Tag Archives: dailyprompt

What’s the most underrated life skill?

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

© 2026 Rise & Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

Website: Home | Blog | About Us | Contact| Resources

What’s a personal mantra or philosophy you live by?

View all responses

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

© 2026 Rise & Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

Website: Home | Blog | About Us | Contact| Resources

What’s the best way to explore a new city?

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

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

Website: Home | Blog | About Us | Contact| Resources

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

Website: Home | Blog | About Us | Contact| 

The genie grants you a wish. What is it?

View all responses

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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?
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

Website: Home | Blog | About Us | Contact| Resources

What are your favorite side-hustle ideas?

What are your favourite side-hustle ideas?

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?

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 01 October 2026

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

Website: Home | Blog | About Us | Contact|Resources

What are five simple exercises to do at home?

The deeper idea is:

When exercise has an “address,” you don’t have to decide each day whether to do it; the routine itself tells you when it happens.

Every Exercise Needs an Address

Ask for five simple exercises to do at home and the internet will hand you five hundred. The lists are not the problem. Most of us already know how to stretch, breathe, and do a push-up. What we lack is not instruction but a place in the day. An exercise without a fixed time is only a good intention, and good intentions are the easiest things in the world to postpone.

So here are my five, each with the excuse it answers and the address where it can live.

1. Five minutes of freehand stretching, for “I have no time”

Neck rolls, shoulder circles, a gentle twist, a forward bend, and a set of calf raises to finish. Nothing heroic. Five minutes is small enough to survive a tired morning, and that is the point. A short routine done daily outlasts an elaborate programme abandoned in the second week. Give it an address: the minutes spent waiting for the kettle to boil.

2. Ten minutes of yoga, centred on the pelvis but reaching the whole body, for “I have no gym”

A mat and a floor are enough. Hip openers, the bridge, the cat-cow stretch, and a deep squat work the region where much of our movement begins, and the rest of the body follows. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the classical Indian text on yoga, define posture in three Sanskrit words: sthira sukham asanam. A posture should be steady and easy. Not strained, not punishing. Easy. Give it an address: straight after the morning bath, on a mat that stays unrolled. A mat rolled up in a cupboard is an argument you will lose.

3. Ten minutes of breathing, for “I have no energy”

This is the exercise that looks like doing nothing, which is why it is so often skipped. Sit upright, slow the breath, lengthen the exhale, or try alternate-nostril breathing. The Tamil sage Thirumoolar admits in the Thirumanthiram [1] that he once thought the body a defect, until he found something precious within it. In a neighbouring verse he writes: “Udambai valarthen, uyir valarthene.” I nurtured the body, and so I nurtured life. Give it an address: before the phone is picked up in the morning.

4. Five minutes of dumbbells and push-ups, for “I have no equipment”

A pair of light dumbbells and a floor. Curls, presses, rows, and as many push-ups as come honestly; wall push-ups are a respectable start. Nearly two thousand years ago, the Stoic philosopher Seneca advised his friend Lucilius to prefer short, simple exercises such as running, lifting hand-weights, and jumping. They tire the body quickly and leave time for the mind. The advice has aged well. Give it an address: the five minutes before the evening news.

5. The walks and the cycling, for “I have no routine”

This is my fifth exercise, and the proof of everything above. A fifteen-minute walk half an hour after lunch. Fifteen minutes of cycling in the evening. Another fifteen minutes of walking before bed. These happen without fail, and not because I am unusually disciplined. They happen because lunch, evening, and bedtime never fail to arrive, and the movement simply rides along with them. “At home,” I have come to think, means within the rhythm of the household day, not only within four walls.

Other traditions knew this long before habit science did. In Japan, Radio Taiso has been broadcast every morning since 1928. It is a few minutes of simple calisthenics at the same hour each day, and it became a national habit through a fixed time, not a hard routine. In Islam, the five daily prayers, with their standing, bowing, and prostration, give movement an appointed place in every day. The lesson is the same: an appointed hour keeps what willpower alone cannot.

Add it up and the day holds about seventy-five minutes of movement, yet no single block runs longer than fifteen. Nothing is intense. It is simply distributed.

A fair objection

Is this too easy? Perhaps. Simple is not the same as sufficient forever. Over time the dumbbells can grow a little heavier and the push-ups a little more numerous. And anyone with back, pelvic, heart, or joint conditions should consult a doctor before starting yoga or strength work. But for most of us, the danger is not doing too little. It is planning too much and doing nothing.

So, five simple exercises to do at home? Any five will do, as long as each one has an address. The best exercise is not the hardest one. It is the one that knows what time it is.

