Past Post: Watterson Wisdom

Exactly one year ago, I wrote a post on a graduating class address that Bill Watterson (creator of Calvin & Hobbes) presented at Kenyon College.  I find Watterson’s wisdom as relevant today as it was two decades ago…

You may be surprised to find how quickly daily routine and the demands of “just getting by” absorb your waking hours. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your politics and religion become matters of habit rather than thought and inquiry. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your life in terms of other people’s expectations rather than issues. You may be surprised to find out how quickly reading a good book sounds like a luxury…

You will find your own ethical dilemmas in all parts of your lives, both personal and professional. We all have different desires and needs, but if we don’t discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled…

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement.

As we go through Life, we often find that it is not what we planned it would be. And yet, we must go on.  And, make our peace with it.  Perhaps even thrive in what it has to offer!

Once again, I implore you to “read this speech” in its entirety. It’s well worth the effort.

Who You Are

Thanks to Jin, I discovered a gem of a guest post on the excellent GapingVoid blog.  In “You, Less Than“, Pamela Slim presents her views on finding an identity that is distinct and true to your self.

Circumstances can cause you to question who you are… A boss writes you a stinging performance review… A reader leaves a bitter comment on your blog post… A vocal audience member questions your authority in the middle of your presentation… 

And you go from You, The Champion of the World to… You, less than.

When you fall into this deep pit of treachery and despair, you need something to pull you out. An image, a word, a note. It helps when this object reflects both the love you have for yourself as well as the love someone has for you.

Like a picture of you through your parent’s eyes… Or a note from an impassioned reader who loved the piece that you loved to write… Or a rock from a beach that was so beautiful you could swear that the sand was kissing your feet.  

You, less than, is a lie… Remember who you are.

Remember who you are?

Then What?

Another brief but thought-provoking post from Seth Godin, called Sad Tim:

At the post office the other day, a guy wearing a beautiful handmade scarf finishes his transaction and starts away from the counter.

A small nail holding the molding apparently isn’t hammered in all the way. It catches the scarf, pulls the threads and ruins the scarf. The man turns to the counter, looks at the postal worker who took his money and says, “There’s a loose nail here, it just ruined my scarf.”

Tim, the postal worker, beaten down, tired, given up, stands behind the counter and barely makes eye contact. “Oh.”

End of interaction.

When you allow (yes, allow) all humanity to be stripped from your day, all day, then what?

I’ve seen this scenario unfold so many times, in so many ways, with so many folks… Will tomorrow be any different?  I sure hope so!

World 2.0

I chance upon The Artist Farm recently, and soon find myself reading post after post on a wide range of interesting topics.  One particular post that stays with me is the one about World 2.0:

World 2.0 is about realizing and deeply internalizing that we (especially westerners) have gone beyond day-to-day survival, that we have crossed this finish line.  (Close your eyes, take a deep breath, slowly exhale… and read that line again).  Seriously, take a second to really feel this and realize it.  Yes, you worry about your finances or getting a bigger house… but you’re not concerned about having enough food for the winter or dying of malaria.  Appreciate this moment that all of our ancestors collectively achieved.  It is amazing.

World 2.0 is about appreciating this moment, and then turning around for the first time to look back at the millions of people still running the race…  It is about looking inside and asking the hard questions about what we see, what we have created, and what we have left behind.

Then, one of my favourite blogs – Mnmlist – posts a very cogent essay on Society, Reimagined (and includes a generous helping of solutions to the problem, too!) :

We’ve gotten fat, tired, sick, deep in debt, disconnected from our kids and other family members, divorced, separated from our neighbors. We’re polluting and causing global warming, all in the name of money and work and profits and buying. This seems broken, to me.

But what’s a better way of living? A society reimagined, built around people and a love for our environment and living and working and playing together, a love for being outside and playing and being active, a love for doing things and spending time with people rather than for buying things and working to support that buying habit.

