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What’s one piece of travel advice you always follow?

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What Is the Best Travel Advice for a More Peaceful Journey?

We carefully pack our suitcases before travelling. But what about the worries we secretly pack in our minds? What if the best travel advice is to leave a little emotional baggage behind? Read the new reflection on Rise&Inspire.

What Should We Leave Behind When We Travel?

Travel advice usually concerns what we should carry: tickets, documents, medicines, money. We check our suitcases twice to make sure nothing essential is left behind.

The one piece of travel advice I always follow concerns a different kind of luggage: travel light, not only in your suitcase but also in your heart.

It sounds simple. It is easily misunderstood. Here is what I have learned it means, and what it does not.

1. The heaviest bag is the one nobody weighs

At the airport, every suitcase is weighed. Nobody weighs what we carry in our minds: unfinished work, family concerns, old disappointments, anxieties about what awaits us on our return.

So we stand before a beautiful landscape while our thoughts are elsewhere. We sit beside the sea, still caught in yesterday’s worries. We visit a historic place and barely notice it. Our bodies travel, but our minds refuse to leave home.

2. The destination will not do the unpacking for us

We often expect the journey itself to lighten us, as though a new place could lift what we brought from the old one. The ancients knew better. The Roman poet Horace observed that those who rush across the sea change their sky, not their soul. Seneca reminded a friend whose long travels had not lifted his gloom of what Socrates once said to a similar complaint: why be surprised that travel does you no good, when you always take yourself along?

The lightening does not happen at the destination. It has to begin at our own front door.

3. Leaving behind is not the same as abandoning

I do not mean that we should neglect our responsibilities or pretend our problems do not exist. Our duties will be waiting when we return.

But must every concern accompany us into every moment? Before I set out, I sort what is on my mind. A few matters genuinely need my attention while I am away; those travel with me. Others can wait. Still others have no answer today, however long I think about them. Only the first kind earns a place in my luggage.

That sorting, more than any packing list, is the advice I keep.

4. The hardest things to leave are the ones we cherish

Worries are not the only weight. Before the journey recorded in The Narrow Road to the Deep North, the Japanese poet Matsuo Basho gave up his little house to travel unencumbered. Yet by the end of his first day on the road, he was complaining of sore shoulders, weighed down by a paper coat for cold nights, rain gear, ink and brushes, and farewell gifts from friends that he could not bring himself to throw away.

Our expectations are like those gifts: the perfect itinerary, the picture of how the trip ought to go, the need for everything to happen our way. They come with love, and they are heavy all the same. Every delayed train, changed plan, and unfamiliar custom is an invitation to loosen our grip.

5. Empty hands have room to receive

The classical Tamil poets built an entire genre out of travel directions, the arruppadai or “guide poem,” in which one traveller tells another what lies along the road.[1] The Perumpanarruppadai, for instance, spends far less time on what to carry than on what to expect: the landscapes the traveller will cross and the welcome awaiting him along the way.

The Gospel offers a parallel. When Jesus sent out the Twelve, he told them to take nothing for the journey, no bag, no bread, no money (Luke 9:3), so that they would rely on the welcome of strangers.

Both traditions point to the same truth: a traveller with less to guard has more attention to give. The kindness of a stranger, the rhythm of an unfamiliar town, the changing colours of the evening sky. Small things, perhaps, but they return us to the present, where life is actually lived.

6. What we bring back matters more than what we take

When a journey ends, we bring back photographs and souvenirs. The better question is what we have learned that we can carry into ordinary life.

Perhaps a little more patience. Perhaps slower judgment of people. Perhaps the discovery that we need far less than we thought to be content, and that a quiet walk or an unhurried conversation can give us more than a crowded sightseeing schedule.

My Takeaway

Pack what you need, but do not carry every worry with you. Leave room in your heart for wonder, in your mind for new perspectives, and in your day for unexpected moments.

The suitcase usually comes home heavier. If we have travelled well, the heart comes home lighter.

A Question for You

When you travel, what do you find hardest to leave behind: your worries, your expectations, your familiar routines, or your need to have everything planned?

Share your thoughts in the comments. Your experience might offer another reader a valuable lesson for their next journey.

Note

[1] Arruppadai (literally, “guiding along the path”) is a genre of classical Tamil Sangam poetry in which a bard who has been generously received by a patron directs a fellow bard to the same patron, describing the route, the landscapes, and the hospitality to be found along the way. The Perumpanarruppadai, by the poet Kadiyalur Uruttirankannanar, is one of the Pattuppattu (Ten Idylls). It guides a bard who plays the large yazh, an ancient Tamil harp, to the court of Ilantiraiyan, ruler of Kanchi.

John Britto Kurusumuthu
Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in
In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 27 October 2026: What’s one piece of travel advice you always follow?
© 2026 Rise & Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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What was your first ever videogame?

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My First Video Game Had No Screen and No Referee

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 26 October 2026

Today’s prompt asks about my first-ever video game. The honest answer is that I never had one. My childhood games were Goli, played with glass marbles, and Gilli-danda, played with two pieces of wood.

It would be easy to stop there and write a fond lament for simpler times. I want to make a different claim. The real difference between the games of my childhood and the games children play today is not the screen. It is the rulebook. Most video games arrive with their rules already written into the code. Our games arrived with only a loose tradition, and every afternoon we had to settle the details ourselves.

1. The game came without a rulebook

Goli needed a circle scratched in the dust and a few marbles. Gilli-danda needed a small tapered stick, a longer one to strike it with, and a shallow groove in the ground. Everything else was open to dispute. Where did the boundary run? Was a marble resting on the line in or out? If your hand crept past the mark as you shot, did the shot stand? Did a catch count if the gilli had bounced off a wall? No manual answered these questions. We did.

2. The arguments were half the game

Some afternoons we spent nearly as long disputing a shot as playing it. That was not wasted time. We were learning to propose a rule, defend it, hear the other side, and accept a decision we did not like. Nobody called an umpire, because there was none to call. In many video games, the code settles disputes instantly. That is efficient, but it can remove opportunities for children to negotiate the rules themselves.

3. Older traditions saw the same thing

In his Laws [1], Plato has his Athenian speaker warn that children’s games decide whether a state’s laws will last. Children who keep changing the rules of their play, he feared, grow into adults who want to change the laws. So he wanted children’s games kept fixed. I read his observation the other way round: children who argue out their own rules learn why rules are worth keeping.

The Romans also linked games to growing up. Their children played with walnuts much as we played with marbles, and “to leave the nuts behind” (nuces relinquere) [2] was a Latin way of saying someone had become an adult.

Tamil poetry adds a gentler note. In the Pillaitamil tradition [3], poets imagine a god as a small child. In the poems addressed to boy-gods, there is a section in which little girls beg the divine child not to destroy the sand houses they have built. Even a god at play, the poets suggest, must learn to respect what others have made.