[1] The Thirumanthiram is a Tamil work of about three thousand verses by Thirumoolar, a Siddhar (mystic-sage), and it is foundational to the Shaiva Siddhanta tradition of South India. Scholars date it variously, but it is generally held to be well over a thousand years old. The lines referred to are verses 724 and 725 in the standard numbering.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 30 September 2026

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

Website: Home | Blog | About Us | Contact| Resources

Word Count:909

Which relationship has taught you the most about yourself?

Some relationships teach us about other people. The deeper ones teach us about ourselves. They reveal how we respond to love, conflict, disappointment, trust, change, and uncertainty—and sometimes show us a version of ourselves we had never noticed before.

Which Relationship Has Taught Me the Most About Myself?

At first glance, the question seems simple:

Which relationship has taught me the most about myself?

My first instinct might be to think about the person who has been most important in my life—the person I have loved most, depended on most, or spent the most time with.

But that is not really what the question is asking.

It is asking something deeper.

It asks me to look beyond the other person and examine what the relationship has revealed about me.

A relationship can become a kind of mirror. I may enter it thinking I am learning how to understand another person. Over time, however, I may discover that I am also learning about my own character, expectations, fears, strengths and limitations.

Perhaps I discover that I am more patient than I thought.

Or perhaps I discover that I am not as patient as I imagined.

I may learn how much I value loyalty, honesty or independence. I may discover that I have a strong need to be understood, appreciated or accepted. I may realise that I sometimes expect others to think the way I do.

These discoveries are not always comfortable.

Some relationships reveal qualities I am proud of. Others expose weaknesses I would rather ignore. A disagreement may show me how I react when challenged. A period of silence may reveal how much I depend on communication. A misunderstanding may teach me whether I listen to understand or simply listen to respond.

That is why the most meaningful relationship is not necessarily the easiest one.

Sometimes the relationship that teaches me the most is the one that makes me look inward.

It may teach me that I cannot control another person’s thoughts or behaviour. I can only control how I respond. It may teach me the difference between compromise and surrender, between forgiveness and forgetting, or between caring for someone and losing myself in the process.

And sometimes, the greatest lesson is that I still have room to change.

Looking back, I may realise that the relationship did not simply teach me something about another person. It changed the way I see myself.

It showed me who I am when I am happy, disappointed, misunderstood, appreciated, challenged or hurt.

That may be the unexpected gift of relationships.

We often enter them asking, “Who is this person?”

Perhaps, with time, we begin asking a more important question:

“Who am I becoming because of this relationship?”

That question turns a relationship from merely an experience into a lesson.

And perhaps that is what makes some relationships unforgettable—not because they were perfect, but because they helped us see ourselves more clearly.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 29 September 2026

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

Website: Home | Blog | About Us | Contact| Resources

Word Count:534

If you could start a new business right now, what would it be?

View all responses

I wrote a full business plan today: members, rules, running costs, the lot. Then I gave it away for free. No, I have not lost my mind. Yes, you can have it too.

Turning the giveaway into the closing twist.

A Business Plan, With One Condition

If you could start a new business right now, what would it be?

I have an answer, and I have worked it out in some detail: what it is, who it serves and how it pays its way. Let me lay it out plainly, the way a founder would. There is one condition attached, which I will come to at the end.

1. What it is

A neighbourhood time bank.

Members trade skills by the hour. One hour spent teaching someone to use a smartphone earns one hour of learning to cook, play the keyboard or fix a leaking tap. Every hour is worth the same, whether it belongs to a surgeon or a student.

The currency is time, and nobody gets more than twenty-four hours a day.

2. Who it serves

It serves retired people with skills and time but fewer opportunities to be asked for either. It serves young people with energy and technical skills but little money, and newcomers who know nobody on their street.

A Tamil saying traditionally attributed to Avvaiyar puts the case in one line: what we have learned is a handful of sand, and what we have not learned is the size of the world.¹ A time bank lets a street pool its handfuls.

3. How it runs

A simple app, or even a paper ledger, records hours given and received. A part-time coordinator matches requests with offers and checks that members are who they say they are.

The coordinator’s pay comes from a modest annual membership fee. Local businesses can sponsor the initiative, and schools or other institutions could use it to support approved community-service activities.

Costs stay low because the value comes from the members’ time, skills and willingness to help one another.

4. What it refuses

It would take no commission on hours. It would not sell members’ data or rank them with stars.

And it would never let anyone buy hours with money, because the moment time can be bought, the rich will own the calendar.

5. An old principle behind a modern design

The idea that knowledge grows when shared is very old.

