You all must have heard the famous proverb “Make Hay While The Sun Shines”. The expression, though dating back to many decades, even centuries, is still in popular usage today.

It means to do something while the circumstances are still favourable for doing it. It means to take advantage of opportunities before they go away. To summarise, it is doing the right thing at the right time.  True, but to take advantage of the opportunities, you need to keep our eyes open to them to recognise them when they are present, as it is well-known fact that opportunities knock only a few times, if not once.

Let me share with you a joke. In a class, the English teacher was asking the students if everybody had done the homework. At this one student put up his hand saying “I could not do it teacher, I was busy making hay till the sun went down at night.” The whole class, including the teacher broke into laughter.

Nobody will be able to make hay when it rains or when it is cloudy. If you want to cut some grass and turn it into hay, you need to be on the look-out for the sun for drying the grass. Similarly, when you want to do something, you need to be on constant vigil for opportunities. Only then will you be able to recognise the opportunities when they present themselves. At this juncture, I would like to mention a couple of related proverbs “Time is money” and “Procrastination is the thief of time”. You not only need to recognise opportunities but also need to grab the opportunity and fulfil the necessary goal/task before the time expires. Else, you would be a loser inspite of identifying the opportunity. This is especially true in today’s competitive society, and more so, in a world beset with recession and lack of employment.

According to a quote mentioned in the Holy Bible, “As the door turneth upon its hinges, so doth the slothful upon his bed”.  A lazy person turns and tosses in his bed, inspite of the door being open and providing him with a means of escape. His tossing on the bed is compared to that of the door upon its hinges. So, recognise and capitalise upon the opportunities as and when they present themselves in order to avoid repenting at a later time. To make the opportunities come is not in your hands, but to recognise them and act swiftly when they come is certainly in your hands.

The application of the proverb may range from incidents in day-to-day life to bigger life accomplishments.   As a simple example from the day-to day life, let us suppose that you are considering investing in shares. You start to scan the newspapers daily for the share prices. Why? It is because you are looking for an opportune moment to buy the shares. In other words, you want to ‘make hay while the sun shines’.  Or what do you do when the tomato prices in the market suddenly go down. You quickly go and buy as many tomatoes as possible and cook them or, perhaps, store them for the next week.  Why? Again, it is because you want to make hay when the sun shines.

Take the case of the numerous computer institutes that are springing up in all the places. They have come to know that today’s job market demands the applicants to have added technical skills, hence they are just cashing in on that point and are profiting. They are, thus ‘making hay while the sun shines’. Today, when you walk on a road, you are bound to come across a Xerox shop every few feet. Why is it so? People are recognising that this is one of most profitable business in today’s market and, hence are just taking advantage. Everybody who are keen on self-employment are thinking of putting up a xerox shop. 

It is not absolutely necessary for you to make a sizeable amount of hay, even an attempt at making hay would suffice. It is sufficient if you try to do your job, even if you could not be successful at it. They are some instances when people tried to make hay when the sun shone, but good luck turned against them. Some time ago, one film-maker produced a Hindi film titled “Maine Pyar Kiya” with a sensitive and a different storyline. It was a huge success and a big hit at the box office. Sensing an opportunity, other film-producers wanted to take advantage and so came out with similar scripts, but alas!, the sun has gone behind the clouds and there was not much of a success.  Similarly, the Telugu and Bengali film makers wanted to benefit by the super-duper success of the Kannada film “Mungaru Male” and to make hay while the sun shone, but were unable to do so, perhaps because of the poor quality of the re-makes.

Hence, this important proverb has so much of application in our daily life and all of us who want to achieve success in life are, knowingly or unknowingly, striving to 'Make Hay While The Sun Shines'.