4. The street was not always fair

Here I must concede something. Rules made by children are often rules made by the biggest child. In Premchand’s Hindi short story “Gulli-Danda” [4], a man returns to his village as an engineer and plays the old game with Gaya, his childhood rival and once the best player around. Gaya plays poorly and lets the engineer’s doubtful strokes pass. Only later, watching Gaya play in earnest, does the engineer realise that he had not won at all. He had been humoured because of his rank. A game that teaches fairness can also teach deference. On this point, the video game has the stronger claim: within the rules of the game, a player’s social rank cannot simply make a doubtful shot count.

5. Video games deserve their due

Modern games teach strategy, persistence through long challenges, and cooperation with players across the world. Multiplayer games bring their own disputes, negotiations and community rules. The best of them now let players build their own worlds and agree on their own rules for playing in them. In those games, the old argument has simply moved indoors.

6. What I would keep

So I would not ask children to choose between the screen and the street. I would ask only that every child have at least one game whose rules they must write, defend and keep for themselves. A child understands a rule he has argued for in the dust. A rule written by a programmer is more often one he simply obeys.

So, what was my first video game? I never had one. What I had instead was my first parliament: a circle in the dust, a handful of marbles, and a few friends arguing over whether a shot was in or out.

Which childhood game taught you to argue over the rules? Share it in the comments.

Notes and references

[1] Plato, Laws, Book VII, 797a–d; the argument continues to 798d. English translation by R. G. Bury in Plato in Twelve Volumes, vols. 10–11, Loeb Classical Library (Harvard University Press). Online text: cts.perseids.org

[2] The proverb nuces relinquere is traced to Persius, Satires 1.10. See Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, s.v. “nux”.

[3] Pillaitamil, roughly “poems of the child”, is a genre of Tamil devotional poetry that praises a deity or hero as an infant, traditionally across ten stages of ten verses each. In the stage called sitril (“little house”), girls plead with the boy-god not to destroy their sand houses; the Tiruchendur Pillaitamil is one example. Kumaraguruparar’s seventeenth-century Meenakshi Ammai Pillaitamil is among the best-known works of the genre. For a scholarly study with translations, see Paula Richman, Extraordinary Child: Poems from a South Indian Devotional Genre (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1997).

[4] Premchand (1880–1936), born Dhanpat Rai, is one of the most celebrated writers of modern Hindi and Urdu fiction. “Gulli-Danda” first appeared in the Hindi magazine Sarasvati in May 1925. English translation in Premchand, The Complete Short Stories, ed. M. Asaduddin, 4 vols. (Penguin Random House India, 2017).

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire   riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 26 October 2026: What was your first ever video game?

© 2026 Rise & Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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Internal links used

Four links, each opened and confirmed as a live, published Rise & Inspire post. No published posts were found on Plato, Premchand, Pillaitamil or the Roman sources, so those passages stay unlinked.

Anchor text	Destination article	Why it fits
childhood games	The Beauty of Being a Kid at Heart	Treats play as the language of childhood
fond lament for simpler times	Do You Spend More Time Reflecting on the Past or Dreaming About the Future?	Warns against nostalgia that keeps us stuck
the screen and the street	Reading vs. Online Reading	Argues for balance between traditional and digital formats
Written by a programmer	Is Learning to Code Still Relevant in the Age of AI?	Argues that human judgment still matters behind the code

The first line of the post is the older SEO title. The tightened version agreed earlier is “What Was My First Video Game? No Screen, No Referee”.

Do you set personal goals for yourself?

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Today’s WordPress prompt asked a simple question: do you set personal goals for yourself? I said yes, but not the kind the planners recommend. When my working years ended, the deadlines and milestones stopped arriving almost overnight. What remained were goals with no finish line at all: to keep learning, to be more patient, to grow in faith, to write something each day that might give someone a reason to hope. I have come to think those were the ones holding everything up. I would love to hear from you: which of your goals do you hope you never finish?

Do you set personal goals for yourself?

Yes, I do. But not quite the kind the productivity books recommend.

The standard advice says a good goal must be specific, measurable, achievable and time-bound. Lose five kilograms by March. Read twenty books this year. Finish the manuscript by December. That advice works well for tasks. For a life, I have come to believe it is the wrong advice. The goals that have mattered most to me are the ones I will never be able to tick off.

I. A finished goal leaves an empty room

Every goal with a finish line carries a hidden cost: the morning after you reach it. Athletes speak of the flatness that follows the medal. Students know the strange emptiness of the day after the final examination. For most of my working years, my goals were of this kind: the next responsibility, the next deadline, the next milestone. Retirement removed them almost at a stroke. What remained were the goals that never had a finish line, and I found they had been holding up the house all along.

II. The goals that matter are verbs, not nouns

A goal that can be completed is a noun: a degree, a promotion, a target. A goal that cannot be completed is a verb: to learn, to understand, to be patient, to grow in faith. At this stage of life I am trying to understand how artificial intelligence works and what it may mean for the world ahead. I will never finish that, because the subject moves faster than I do. That is exactly what keeps it alive for me. Patience is the same. I have never once been able to declare it achieved; every difficult conversation reopens the file.

III. Three traditions, one discovery

In the Metaphysics, Aristotle draws a distinction I find more useful than any planner. Some activities are incomplete until they end: no one can be building a house and have built it at the same moment. Others are complete at every moment: one can be living well and have lived well at the same time. The first kind satisfies only at the finish. The second satisfies all the way through.

The Tamil poet Subramania Bharati [1] wrote a short prayer-poem that is, in effect, a list of personal goals. It opens: “Manathil urudhi vendum, vakkinile inimai vendum.” It means: I want firmness in my mind, sweetness in my speech. He also asks for good thoughts, and for his dreams to come true, which is a goal that can be reached. Yet the requests he places first cannot be achieved once and filed away. A steady mind and a gentle tongue must be asked for again tomorrow.

And Paul, writing to the Philippians, admits openly that he has not reached his goal and is not yet complete. He forgets what lies behind and presses on (Philippians 3:12–14). By then he had founded churches across much of the Mediterranean world, and he still counted himself unfinished. I find that consoling.

IV. The fair objection

There is a real danger in what I am arguing. “Becoming more patient” can be a comfortable way of never being tested. “Learning” can quietly turn into browsing. A goal without a finish line can drift into a goal without effort. On this point the productivity books are right: little gets done without something that can be measured.

My answer is to pair the two. The large goal has no finish line; the small goal has a finish line every evening. For more than three years, Rise&Inspire has asked me for one piece of writing each day. Each day’s post is finished, measurable, and done. The goal it serves, that someone somewhere finds a reason to hope, will never be finished, and I would not want it to be.

V. Why this matters at every age

The young are told to set goals so that they will arrive somewhere. The old are quietly told that they have arrived  may now stop. Both messages rest on the same mistake: that goals are about arrival. The goals that matter most were never about arriving. They are about who we become while we walk. As long as a person holds one goal that cannot be finished, that person has a reason to look forward to tomorrow.