A popular Sanskrit verse describes the ways learning surpasses other forms of wealth.² Thieves cannot steal it, kings cannot seize it and brothers cannot divide it, and unlike material treasure, it grows through use and sharing.

An Islamic teaching holds that when a person dies, their deeds come to an end except three, one of which is knowledge that continues to benefit others.³

The Panchatantra shows how stories and knowledge can travel across cultures. Its fables moved from India into Middle Persian, then Arabic, and subsequently into other languages through translation, adaptation and retelling.⁴

6. The honest objection

Time banks are not new. Versions of time-based exchange have existed for decades in many countries, and some have struggled to remain active once the founding enthusiasm faded. Hours can be difficult to balance fairly, and generous members can tire of giving more than they receive.

Every founder also knows the old saying that ideas are cheap and execution is everything.

All of this is true.

7. The condition

That is exactly why I would not start this business myself.

I would give it away.

Everything above is yours to copy, rename and run on your own street, with no licence, no fee and no credit required.

When Jonas Salk was asked who held the patent on his polio vaccine, he famously replied, “Could you patent the sun?“⁵

A time bank belongs to the neighbourhood that runs it, and a founder who does not live there would be the wrong owner.

If ideas are cheap, giving this one away costs me little. If execution is everything, then it belongs to whoever lives on the street and is willing to knock on the doors.

At this stage of life, I am less interested in owning things than in seeing them used.

My contribution is the blueprint.

Yours can be the first hour.

What idea are you holding on to that might do more good if you gave it away?

Notes

¹ “Katrathu kaimann alavu, kallathathu ulagalavu”, a saying traditionally attributed to the Tamil poet Avvaiyar.

² A well-known Sanskrit subhashita, or verse of wisdom, widely taught in Indian schools.

³ Recorded in the hadith collection Sahih Muslim.

⁴ The Panchatantra is a collection of Indian animal fables. Its stories were transmitted through Middle Persian and Arabic and later reached other languages through translation and adaptation.

⁵ Jonas Salk is widely reported to have used the phrase “Could you patent the sun?” when discussing ownership of the polio vaccine.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 28 September 2026

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

Website: Home | Blog | About Us | Contact| Resources

Word Count:863

What are your best healthy eating habits?

Every morning at seven I eat the same breakfast: a handful of soaked nuts and a glass of warm water. Nothing about it would photograph well, but it taught me something I had missed for years. We talk about healthy food as if health were stamped on the ingredient. Yet the same food can nourish or burden depending on how much, when and why we eat it. 

In today’s post I share five habits that changed my relationship with food, including the hardest one: stopping before I am full. I also look at how a Buddhist king, a saying of the Prophet Muhammad, the elders of Okinawa and the ancient Greeks at Delphi all arrived at the same lesson. 

What is one eating habit that has served you well over the years?

The Trouble with the Word “Healthy”

At seven every morning, my breakfast is the same: a handful of soaked nuts, walnuts among them, and a glass of warm water. Nothing about it would photograph well. Yet this plain routine has taught me more about healthy eating than any list of superfoods.

What it taught me is this: we have put the word “healthy” in the wrong place.

We ask which foods are healthy, as if health were stamped on the ingredient itself. But a kilo of almonds eaten at one sitting is not healthy, and a festival sweet pressed into my hand by a neighbour is not a moral failure. The same food can nourish or burden, depending on how much, when, why and how it is eaten. Health is not a property of food. It is a property of the relationship between a person and a plate.

Seen that way, my best habits concern less what I eat than how I conduct that relationship.

1. I do not eat simply because food is available. The open packet, the buffet, the plate refilled without asking: none of these is hunger. Before I reach, I try to ask whether I am hungry or merely near food.
2. I do not rush a meal. Hurried eating is absent eating. When I sit down, chew slowly and notice what I am eating, I need less and enjoy more.
3. I do not treat every craving as a command. A craving is information, not an instruction; often it is boredom or tiredness wearing the mask of appetite. Sometimes I honour it. I simply no longer obey it by reflex.
4. I do not reinvent my plate every morning. The same simple breakfast at the same hour removes one daily negotiation with myself. Consistency, I have learned, outlasts enthusiasm. Even the soaking helps: tomorrow’s breakfast begins with a small decision made the night before.
5. I stop before I am full. This is the hardest habit and, I suspect, the most important.

That last habit is hardly my discovery. It appears in strikingly similar form across traditions that never consulted one another.

