I'm the son, and maa is the founder of this venture. Given that this is her first attempt at entrepreneurship, I thought of penning down a "few" lines to introduce this lovely lady and elaborate on the reasons that prompted her to embark on this journey.

For many of us, there is a stark contrast in the life that we intend on leading versus the one that we actually end up living. Concerns pertaining to the gross work-life imbalance, the sheer banality of our jobs, and the resultant toll on our mental and physical health often cede space to the (semblance of) comfort that a steady paycheck provides. Bills, after all, have to be paid each month, while one has an entire lifetime at their disposal, or so one thinks, to effectuate their blueprint of setting up parallel income streams, which are subsequently put on the back burner. Moreover, we often exculpate ourselves from our decision to accept the status quo by conjuring up some pretty convincing and often deceiving notions: oh, it's merely a detour, a blip on the radar if you will in the larger scheme of things, and we shall definitely reach the promised land one day, where money won't be a concern and we won't have to toil this hard to put food on the table, so on and so forth.

But how, when the very plans that can potentially help one attain financial independence and provide cushion from the fluidity of the job market have been held in abeyance in lieu of that monthly/bi-monthly paycheck? That is a topic to be pondered upon for another day, one rationalizes, when one has enough free cycles at hand for such musings. So the grind continues, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, up until the day the social security checks kick in, the body starts to cave in, and the regret-laden thoughts start to seep in wondering what all one might have accomplished had they invested that extra time after work in writing a book, picking up a new skill, or what have you, instead of netflixing for hours on end.

Now, there are two ways in which a person can be instigated to shun indolence and get a move on: with sheer grit, passion, and in-built motivation, or when unforeseen circumstances themself forces them to act, and act with urgency. Given what I said above, the reader might get an impression that maa and I had had enough of our mundane lives and finally found the strength to break the monotony and start doing what we had always intended on doing. Nope. That's not what happened. For us, it was the latter.

Dad developed severe post-Covid complications in March '21 -- brain stroke, paralysis, heart attack, et al. He miraculously survived, though is still in recovery after all these years. The thing with life is that no matter how big of a body blow it knocks you down with, it goes on. One traverses the five stages of grief from denial to acceptance with such swiftness simply because there's so much to be dealt with and just no time to reflect on how life changed in the blink of an eye. New challenges pave way for new pathways, and we were getting used to the new normal too, but then I was dealt with another body blow, and this one completely shattered me. I lost a huge chunk of my investments to a fraud (the matter was reported to the law enforcement, though not much progress has been made in recovering the funds till date), putting me under a massive debt burden. These weren't the only mishaps that we endured in the past two years, but if I were to elaborate on each and every one of them here, I'll start sounding like Ross cribbing to Janice, and I wouldn't want to scare away anyone reading this section, not even the Janices, so I shall refrain from adding any more words to this section than I already have.

Now, mumma always said that one must never disrespect time or waste any, for it (time) always punishes those who do. I never really understood what she meant by it -- I mean, what does it even mean that time, of all things, would punish someone, UP UNTIL NOW. I'm in my 30s, and the plan was always to explore alternate sources of income in fields that could simultaneously benefit the disadvantaged among us, but could never really narrow down my choices to one or two domains that I would have really liked to explore. These were the kind of conversations I used to have with myself: 

1. Get a degree in psychology/psychiatry to assist people in getting on with their day to day lives. However, that would have required taking on student loans again, so it's most likely a no/shall think about it later.
2. Write a book/publish a blog on critical thinking/counselling/psychology so as to give people an alternate view on certain topics/help them deal with depression, etc. But that's too much work and not feasible with the current work load, but doable, so I shall get to it someday -- so on and so forth.