And finally, a friend – Joy Dutta – posts about the “dumbing down of society” on his blog:

Look at the senseless media explosion and the priorities of news consumption by the masses. A celebrity scandal is perceived to be ten times more important than the serious geographical, social, political and economic issues we face today. Why ? Because the former is a no-brainer entertainment while the latter demands some maturity. It is all about popular culture now…

When I look at the kids here in the west it makes me sad. No genuine curiosity, no manners, no respect for elders. Despite free public schools, the abysmally low standard of curriculum and lack of discipline from parents are making them far from the generation we need in the future…

Once again, I get the feeling that the Universe is conspiring to tell me, and you, something… Which of these matches your world-view.  And, more importantly, what do you plan to do about it?

Decision Dilemma

Seth Godin makes some interesting observations in his post on Rational vs Irrational decision making:

No one is rational all the time. In fact, somewhere along the way we made ‘irrational’ into a bad word, but it shouldn’t be.

If you’re running Adwords on Google, I hope you’re making rational decisions based on clickthrough and conversion… (But) Irrational passion is the key change agent of our economy. Faith and beauty and a desire to change things can’t be easily quantified, and we can’t live without them.

There’s room for both rational and irrational decision making, and I think we do best when we choose our path in advance instead of pretending to do one when we’re actually doing the other. The worst thing we can do is force one when we actually need the other.

I’ve seen this manifest countless times, and I couldn’t agree more.

Fighting Complacency

I few days ago, I encountered a blog post by Jin Yang entitled ‘Complacency‘.  In it, Jin writes about his early years growing up in China, and then moving to the US only to discover that life was way easier than imagined:

I still remember the end of my elementary years. My school days were from 6am – 6pm. After I got home it was a brief dinner and then I studied until I went to bed. Everyday. Winter and summer breaks were short, also burdened with homework. During the final preparation for the middle school entry exam, I studied so hard the corners of my text book pages became translucent…  The magnet middle school I applied for required a minimum of 247 points (out of 250). I scored 247.

Two months into the first semester in middle school I came to the U.S. to visit my mother. I ended up staying permanently. How could I not? School here was a cakewalk. Everyday was a vacation to me. I didn’t have to come to school at 6am to clean up the class room, there were janitors doing that. (Maybe they didn’t pass their middle school placement test, I used to think)…

There was no need to be in the top of the class. There were no entry exams to get in high school, not even to enter college. There were no relatives or family friends that I had to impress. I didn’t learn anything new in math until I was a junior in high school; I was coasting off what I had learned in China…. I was being complacent and I was totally OK with it.

Upto this point in time, Jin’s story may be very different from your’s.  But, as the years go by, the lines begin to merge…

… Then I got married and had kids. Life became comfortably routine. For a couple of years, I didn’t learn anything new at all. I felt even though my skills weren’t exactly up to date anymore, they were “adequate enough” to do my job. One thing about being complacent is that you give yourself excuses and sometimes you can even fool yourself. Deep down, I knew I had enough free time to learn new things if I didn’t watch TV or play games. I knew I wasn’t the only one who was being lazy. As one gets deeper into this thing called “life,” responsibilities creep up, and the urge to learn new things gets dimmer.

That got me thinking.  I have observed this sense of “complacency” with countless friends and family members.  We grow up, we get busy with our lives, and before we realize, we get complacent.  As Jin pointed out, it’s so easy to make excuses and to fool yourself, to keep the illusion going.  But, deep down, we know it’s not the best we can do.

That computer whiz who used to be the neighbourhood’s envy, that teenage girl who enjoyed creating art, that little boy who could break the telephone apart and put it back together… One by one, slowly and steadily, we stop doing the things we enjoyed the most… We stop learning… We stop living.

It’s easy to say that we live busy lives and are not able to spare time, but time is a function of interest. 

I have two hyper-active kids, an aged mother who doesn’t keep too well, a commute that stretches well over two hours and a fairly demanding work environment.  I still make the time to stay in touch with over a hundred XML feeds (courtesy Netvibes), author four different blogs and tweet 2-3 times a day.  And, like Jin, “Everyday, I learn something new on the web, via blogs, twitter, coworkers or readers like you.”