In a Buddhist discourse, King Pasenadi of Kosala came to the Buddha panting after an enormous meal [1]. The Buddha offered him a short verse on knowing the measure in eating. The king had a young man recite it at every meal and reduced his portions gradually until the heaviness left him. The teaching named no forbidden food. It taught measure.

A hadith, a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, puts it in memorable arithmetic: a third of the stomach for food, a third for drink, a third for breath. Older Okinawans speak of hara hachi bu, eating until eight parts in ten full. And in ancient Greece, “nothing in excess” was inscribed at the temple of Apollo at Delphi.

Four traditions, one striking lesson. the measure matters as much as the meal.

Is this too tidy? Perhaps. Food is not merely fuel. It is hospitality, celebration, memory and comfort, and a life that treats every meal as a calculation has lost something worth keeping. So I add a sixth habit, the one that protects the rest: I do not punish myself for enjoying food. Moderation that forbids all pleasure is only another kind of excess. I will also concede the obvious: measure cannot redeem everything, and what goes on the plate still matters. My claim is only that it is not the whole story.

When we are young, we eat for pleasure and for the moment. As we grow older, we begin to understand that every meal is also a conversation with our future self, the person who will inherit the habits we are shaping today.

The Tamil poet-mystic Tirumular [2] confessed in one verse that he once regarded the body as a flaw. Then he found something precious dwelling within it, and from that day he began to tend it with care. I recognise that turn. My handful of soaked nuts at seven o’clock is not a diet. It is a small daily act of respect for the body I have been given, and for the years it still has to carry me.

That, finally, is my best healthy eating habit: not a food, but a way of sitting down to one.

Notes

[1] The account appears in the Donapaka Sutta of the Samyutta Nikaya, part of the Pali Buddhist canon. Pasenadi ruled Kosala, a kingdom in northern India, and was a contemporary and lay follower of the Buddha.

[2] Tirumular was a Tamil Siddha poet whose Tirumantiram, some three thousand verses composed well over a thousand years ago, forms the tenth book of the Tirumurai, the canon of Tamil Shaiva devotional literature. The Siddha tradition treated care of the body as part of spiritual discipline.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 27 September 2026

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

Website: Home | Blog | About Us | Contact| Resources

Word Count:979

What are some life hacks that you practice?

View all responses

Confession: my best life hacks are mildly annoying. Each one costs me a minute today and saves me an hour of searching, worrying and apologising tomorrow. Curious which five inconveniences I swear by? They are waiting on the blog.

My Best Life Hacks Make Life Slightly Harder

A life hack, as the internet sells it, is a clever way to skip a step. Peel the garlic by shaking it in a jar; fold the shirt in two seconds. Save time, money, effort and stress. The promise is always subtraction.

Yet when I list the small practices that have genuinely improved my days, I notice something odd. Almost every one of them adds a little effort rather than removing it. They do not skip a step. They insert one, deliberately and early, so that I am spared many steps later.

That, I have come to believe, is what a real life hack is. It is not a shortcut but a small inconvenience chosen in advance. Here are five I practise.

1. A fixed place for everyday things

My keys, spectacles and pen each have a home. Returning them there costs something every time, especially at the end of a tiring day when it would be easier to drop them anywhere. But that small discipline has nearly abolished one of life’s most pointless activities: searching. The friction is paid in seconds; the saving is paid in calm.

2. Writing things down

Trusting memory feels faster. It is not. A task held in the head does not sit quietly; it keeps tapping the shoulder. Writing it down takes a moment longer, but a written list does more than organise the day. It gives the mind permission to stop remembering everything and start thinking about something.

3. Doing the small task at once

A two-minute reply, a bill to file, a call to return. Postponing each seems harmless, but small tasks do not stay small once they gather. A pile of trivial things weighs far more than the sum of its parts. So I do the small thing immediately, even when I would rather not. The reluctance lasts a minute. The relief lasts the day.

4. Taking a moment before responding

This is the hardest of the five, and the most valuable. When a message or a remark irritates me, I let it wait before answering. Most irritations lose their heat within the hour. The reply I would have sent in the first minute is rarely one I would still defend by evening. Centuries ago, the Tamil poet Avvaiyar compressed this whole practice into two words: “Aaruvathu sinam”, let anger cool. [1]

5. Saying no

Agreeing is the easy path. Refusing costs a moment of awkwardness, perhaps a flicker of disappointment on someone’s face. But every unconsidered yes is a loan drawn against my future time, and the interest is steep. A courteous no, given early, is kinder to both sides than a reluctant yes honoured badly.

