View: So, what movie do you live your life in?

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

The first thing, though, that I had to decide is whether I'll tackle motivational or inspirational stuff. To motivate, as any floor manager worth his or her strutting up and down aisles knows, is quite different from to inspire. Inspirations mostly stay stuck in the 'feeling' stage.

Motivations are more actionable, of the getting-off-one's-butt kind. Plus, inspirers — inspirators? — are a far larger, more variegated pushy bunch. They can be anyone who may not have sought to be inspirational in the first place, but who still ends up inspiring.

Tariq Khan has been such an inspirator for me. As Ratan/Monto in Yadon ki Baraat, he holds a guitar in his hand without playing it even once in the title song scene despite the number having enough guitar 'jhaaang's in it. See it for yourself at bit.ly/44jIgoi.

Effectively, Tariq has inspired me to get away with doing nothing while constantly 'holding an instrument'. But motivating people requires a similar strong sense of self-worth and motivating by example. If Jesus constantly bickered with his neighbours, 'Love thy neighbour' would have been dead in the water-turned-wine.

So, to get people to act, one has to get one's act together. Which for me, being not the regular man of action, can be a challenge. Be that as it may, there is one pearl of motivational wisdom I can cast before wine-sippers this Sunday: Choose the movie you are living in.