions offer similar insights into the relationship between quality and visibility. A Chinese saying holds that fragrant wine fears no deep alley, suggesting that genuine quality can overcome obscurity. Yet another perspective recognises that even fragrant wine may remain undiscovered if its shop is hidden away.
Tamil wisdom expresses a related idea through the image of a kudathil itta vilakku—a lamp placed inside a pot, burning but unable to illuminate its surroundings. Its counterpart, a kundrin mel itta vilakku, is a lamp placed on a hilltop, visible from afar.
I find this imagery particularly meaningful for blogging.
SEO can carry the lamp up the hill. It cannot put oil in it.
A well-optimised article may become easier to discover, but its lasting value depends on what it offers the reader.
9. Can SEO Harm Good Writing?
Yes, when SEO becomes the purpose rather than the means.
Articles written primarily for algorithms can become repetitive, mechanical, and hollow. Readers may notice when natural expression has been sacrificed to keyword placement or formulaic headings.
There is another challenge. Search engines increasingly provide AI-generated summaries and direct answers to common questions. As a result, some readers may find the information they need without visiting the original webpage.
In this changing environment, generic information alone may not be enough to distinguish a blog. Personal experience, thoughtful reflection, practical examples, and an honest voice can give readers reasons to seek out the original article.
That is why I do not chase a particular word count or keyword density as though either guarantees success. SEO should support the substance of an article, not dictate every sentence.
The more crowded and automated the information landscape becomes, the more important it is to offer something genuinely useful and recognisably human.
10. What Have I Learned About SEO Through Blogging?
My experience with Rise&Inspire has taught me that blogging involves more than publishing articles. It requires an ongoing effort to create meaningful content, understand readers, improve presentation, and make useful information accessible.
Keywords, titles, meta descriptions, internal links, image optimisation, and analytics all have their place. None of them is the wine.
I begin with an idea worth sharing. I develop it in my own voice, organise it clearly, and consider the questions readers may have. Only then do I use SEO to help the article reach its intended audience.
If a reflection helps someone face a difficult day with hope, the writing has done its work. If an article encourages a reader to make a better decision or inspires someone to take a constructive step, it has achieved something meaningful.
SEO simply shortens the road between that message and the person who may need it.
Write for people first. Use SEO to help them find you.
Your Turn
What SEO strategies have helped your blog reach more readers?
Do you focus on keywords, engaging titles, internal links, image optimisation, social media, or something else?
Share your experience in the comments. Your insights may help another blogger make their writing more discoverable.
Thank you for being part of Rise&Inspire. Let us continue to learn, grow, and inspire one another.
Rise&Inspire — Strive to elevate in life.
In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 12 October 2026
What’s one thing you know now that would have saved your younger self a lot of pain?
Most of us assume that knowing more would have spared us pain. Hindsight suggests otherwise. Much of what hurt us was not what we failed to know, but the certainty we demanded before acting, and the blame we heaped on ourselves afterwards for what we could not have foreseen. Learning to choose with the light we have, and to release what lay beyond our sight, can turn regret into wisdom.
Discover why hindsight is a teacher and not a judge, and how that one lesson can help us live more purposefully today, on Rise & Inspire.
What Would Have Spared My Younger Self So Much Pain?
WordPress Daily Writing Prompt: What’s one thing you know now that would have saved your younger self a lot of pain?
If I could sit beside my younger self today, I would not begin by listing his mistakes. I would first listen to him: the hopes he carried, the fears he concealed, and the future he imagined so confidently.
Then I would tell him one thing. It is not the thing he would expect.
1. The Wish Behind the Question
Today’s prompt rests on a familiar wish: if only I had known then what I know now. It assumes that my younger self suffered because he did not know enough. For a long time I believed that too. So my first instinct would be to advise him to read more, ask more, and wait for one more sign before he moved.
2. The One Thing
What I know now is the opposite. Knowing more would not have saved him. Much of what he needed to know could only be learned by choosing, and then living with the choice. The pain he could have been spared was not the pain of not knowing. It was the pain of demanding certainty before acting, and then condemning himself afterwards for what he could not have known.
Hindsight is not a verdict. It is a view from a hill he had not yet climbed.
3. Understood Backwards, Lived Forwards
The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote in his journal that life must be understood backwards but lived forwards.1 Every real decision is made facing forward, in fog. To judge yesterday’s choice by today’s clarity is like blaming a traveller for ignoring a map that was drawn only after his journey ended. My younger self did not need more information. He needed permission to choose without it.
4. Who Knows What a Loss Means?
An old Chinese tale in the Huainanzi tells of a farmer on the frontier whose horse runs away.2 His neighbours console him; he asks how they know it is bad luck. The horse returns with a fine stallion from beyond the border; they congratulate him; he asks how they know it is good luck. His son falls from the new horse and breaks his leg. Then war comes, and the lame son is spared. The story does not claim that every loss is a hidden gain. It says something humbler: in the moment of loss, we are rarely able to read what it means. I would tell him that some doors will close on him that are not the tragedies he takes them to be.
5. The Second Arrow
An early Buddhist discourse, the Sallatha Sutta, describes a person struck by an arrow who is then struck by a second.3 The first arrow is the pain itself. The second is the grief, resentment and self-blame we add to it. Life fires the first arrow; we usually fire the second ourselves. This is exactly where my younger self could be spared. The people who will disappoint him and the opportunities that will vanish are first arrows. The nights spent replaying them, asking why he did not see it coming, are second arrows, and he will be the archer.
6. Fear Must Not Sign the Decision
The demand for certainty is often fear dressed as prudence. The Tamil poet Subramania Bharathi, writing under colonial rule, built one of his best-known songs on a single refrain: Achamillai, achamillai, achamenbathillaiye (there is no fear, no fear, no such thing as fear).4 Even if the whole world stood against him, he sang, fear would find no place. He was not denying danger. He was refusing to let fear make his choices. I would tell my younger self the same: fear may sit in the room, but it must never sign the decision.