What about you? Which of your goals can be finished, and which one do you hope you never finish?

Note for readers

[1] Subramania Bharati (1882-1921), honoured as Mahakavi (“great poet”) Bharathiyar, was a Tamil poet, journalist and freedom fighter whose verse helped shape modern Tamil literature. The poem is widely known by its opening words, “Manathil Urudhi Vendum” (roughly, “Firmness of Mind Is What I Need”). The translations here are my own.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire  riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 25 October 2026: Do you set personal goals for yourself?

© 2026 Rise & Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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

What do you think is the future of AI?

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Most forecasts about artificial intelligence are forecasts about the machine. How powerful will it be in ten years? Which jobs will it take? Will it one day think like us?

My forecast is about the person on the other side of the screen, and I found it in an unlikely place: a Tamil grammar¹ written more than eight hundred years ago.

Here is my answer to today’s question. AI will not create a new kind of human being. It will make the old kinds more extreme.

1. The machine is the easy part to predict.

AI will almost certainly become faster, cheaper and more capable. That forecast takes no courage. The harder question is what all that capability will do to the habits of the people who use it, because habits, not hardware, decide what a tool is worth.

2. An old classroom has already sorted us.

Nannool, a grammar by the Jain monk Pavanandi Munivar, contains a short verse that ranks students using animals and household objects. The best are like the swan, which is said to drink the milk and leave the water, and the cow, which grazes first and chews the cud later. In the middle are the parrot, which repeats only what it was taught, and the soil, which gives back only as much as the farmer puts in. At the bottom are the leaky pot, which loses whatever is poured into it, and the ghee-strainer, which lets the good pass through and keeps the dregs.

3. Another tradition reached the same kitchen.

A thousand years earlier and thousands of kilometres away, the Jewish sages of the Mishnah described four kinds of people who sit before the wise: the sponge, the funnel, the strainer and the sieve.² The sponge soaks up everything, clear or murky. The funnel lets everything run straight through. The strainer lets the wine flow away and keeps the sediment. The sieve holds back the fine flour. Two traditions that never met reached for the same kitchen utensils, and agreed on what the poorest learner keeps: the dregs.

4. AI makes the lower ranks effortless.

This is the heart of my forecast. AI does not invent these types. It removes the effort that once kept them apart. Being a parrot used to require memorising; now the machine repeats for us. Being a funnel used to waste a teacher’s afternoon; now answers pour through us at no cost and leave nothing behind. And because AI can sound just as confident when it is wrong as when it is right, the strainer’s danger grows. We may keep the fluent error and let the careful truth flow away.

5. The higher ranks still cost what they always cost.

No machine can do the swan’s work for it. To separate milk from water, you have to taste both. No machine can chew the cud for the cow; understanding settles only when we return to a thing and turn it over. We learn to reason by reasoning, to write by writing, and to judge by weighing the evidence ourselves. This year I have been learning a few terminal commands, and an assistant can hand me any of them in a second. Copying is faster. Asking why the command works is slower. Only the slower way leaves something behind.

6. Granted, every new tool has faced this charge.

In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates retells an Egyptian story in which a king warns that writing will breed forgetful learners who seem wise without being wise. We know of that warning only because Plato wrote it down. Writing did not turn humanity into funnels; it gave us libraries. AI may follow the same path, and it can serve the swan well by explaining a hard idea, offering the counterargument or testing a draft. Nor does everything deserve rumination. The cow chews what nourishes it, not everything in the field. Hand the trivial to the machine; keep the formative for yourself.

7. So the gap will widen.

If I am right, the future of AI is not one future but two. Those who use it to extend their thinking will grow sharper, faster than any generation before them. Those who use it to avoid thinking will grow emptier just as fast. Institutions will tilt the balance. A school that grades only the finished essay rewards the parrot. A school that asks students to defend their reasoning aloud rewards the swan.

So what do I think is the future of AI? I think it will be remarkably powerful, and that its most important effects will be decided in small, private moments: each time an answer arrives instantly, and we choose whether to taste it, chew on it, or simply let it pour through.

The machine will not tell us what kind of learners we must become. That decision remains ours.

When you use AI, which of the old classroom’s creatures do you recognise in yourself, and which would you rather become?

Keep learning, keep showing up, and keep striving to elevate in life.

Notes

¹ Nannool (Naṉṉūl, “the good treatise”) is a Tamil grammar composed around 1200 CE by Pavanandi Munivar, a Jain ascetic, and is regarded as the most important Tamil grammar after the Tolkappiyam. The verse ranking students as first, middle and last (sutra 38 in the common numbering) appears in its general preface; the images above follow the traditional commentaries.

² Pirkei Avot (“Chapters of the Fathers”) is a tractate of the Mishnah, the foundational compilation of Jewish oral teaching completed around 200 CE. The passage cited is Pirkei Avot 5:15 (5:18 in some editions).

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 24 October 2026: What do you think is the future of AI?

© 2026 Rise & Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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Which book’s world would be the absolute worst to live in?

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When we imagine the worst world in a book, we usually imagine pain: tyrants, prisons, famine, war. My answer has none of these. That is exactly what makes it the worst.

Picture a world where no one goes hungry, and no one is lonely. Wars ended long ago. Disease is rare, and old age has been engineered away; people stay youthful almost until the day they die. Everyone has suitable work and is content with it. If a sad feeling ever appears, a small tablet makes it vanish, with no hangover and no regret.

Would you live there?

If you hesitated, you already understand why I think this is the worst world in literature.

It is the World State of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, published in 1932. Here is my case against it.

1. Suffering is not the worst thing a world can do to you.

A world that hurts you still leaves you the knowledge that you are hurt. Pain protests. It tells you something is wrong and makes you long for something better. A prisoner who hates his cell still has a self the cell has not reached. The real danger begins when the hatred, the protest and the longing are gone.

2. Huxley’s prison has no walls, because no one wants to leave.

In the World State, children are grown in bottles, sorted into castes before birth, and taught in their sleep to love their place. A drug called soma dissolves whatever unease remains. No one needs watching, because no one wants anything they are not supposed to want. When an outsider named John finally objects, he must demand what no citizen would think to ask for: “the right to be unhappy.”

3. Why did Huxley fear that pleasure could become a tool of control?

On 21 October 1949, Huxley wrote to his former Eton pupil George Orwell. He predicted that future rulers would find it more efficient to make people love their servitude than to flog them into obedience. Cruelty needs guards, spies and constant effort. Comfort needs only a steady supply. Pleasure is a quieter jailer than pain, and a far more efficient one.