Old counsel, new name

None of this is new. Aesop’s tortoise did not win by cleverness; it simply kept going while the hare, sure of its speed, lay down for a nap. The Book of Proverbs sends the idle to study the ant, which gathers its food in summer though no one compels it. A saying often associated with Zen observes that before enlightenment one chops wood and carries water, and after enlightenment one chops wood and carries water. A well-known hadith advises tying the camel first, and then trusting in God. Across these traditions the counsel is the same: attend to the small thing now, and the larger things grow lighter.

A fair objection

Not every shortcut is a vice. The washing machine, the calendar reminder and the recipe that halves the cooking time are gifts. Refusing them out of pride would be its own kind of foolishness. The question I ask is simple: does this shortcut remove drudgery, or does it remove attention? The first deserves a welcome. The second usually returns later, carrying a bill.

What a life hack really saves

A clever hack saves a few minutes. A good habit shapes the person who spends them. None of my practices is ingenious; a child could follow any of them. Their value lies in choosing a small inconvenience early, so that life does not hand me a larger one later.

Perhaps that is the only life hack worth passing on: pay the small price now, willingly, before a bigger one arrives unasked.

Note

[1] The Aathichoodi is a collection of single-line moral maxims in Tamil, traditionally attributed to the poet Avvaiyar. Its lines follow the order of the Tamil alphabet and have been taught to children for generations. “Aaruvathu sinam”, its second line, may be rendered as “anger is what should subside”.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 26 September 2026

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

Website: Home | Blog | About Us | Contact| Resources

Word Count:835

Do you believe in karma?

We have all said it, usually through gritted teeth: karma will get them. I have said it too. But while writing today’s post, I noticed how rarely we say it about ourselves.

So I went back to what karma meant in the traditions that gave us the word. I looked at a Tamil epic about a king who condemned an innocent man without hearing him, and at the Bible’s surprising refusal to read suffering as punishment. Where I landed may not be where you expect.

I would love to hear how you see it. Is karma about justice for others, or responsibility for ourselves?

Do I Believe in Karma? Yes — Which Is Why I’ve Stopped Wishing It on Others

“Karma will get them.”

I have heard that sentence in offices, at bus stops and in family quarrels. I have said it myself. It is almost never said about the speaker. So before I answer today’s question, I want to look at how the question is usually asked.

1. The Phrase We Reserve for Others

Karma may be the only law most of us believe in on someone else’s behalf. We invoke it when a rude colleague is promoted or a dishonest neighbour prospers. In that mood, karma is less a moral principle than a postponed revenge, a debt collector we hope will one day knock on another person’s door. If that is what belief in karma means, then I do not believe in it.

2. What the Word Actually Means

The Sanskrit word karma simply means “action” or “deed.” In the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions that shaped it, karma describes how what we do leaves its mark on us and on the world. The Bhagavad Gita asks us to act rightly while giving up any claim on the results. The Buddha placed the weight on intention: “Intention, I tell you, is kamma.” Neither text gives us a scoreboard for tracking our neighbours.

3. The Epic That Made Karma Its Thesis

The Tamil epic Silappatikaram [1] opens by announcing three truths it will show. One of them is that past deeds return in full force and make us taste their fruit. The story that follows is, at its heart, a courtroom tragedy. A king condemns an innocent man, Kovalan, on the word of a thieving goldsmith, without hearing him. Kovalan’s widow, Kannagi, breaks her anklet before the throne and proves his innocence. The king cries out, “Am I a king? I am the thief,” and dies where he sits.

4. Why We Built Courts Anyway

I spent most of my working life drafting and reforming laws. I have come to see every penal code as a quiet confession that we do not trust karma to deliver justice on time. Law is organised consequence. It insists on evidence, a hearing, and a verdict within a lifetime. The king’s failure in the epic was a failure of natural justice: he never heard the other side. Yet law has limits the old traditions noticed long ago. A statute can reach only what we do. It cannot reach what we intend, and it has no power over who we become.

5. The Hardest Objection: Innocent Suffering

Any honest essay on karma must face the child born into misery and the cruel man who dies in comfort. Here the Bible offers a rebuke rather than a parallel. When the disciples asked whose sin had caused a man’s blindness, Jesus answered that it was neither his nor his parents’. When a tower fell at Siloam, he denied that its eighteen victims were worse than anyone else. Job’s friends lose their argument precisely because they read his suffering as payment. Even the Buddha counted the exact working-out of karma’s results among four things no one should try to calculate. These traditions disagree about whether karma exists, but they agree that I have no licence to read another person’s pain as a verdict.