7. A Necessary Concession
This is not a licence for carelessness. Some pain is earned. Some choices go wrong not because the future was hidden but because we ignored what was plainly in front of us: a warning we did not want to hear, a duty we kept postponing. Hindsight is not a verdict, but it is a teacher, and refusing its lessons would be another kind of foolishness. Wisdom lies in telling the two apart: learning from what we could have known, and releasing what we could not.
So this is what I would tell him. You cannot control everything that happens to you, but you must never surrender responsibility for the choices that remain yours. Make them with the light you have. Then forgive yourself for the light you did not have.
Perhaps growing older is not about learning how to avoid all pain. It is about learning which pain teaches us, which suffering we can prevent, and which burdens we no longer need to carry.
Notes
1 Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) was a Danish philosopher and theologian. The remark comes from his journals for 1843, where he grants the philosophers that life is understood backwards, but adds that they forget it must be lived forwards.
2 The Huainanzi is a Chinese compendium of philosophy compiled at the court of Liu An, King of Huainan, in the second century BCE. The story of the old man at the frontier (Sai Weng) appears in its eighteenth chapter and lives on as a Chinese proverb: when the old man lost his horse, who could tell it was not a blessing?
3 The Sallatha Sutta (“The Arrow”) is found in the Samyutta Nikaya (36.6) of the Pali Canon, among the earliest collections of the Buddha’s teachings. It contrasts the untrained person, who meets bodily pain with mental anguish and so feels two arrows, with the trained disciple, who feels only one.
4 Subramania Bharathi (1882–1921), honoured as Mahakavi (“great poet”) Bharathiyar, was a poet, journalist and freedom fighter from Ettayapuram in present-day Tamil Nadu, and a pioneer of modern Tamil verse. The refrain அச்சமில்லை அச்சமில்லை அச்சமென்பதில்லையே opens a song he wrote during the independence struggle; its later lines insist there is no fear even if all the people of the world stand opposed. The scholar R. P. Sethu Pillai, in Tamil Inbam, observed that the song echoes the seventh-century Saiva saint Thirunavukkarasar (Appar), who sang that there is nothing to fear and nothing coming that need be feared.
Have you ever finished a film and wondered what on earth you had just watched?
Most films keep a quiet agreement with us. We meet the characters, follow the plot, sense the ending approaching, and leave satisfied. A few films break that agreement. Time runs backwards, ordinary objects behave in extraordinary ways, a character wakes to find the world has changed around them, and the credits roll without a word of explanation. These are the films we call weird.
But here is the question I keep returning to. When we call a film weird, are we describing the film, or describing ourselves?
Weird Is a Verdict, Not a Genre
No film is weird in itself. It becomes weird only when it collides with what we expected. A story that baffles one viewer may feel perfectly natural to another who grew up with different myths, a different visual language, or simply more patience.
So “weird” is less a report on the screen than a report on the seat. It tells us where our expectations end. That makes the weirdest film we have ever watched surprisingly useful: it marks the edge of our own imagination.
The Confusion Is the Point
Strangeness can be deliberate, and it can teach. The Zen tradition has long used the koan, a riddle designed to defeat ordinary reasoning. The eighteenth-century Japanese master Hakuin asked his students to listen for the sound of one hand clapping. The question has no logical answer, and that is precisely its purpose. The student’s frustration is not the failure of the lesson; it is the lesson beginning.
A strange film can work the same way. It withholds the explanation we crave, and in that gap we notice how much of our thinking runs on habit. We discover that we expected the hero to be good, the ending to be fair, and time to move forward, without ever having asked why.
Not Every Strange Film Is Meaningful
Here I must be fair to the sceptic. Some films are not mysterious; they are simply muddled. Strangeness can be a costume worn by emptiness, and it would be foolish to call a film a masterpiece merely because we failed to understand it.
Yet the opposite mistake is just as easy to make. In the Vetrivetkai, the sixteenth-century Tamil poet-king Athiveerarama Pandiyan observes that the seed of a banyan fruit is smaller than the egg of a tiny fish in a clear pond, yet it grows into a tree that can shade a king with all his elephants, chariots, horses and soldiers.[1] Some films are like that seed: slight or baffling at first sight, they take years to show what they hold. So the cinema asks for two disciplines. Do not worship a film because it baffles you. Do not dismiss it because it is unfamiliar. Give it a fair hearing first; judge it afterwards.
The Discipline of Not Knowing
In a letter written in 1817, the poet John Keats admired a quality he called “negative capability”: the ability to remain in uncertainties, mysteries and doubts “without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
Most of us are not good at this. We want every story explained and every experience to deliver its lesson on time. Yet life, after all, rarely follows a perfectly written script. People surprise us, plans change, and some questions stay open for years. A strange film is a safe place to practise sitting with that discomfort. Reason is not abandoned; it simply learns to wait while imagination does its work.
So, What Is the Weirdest Movie I Have Watched?
You may have noticed that I have not named mine. That is deliberate. The moment I name a title, the conversation turns into a debate about that one film: whether it deserves the label, whether you found it strange at all. And that would only prove the point. My weirdest film might be your ordinary Tuesday evening.
What I can tell you is what such films leave behind. They make the familiar look a little unfamiliar. They remind us that “normal” is a habit, not a law of nature. And they show that a question which stays with us can be worth more than an answer we quickly forget.
Your turn: What is the weirdest movie you have ever watched? Was it bizarre, baffling, hilarious, or quietly meaningful? Share the title and tell us what made it unforgettable. Your strange film might become another reader’s discovery.
Keep an open mind, stay curious, and continue to rise and inspire.