4. How have different traditions warned us about the comfortable cage?

In Homer’s Odyssey, sailors who ate the lotus lost all wish to sail home; Odysseus dragged them, weeping, back to the ships. In the Hebrew scriptures, slaves freed from Egypt soon longed for the fish, cucumbers and melons of their bondage (Numbers 11:5). The Lotus Sutra, a classic of Mahayana Buddhism, tells of children so absorbed in their games that they will not leave a burning house until their father lures them out with the promise of carts. And the Tamil poet Bharati asked when his people’s thirst for freedom would be quenched, and when their infatuation with slavery would die [1].

Bharati names the danger most sharply. The enemy is not only the ruler. It is our affection for the chains.

5. Is this unfair to people who truly suffer?

It is a fair objection. For a single week, I would choose Huxley’s world without hesitation; no sane person prefers a dungeon to a pleasant afternoon. And millions today live with the hunger, war and illness Huxley’s citizens never meet. Calling his world “the worst” can sound like a comfortable man’s complaint.

But the question is not where I would spend a week. It is where I would spend a life. A person in pain may still hope for a better future. The danger in Huxley’s world is not contentment itself, but contentment deliberately engineered to suppress independent thought, critical judgment, and the desire for change. When people are conditioned to accept their circumstances as perfectly satisfying, they may gradually lose the ability to imagine a better life or question the society that shapes their desires.

6. Huxley’s world needs no secret police. It needs only our consent.

No one will need to force soma on us. We are more likely to order it ourselves: a scroll for every silence, an instant answer for every question, a distraction for every grief. I have come to believe that boredom, longing, delay and sorrow are not defects in human life. They are signs that a person is still awake.

What I fear most is not a tyrant at the door. It is the day I stop noticing that I would rather be somewhere better.

The worst world is not the one that makes you suffer. It is the one that makes you stop wanting anything more. Give me a hard world in which I can still long for a better one, rather than a soft world that has quietly taken the longing away.

Our restlessness is not a flaw to be medicated. It may be the last proof that we were made for more than comfort.

Now, over to you: Which book’s world would you least want to live in: the one that hurts you, or the one that makes sure you never feel the hurt?

Note

[1] Subramania Bharati (1882-1921), known as Mahakavi Bharathiyar, was a Tamil poet of India’s freedom struggle. The lines, in transliteration: “Endru thaniyum intha suthanthira thaagam? Endru madiyum engal adimaiyin mogam?” In English: “When will this thirst for freedom be quenched? When will our infatuation with slavery die?”

John Britto Kurusumuthu
Rise & Inspire  riseandinspire.co.in
In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 23 October 2026: Which book’s world would be the absolute worst to live in?
© 2026 Rise & Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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What’s the most underrated movie you’ve ever watched?

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WordPress Daily Writing Prompt  ·  22 October 2026

Today’s prompt asks me to name the most underrated movie I have ever watched. My honest answer begins with a confession and leads me somewhere unexpected: the most underrated film I know has never appeared on a cinema screen.

When I came across the question, “What’s the most underrated movie you’ve ever watched?”, I had to smile. It is an interesting prompt, but I may not be the right person to answer it!

The truth is that I am not much of a movie watcher. I find it difficult to sit through a film lasting more than an hour. Just when the story is unfolding and the characters are developing, my attention begins to wander.

But this made me wonder: Is the problem really the length of a film, or is it something else?

1. Why Do Books Hold My Attention Better Than Films?

I can spend a long time with a good book, return to a favourite sentence, pause to reflect, and continue when I feel ready.

A film follows its own rhythm. The scenes unfold, the music rises, and the story moves forward. Of course, we can pause a film, but reading naturally gives us more freedom to stop, think, and imagine.

Perhaps I enjoy reading because it allows me to become part of the storytelling. I do not simply follow the characters; I picture their faces, imagine their surroundings, and give the story a life of its own.

That may explain why a book can hold my attention long after a film has lost it.

2. Have We Always Needed Stories to Unfold Slowly?

Our ancestors enjoyed stories long before cinema existed. Many traditional performances invited audiences to spend hours listening, watching, and participating in a shared experience.

In Tamil Nadu, Therukoothu brings stories to life through song, dance, costumes, and dialogue. Performances often take place at night and may continue until dawn.

Villu Paattu, or bow-song storytelling, uses a bow-shaped instrument as part of a musical performance that brings folk tales, legends, and local histories to life.

Kerala has its own remarkable tradition in Koodiyattam, an ancient form of Sanskrit theatre. Some performances unfold over many days, allowing actors to explore a character’s emotions through remarkably detailed expressions and gestures.

These traditions remind me that a good story does not always need to hurry. Sometimes, the experience lies in taking time to absorb it.

For readers interested in these traditions: Therukoothu, Villu Paattu, and Koodiyattam.

3. Can a Pause Make a Story More Meaningful?

One of the things I appreciate about reading is the freedom to pause. A sentence may remind me of an experience, a person, or a lesson I have learned. I can stop and let the thought settle before moving on.

The Japanese concept of ma offers a related insight. It describes the space or interval between things and can also refer to the pauses that give traditional performances their rhythm.

I find this idea beautiful. Sometimes, what happens between two moments is as meaningful as what happens within them.

A story that gives us room to think may stay with us longer than one that rushes to its conclusion.

4. Am I Simply Resisting a Different Way of Telling Stories?

There is another possibility I should consider: perhaps I am not giving films a fair chance.

In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates questions whether writing might weaken memory and give people the appearance of wisdom without true understanding. His concern reminds me that people have long debated how new ways of communicating affect the way we think and learn.

Today, we have films, television, and short videos. Each medium tells stories differently, and each has its own strengths.

I would not claim that reading is better than cinema for everyone. Perhaps there are films with the depth, silence, and emotional richness I enjoy in books. I may simply not have discovered the right ones yet.

5. What Is the Most Underrated Movie I Have Ever Watched?

Here is my honest answer.

The most underrated movie I have ever watched has never been released. It plays only when I read.

I imagine the faces, choose the setting, hear the voices, and decide when each scene ends. The characters come alive in my mind, and the story unfolds at my own pace.

No cinema will screen this film. No critic will review it. Yet it can move me, challenge my thinking, and leave me with lessons that remain long after I close the book.

It also reminds me of a story from the Bible.

In 2 Samuel 12, the prophet Nathan tells King David about a rich man who takes a poor man’s only lamb. David becomes angry at the injustice. Then Nathan reveals that the story is about David himself.

The story makes David recognise a truth he had failed to see. That is the power of storytelling: sometimes, we understand ourselves more clearly when we first see our lives reflected in someone else’s story.

Perhaps the most meaningful stories are not always the ones we watch on a screen. They are the ones that help us see life, and ourselves, differently.

Now I am curious: What movie would you recommend to someone like me, who usually checks the time before the first hour is over? Is there one so meaningful that I might forget the clock altogether?

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 22 October 2026: “What’s the most underrated movie you’ve ever watched?”

© 2026 Rise & Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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What’s something you’ve done that you never thought you could?

Growth does not always begin with confidence. Sometimes, it begins with a problem we do not know how to solve.