6. Where Consequences Land First

If karma is not a cosmic ledger, what remains? Something closer to home. Aristotle observed that we become just by doing just acts. Paul warned that whatever a person sows, that they will also reap. The Qur’an says that anyone who does an atom’s weight of good will see it. Read together, these point to the same place: the first person my actions reach is me. A lie repeated becomes a habit, a habit becomes a character, and character, far more than fortune, is the harvest I can be certain of gathering.

7. So, Do I Believe in Karma?

Yes, but only in the version I am permitted to apply to myself. I cannot audit the universe’s books, and I should stop trying to audit my neighbour’s. What I can do is look at the seeds in my own hand.

The next time you are tempted to say that karma will catch up with someone, ask yourself this: if it caught up with you first, what would it find?

Note for readers

[1] The Silappatikaram (“The Tale of the Anklet”) is one of the Five Great Epics of Tamil literature. It is attributed to Ilango Adigal, traditionally described as a Chera prince who renounced the throne, and is dated variously between the second and sixth centuries CE. Its prologue names three truths the story will show. First, dharma turns into death for a ruler who errs in governance. Second, the great will honour a woman of true virtue. Third, past deeds return in full force to be lived through; in Tamil, ūḻvinai uruttu vantu ūṭṭum.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 25 September 2026

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

Website: Home | Blog | About Us | Contact| Resources

Word Count:963

How do you write what people actually want to read?

View all responses

The real test of writing is not whether the writer enjoyed writing it, but whether a reader finds a reason to keep reading. That reason is rarely found in the writer’s cleverness. It is found in the reader’s life—in a question they carry, a concern they revisit, or a thought they have not yet found words for.

 Across traditions, from Rumi to the Letter of James to the Tamil poet Avvaiyar, the counsel is remarkably similar: listen first, then offer something that matters. When a writer’s curiosity meets a reader’s need, content becomes conversation.

 Listen to What They Want, Write What They Need

 People read because they want something: a useful answer, a fresh perspective, a moment of recognition, a little encouragement, or simply the feeling that someone has put into words what they themselves were thinking.

 The usual advice follows naturally: find out what people want, and give it to them.

 I believe that advice is only half right.

 Good writing does begin by listening to what people want, but it ends by giving them what they need—and the two are not always the same.

1. Writing begins with the ear, not the pen.

The writer’s first task is to listen.

Listen to conversations. Listen to questions. Listen to the concerns people repeat. Listen to silence. Listen even to the subjects people avoid, because what goes unsaid is often what most needs saying.

Before a writer can speak meaningfully to readers, the writer must first learn to hear them.

2. What people ask for is only the surface.

Readers may say they want quick tips, short lists, and headlines that promise everything in five minutes. But look beneath the request, and something deeper often appears.

The person searching for “ten ways to sleep better” may really be asking how to quiet a worried mind.

The request is the door. The need is the room behind it.

Good writing does not stop at the door.

3. An old Indian teaching tradition wrapped the need inside the want.

The Panchatantra, the ancient Indian collection of animal fables, is traditionally framed around a problem every writer understands. A king had three sons who would not learn, and conventional study would have taken years. A teacher named Vishnu Sharma promised to make them wise in six months—and he did it through stories of jackals, crows, lions, and tortoises.

The princes wanted entertainment.

They needed statecraft.

He gave them both, and the lesson arrived without announcing itself.

That is a powerful lesson for writers. Sometimes the most effective way to give readers what they need is to begin with something they already want.

4. Every tradition places listening before speaking.

Rumi opens his great Masnavi not with instruction, but with a command to the ear: listen to the reed as it tells its tale of separation.

The Letter of James counsels believers to be quick to listen and slow to speak.

Traditions that agree on little else agree on this: those who wish to be heard must first learn to hear.

For a writer, listening is not a preliminary exercise. It is part of the writing itself.

5. Write to offer, not to display.

The Tamil poet Avvaiyar is remembered for a line of striking humility: what we have learned is a handful of earth; what we have not learned is the size of the world.[1]

A writer who writes chiefly to show what they know is writing to a mirror.

A writer who writes to offer something useful, meaningful, or illuminating is writing for another human being.

Those who draft laws learn the same discipline. A statute is not written for the person who drafts it, but for the citizen who may one day have to read it, understand it, and live by it.

Writing, at its best, is an act of service.

6. Listening is not the same as obeying.

Here the argument needs a counterweight.

A writer who merely echoes what the crowd wants becomes a vending machine: press a button, receive a product.

Popularity is not proof of value, and the most-clicked article is not always the most-needed one.

Yet the opposite error is just as real. A writer who ignores what readers want becomes a preacher in an empty hall—correct perhaps, but unheard.