John Britto Kurusumuthu
Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in
In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 10 October 2026
[1] The Vetrivetkai, also known as the Naruntokai, is a collection of short moral verses composed in the sixteenth century by Athiveerarama Pandiyan, a Pandya king who ruled from Tenkasi in southern Tamil Nadu and was himself an accomplished poet. Its verse on the banyan seed, which opens “Thelliya aalin siru pazhaththu oru vithai,” is among the best-known lines of Tamil moral poetry and is often quoted as a lesson against judging anything by its size or first appearance.
Some mornings begin with an alarm. Others begin with a thought, a quiet moment of gratitude, or the simple realisation that another day has been given to us.
Most descriptions of a morning routine list what gets done in it: the walk, the workout, the emails cleared before breakfast. By that measure, a good morning is a productive one. Over the years I have come to measure mine differently. The first hour matters not for what I finish in it, but for the attention it leaves me with for the rest of the day.
None of it is elaborate. That is rather the point.
2. Quiet comes before the noise
Before messages, news and other people’s concerns arrive, I give a few minutes to stillness. Meditation lets me look inward before the day pulls me outward, so that I reflect before reacting and think before responding.
This quiet also has a spiritual dimension for me: a moment to acknowledge the gift of another day. It need not be perfectly peaceful. Even a few undisturbed minutes help.
A morning thought, a verse of Scripture, a reader’s question or a WordPress prompt often becomes the day’s post. In The Blogger’s Daily Grind I listed what I wished I had more time for; in How Does a Blogger Spend Their Day From Morning to Night? I imagined a whole day given to writing. The morning is where that wish gets its first hour. A routine that leaves no room for curiosity has missed something.
5. The old traditions never asked dawn to be efficient
Long before morning routines became a self-help genre, many traditions honoured the dawn, and few treated it as a productivity tool.
In the Thiruppavai, the Tamil poet-saint Andal speaks as a young cowherd girl going from door to door before sunrise, waking her friends for the dawn bath and worship [1]. Her morning is shared, and it points beyond itself.
In the call to the dawn prayer, most Muslim communities add a line heard at no other hour: prayer is better than sleep. The day’s first claim on us, it says, is not work.
The Book of Lamentations, written amid the ruins of Jerusalem, still declares that the Lord’s mercies are new every morning (3:22–23). The morning is not a reward for a good yesterday. It is given regardless.
Different faiths, one instinct: the first hour is for orientation, not output.
6. The measure is attention, not completion
So I no longer judge my morning by the items I tick off, but by the attention I bring to it and carry out of it.
That realisation came slowly. In What’s the Simple Pleasure That Took Me Decades to Recognise? I described how the early morning, once mere preparation for work, became cherished in its own right. We spend years seeking happiness in large achievements, only to find some of it waiting in an ordinary hour.
7. A fair objection: not everyone has a quiet hour
A parent getting children ready for school, a commuter, a student before examinations: their mornings are not mine, and a retired person’s flexible hours are a luxury many do not have. I would not ask anyone to copy my routine.
Begin instead with one realistic practice, a cup of tea in silence, a short walk, a prayer, three tasks written down, and let it become a habit before adding another.
8. An opportunity, not an obligation
Some mornings unfold as planned. Others are interrupted by unexpected demands or simply a lack of energy. A useful routine should support us, not make us feel guilty when we cannot follow it. The question is not whether every item was completed, but whether we gave ourselves a fair chance to begin the day with awareness and purpose.
Perhaps that is the quiet wisdom of a morning routine: it gives us a fresh beginning, not because yesterday was perfect, but because today offers another chance to live well.
What does your morning routine look like, and which single habit makes the greatest difference to the rest of your day? Share it in the comments. Your routine might be the idea another reader tries tomorrow.
Note for readers
[1] Andal, usually dated to the eighth or ninth century, is the only woman among the twelve Alvars, the poet-saints of Tamil Vaishnava devotion. Her Thiruppavai, thirty verses set in the month of Margazhi (mid-December to mid-January), forms part of the Nalayira Divya Prabandham and is still sung at dawn in homes and temples across South India during that month. Its opening verse calls the young women of the village out to bathe: “Neeraadap poduveer, podumino” (“You who would bathe, come along”).
What’s the best way to meet new people while traveling?
When we plan a journey, we think about the places we will see, the food we will taste, and the photographs we will bring home.
But the memory that lasts longest is often not a landmark. It is a person. A fellow traveller who helped us find our way. A local who showed us something no guidebook mentions. A stranger whose conversation we still recall years later.
So how do we meet such people? Most advice is about where to go: hostels, tours, apps. I want to suggest something about how to be. The best way to meet people while travelling is to become a little less self-sufficient.
1. We Have Made Strangers Unnecessary
Modern travel is designed so that we need no one. The phone gives directions. An app translates the menu. We stay with our companions, check our screens, and move from one attraction to the next.
Each convenience is useful. Each also removes one more reason to turn to the person beside us. Meanwhile, interesting people are passing by.
2. Ask, Even When You Could Look It Up
A simple question can open a door:
“Where are you from?”
“Have you been here before?”
“Is there a local place you really enjoy?”
An app can tell you what is popular. Only a person can tell you what they love. You do not need a perfect opening line. Genuine curiosity is usually enough.
3. Let a Shared Experience Do the Introducing
Conversation comes easily when people are doing something together. Join a walking tour, sit at a communal table, take a cooking class.
You may begin as strangers. But after finding your way together, sharing a meal, or laughing over a small travel mishap, you may discover you have more in common than you expected.
4. The Road Has Always Been a Meeting Place
Classical Tamil poetry has an entire genre, the aatruppadai, built around one encounter. A bard returning from a generous patron meets a struggling fellow artist on the road and shows him the way. [1]
In Luke’s Gospel, two disheartened travellers walk to Emmaus beside a stranger and recognise him only when he breaks bread with them. The Qur’an (49:13) says humanity was made into nations and tribes so that we might come to know one another.