My Rise&Inspire journey has shown me how technical difficulties, demanding writing projects, and the willingness to keep learning can reveal abilities I never expected to develop.

Our potential is not always visible before we begin. Often, we discover it through action, persistence, and curiosity.

What have you accomplished that changed the way you see yourself?

What Have I Done That I Never Thought I Could?

Have you ever looked back at something you have accomplished and wondered, “Did I really do that?”

Sometimes our most meaningful achievements bring no awards, recognition, or applause. They are the things we never imagined ourselves doing until life presented a challenge, and we discovered that we were capable of more than we thought.

For me, one such journey has been creating and developing my blog, Rise&Inspire.

Yet when I look closely, I notice something that turns the question on its head. I never thought I could do these things because I never thought about them at all. They were not ambitions I doubted. They were problems standing between me and a simple wish to write. The abilities arrived later, almost as by-products.

1. How Did It All Begin?

When I started Rise&Inspire in March 2023, my aim was simple: to share my thoughts, experiences, and reflections, and to encourage readers to rise above their difficulties, discover their potential, and approach life with hope.

I knew I wanted to write. I soon discovered that running a blog involves much more than putting words on a page. There was WordPress to understand, articles to publish, images to prepare, and technical settings to manage. Each new challenge opened another area of learning I could never have anticipated.

2. What Happens When You Cannot Publish?

One day, I could not upload an article to my own blog.

For a blogger, publishing is not a minor convenience. It is the means through which ideas reach readers. It would have been easy to feel helpless, or to assume the problem was beyond my technical abilities.

Instead, I wanted to understand what had gone wrong. I explored the problem, studied the available options, and worked until my blog was functioning again. The experience reminded me that running a website requires patience as much as creativity.

The real test was never the upload. It was whether I could face an unfamiliar technical challenge without giving up. We do not always need to know the solution at the beginning. We need the willingness to investigate, learn, and keep trying.

3. How Did I Become a Developer?

Another moment stands out. A website issue required a solution beyond the ordinary options available to me. Rather than stopping at what I already knew, I explored custom CSS. CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is the language that controls the appearance and layout of web pages.

I added custom CSS to my site and solved the problem myself. Then came an unexpected little reward: a badge bearing the words, “You’re a developer now. Basically.”

I smiled. I had not set out to become a developer. I had simply wanted to solve a problem with my blog. The badge was playful, but the lesson behind it was meaningful: we often discover new abilities while trying to solve ordinary problems.

4. When Writing Becomes a Challenge of Its Own

Not every challenge was technical. An article in my Wake-Up Calls category tested me in a different way. I wanted to explore the question of belief scientifically while also citing relevant passages from the Bible.

Bringing these perspectives together was not easy. I had to think carefully about what belief means, how claims should be examined, and how biblical passages could be discussed without treating every question as though it had a simple answer. I wanted to respect the spiritual dimension of the subject while maintaining intellectual honesty and clarity.

I examined my reasoning, reconsidered how I presented my ideas, and kept refining until I had an article readers could engage with meaningfully. The articles that challenge us most teach us the most about our own thinking. A difficult article refines not only our language but also our judgement.

5. Is Age a Reason to Stop Learning?

I do not believe so, and I find myself in old and good company.

The Naladiyar, a classical Tamil collection of moral verse, observes that learning has no shore, while the learner’s days are few.¹ Its advice is not despair but discernment: choose what truly serves you, as the swan takes the milk and leaves the water. I did not need to master web development. I needed the piece of CSS that solved my problem.

In first-century Rome, Seneca told his friend Lucilius that, already an old man, he had begun attending a philosopher’s lectures. One should keep learning, he argued, as long as one is ignorant of anything, which, if the old proverb holds, means as long as one lives.²

In nineteenth-century Japan, the artist Hokusai, then in his mid-seventies, wrote that nothing he had drawn before seventy was worth noticing, and that he hoped to keep improving until he was a hundred.³

Three traditions, one conviction: curiosity does not have to retire when we do. We may need more time, more patience, or more attempts than we expected. That is perfectly all right. I do not need to know everything before I begin. I need the willingness to learn as I go.

6. Are These Achievements Too Small to Count?

Someone may fairly object that these are modest things: an upload restored, a stylesheet added, an article revised. I would not claim that one successful use of custom CSS makes me a professional developer.

But that is precisely the point. Most of the things we never thought we could do are not dramatic. They are small, private, and easily dismissed, even by ourselves. Yet I had learned something new, applied it, and solved a problem independently. That was an achievement worth celebrating.

7. What Has This Journey Taught Me?

I did not begin with all the knowledge I needed. I acquired it gradually, in response to the challenges before me. I could not upload an article, so I found a way forward. I wanted to modify my website, so I explored custom CSS. I struggled to express a complex idea about belief, so I kept examining the subject and refining my writing.

In the beginning, I might have assumed that a website difficulty required someone with technical expertise. Now I am more willing to investigate, experiment, and learn for myself. Rise&Inspire has become more than a place where I publish articles. It is a space where I continue to grow as a writer, a thinker, and a user of technology.

None of this came from ambition. It came from loyalty. I did not set out to prove what I could do. I simply refused to abandon something that mattered to me, and the abilities followed.

8. What About You?

What is something you have done that you never thought you could?

Perhaps you learned a skill later in life, overcame a difficult situation, took on an unexpected responsibility, or solved a problem that once seemed beyond your abilities. It need not be extraordinary in the eyes of the world. If it helped you discover a strength you did not know you possessed, it deserves to be remembered.

We begin uncertain. We make an effort. We learn along the way. And eventually, we look back with a quiet sense of satisfaction and say, “I never thought I could do that.”

Keep learning. Keep growing. Keep discovering what is possible.

Rise&Inspire — Strive to elevate in life.

Notes

1. Naladiyar, verse 135, from the chapter on Learning. The Naladiyar (“four-line verses”) is a collection of four hundred quatrains composed by Jain monks in the post-Sangam period, roughly 100 to 500 CE, and is among the most admired ethical works in Tamil. The verse compares the wise learner to the kuruku, usually rendered as the swan, which Indian poetic tradition credits with separating milk from water.

2. Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 76. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BCE to 65 CE) was a Roman Stoic philosopher and statesman.

3. Katsushika Hokusai (1760 to 1849), postscript to One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji (1834), which he signed as “the old man mad about drawing.”

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 21 October 2026: What’s something you’ve done that you never thought you could?

© 2026 Rise & Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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If you could switch lives with a famous person for a week, who would it be and why?

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A reflection on fame, perspective, and the value of an ordinary life

Offered a famous person’s life for a week, most of us might reach for the spotlight: the stadium, the palace, the podium. I reached for a calendar instead.

No famous life is famous all week. Fame lives in a few public moments: the speech, the award, the winning goal. The rest is preparation, travel, tiredness, and waiting. Borrow a celebrity’s life for seven days, and you may discover that much of what you have borrowed is a timetable. So I asked a narrower question: whose famous week would I choose?

