Jar of Life, Friends & Brotherhood — A Short Note from a Short Trip
- Prateek Khanna
- Jul 8
- 3 min read
There’s something about leaving the city for work that sparks a deeper emotion in me. Maybe it's the change in air, or maybe it's the longing for connections that often get buried under emails, meetings, and routines. Whenever I travel for meetings, no matter how tight the schedule is, I make time to meet friends—seniors, juniors, batchmates. I don’t know when this started or why exactly I do it… but I’ve come to realize: I just love doing it.
Some of my friends are too caught up in the busyness of life to meet anymore—and I don’t judge that. Everyone has their own battles.
But there’s an unspoken rule in my circle: if you’re in NCR, you meet me. And if I’m in your city, I’ll hunt you down and make sure we catch up. It’s not about the drinks, or dinner, or even the stories—it’s about belonging, about not letting go of something that once shaped us deeply.
Just a few days ago, I was in Dehradun for 24 hours—back-to-back meetings from the moment I landed.
But I called up two of my batchmates, Arvind and Ashutosh. And what a night it turned out to be!
Arvind—whom I hadn’t seen in 14 years—showed up with the same warmth (And humour :() he had on campus.
We laughed, we remembered, we relived. Even my business partners joined in, and I’m glad they did. Because there’s something about DMET brotherhood that’s hard to explain—it needs to be felt. And honestly, I think they love hearing our stories as much as we love telling them.
Why am I writing this?
Because today I stumbled upon a video on YouTube—a simple classroom experiment, yet so profound it moved me. It reminded me of why I do what I do, and why you should too.
Let me share it with you:
A professor stands before a class with a glass jar. He fills it with golf balls and asks, “Is the jar full?” The class says yes. He then pours in pebbles, shaking them in between the gaps. “Is it full now?” Again, yes. Then comes the sand, trickling in to fill every remaining space.
The jar, he says, represents your life.
The golf balls are your family, friends, health, and passions—the things that truly matter.
The pebbles are your house, job, car—important, but not everything.
The sand is the small stuff—emails, errands, endless scrolling.
And the key takeaway? If you fill your jar with sand first, you’ll never have space for the things that matter.
And just when the class thinks the jar is completely full, the professor pours in two beers and says:
“No matter how full your life is, there’s always room for a couple of beers with a friend.” (I don't drink by the way, I still enjoy beer, Reach out to my batchamtes to know more, ha ha ha )
I felt that. Deeply.
So to all my fellow DMETians, maritime professionals, and friends scattered across cities and seas—take that detour. Send that message.
Make that call. Meet. Hug. Laugh. Share.
We only get one life. Let’s make sure our jars are filled with the right things.
And yes, I’m sharing the video link below. Watch it. I hope it inspires you the way it did me.