Three traditions, one intuition: difference is an invitation to acquaintance, and the road is where that invitation is most often extended.
5. Listen More Than You Speak
Meeting people is not about collecting contacts. Every traveller carries a story, and so does every local. Someone you meet may have grown up in a culture unlike yours, or faced challenges that changed how they see life.
Ask questions. Then listen, without rushing to compare their story with your own. You may come home carrying something more valuable than a souvenir: a new perspective.
6. Not Every Meeting Needs a Future
What if they do not want to talk? That is possible. Some travellers seek solitude, and that deserves respect, including on the days when the one seeking it is you.
Not every conversation becomes a friendship, and it need not. The Japanese tea tradition speaks of ichi-go ichi-e, “one time, one meeting”: treat each encounter as unrepeatable, because it is. One conversation may last two minutes. Another may last two hours. One may stay with you for years.
7. Be Open, But Be Wise
Needing people does not mean trusting everyone. Meet in public places, protect your personal information, and trust your instincts. Openness and good judgment are not opposites. They travel well together.
8. Carry the Habit Home
We do not need to cross a border to meet someone new. There is the neighbour we have never spoken to, the passenger beside us on the bus, the person waiting in the same queue.
Routine makes the world feel smaller than it is. Perhaps travel simply gives us permission to be curious. What if we brought that permission home, looked up from our phones, and asked a genuine question?
The Best Souvenirs Have Faces
Years from now, we may forget the name of the restaurant, the price of the ticket, and the route we took. But we will remember the person who helped us when we were lost, the stranger who made us laugh, the local who showed us a hidden corner of their town.
So perhaps the best way to meet people while travelling is not to search for friendship. It is to travel with an open mind, a curious heart, and the humility to need someone.
The destination gives us a photograph. The people give us a memory.
A Question for You
Have you ever met someone while travelling who left a lasting impression on you? What made that encounter memorable?
Note for readers
[1] Aatruppadai (ஆற்றுப்படை) (roughly, “showing the way”) is a genre of classical Tamil Sangam poetry, among the oldest literature in the language. Its best-known poems, such as Sirupanatruppadai and Perumpanatruppadai, belong to the anthology Pattuppattu (பத்துப்பாட்டு)(the Ten Idylls). In most of them, a poet or performer who has been honoured by a patron meets a fellow artist on the road. He describes the route, the landscapes and the welcome that await the newcomer.
John Britto Kurusumuthu
Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in
In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 08 October 2026
If aliens arrived tomorrow, what’s the first thing you’d ask them?
Most of us would ask about their spacecraft. Some would ask about the meaning of life. I think both miss the point. Our oldest problem is not that we do not know what is good, but that we know and do not do it.
Imagine waking tomorrow to news that a spacecraft has landed, its passengers are not human, and I have been granted one question. Only one.
The obvious questions queue up at once: where they came from, how they crossed the distance, how their ship works.
I would set them all aside. But I have come to think that the next question many thoughtful people would reach for, “What matters most?”, is the wrong one too.
1. The first question is a confession
Whatever we ask first reveals what we believe we lack. Ask about their engines, and we confess that we think our problems are problems of power. Ask about the meaning of life, and we confess that we think our problem is ignorance.
I am not convinced either is true.
2. We already know what matters most
Suppose they answered: kindness, honesty, restraint, care for the weak, gratitude, love beyond self-interest. Would any of us be surprised?
Every human civilisation has arrived at much the same list. We would have crossed the gulf between stars only to hear what our grandparents taught us at the kitchen table.
3. Our real problem is older than our science
The gap that troubles us is not between ignorance and knowledge, but between knowing and doing.
The Roman poet Ovid gives Medea a line that has never gone out of date:
“I see the better way and approve it; I follow the worse.”1
Writing to the Romans, the apostle Paul makes the same admission:
“For the good that I would I do not.”2
In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna asks Krishna what drives a person to do wrong even against his own will, as if pushed by force.3
Three traditions, far apart in language and belief, make the same confession. Notice, too, that Arjuna puts his question to one his tradition regards as the divine in human form. He had his own encounter with a visitor from beyond, and this is what he chose to ask.
4. So this is my one question
“You must have known what was good long before you lived by it. How did you close the gap?”
I would not want their beliefs but their methods. What habits, customs, upbringing or forms of government turned knowledge into character? How did they keep power from outrunning compassion, and their machines from using them?
5. The objection: is that not a wasted question?
A fair reader will object. A cure for cancer, clean energy, an end to hunger: these would save millions of lives. A hungry child would be right to ask for bread, not philosophy.
I grant this. If they offered such gifts, I would not refuse them.
But consider hunger. The world already grows enough food for everyone, yet people still go to bed hungry. The shortfall is not technical. Every great gift of power, from fire to the printing press to the atom, has been absorbed into our old habits. Hand us their technology, and we would carry it home in the same hands.
6. The answer may not come from the sky
A Tamil poem nearly two thousand years old, from the Purananuru, opens with two lines that suit a first-contact morning:
“Every town is our town; everyone is our kin. Good and evil do not come from others.”4
The first line welcomes the stranger, even one from another world. The second warns us not to expect too much from him: if good and evil do not come from others, they will not come from other planets either.
7. While we wait for the spacecraft
So I can begin now, closer to home. I can ask someone who survived a war, an elderly neighbour, a parent who has raised children, a person who lost almost everything and still found reason to smile.
But I would ask the sharper question. Not “What matters most?”, which would only tell me what I already know, but “How did you manage to live by it?”
And I would ask myself.
If the visitors do land tomorrow, I half hope they hesitate. I half hope they admit that they never fully closed the gap either, and that each generation among them has had to begin again. That answer would disappoint the engineers among us. To me, it would be the most reassuring news from the stars: that becoming good is not something any civilisation finishes, only something it keeps choosing to take up.