One answer kept returning. In April 1984, Indian Air Force pilot Rakesh Sharma spent seven days, twenty-one hours, and forty minutes aboard the Soviet space station Salyut 7. He became the first Indian citizen to travel into space. Those eight days became a defining part of his public story, and his is the week I would borrow. [1]

It would be no holiday. In weightlessness, the body has to adjust to a world without the familiar pull of gravity. Sharma and his fellow crew members carried out forty-three experimental sessions, including work involving yoga in weightlessness and the observation and photography of India from space. Up there, reputation counts for little. Competence, discipline, and teamwork matter. The station circled Earth roughly every ninety minutes, bringing about sixteen sunrises and sunsets each day. Yet a person occupied with demanding work might have little time to pause and admire them. [1]

Then came the moment many Indians remember. During a conversation with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, she asked Sharma how India looked from space. His reply, “Saare Jahan Se Achha”—the opening words of a much-loved patriotic poem—connected the extraordinary view from orbit with the familiar idea of home. The memorable answer was not a description of a distant planet. It was an expression of belonging. [2]

Writers had imagined such a view long before rockets carried people into space. In Cicero’s Dream of Scipio, a young Roman sees the Earth from above and is reminded how small it is—and how limited earthly fame can be. A Tamil poet of the Sangam age reached a related insight without leaving the ground. In Purananuru 189, a king who rules a great territory is compared with a hunter who keeps watch for game. Their circumstances differ, but both need food and clothing. The poem invites us to look beyond rank and power and recognise what human beings share. Seen from far enough away—or considered deeply enough—the great and the small may look less different than we imagine.

What came after Sharma’s spaceflight matters to me, too. He returned to his professional life as a test pilot. His achievement remains part of India’s history, but a remarkable week did not have to become the whole meaning of a life. That distinction is important: fame may preserve a moment in public memory, but it cannot tell us everything about the person who lived it.

Someone may fairly object that I have chosen a famous person whose story is not defined by a relentless pursuit of celebrity. And fame is not merely vanity. Sharma’s mission gave India a moment of pride and encouraged people to imagine possibilities beyond the familiar. Decades later, another Indian citizen travelled to space. Such achievements can inspire a generation to look up and ask what might be possible.

But I am not refusing the exchange. I would gladly experience the hardest, strangest week of Sharma’s life. I would want to see Earth from orbit and discover what that distance might teach me about our shared home. What I would refuse is the idea that one extraordinary week should own the rest of a life. The lesson I take from Sharma’s story is not that fame has no value, but that it need not become the measure of a person.

Then the spacecraft would bring me back, and I would return to my own ordinary life: the morning ride, the walk after lunch, and familiar voices around my table. At this stage of life, I value time differently. I would be grateful for gravity, for the scent of rain on warm earth, and for days that nobody else may remember. These moments may never make headlines, but they belong to the life I have actually lived. My life is not a rehearsal for somebody else’s.

And I would bring back a new way of looking at home. From orbit, Sharma was asked how India looked, and he answered with words that expressed affection for his country. I would like to look at my own small patch of ground with a similar sense of wonder—without needing to leave it. Perhaps the greatest gift of borrowing a famous week would be to return more attentive to the life that is already mine.

Notes for readers

[1] The Indian Human Space Flight Centre records that Rakesh Sharma spent 7 days, 21 hours, and 40 minutes aboard Salyut 7 and that the mission included forty-three experimental sessions. His work included biomedical studies and remote sensing.

[2] The phrase “Saare Jahan Se Achha” comes from a poem by Muhammad Iqbal, written in 1904 and widely known as a patriotic song.

The Dream of Scipio is the concluding section of Cicero’s On the Republic. Purananuru is an anthology of classical Tamil poems from the Sangam period; the poem discussed here is verse 189.

A Question for You

If you could borrow one famous week, whose would it be, and what would you bring back from it?

Thank you for being part of Rise&Inspire, where we strive to elevate in life by discovering meaning in our everyday experiences.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 20 October 2026: If you could switch lives with a famous person for a week, who would it be and why?

© 2026 Rise & Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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How do you manage stress?

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Stress rarely makes a dramatic entrance. It arrives quietly: a message that wants an answer by evening, a plan that slips by a day, a small uncertainty carried from one room of the mind into the next.

For years I treated stress as an enemy to be reduced, controlled or defeated. I now think that aims at the wrong target. Stress usually does an honest job. What wears me down is the habit of carrying it long after it has delivered its message. That is what I have learned to manage.

1. Stress Is the Messenger

Stress tells me that something matters. A deadline is real, a relationship needs attention, a responsibility is mine. If that alarm were silenced altogether, I would stop noticing what deserves my care.

The trouble begins when the messenger refuses to leave. I rehearse a conversation that has not happened and replay a decision that cannot be undone. Worrying about a problem and solving it feel alike from the inside, but only one of them gets anything done. At that point, stress becomes entangled with worry. I am no longer simply responding to a problem; I am repeatedly carrying it in my thoughts.

2. Are You Still Carrying Her?

A Zen story tells of two Japanese monks, Tanzan and Ekido, walking down a muddy road in heavy rain.¹ A young woman in a silk kimono cannot cross, so Tanzan carries her over the mud. Ekido says nothing until they reach their lodging that night, then objects that monks must not go near women. Tanzan replies that he left the girl back on the road, and asks whether Ekido is still carrying her.

Most of my stress is not the muddy road. It is the carrying afterwards.

Jesus named the opposite habit in the Sermon on the Mount: borrowing trouble from tomorrow. Do not be anxious about tomorrow, he taught, for each day has trouble enough of its own (Matthew 6:34). The Zen story warns against carrying yesterday; the Gospel warns against carrying tomorrow. Between them lies the only load I am actually asked to bear, which is today’s.

3. Be Still, Without Words

The fifteenth-century Tamil poet Arunagirinathar describes Murugan giving him a single instruction: summa iru, sol ara—be still and cease from words.² The verse recounts the poet’s response to this instruction and his sense of wonder at the experience.

I take that line as practical counsel. When something troubles me, I pause before I react and ask three plain questions. What has actually happened, as distinct from what I fear might happen? Is there one thing I can do about it today? If not, can I set it down until there is? Often the pause becomes a short prayer. The form matters less than the stopping.

4. I Walk It Down to Size

My routine is modest and does not change: fifteen minutes on the bicycle, a fifteen-minute walk after lunch and another before bed. None of it is athletic. Its value is interruption. A worry that felt enormous at the desk looks smaller after a quarter of an hour on my feet, and the evening walk is a threshold that keeps the day’s unfinished business from following me into sleep.

5. I Write the Fog Into Sentences

Worry thrives on vagueness. “Everything is piling up” cannot be solved. Written down, it becomes three specific items, two of which can wait. A worry put into words either becomes a task or reveals itself as nothing at all.