Vishnu Sharma did neither.

He did not lecture the princes, and he did not merely amuse them. He listened to what they would accept and used it to carry what they required.

That may be one of the finest principles of writing: meet readers where they are, then take them somewhere worth going.

7. The real test belongs to the reader.

The question is not, “Did I enjoy writing this?”

It is:

“Will someone find a reason to keep reading?”

That reason may be an answer that works, a thought that stays, or a sentence that makes someone say, “Yes, that is exactly what I felt.”

Every one of those reasons lives in the reader’s life, not in the writer’s pride.

So, how do you write what people actually want to read?

You listen long enough to discover what they want, and you care enough to give them what they need.

Because readers may click for curiosity, stay for relevance, and return for value.

When the writer’s curiosity meets the reader’s need, writing becomes more than content.

It becomes a conversation.

 

Note for readers

[1] Avvaiyar is the name given to one or more revered women poets of Tamil literature across different centuries. The line quoted here, “Katrathu kaimann alavu, kallathathu ulagalavu” in Tamil, is traditionally attributed to her and is widely taught in Tamil Nadu as a lesson in intellectual humility.

 

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 24 September 2026

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

Website: Home | Blog | About Us | Contact| Resources

Word Count:999

What’s the most spontaneous thing you’ve ever done?

View all responses

Ask people about the most spontaneous thing they have ever done, and you usually hear about a trip, a purchase, or a ticket bought at midnight. Mine is quieter. One morning I set aside a carefully planned day and followed a single thought instead.

In this post I argue that spontaneity needs a plan to depart from, and that a prepared mind improvises best. I also admit that not every abandoned plan is spontaneity, because some of it is plain avoidance.

I would love to hear where you draw that line.

The Day I Did Nothing on Purpose

Perhaps the most spontaneous thing I ever did was not doing something at all. I abandoned a carefully planned day and followed a thought that had no appointment in my calendar.

I had arranged the day the evening before, as I usually do. There were calls to return, a document to finish, an errand in town, and a letter that could not wait another week. The list sat on the table, neat and reasonable. Then, over the first cup of tea, a thought arrived. It was not urgent, and it was not useful in any way the list would recognise. It simply asked to be followed.

I followed it. The calls waited, and so did the document. By evening the list was untouched, and I had spent a whole day walking behind an idea.

When people answer this question, they usually describe a sudden trip, a reckless purchase, or a ticket bought at midnight. I want to argue for something quieter.

1. Spontaneity begins in the mind, not the feet.

We think of spontaneity as movement: getting up and going. But the body only carries out a decision the mind has already made. The truly unplanned moment is the one in which a thought is allowed to change the shape of a day. The trip is only the part other people can see.

2. You can only abandon a plan you have made.

This is the paradox. A person with no plan cannot be spontaneous, only adrift. Spontaneity needs a structure to depart from, just as a detour needs a road. My day felt free precisely because it had been so carefully arranged. The list did not prevent spontaneity. It made spontaneity possible.

3. The prepared mind improvises best.

The Tamil poet Kavi Kalamegam [1] was renowned as an aasu kavi, an extempore poet, and for his ingenious silēḍai verses in which words or lines could carry more than one meaning. It looks like pure impulse. Yet no one can play with two meanings in an instant without already holding the whole language in hand.

In the Zhuangzi, the Chinese classic, Cook Ding carves an ox for Lord Wenhui so smoothly that it looks like a dance. He explains that after years of practice he stopped seeing the whole ox, and his knife now simply finds the spaces between the joints. His blade, in use for nineteen years, is still as sharp as the day it left the grindstone.

What we call spontaneity is often preparation that has finally forgotten itself.

4. A thought followed is an appointment kept with oneself.

Our calendars are full of other people’s claims. Rarely is there an entry for the question that has been waiting quietly in our own minds. The Book of Ecclesiastes says there is a time for every purpose under heaven. Some of those purposes never make it onto a list. They have to be given a day anyway, or they are never given one at all.

5. Not every abandoned plan is spontaneity.

Here I must be fair to the other side. Sometimes we drop a plan not because a thought has called us, but because the task is hard and we want an excuse. That is not spontaneity. It is avoidance wearing a better coat. The difference lies not in the leaving but in the returning.

Avoidance comes back empty. A true thought, followed honestly, comes back with something.

What was the thought? It was a question I had carried for years and never given a single morning to. I will not name it even now. The question matters less than the fact that, for once, it was given a whole day.

I returned the calls the next day and finished the document, a little late. Nothing collapsed. But I still think of that day as the only one I can remember that was not written in advance.