If you had only one question for them, what would you ask, and could you ask it of someone you already know?
Notes for readers
1. Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 7, lines 20–21: video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor. Medea speaks these words as she wrestles with a love that will lead her to betray her own father.
2. Romans 7:19, King James Version.
3. Bhagavad Gita 3.36, paraphrased. In the verse that follows, Krishna names desire and anger as the forces at work.
4. Purananuru 192, by the poet Kaniyan Pungundranar. The Tamil opening reads: யாதும் ஊரே யாவரும் கேளிர்; தீதும் நன்றும் பிறர்தர வாரா (Yaadhum oore, yaavarum kelir; theedhum nandrum pirar thara vaara). The Purananuru is one of the eight anthologies of classical Tamil Sangam poetry, a collection of some four hundred poems on public life, kingship, war and ethics. This poem’s opening line is among the most widely quoted expressions of universal kinship in Indian literature.
John Britto Kurusumuthu
Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in
In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 07 October 2026
We often admire people who act quickly. We praise those who reply at once, decide fast and speak with confidence when life becomes difficult. Speed is frequently mistaken for strength.
But I would argue that the most underrated life skill points the other way: knowing when to step back. It is underrated not because it lacks value, but because its victories are often invisible.
1. Its victories are invisible
Nobody applauds an argument that never happened. No one sees the angry email you deleted, the sharp remark you swallowed or the hasty decision you slept on. Action leaves evidence; restraint leaves none.
We can only praise what we can see. So the skill whose greatest victories are the things that never happened often goes unnoticed—even by the person who practised it. Its success looks exactly like nothing.
2. Stepping back is not walking away
Walking away abandons a responsibility. Stepping back creates enough distance to understand what is really happening.
Imagine receiving a message that upsets you. Your first instinct is to reply at once: to defend yourself, correct the other person, make your anger known. Wait an hour, and something changes. The emotion settles. You read the words again and realise they were not meant the way you first heard them. That small distance has prevented a large conflict.
Distance can reveal what closeness hides.
3. Even an emperor was told to wait
Plutarch records that when the philosopher Athenodorus took leave of the Roman emperor Augustus, he left him one piece of advice: whenever you are angry, say and do nothing until you have silently recited the twenty-four letters of the alphabet.1 Augustus took him by the hand, said he still needed him, and kept him at court another year. The most powerful man in Rome valued the friend who taught him to wait. The familiar advice to “count to ten” has an unexpectedly ancient—and imperial—ancestor.
The Jewish sages prized the same pause. In Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers, Shimon son of Rabban Gamliel says he grew up among the wise and found nothing better than silence.2
An old Tamil proverb turns it into a prophecy: Poruththaar boomi aalvaar, ponginaar kaadu aalvaar.3 Those who bear patiently will rule the land; those who boil over will rule only the wilderness.
And Japan has a word for the space itself: ma, the deliberate pause in music, speech and design.4 It is not treated as emptiness. It is the space that gives everything around it shape.
4. The hardest step back is from ourselves
Often, what we need distance from is not the other person but our own habits. Why does this particular criticism hurt so much? Am I defending what is right, or only my pride? Is this truly worth my energy?
These questions require honesty. But they lead to self-awareness, and self-awareness is where growth begins.
5. When stepping back is the wrong choice
This skill has a shadow, and it would be dishonest to ignore it. When someone is in danger, when injustice is happening in front of us, when a person we love needs an answer now, delay is not wisdom. It can become abandonment. Silence in the face of wrong can quietly become consent.
Even Confucius, who prized reflection, saw the danger. When he heard that a respected minister of his state always thought three times before acting, he remarked that twice would be enough.5 A person who always steps back has not mastered restraint; they have only found a more respectable name for avoidance.
That is why the skill is not stepping back. It is knowing when.
6. A simple practice: step back, breathe, choose
The next time you feel provoked, try three steps.
Step back. Do not rush to react.
Breathe. Give your mind a moment to settle.
Choose. Ask yourself: “What response will I respect tomorrow?”
That question cuts both ways. Sometimes the answer is silence. Sometimes it is speaking up at once. Either way, the response comes from judgement rather than impulse.
A thought to carry with you
Life does not always reward the fastest reaction. Stepping back does not always take us away from the path. Sometimes, it helps us see it more clearly.
So the next time life provokes you, take a breath. Look again. Then choose.
You may discover that the space you created was not empty at all.
It was filled with clarity.
What is one reply you are glad you never sent, or one you wish you had sent sooner?
Notes
1. Plutarch (c. 46 to after 119 CE) was a Greek biographer and essayist. The story appears in his Sayings of Kings and Commanders, part of the Moralia, among the sayings of Caesar Augustus. Athenodorus of Tarsus was a Stoic philosopher and one of Augustus’s teachers. The alphabet in question is the Greek one, which has twenty-four letters.
2. Pirkei Avot (the Ethics of the Fathers) is a tractate of the Mishnah, the early compilation of Jewish oral teaching completed around 200 CE. It gathers the ethical sayings of the early rabbinic sages. This saying appears in its first chapter.
3. A Tamil pazhamozhi, or folk proverb, still common in everyday speech. Literally: “Those who endure will rule the earth; those who boil over will rule the forest.” The forest here is the opposite of a kingdom: a place of exile rather than rule.
4. Ma is a Japanese idea of interval or meaningful pause, found in music, theatre, architecture and conversation, where the gap is valued as part of the whole rather than as something missing.
5. Confucius (551 to 479 BCE), Analects, Book 5. The minister was Ji Wenzi of the state of Lu. Chapter numbering differs between translations (5.19 or 5.20).