So, I’m not buying the argument that we don’t have time for the things that matter to us.  You can fight complacency.  And win.

Giving Back

Just a year after graduating from business school, I went back to teach a course in Information Technology to the upcoming batch of young managers in my institute – The K.J. Somaiya Institute of Management Studies (SIMSR).  It was at the time, and continues to be, one of the most rewarding experiences of my professional life. 

I had promised myself back then, that I would return to it, as and when time permitted.  But Life, as we all know, is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.  Priorities at work would take up most of my time in the years to come. And soon, I found myself at the other end of the decade, wondering what happened to my plans of going back to school and teaching?!

As a young student myself, I remember that a handful of teachers had left an impression on my mind, in a span of a few hours of their delivery, that would last me a lifetime!  I could not help but think, if I could give even a little of that to the next generation of students, it would be well worth the journey…

So, in that spirit, I have once again embarked on an effort to engage with the young leaders of tomorrow.  For the moment, it has taken the form of guest lectures in select business schools, since my schedule still limits the time available at my disposal.

A month ago, I addressed a batch of about 65 students in their final year in NMIMS’ dual-degree MBA (Tech) course on the topic of “Change Management & Business Process Reengineering“.  Last week, I had the opportunity to return to SIMSR as an alumnus and guest faculty, to speak on “Six Sigma & Process Excellence” with a class of more than 120 eager beavers. 

Both topics required a fair bit of work to create a presentation that is appealing and informative.  And, keeping the students engaged has been an interesting challenge too.  But, if the feedback I have received via feedback forms, on email and on LinkedIn is any thing to go back, I seem to be doing something right…

Beginner’s Guide to Twitter

I think most of you will agree that there is an incredible amount of media coverage and currency that Social Media tools like Twitter and Facebook are presently enjoying, all over the world.  As a result, those of us who don’t have an account, are busy signing up in a rush, to see what the fuss is all about! 

Now, with Facebook, that’s relatively easy to do.  Sign up for an account, and the system offers you multiple ways to “connect” with friends from all the other services you may be using.  A few clicks later, your Facebook homepage is lush and green – complete with all the status updates of the world showing up in your News Feed, without requiring any effort from your end!  But, Twitter?  That’s a different story altogether…

What is Twitter?

Well, the founders of the service describe it as “a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages.  People write short updates, often called “tweets”  of 140 characters or fewer.  These messages are posted to your profile, sent to your followers, and are searchable on Twitter search.”

The easiest way for me to describe it is in relation to Facebook – It’s a lonely world on Twitter when you first begin to tweet.  There is almost nothing on your homepage unless you immediately start “following” a vibrant community of twitterers.  I repeat: Nothing.  My guess is that that may be the single biggest reason why most people never go beyond the first few tweets.

What can you do with Twitter?

Tom Lambert has posted an easy-to-understand explanation of the typical Twitter Modes that emerge from the use of the platform:

1. Broadcast Mode – Basically, a soapbox that matters
2. Network Mode – Reading and replying via Twitter
3. Journal Mode – “Me” mode i.e. write what you want… for yourself
4. Listen Mode – Actively soliciting opinions

You can read the entire post for details of the various modes, but you’re beginning to get the picture, right?

How do I use Twitter?

If you ask me, I basically use Twitter as a combination of Broadcast+Journal. 

It’s a platform for me to connect to a wide audience (without the permission they need to connect via Facebook), on subjects that matter to me.  So, in Broadcast mode, I use it to auto-post blog updates from all my various blogs (5 and counting!) so that any one who wishes to keep track of my writing can do so by “following” me on Twitter.  I also end up tweeting about links I find interesting during the day’s reading, which serves as a my Journal and complements my Broadcasting, since it’s usually about stuff that matters to me.