Even though exploring alternate sources of income became a necessity given what transpired (mentioned in brief above), there were quite a few limitations: I couldn't set time aside with my full-time job to pursue them, and in a family of three (since I don't have siblings), that left two other people to help out: mom and dad. Dad has not even been told anything about what happened, nor have any of our relatives. He's still in recovery, and we wanted to eliminate the possibility of anything ever reaching his ears through anyone in the family, which is why this venture will remain a mother-son secret till it takes off, and if it does, I'll personally break the news to him about what happened and how we came out of it i.e. if/when we do. That left mom. Now, mumma and I had always dreamt of starting a restaurant together. Cooking is meditative for her. In fact, she's the kind of person who feeds everyone coming to the house: the plumber, the electrician, the handyman, the reason why my grandmother picked her over my dad's siblings to spend her last years with, the reason why anyone ever visits our home, you know the kinds. But given that she manages the house now that dad is unwell and takes care of him too, the option to saddle her with the responsibility of running a restaurant just didn't seem feasible, not to mention the financial commitment such endeavour would have entailed. What to do, then?

Enter lifehearted.com

Lots of googling eventually led us down this path, and it checked all the boxes vis-à-vis everything that we ever wanted to do:

1. Helping the needy: the cotton for our organic cotton t-shirts printed in the UK is sourced directly from farmers in India, which owing to vested interests have been suffering for decades, with nearly 30 farmers dying by suicide every single day.
2. Environmentally friendly.
3. Supports small businesses -- all of our vendors for soaps and candles are small business owners/single-women owned/family businesses based in the US.
4. Working with those currently struggling with personal setbacks: this is one area where it seems we've attained mastery over the past few years :D, so we decided to start a YouTube channel to comfort those who are in a similar boat and could use some assistance in navigating through tough times.

While conducting research for this venture through blogs, videos, and talking to people, we were advised to use cheap materials to maximize profits, and then make changes once people start recognizing the brand. But why would anyone come back and buy anything from us ever again if the products were not up to quality? What would those extra dollars in our pocket mean when people won't even trust us? Since each small business is a manifestation of the ethos of people behind it, it's no different for this venture too. We've always been minimalists striving on quality over quantity and need over want, and have tried providing high quality merchandise through this undertaking while keeping the costs in check. This is the reason why the price of even the non-organic merchandise being sold on similar websites is comparable to our organic merchandise shipped from the UK, and in many cases, a lot cheaper too. Like any other business, our intent is to earn profit too, and hopefully we'll get there by keeping the costs reasonable such that our products are within reach of most people. As stated previously, it's probably time punishing me for disrespecting it as maa always warned. Had I acted on my plans in time, I would have had something to fall back on today when I needed it the most. So, to anyone reading this, learn from my mistakes: don't wait for the right time to do what you've always wanted to do. It's not a nice feeling when you're pushed into a corner and are forced to act. Act now: like someone, tell them now before they're gone; want to apologize to someone, do it today before it's too late; want to move to NYC, do it now.

P.S. 'Life Hearted' was born as a result of a series of unexpected events we experienced these past two years, and so was the name. It was our love for life and the immense possibilities it offers that the name ('Life Hearted') was thought of. However, once we decided on the name and went to buy the domain, we realized that lifehearted.com had already been purchased, though a quick google search told us that it was on sale by the owner. After our first two bids to purchase the domain went unanswered, we wrote a personal note to the domain owner explaining why we loved the name so much and offered to buy it from them for a token amount (which was much higher than the previous two bids) along with the promise of paying them residual amount later should our venture takes off. Given how our initial two bids went unanswered, we weren't expecting a response from them the third time either, though one day before we were to purchase the lifehearted.co domain, they replied saying they were willing to accept our offer and that we can pay them the rest of the amount only if our venture makes any money. There was no paperwork signed i.e. these terms were all mutually agreed upon, showing once again that good still exists in this world. Since we were chatting through the domain host's portal, we lost access to the chatting interface the minute we purchased the domain and before any contact information could be exchanged. If the previous domain owner is reading this introductory essay by any chance, we request them to get in touch with us and tell us the amount we agreed upon and other references to our chat so we know it's you. We're just launching, and if this does take off, we'd love to pay you back the residual amount as promised.