John Britto Kurusumuthu
Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in
In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 06 October 2026
Everyone has a life philosophy, even if they have never written it down. Mine has three simple instructions: keep moving, keep learning, keep making a difference. What would yours be?
We usually describe a personal philosophy as something we live by, as if it were a rule we keep every day without fail.
I have come to believe the opposite. A good philosophy is not the rule we never break. It is the place we return to after we have broken it.
Mine is simple: keep moving forward, keep learning, and keep making a difference.
I did not adopt it overnight. Life taught it to me slowly, through responsibilities and disappointments, relationships and successes, and the many unexpected turns that come with growing older. And I return to it most on the days I have failed to live it.
1. Keep Moving Forward
Moving forward does not always mean achieving something spectacular. Sometimes it simply means getting up and facing another day with hope.
We cannot control everything that happens to us, but we can usually choose how we respond. Progress may be very small: finishing a task I had postponed, writing a few lines, taking a walk, reaching out to someone, or simply refusing to surrender to discouragement.
Aesop’s tortoise did not win because it was fast. It won because it did not stop.
Someone may object that “keep moving” sounds exhausting, as if rest were a failure. I don’t think so. Rest is part of the journey; giving up is not. Forward is forward, even when the steps are small and the pauses are long.
2. Keep Learning
I don’t believe learning has an expiry date. Age may change our pace, but it need not end our curiosity.
Technology keeps changing, and new tools, ideas and ways of communicating appear almost daily. Rather than resisting everything unfamiliar, I try to stay curious.
An old Tamil work, the Naladiyar, puts it with striking honesty: learning has no shore, and the learner’s days are few. So, it advises, choose wisely what to learn, like the swan of Indian legend that is said to drink the milk and leave the water behind.1 That verse comforts me at this stage of life. I cannot learn everything, but I can still learn what matters.
Writing has become part of that learning. Through Rise & Inspire, every article teaches me something, not only about the subject but sometimes about myself. As long as we remain curious, we remain capable of growth.
3. Keep Making a Difference
The older I become, the more I realise that a meaningful life is measured not only by what we accumulate, but also by what we contribute.
A kind word, a piece of knowledge shared, a little encouragement for someone who is struggling, an hour given to a worthwhile cause: each of these can make a difference. Islamic tradition teaches that even a smile offered to another person is a form of charity.2 We rarely know how far a small kindness travels.
So I try to ask not only, “What can I achieve today?” but also, “What good can I do today?”
4. Trust What You Cannot Control
For me, this philosophy is held together by faith.
Faith does not mean that every question will have an immediate answer or that every difficulty will disappear. It gives me the confidence to continue when I cannot see the whole road ahead. I do my part faithfully and responsibly, and I accept that I cannot control everything. There is a certain freedom in that.
Other traditions arrive at the same freedom. The Bhagavad Gita teaches that we have a claim on our work, but not on its fruits.3 We do what we can, learn from what happens, and continue the journey.
5. Let “Forward” Grow With You
When we are young, moving forward may mean building a career, earning money or reaching a particular position. Later in life, the meaning changes. Peace becomes more valuable. Relationships become more precious. Health and time are appreciated differently. Leaving something worthwhile behind matters more than getting ahead.
A life does not have to become smaller with age. It can become deeper.
Returning, Not Perfecting
I don’t claim to follow this philosophy perfectly. There are days when I feel tired, when progress seems slow, and when I wonder whether what I am doing really matters.
That is exactly why I need it. A personal philosophy does not promise that life will be easy. It reminds us, even when life is hard, that we still have a choice about how we live it.
If I had to put it in one sentence, it would be this: keep moving forward, keep learning, and keep making a difference, one day, one step and one person at a time.
So, what about you? What mantra or philosophy do you return to when life becomes challenging?
Notes
1. The Naladiyar is a collection of four hundred Tamil quatrains composed by Jain monks. It is one of the Eighteen Minor Classics (Pathinenkilkanakku) of Tamil literature. The lines come from its chapter on learning (verse 135), which begins “Kalvi karaiyila, karpavar naal sila,” meaning “Learning has no shore; the learner’s days are few.” The swan that separates milk from water is a long-standing Indian image for discernment.
2. Recorded in Jami’ at-Tirmidhi, one of the major collections of the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad.
3. Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Verse 47.
John Britto Kurusumuthu Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in
In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 05 October 2026
When we arrive in a city we have never visited before, what should we do first?
Look for its famous landmarks? Follow a carefully prepared itinerary? Take photographs of everything?
Or should we simply walk, observe and allow the city to reveal itself to us?
I believe the best way to explore a new city is to slow down enough to experience it.
A city is much more than its monuments, museums and tourist attractions. Behind every famous landmark are ordinary streets, small shops, local markets, cafés, places of worship, parks and homes where everyday life unfolds. These ordinary places often tell us more about a city than its most photographed attractions.
Walk Beyond the Planned Route
Walking is one of the simplest ways to discover a new city.
When we walk, we notice things that we might miss from a car or tour bus—a colourful doorway, an old building, a street musician, a neighbourhood bakery or children playing in a park.
We begin to understand the rhythm of the city.
Sometimes, taking a slightly unfamiliar street can lead to an unexpected discovery. That is part of the joy of travelling.
Talk to People
Buildings tell us about a city’s history.
People tell us about its soul.
A brief conversation with a shopkeeper, taxi driver, waiter or local resident can reveal something no travel brochure can provide. Their stories, expressions and recommendations can introduce us to places we might never have found on our own.
We don’t need to have long conversations. Sometimes even a simple exchange can make a place feel more familiar.
Taste the Local Life
Food is another doorway into a city’s culture.
Instead of looking only for familiar restaurants, why not try something local?
A traditional dish, a neighbourhood café or a busy market can offer more than a meal. It can introduce us to traditions, ingredients, customs and memories that have been passed from one generation to another.
Sometimes, we understand a place through its food before we understand it through its history.