6. Sometimes the Stress Is Right

Here I must argue against my own thesis. Not every burden can simply be set down. Sometimes the alarm keeps ringing because the fire is real: too many commitments, a role that no longer fits, a yes given out of habit rather than conviction. Calming my thoughts would then only help me tolerate what I ought to change. The braver response is subtraction: declining, stepping back, closing a chapter.

And when stress persists despite all this, turning to someone you trust or to a qualified professional is not a failure of character. It is good judgement.

A Thought to Carry With You

No routine, prayer or philosophy will stop difficulties from arriving. Delays, hard conversations and ill-timed responsibilities are the ordinary terms of being alive. But the muddy road has to be crossed only once. Whether I carry it for miles afterwards is, more often than I like to admit, my own choice.

So my honest answer is this. I do not manage stress so much as listen to it, act on what it asks, and then set it down by the roadside.

Your Turn to Reflect

What helps you let go of a worry once you have done what you can? Do you turn to prayer, walking, writing, quiet reflection, or a change in circumstances?

Share your experience in the comments. Your insight may help another reader find a little more peace.

Notes

1. The story “Muddy Road” appears as story 14 in 101 Zen Stories, transcribed by Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps and published in English by David McKay Company in 1940. It was later included in Paul Reps’s Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (1957). In the story, Tanzan carries a young woman across a muddy road, while Ekido continues to dwell on the incident long afterwards. The story illustrates the difference between responding to a situation and continuing to carry it in one’s thoughts. Read the story, “Muddy Road”.

2. Arunagirinathar was a Tamil devotional poet whose Kandar Anubhuti contains, in verse 12, the expression “சும்மா இரு, சொல் அற” (summa iru, sollara), commonly rendered as “be still, without words.” In the verse, the poet describes Lord Murugan’s silent instruction and the resulting experience in which he says he knew nothing. The passage is traditionally interpreted in a devotional and spiritual context. Here, I draw on its invitation to stillness as a practical reflection on responding to stress. Read verse 12, with its Tamil text and English translation.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 19 October 2026: How do you manage stress?

© 2026 Rise & Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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If you could go back in time and give your younger self advice, what would it be?

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Most of us would hand our younger selves a long list of warnings. I think I would say far less. I would give him a compass instead of a map that dodges every storm, and there is one rule I would break without hesitation. What would you withhold?

The Advice I Would Withhold From My Younger Self

Most answers to this question arrive as a list of warnings. Avoid that mistake. Seize that chance. Beware of that person. Behind the kindness lies a quiet wish to edit the past.

If I could sit across from the young John Britto, I suspect I would disappoint him. I would say far less than he expected. This is not because I have nothing to offer. It is because most of what the years have taught me could never have been handed to him. He had to walk into it.

So my answer begins with what I would withhold.

1. Wisdom does not travel backwards

Confucius once traced his own life in stages. At fifteen he set his heart on learning. At forty he was free from doubt. At sixty his ear had learned to listen. Only at seventy could he follow his heart without straying from what was right.¹ The passage carries a quiet implication: the ear of sixty cannot be lent to the boy of fifteen. Each stage is earned by living through the one before it.

Had I told my younger self everything I know today, he would have nodded politely and carried on in his own way. I know this because I would have done exactly the same.

2. I would not warn him away from the detours

The delays that tested his patience, the responsibilities he did not choose, and the years that seemed to lead nowhere in particular were not obstacles on the road. They were the road. Friction is what allows a tyre to grip. Take every difficulty out of a young life, and you take out the strength that difficulty builds.

So I would not hand him a map that routes around every storm. I would hand him a compass.

3. The compass: three bearings

The first bearing is people before positions. Titles are borrowed for a season and then returned. What remains is how you treated those who could do nothing for you.

The second is the daily over the dramatic. Success rarely arrives like lightning. It accumulates quietly, through the page written, the walk taken, the promise kept on an ordinary afternoon.

The third is curiosity without an expiry date. No one told the young man that some of the most satisfying work of his life would begin after retirement. For me, it began with Rise & Inspire.

A compass does not tell you where to go. It only tells you when you are drifting. That, I think, is all a younger self can really use.

4. Where I would break my own rule

There is one kind of advice I would give without hesitation: advice about the things time does not return.

The Naladiyar, a collection of Tamil moral verse composed more than a thousand years ago,² devotes an entire chapter to the impermanence of youth. It urges its readers to do good while their strength lasts. The Psalmist prays to be taught to number his days, that he may gain a heart of wisdom (Psalm 90:12). Two traditions, separated by language, geography, and centuries, arrive at the same urgency.

So I would tell him to care for his health before it demands his attention. I would tell him to speak his gratitude now, to the people who will not always be there to hear it. Failure does not teach these lessons well. Loss teaches them, and loss teaches too late.

5. Perhaps the advice was never meant for him

Søren Kierkegaard wrote that life can only be understood backwards, yet it must be lived forwards. I cannot reach the young man behind me. But the older man I am yet to become is still within reach.

Whatever I would have said to my younger self, I can still say to myself today. I will never again be as young as I am this morning.

If I were permitted just one sentence across the years, it would be this: Live honestly, love generously, keep learning, and do not let regret about yesterday rob you of the opportunities of today.

Notes for readers

1. Analects 2.4. The Analects is a collection of the sayings of Confucius, compiled by his disciples and later followers.

2. The Naladiyar is an anthology of four hundred quatrains attributed to Jain monks. It is counted among the Eighteen Minor Classics (Pathinenkilkanakku) of Tamil literature. Its opening chapters reflect on the impermanence of wealth, youth, and the body.

A Question for You

If you could sit beside your younger self for five minutes, would you hand over a map or a compass? And what is the one thing you would refuse to tell? Share your answer in the comments. It may be the very bearing someone else needs today.

Strive to elevate in life.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 18 October 2026: If you could go back in time and give your younger self advice, what would it be?

© 2026 Rise & Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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What’s something you’ve done that your past self would be proud of?

The Pride My Younger Self Would Not Recognise at First

If the young man I once was walked into my study this morning, I doubt he would be impressed. At least, not at first.

He would find no office, no file awaiting my signature, no title on the door. He would see a man in his seventies at his desk before sunrise, writing for readers he has never met, working patiently through a beginner’s lesson in Python, and planning nothing more urgent than a walk. That young man measured life in syllabus schedules, deadlines, and career ladders, where success came printed on a letterhead. By his measure, he might conclude that I had quietly slowed into decline.

So here is my answer to today’s question, turned the other way round: the things my past self would be proudest of are the very things he would first mistake for failure.

1.Writing without applause

He would ask the practical questions first. Who commissioned it? Is it paid? How many people read it? When Rise&Inspire began in March 2023, nobody had commissioned it and nobody was waiting for it. It has since become a daily discipline of well over a thousand consecutive mornings, and it now reaches more than sixteen hundred readers across the world. But the number is not what would win his respect. What would win it is that the writing continued on the mornings when no one responded. The young admire talent. Only later do we learn to admire persistence that needs no witness.

