It was a typical Monday morning, when going to school after a fun filled Sunday was not that fascinating, and that was quite natural in earlier days where we had a holiday only on Sundays. But with all the expectations on our shoulders along with a 7 -8 kg school bag, we (myself along with my friends) were on our way to bus stop to get into the school bus.
We had a routine of playing Antakshari (musical game) in the bus and it was no different that Monday also. As soon as we boarded the bus, we got our self divided into two teams and started singing the melodies of 90’s. There was a student, one class junior to us, who always used to sit very silently in the bus and never used to interact with us and was very shy. We used to tease him also being senior to him. He never used to retaliate and kept silent throughout. Whenever we used to break our entire group of buddies to 2 teams, we never used to ask him, neither he ever shared his interest to be a part of the game that we used to play.
That day, one of our friend did not turn up and we needed one extra person to justify the equal team composition. We thought of asking the same shy fellow to join us, (only to have equal distribution in both the teams and never to get any help or contribution from that fellow during the course of game). We were all making fun, enjoying the journey to school by playing our favorite game, till we realized that we got stuck at a point of time and needed someone to help us in the game. The time clock started ticking 1..2..and so on, suddenly the fellow whom we inducted in our team (only to make the head count equal), shared a helping hand and we survived the loss of 1 point.
Slowly as the bus kept moving, we started talking a bit more with that fellow, making him more included in the game, and we slowly realized that he was contributing even more and probably he emerged as an individual who could and was singing better than all of us in that game. His inclusion increased more and more with each passing day and after a month we could realize that he is not same shy person anymore, he is not submissive any more, he is not worthless, he introduced to us a different lens to see the life and world with fresh perspective which we never thought that even exists
Finally we realized an entire phenomenon of restructuring of thoughts that was happening within each one of us. We were coming out of our thought pattern and got to realize the ideations/power/creativity/value addition and uniqueness that each individual possess and brings to the table
In the current scenario, most of us need this cognitive restructuring to make this world more inclusive by building on the strength & uniqueness of each individual
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