I have come to believe that a well-planned life needs at least one such day: a blank space the plan did not foresee, where something unplanned is allowed to happen.

What is the most spontaneous thing you have ever done—and how do you know it was spontaneity rather than avoidance?

Note

[1] Kavi Kalamegam was a Tamil poet usually placed in the fifteenth century. He is remembered as an aasu kavi, a poet who composed verses instantly on a theme set by others, and for his silēḍai verses, in which each line can hold two meanings at once. His name means “dark rain-cloud”, a tribute to the way verses poured from him.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 23 September 2026

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

Website: Home | Blog | About Us | Contact| Resources

Word Count:906

How do you make time for self-care?

How do you make time for self-care? I tried answering that honestly and realised the question itself was part of the problem. Every time I “scheduled” rest, it became one more task on the list. So I turned it around and asked what I could take away instead. Less noise. Less pressure to reply at once. Less guilt about an hour that produces nothing. What was left surprised me: a quiet morning, a good conversation, a few pages of a book. 

In today’s post I explore this idea, drawing on the Sabbath, Buddhist and Sufi traditions, and an old Tamil classic. I would love to hear what you have removed from your own day.

The Wrong Verb: Why Self-Care Is Found by Subtraction

The question asks how I make time for self-care. I want to begin by quarrelling with the verb.

Nobody makes time. Each day arrives with the same twenty-four hours, most of them already claimed before we wake. To “make time” for self-care is to treat it as one more appointment, one more box to tick. And once care becomes a task, it quietly becomes another source of pressure. The wellness industry understands this well. It sells schedules, subscriptions, retreats and routines, and it calls the purchase rest.

So I have stopped thinking of self-care as something I have to fit into my day. Instead, I ask a different question: what should I remove from my day so that I can hear myself again?

1. Remove the noise. Much of what fills our hours is not work or duty but sound: notifications, background television, the scroll that begins as a glance and ends as an hour. None of it asks much of us, and that is exactly why it takes so much. Silence is not empty. It is the room in which our own thoughts finally become audible.
2. Remove the pressure to respond immediately. Not every message needs an answer within minutes. The expectation of instant reply is a modern habit, not a moral obligation. A thoughtful answer given tomorrow is usually worth more than a hurried one given now. Delay, rightly used, is a form of respect for the question and for ourselves.
3. Remove the belief that every minute must be productive. This is the hardest removal, because the belief feels like virtue. We measure our worth in output and feel guilty for an idle hour. But a walk without an agenda produces nothing you can count, and it can still restore the whole person who does the counting.
4. Remove borrowed urgency. Many of our emergencies belong to other people. Their deadlines become our anxieties, and their haste becomes our pace. Learning to tell a real obligation from an imported urgency is itself an act of care.
5. Notice what remains. When these things are removed, what is left is modest: a quiet morning, a thoughtful conversation, a few pages of a book, a walk, or simply sitting still. None of these needs to be scheduled. They were always there, crowded out.
6. The old traditions knew this before we did. The Hebrew Sabbath is rooted in the idea of ceasing. It is not a holiday filled with leisure but a day marked by what is not done. Buddhist teaching speaks of renunciation, the letting go of what binds the mind, as the path to clarity. In the Sufi tradition, khalwa, a period of withdrawal and seclusion, is undertaken so that the seeker can hear what the world drowns out. The Naladiyar[1], the classical Tamil collection of quatrains, returns again and again to the passing nature of wealth, youth and worldly striving, and reminds its readers that clinging to them only deepens the unrest. Across faiths and languages, the pattern is the same: the self is recovered by subtraction, not accumulation.
7. A necessary concession. Subtraction is not equally available to everyone. A daily-wage labourer, a single parent working two jobs, or someone caring for an ailing relative cannot simply remove duties from the day. To preach stillness to the overburdened can sound like privilege dressed as wisdom. Yet even in the fullest life, some small removal is usually possible: one message left unanswered for an hour, five minutes left unaccounted for, one worry set down before sleep. And those of us who can subtract more have a quiet duty not to load our own noise and urgency onto those who cannot.

Perhaps self-care is not always about doing something for ourselves.

Sometimes, it is about stopping long enough to remember who we are.

Note [1] The Naladiyar is a collection of four hundred quatrains in classical Tamil, traditionally attributed to Jain ascetics. It belongs to the Pathinenkilkanakku, the Eighteen Minor Classics of Tamil literature, and is known for its ethical and didactic verse.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 22 September 2026

© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

Website: Home | Blog | About Us | Contact| Resources

Word Count:838