Heartiest gratitude and smiles!

I write this often at the end of my emails. Picked it from a friend’s email newsletter a couple of years ago! 

Today I am grateful to Mohit for giving me this opportunity to write a column on “gratitude” 

Gratitude as we perceive to be is to be thankful for all the good things in your life. Or the good things others have done for us. Whenever we face a roadblock in life we try to convince ourselves that, it is okay that we have this tough time today. Telling ourselves that there are so many things around us that we can be grateful for. It makes us feel better that despite the challenges we have enough.

But why show gratitude only to the good in life, why not embrace everything? The good bad and the ugly! 

Over the past few years as I have climbed the ladder of entrepreneurship, it has been an equally rewarding journey of personal growth as well, guided by some bit of stoicism and connecting the dots in retrospect.

Somewhere I have the deepest gratitude for the experiences others perceived to be challenging (though sometimes for me it was just another day) or the toughest times in my life till now. Because all of those made me into who I am today, whom you meet or interact with. All of that impacts and influences how I think and perceive things today or respond in any given situation. Had it not been for them, who knows who Neha Arora would have been? And I am in a really peaceful place with myself and don’t aspire to be anyone else.   

Let me give you a few examples of my life’s journey to give a little perspective of what I am saying.

I was born to parents with disabilities. And the day I was born everyone said, such parents should have had a boy at least as their second child. Who would take care of them in old age? I am glad my parents gave a damn about that! And I am glad I never had a brother to protect me or back me up! You know why? Because I got all the freedom in my life to do everything myself! Whether it was buying veggies, fruits and groceries for the house on my cycle or depositing my school fees in the bank by myself since 12 years of age. Or pulling out the RBI circular of equitable right from the internet when a bank denies opening a bank account for your father because he is blind. I might have been 15 years old that time. Or when your mother forgot to tell you in time about a critical medication that ran out in the middle of the night and there you picked your scooter at 2 am in the night to the 24X7 pharmacy. I was 16. 

These are just a few instances, there are many more. All of this might seem to most people as overwhelming or a challenging childhood. Well it was far from it. It was filled with freedom and another level of high having been given the opportunity to learn, do and have so many diverse life experiences at such an early age. Because I could do so many things my peers never even thought of or were ever allowed to. Honestly it gave a pump to my feet when I walked. And it wasn’t that my parents were dependent on us. It was just they chose to make us very independent early in life. And I am deeply grateful to them for giving me a unique childhood not many get to have. I never realized the importance of all of this back then. Only when I look back I realize the confidence I have to walk into any place and situation and not bogged down by it and own it. Yes I never got to do a lot of things my peers had the time for like binging on movies or music albums and having deep discussions about it. But who cares about all that?

Not being able to ever go for a holiday as a child and the not so good experiences of travelling with my parents with disabilities led me to start the inclusive travel journey of Planet Abled. 

Had it not been for those arguments and fights and asking for right to accessibility at travel destinations, which is really not a very good memory of our lives as a family, would I have ever ventured out, or leave my corporate career and find my purpose? To change the way travel happens on this planet forever and give everyone the freedom of choice to travel whatever the disability? Well of course not! Those experiences were the stones which are put into the foundation of Planet Abled. And I cannot be more grateful to my life for being given this unique opportunity to do so. 

And while running the company I have faced some of the toughest of the days of my life. From being bankrupt to finding myself lost and alone. And when I look back on it today, they were the times of monumental growth, as a company and as a person. Life’s biggest of lessons which are not taught in any classroom or course. And I am utterly grateful to those times for making me who I am today and how I respond to any crisis that life throws at me. 

Covid has turned the world upside down and filled our lives with so much uncertainty about the future of the travel industry and also personally for many. Honestly, the crisis did not intimidate me much. In the earlier months, I was thankful for the rest I got as I had been continuously running for many years. The later months made me rethink the business and the gaps the industry had to become inclusive. Try new initiatives, most failed and many never saw the light of the day. But today, all those experiences led to reinvention. Planet Abled 2.0 plan is so much bigger and ambitious and I am so very excited about what we are going to do next. Had covid not happened Planet Abled’s road ahead could have just stayed the same slow course and not take that leap of exponential growth. But here we are doing a rocket launch.

So many travel companies shutting down didn’t deter me much either. I just had to go back in time and realize, if I can survive bankruptcy and come out stronger, I can survive this easily with the company being in a much better position than before. This is why I am thankful to the time when I had no money. 

But shouldn’t we all be grateful for this? For the lessons this pandemic is trying to teach us and giving us a chance to mend our ways as collective humanity? 

When the millions of migrant labourers were on the road during lockdown, we, the privileged, were all grateful for having a roof on our heard, food on our table and a running internet connection. We did whatever we could to help those in need. Raised our voice, supported people financially and in sweat or in kind. It gave us a chance to be more empathetic and kind human beings. And we are still continuing to do so. Yes this statement comes from a lot of privilege so please so not judge me. Every one of us is on our own journeys, which is filled with some happy and some very traumatic experiences and everything in between. The fight is still not over and there is long road to recovery ahead. And there will be a lot of losses on the way but we should still embrace it and be grateful for it. 

Make our best efforts to deal with the situation we are in and seek what this challenging situation is trying to teach us as a human being, embrace it and be grateful for the lesson that came with it. 

And you would never value the good days if you haven’t had the bad ones. So shouldn’t we be thankful for those bad days too? 

Because all of the people who come into our lives, who stay and who leave have a role to play. Some are pleasant experiences, some life’s biggest lessons who prepare us for our future relationships. When someone close to you misbehaves with you repeatedly it’s a moment to rethink that relationship and move away.  Shouldn’t we be grateful to them as they turned us into better human beings or gave us a chance to know a side of ourselves more deeply which we were totally unaware of ? We can be grateful to be able to make this choice and become a better person or we can beat ourselves up with the trauma and perhaps never recover from it. The default human nature is to choose the latter unfortunately. 

The same applies to all the incidences that happen to us. Some bring us joy and happiness and success while many are setbacks and annoyances or possibly pandemics. So if we had gratitude for the good times in our lives why discriminate with the not so good times? Again it is choice that you have to make. Be bogged down by the failures and find someone to blame, feel sad about our personal and professional loss, look at the news and feel hopeless or feel all of these feelings, let them take their own time to transition through ourselves(we are humans after all) and then be grateful for that life experience. Yes grateful for even the loss because then we learn how to recover from it and then it brings us peace. 

Reiterating that even here I am speaking from a place of privilege and I am grateful for that. Sometimes the only choice many people have is survival and everything else is irrelevant. 

So today onwards, make a choice to be thankful for anything and everything that forms part of your life and embrace it. Enjoy the good times and look for the opportunity of growth in the not so good times. 

And if you are wondering whom you should be grateful to, well I am grateful to just life. You can choose it to be God, religion, energy, universe or anything for that matter you have faith in. 

With gratitude and smiles.

Written By Neha Arora

Neha Arora is the founder of Planet Abled, which provides accessible and inclusive travel solutions for people of all disabilities. Born to parents with disabilities she experienced challenges in travelling and one such experience, became the tipping point for her to leave her corporate career and start the inclusive travel journey. Planet Abled is the recipient of the National Award by the Ministry of Tourism Government of India and has also been awarded the best practice award by Zero Project at United Nations Vienna and India Responsible Tourism Awards by WTM London.

Week 15, April 2021