# Motivation, My first Goal - To Smile - It costs nothing
Hello!
My Dearest Friends...
Please allow me to thank all of you who are making a difference through beautiful posts before I begin my first post.
Exactly one year ago, I joined after being impressed by one of my former colleagues, @sduttaskitchen. Since I did sign up, destiny has brought me here exactly one year later. In the future, I hope that this platform will prove to be one of the strongest and most successful milestones in my professional career. My first step on my journey should be to start with a big smile that costs nothing.
Everything occurs for a reason, and we are all guided by nature's will.
It has not been an easy journey for me over last one year; many things have occurred - I lost my father, lost my job, lost all of my savings, drowned in debt, etc. There were times when I had to travel every week from Kolkata to my kilometers away, and had to spend many sleepless nights in hospitals during my father's chemotherapy treatment. In some cases, I have travelled by train on a standing basis due to the sudden onset of my father's illness. Despite numerous attempts to save him, we were unable to save him since he was diagnosed with the last stage of lung cancer. The loss of the backbone of our family broke my heart. The fact that I am the elder one in my family required me to be strong. As a result, I had to fulfill two roles - that of my father and myself. After this unfortunate incident, I was forced to leave my job and sacrifice 15 years of my corporate experience in order to take care of my mother who stays in native.
Being an older son is more challenging. For me, these challenges are not a problem as life teaches us patience and prepares us for the next phase of my life. I have experienced countless challenges throughout my life, including during my childhood to adolescence days. Even after moving to Bangalore in 2003 for higher study and job, I continued to encounter with struggle as everything I was doing of my own. Having learned to live strong, I had to become friends with problems.
Despite all of these challenges, I continue to be strong enough to manage them all. All I can do is laugh. The reason I laugh is that life is not just about money; it is not just about dwelling in misery and sadness. Also, it is about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and taking steps to overcome all of these obstacles.
My goal today is to start feeling good about all the good things that have happened, like family, friends, and love. Today I remembered to smile. You should too. It’s never too late. Do it today, do it now. That wasn't so difficult, was it?
