Suriya recently offered advice to students at the 47th anniversary celebration of his father and veteran actor Sivakumar’s Sivakumar Educational Trust. While doling out life lessons to the students, the actor also addressed the excessive consumption of Instagram Reels today. He argued that instead of spending too much time scrolling reels, students should explore podcasts and do extensive online research to learn more about a subject rather than just skimming the surface.
“If you keep watching Reels, you are only watching a story. You may not learn anything from it,” said Suriya at the event. He urged the students to study real-life stories of successful personalities instead, by watching long-form podcasts on their journeys.
Suriya also compared life to the process of filmmaking during his motivational speech.
“The director never says, ‘You have failed.’ Instead, he says, ‘One more.’ I look at life as a director. Life never tells you that you have failed. You may think so, but life is not like that,” said Suriya, drawing a parallel between canning different takes of the same shot on a film set and the idea of failing in life — only to get back up and keep trying again till you succeed.
Adding that “there is always one more chance”, the actor asked students to remain hopeful about gaining success in life. Taking a page out of his own life, Suriya confessed that he wasn’t well-versed in acting at the start of his career. But working consistently for 30 years, and consciously improving on his craft, has helped him to attain stardom.
Suriya also offered lessons on gratitude, asking students to always acknowledge the contribution — even though minor — of every person who’s helped them get to a successful point in life. He pointed out that even on a film set, there are multiple forces that contribute to his performance — from the director and writer to technicians like the cinematographer, the editor, and the action director, among several others.
He urged that just as all these professionals have helped him in his career, each student must also uplift at least one person once they reach a position of power and influence. Even with the Sivakumar Educational Trust, Suriya and his father have managed to do exactly that. At the event, they also distributed financial assistance worth Rs 13.78 lakh to students and educational institutes.
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When Madhavan lauded Suriya’s efforts in education
Last month, Suriya’s former co-star R Madhavan took to his Instagram Stories to laud the actor’s initiatives in the education sector. Suriya’s Agaram Foundation supports students facing social and financial barriers to education. Through its sustained efforts, the foundation has helped 51 students become doctors and 1,800 pursue careers in engineering.
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Earlier, at an event in Chennai, Suriya revealed that more than 6000 students have benefited from the initiatives of his foundation, the majority of whom are the first from their respective families to study after Class 12.
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