Don’t Let the Itinerary Control Everything
Planning is useful. It helps us make good use of limited time.
But an itinerary that is too rigid can turn exploration into a race.
We move from one attraction to another, take a photograph, check it off the list and hurry to the next destination.
Where is the space for surprise?
Leaving a little room in the day allows us to discover something that wasn’t on the plan. Perhaps it is a quiet garden, an interesting bookshop, a beautiful street or simply a place where we feel like sitting for a while.
Some of our best travel memories may come from moments we never planned.
Put the Camera Down Occasionally
Photographs help us remember places.
But not every beautiful moment needs to be photographed.
Sometimes we should simply stand still and look.
Listen to the sounds around us. Watch people going about their daily lives. Notice the architecture, the light, the smell of food and the changing atmosphere of the street.
There is a difference between recording a moment and living it.
Explore With Curiosity
Perhaps curiosity is the most important companion we can carry into a new city.
Instead of asking only, “What should I see?”, we can ask:
“What can this place teach me?”
That small change in perspective transforms travel.
A city becomes more than a destination. It becomes a story.
And every street, person and unexpected encounter becomes part of that story.
What Can a New City Teach Us About Life?
Exploring a new city can teach us something about exploring life itself.
We may begin with a plan, but we cannot control everything that happens along the way. We encounter unfamiliar places, unexpected turns and people whose paths cross ours briefly.
The lesson is simple:
We don’t have to rush through life checking destinations off a list.
Sometimes, we need to slow down, look around and remain open to what we discover.
The best way to explore a new city may therefore be the same way we can approach life—with curiosity, openness, patience and a willingness to take an unexpected turn.
Because in the end, the greatest travel memories may not come from the places we intended to visit.
They may come from the moments we never planned.
When you visit a new city, do you prefer to follow a carefully planned itinerary or leave room for unexpected discoveries?
John Britto Kurusumuthu
Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in
In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 04 October 2026
What’s a moment in your life that made you feel truly alive?
I will not tell you where it happened, or when. The details do not matter. What matters is what I finally saw that day.
The Ordinary Hour That Woke Me Up
A lifetime may contain thousands of days, but only a handful of moments make us profoundly aware of living. Today’s prompt asks for one of them. I suspect it expects a summit: a wedding, a first salary, a mountain top, a cheering crowd. My answer is plainer, and it arrived late.
The real question behind the prompt is not “When were you most excited?” It is “When did you stop merely going through life and become fully present in it?” Those are different questions, and they rarely share the same answer.
We look for aliveness in the wrong places. We are taught to measure life by its peaks. Milestones are photographed, celebrated and remembered. But peaks are noisy. Excitement fills the moment so completely that little room is left to notice it. I have stood at a few summits in my life, and looking back, I was busier than I was present at most of them.
Mine came on an unremarkable day. I will not tell you where it was, or when, or what I was doing, except that I had done it a thousand times before. Nothing happened. No news arrived. No one spoke. And yet, for a few minutes, everything became vivid: the light, the air, my own breathing, the plain fact that I was here. I am leaving out the details on purpose. They would make the moment only mine. Without them, you can put your own ordinary hour in that space.
What changed was not the circumstance, but the seeing. The day itself was ordinary. What had changed was the eye looking at it. For years I had treated life as something owed to me, a background against which the important things happened. In that hour I understood that life was not the background. It was the gift. Everything else was wrapping.
Why the realisation came so late. Adam Smith once asked why water, without which we cannot live, costs almost nothing, while diamonds, which we can do without, cost a fortune. The answer is abundance. Our days are like water. While they seem endless, we spend them without counting. Only when age, illness or loss makes them scarce do we begin to see their worth.
Many traditions arrived here before me. In Homer’s Odyssey, Achilles, the greatest of heroes, tells Odysseus in the underworld that he would rather be a hired labourer on earth than king of all the dead. Glory, it turns out, is a poor exchange for simply being alive. The Buddha compared the rarity of human birth to a blind turtle that surfaces once in a hundred years and, by chance, puts its head through a single yoke floating on the ocean. A saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad urges us to value five things before five: youth before old age, health before sickness, wealth before poverty, free time before busyness, and life before death. The Tamil mystic Tirumular confesses that he once thought the body a thing of shame, until he found the treasure dwelling within it, and from then on cared for it as a temple [1]. That is the late realisation I mean: not a new possession, but a new way of seeing an old one.
A fair objection. An older Tamil voice counsels caution. The poet Kaniyan Pungundranar wrote that death is nothing new, and so he neither rejoices that life is sweet nor curses it as bitter [2]. His point deserves respect. No one can live at the pitch of that moment every day, and trying to would be exhausting, even false. Perhaps the aim is not permanent wonder, but a steady gratitude that does not depend on wonder.
What remains. I cannot return to that hour. I have tried, and it does not come when called. But something from it stayed. I notice more. I complain a little less. I handle my ordinary days with more care, the way one handles something borrowed.
We cannot hold on to a moment forever. But we can carry its awareness into the days that follow.
Notes for readers
[1] Tirumular was an early Tamil Shaiva mystic and poet. His Tirumantiram is a foundational work of Tamil devotional and yogic thought. The reference is to verse 725.
[2] Kaniyan Pungundranar was a poet of the Sangam period, the classical age of Tamil literature. The lines come from poem 192 of the Purananuru, an ancient anthology of four hundred poems. The same poem opens with the well-known line “Every town is my town, every person my kin.”
John Britto Kurusumuthu
Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in
In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 03 October 2026
Everyone has a wish ready for the genie. We have been rehearsing it since childhood. But what happens when the genie warns that you will get exactly what you ask for, and not what you need?
The Genie’s Fine Print
A genie appears and says, “You have one wish. Ask for anything.”
Most of us could answer before the genie finished speaking.
