Don’t waste life making grand plans. Just jump - Masarat Daud

I have to interrupt my blogging about LA to introduce you to another amazingly inspirational person I have had the pleasure of crossing paths with. I briefly explain how I came about meeting her in the intro to another blog when I saw her talk at TEDx Dubai.

Masarat Daud's business card says she is a "Chief Actionista" and heads up the 8 day Acadamy. This initiative empowers children and adults from less fortunate areas in India through educational courses that span 8 days. She is truly a lady of action and also a prolific twitter addict - she always keeps me entertained with tweets such as:

Nobody in my village and community wanted to marry me because of two reasons: education and ambition.

It's not God that we lose faith in. It's humans. When we see the worst that humans are capable of, it shakes our core.

I am so small I can barely be seen. How can this great love be inside me? Look at ur eyes, they're small but they see enormous things.--Rumi

I asked her a few questions and I hope you find her answers as inspiring as I do. This women is one dynamite package. Recently married - I wish her all the best and her husband is one helluva lucky man!


What was the first good deed you did in your life?
Gosh, I can’t remember. I’ve been a softie since childhood and I can’t trace back! I don’t think it really matters to even go back and remember these deeds—they are done and gone. It is a continuous process, we have to constantly give back. I’m just giving a small payoff for the enormous generosity Life has blessed me with.

How long have you been involved with your initiatives?
I have been working on the 8-Day Academy since February 2009. It’s still in its infancy and after many different experiences, I’m still trying to build it. Many lessons learnt in this short year.

WHERE do you think your ideas come from for the charitable work you do?
It comes from goodness. My manifesto is to be a good person everyday, in such a way that my goodness inspires others to do good. I look at people, I listen to them and my work focus is: how can I give them practical, long-term solutions to positively affect their lives? That’s why I don’t call my work ‘charity’. I call it an investment. Your small gesture can lead to big returns!

How and when do you find that you come up with ideas for your initiatives?
In my case, it’s a little different. I gave up my job to focus on changing lives through education. Not everyone should follow my example because I escaped the corporate life before Life caught me (marriage, children, bills etc etc). My brain is constantly working—when I meet people, I try to see how I can bring their skills and experiences to my village people; when something inspires me, I wonder how I can bring this inspiration to the villages? If there’s an idea that clicks (usually it comes from researching communities, meeting people working on different projects, discovering a chronic problem that villagers face), I immediately think ‘How will the 8-Day Academy help in this?’ If it means to intervene besides the 8DA, I do that too. There are too many things to do, too many people to help and very little time.

What drives you to want to make a difference?
A sense of responsibility to the world. Beyond and above religion, is humanity. Or I’d even say that humanity is our biggest religion. When you look at things from that perspective, you realise that we are all the same. So it’s just unfair that there is such an imbalance in the world—one side of the world wastes resources while the other side scrambles and begs.

Do you feel guilty if you are not giving?
Yes, absolutely. It feels like you’re staying in a penthouse, without paying a penny!

How do you motivate yourself?
I love watching TED talks. I love connecting with inspiring people, who have faced many odds and changed many lives. I love reading about their initiatives. I look at my own 8DA graduates and see that with the little that I’ve taught them, how large a difference it has made to their lives. I am inspired by very random and regular people, in many different ways.

Do you get support from people and if not do you feel frustrated by people who don’ have the same vision as you?
I am very grateful for the support I have received from my friends and some family members. Largely, I’m still misunderstood but I don’t waste too much time on that. We can’t force others to see through our eyes. In my heart, I know that I am doing good work for a good reason and one day, they will all understand. This is how I feel about people around me. However, when I face resistance from the people whose lives I am trying to improve, it saddens me more than it frustrates me. But those moments are temporary. I’ve seen opinions change very fast!

Tell me about your parents and what type of people they are:
My parents! I am a mixture of my dad’s and mom’s spirit. My father is the quiet, intelligent diplomat who is very passionate about education. My mother is the fearless, kind-hearted, street-smart person. My parents are village people who came to UAE 26 years ago to earn a good life for us. It was a very difficult journey and UAE was a desert back then. My father came from a poor background and he used to study under the streetlights from borrowed books. I really respect them from the way they have grown and evolved without forgetting their roots.

Is there anything else you want to share?
Don’t waste life in making grand plans. Just jump. When you’ve jumped, you’ll realise that drowning isn’t an option and you HAVE to swim through. You cannot know in that one moment in time whether what you did was a bad or good decision. You will only know later in life. I left my job and many told me that it was a bad choice. But in this one year, if I wasted life and didn’t take the 8DA seriously, I would have agreed that leaving my job was a bad choice. But a year later, when I see so many success stories coming out of 8DA, I know that my decision was right! Money isn’t always the best way to judge your decisions.