2.Becoming a beginner again

In his world, seniority meant you had finished being a student. He would be puzzled to watch a man of my years asking basic questions about terminal commands and testing ideas alongside an artificial intelligence. It would look like a step down. It is the opposite. After a long career, the hardest thing to keep alive is not knowledge but the willingness to be ignorant in public.

3.Choosing an unhurried life

My mornings now begin with warm water, a handful of almonds and walnuts, and a brisk walk measured by breath rather than by the clock. To a young man forever running late for something, this would look like idleness. He would not yet know that slowness is a discipline, harder to practise than haste, and that peace of mind is the one promotion nobody else can grant.

None of this reversal is my discovery. Confucius traced his own life in stages: at fifteen he set his heart on learning, and only at seventy could he follow his heart’s desires without overstepping what was right. The young choose the direction; only the years reveal whether they kept faith with it. The ancient Indian scheme of life’s stages gave a name, vanaprastha, the forest-dweller, to the season when a person steps back from worldly duties to reflect and to teach. Stepping back was not defeat. It was the next assignment. And the Tamil classic Naladiyar¹ reminds us that learning has no shore while the learner’s days are few, so one must learn with discernment, like the swan of legend that drinks the milk and leaves the water.

A fair objection

Is this simply an old man dressing up a smaller life as wisdom? I have put that question to myself, and it deserves an honest answer. Slowing down becomes wisdom only when it is chosen and when the learning continues. Retreat that stops growing is decline; retreat that keeps learning and giving is a new stage of the same journey.

Nor would my younger self approve of everything. There are words I would take back, opportunities I let pass, and situations I understood only in hindsight. Pride in the past does not require a perfect record, only that the mistakes taught something. And one thing he would recognise at once: the slower pace never softened the principles. When the moment called for standing firm on fairness, or for stepping away from a position with dignity once the work was done, the resolve was still there.

Now turn the question towards your own life. Ask yourself:

What in your life today might your younger self mistake for failure, though you know it to be growth?

What habit have you kept that the person you were twenty years ago doubted you could sustain?

Where have you stayed true to your values when a shortcut would have been easier?

You do not need a trophy to earn the respect of the person you used to be. Give that younger self time to look closely. What first looks like slowing down may turn out to be arriving.

Keep learning, keep showing up, and keep striving to elevate in life.

Note

¹ Naladiyar (Nālaṭiyār, literally “the four-line verses”) is a classical Tamil collection of four hundred quatrains on ethics, composed by Jain monks and counted among the Eighteen Lesser Texts (Patinenkilkanakku) of Tamil literature. The thought paraphrased here is from verse 135, in the chapter on learning.

John Britto Kurusumuthu
Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in
In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 17 October 2026: What’s something you’ve done that your past self would be proud of?
© 2026 Rise & Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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What’s the best online course you’ve ever taken?

The best learning experiences do not always come with certificates. Sometimes they begin with a simple question, a curious mind, and the willingness to explore something new.

When I think about today’s question, I find I cannot answer it with the title of a course. I could list platforms, subjects and completion badges, but the name would be the least important thing about any of them. The deeper question is this: what kind of learning actually stays with us?

My answer may sound like a contradiction. The best course I have taken online did not teach me to add more to what I know. It taught me what to leave out.

1. Learning has no age limit

Experience teaches us many lessons, but it should never persuade us that the lessons are over. The Roman philosopher Seneca, already an old man, wrote to a friend that he had begun attending a philosopher’s lectures and was being teased for going back to school at his age. His reply has outlived the teasing: we must keep learning how to live for as long as we live.

That is why I value learning at my own pace. I can return to an explanation, compare viewpoints, and test new ideas against what life has already taught me. Seen this way, retirement is not the end of the syllabus. It is often the first time we get to choose our own.

2. A classroom without walls is also a classroom without a gatekeeper

With a phone and an internet connection, subjects that once required a library, a classroom or an expert are open to anyone. Emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, are changing how we find information, express ideas and solve everyday problems.

But a classroom without walls also has no one at the door. Sound scholarship walks in, and so do half-truths and confident nonsense, often dressed alike. Finding information is no longer the hard part. Filtering it is.

3. The real curriculum is discernment

An old Tamil work, the Naladiyar [1], says this in very few words. Learning has no shore, it says. The learner’s days are few, and many ailments interrupt them. So learn carefully what is worth learning, the way the swan, in the old image, drinks the milk and leaves the water behind.

In ancient China, Confucius made the same point from both directions: learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous. Information needs judgement, and judgement needs information.

This is the course I am still taking. I am learning to pause before a confident answer, to check a claim against a reliable source, and to use technology, including AI, without handing my judgement over to it.

4. A fair objection: structure has its place

Free, open learning has its own danger. Without a syllabus, deadlines or an examiner, it is easy to mistake browsing for learning. We can become lifelong tourists of knowledge who visit everything and settle nowhere. A well-designed course, with its sequence and discipline, guards against that. Certificates, too, have honest uses.

But structure is the scaffolding, not the building. A certificate records that we finished something. It cannot record whether anything in us changed.

5. The best course is the one that changes how we act

A good course teaches a new skill. A better one helps us see a familiar problem from a new angle. The best one shows up in practice. It shows in how we communicate, how we solve problems, how patiently we listen to a view we do not share, and how we contribute to the people around us.

Learning becomes meaningful when it shapes our decisions and actions. The real evidence of learning is not framed on the wall. It is visible in the way we live.

My Takeaway

If I had to define the best online course, I would choose the one that keeps curiosity alive, sharpens independent thinking and turns into practice. The subject matters, but the lasting value lies in what we do with it.

Knowledge has never been easier to reach. The challenge now is choosing what deserves our attention: taking the milk, leaving the water, and turning what we keep into wisdom.

Let us remain students throughout our lives. There is always something new to discover, something useful to understand, and something meaningful to share.

Your turn: What is the best online course you have ever taken? What did it teach you, and what did it teach you to leave out? I would love to hear your experience in the comments.

Keep learning, keep growing, and keep inspiring.

Note

[1] The Naladiyar is a classical Tamil collection of four hundred four-line verses on ethics and conduct. It was composed by Jain monks, and most scholars place it in the post-Sangam period, roughly 100 to 500 CE. The lines paraphrased here come from verse 135, in its chapter on learning (Kalvi). The swan that separates milk from water is a familiar image across Indian literature for the power of discernment.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 16 October 2026: What’s the best online course you’ve ever taken?

© 2026 Rise & Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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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?

© 2026 Rise & Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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What does it mean to be a good person?

John Britto Kurusumuthu  ·  Rise & Inspire

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.

At the end of each day, three questions are enough.

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?

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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?

© 2026 Rise & Inspire. All Rights Reserved.

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