Then the genie adds one warning: “You will receive exactly what you ask for, not what you really need.”
Suddenly the question is no longer a daydream. Every wish has fine print, and I am the one who will have to live inside it. So before I speak, let me read the fine print on each wish.
Wealth answers the wrong question. Midas asked that everything he touched would turn to gold, and he got exactly that. Then his bread turned to gold in his hand and his wine turned to gold in his mouth. Wealth tells you how much. It never tells you what for. A wish for money is a wish for a tool, made by someone who has not yet decided what to build.
A long life is a quantity, not a quality. In Greek myth, the goddess of the dawn asked Zeus to make her mortal lover, Tithonus, live forever. She forgot to ask that he stay young. He kept ageing, without end, until little was left of him but a voice. One sentence can ask for more years. No sentence can promise what those years will hold.
Success often means more arms for the same loom. The Panchatantra, the old Indian book of fables, tells of a weaver whose loom broke. When he went to cut wood for a new one, a spirit offered him a wish. He asked for a second head and two more arms so he could weave twice as fast. When he walked back into his village, people took him for a demon and killed him. He did not wish for a better life, only for more capacity to live the same narrow one. Many of our wishes for success are like his.
The generous wishes are the hardest to word. Peace, perfect health, the happiness of my family: these sound unselfish. But read them literally. If I wish for peace, whose terms of peace are imposed? If I wish for my family’s happiness, whose idea of happiness gets delivered? Mine, in both cases. I would be writing the script of other people’s lives without asking them. And even perfect health would bring me back, sooner or later, to the same question: healthy for what?
Wisdom looks like the winning answer. In the Hebrew Bible, God appears to the young King Solomon in a dream with the same open offer. Solomon asks for neither riches nor a long life, only for an understanding heart to rule his people well. He is given wisdom, and the riches he did not ask for besides. Here, it seems, is the perfect wish: ask for the capacity, not the outcome.
Yet I have to admit how that story ends. The same book records that in old age Solomon’s heart was turned away, and the wisest of kings made foolish choices. Wisdom given in a single night did not last a lifetime. This is the crack in my neat answer. Even the best gift fades when it is received once and never chosen again.
So one wish is the wrong unit. What I most need cannot be delivered in a single moment. Patience, gratitude, courage and kindness are not possessions. They are decisions, and they have to be made again every morning. The genie offers a one-time grant. Life asks me to renew it every day.
Here, then, is my wish. In Manimekalai [1], one of the great epics of Tamil literature, a young woman who has chosen the Buddhist path receives the Amudha Surabhi, a begging bowl that never runs empty. She does not use it to feed herself. She carries it through the city and feeds the hungry, and the bowl never fails. The bowl itself began with a gift: before she fed anyone, Manimekalai went to Aathirai, a woman known for her virtue, to receive the first alms into it. I would ask the genie for that bowl. Not a fortune to fill my house, but something that is useful only when I hold it out to someone else.
Even then, the genie could give me only the bowl. Picking it up tomorrow, and the day after, would still be my work.
Perhaps that is the real answer to the genie. The greatest wish is not to receive everything I want. It is to become the kind of person who keeps carrying the bowl, whatever life puts in my hands.
What is the bowl you would ask for, and whom would you hold it out to first?
[1] Manimekalai is a classical Tamil epic of Buddhist inspiration, attributed to the poet Seethalai Saathanar and composed well over a thousand years ago. It is counted among the five great epics of Tamil literature and continues the story of an earlier epic, Silappathikaram.
John Britto Kurusumuthu
Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in
In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 02 October 2026
When I hear the phrase side hustle, I usually think of someone looking for a way to earn additional income without giving up their main work. But the more I think about it, the more I feel that a side hustle can mean something broader.
It can be a way of turning experience into value, knowledge into service, or passion into something useful for others.
For me, writing would be high on the list.
I have always enjoyed writing, thinking, learning and sharing ideas. That is one reason I started Rise&Inspire. What began as a blog has become much more than a place to publish articles. It has given me a space to reflect, explore ideas, connect with readers and keep learning.
Could blogging itself become a side hustle?
Certainly. A blog can eventually generate income through advertising, affiliate marketing, digital products, courses, memberships, consulting or other services. But income is only one measure of its value. A blog can also build credibility, relationships and opportunities.
What else could make a good side hustle?
Teaching and mentoring would be another choice.
Years of professional and personal experience can become valuable when shared with someone who is still learning. A person doesn’t always need another qualification. Sometimes, they need someone who has already travelled a similar road and can help them avoid unnecessary mistakes.
Consulting is another possibility.
Experience that once seemed ordinary can become valuable when someone else needs it. Administrative knowledge, professional experience, problem-solving ability and specialised knowledge can all become services when they solve a real problem.
Then there is digital content.
Writing articles, producing educational material, creating ebooks, developing online courses or sharing practical knowledge through digital platforms can turn expertise into something that reaches people far beyond our immediate circle.
But before choosing any side hustle, I would ask one question:
Would I still enjoy doing this if the money took time to arrive?
That question matters.
A side hustle that demands constant attention, creates stress and leaves no time for life may defeat its purpose. The right one should fit naturally into your life rather than take it over.
Perhaps that is why I am drawn to writing, teaching, mentoring and sharing knowledge. These activities don’t feel like entirely new occupations. They are extensions of things I already value.
And perhaps that is one of the secrets to finding a good side hustle.
You don’t always have to start by asking:
“What can make me money?”
You can start with:
What do I know?
What do I enjoy?
What can I do well?
Whom can I help?
And finally:
Can I turn those answers into something people find valuable?
Your next source of income may not be hiding in a completely new idea.
It may already be hiding in something you know, something you love, or something you have spent years learning to do well.
What about you?
If you could turn one skill, hobby or passion into a side hustle, what would you choose—and why?