So yes, my “followers” list is a function of how much I’m connecting with my audience.  But I’m not obliged to follow every one who decides to follow me.  And, there’s no reason you should be obliged to follow anyone reciprocally.

I don’t particularly fancy using a ‘public’ platform like Twitter to have entire conversations with my friends (or followers), so I avoid using @Replies and tend to use Email/Chat/Facebook for that.

How should you use Twitter?

Guy Kawasaki, over at OpenForum, has posted a very readable list of things to avoid when using Twitter.  One of the points he eloquently makes on that post is how you should avoid telling others ‘how to tweet’:

There is no right and wrong with Twitter. There’s only what works for you and what doesn’t, so telling people how to use Twitter is as laughable as telling people what kind of websites were acceptable in 1980. Twitter is a platform – do with it what you want, but don’t tell others what to do.

Sensible advice, there.  So I’ll refrain from prescribing how you should use the platform.  What I’ve attempted to do with this post is to demystify some of the workings of Twitter, and make it a little more comfortable for newbies to work with it.  I only hope it has been of some help to you…

See Also: Facing the Truth (related post on Facebook)

A Sick Joke?

A post on the Acumen blog got me thinking about something that I have witnessed and lived with all my Life!

Here was a man simply enjoying an evening at a 5-star property in South Mumbai, thinking about the extreme contrasts which most of us fail to notice as a part of our daily lives…

My biggest culture shock in India has not been the omnipresent abject poverty, or the constant deafening noise, or the thousands of people crammed together in the rickety commuter trains. Ironically, it has been the incredible wealth that sits right next to absurd poverty. More than half of Mumbai lives in slums, yet it is home to the richest collective of billionaires in the world – ahead of New York and London…

And yet, it seems to make sense to everyone but me. My middle-class Indian friends have reinforced this many times when they say: “Of course it’s normal that the rich and the poor live next to each other… The rich live here and require services, so the poor come in to fulfill that demand.” It doesn’t shock anyone that you could pay 22,000 rupees to get into a new year’s eve party, much more than the national yearly income. And no one seems to mind that the office I work in, which has air-conditioning, wireless internet, and biometric fingerprint security, sits literally across the street from hundreds of temporary workers and their families – we’re talking dozens of children per street block – who cook, eat, bathe and sleep on the dirty sidewalks every night.

In that sense, India is quite different from Africa, where the rich are merely middle-class, the poor and the rich are typically segregated, and the ultra-rich promptly shift their assets (and themselves) out of the country. Yes, as an expat in Africa, I certainly felt wealthy, privileged, or just plain lucky. But here, holding a glass of one of the most expensive champagnes in the world, surrounded by the cream of the crop of Indian society and looking down on more than six million human beings living in slums forty floors below, I can’t help but wonder if this is some kind of a sick joke that everyone, including myself, is somehow part of.

You gotta wonder if he has a point…

In Memoriam

Three years ago, I lost a dear friend.  His name was Sanjay Nathani, and he was just about as old as I am.  Until a few weeks prior to his death, he was a hale and hearty individual with no history of any major illness.  Then, one day, they discovered a tumor in his brain that was already in its last stages.  Soon after, he died.

Two days ago, on the occassion of his third death anniversary, the wife and I went to a close friend’s house to honour his memory.  I’d seen death in the family many times before, but this would be a first for a friend. 

What do you do at such an event?  How do you honour someone’s memory after they’re gone?  Do you talk about them, recounting stories when they were around?  Do you share photographs with each other?  Do you build a website or setup a Facebook account in their memory?  Does it even matter?!

There would be more questions than there were answers… And there would be no right answers, in any case.

Then, I recalled that only a few months ago, I had returned from my aunt’s funeral and had started penning down some thoughts on this very subject.  She was the closest friend or relative my mom has known, and therefore, had come to occupy a significant place in our lives.  What I’d started writing then, would be completed today…

Photographs of times with your family and friends?
Those hideous shoes and your fashion sense?!
 
How naughty or responsible you were as a child
Your choice of carpet or how your kitchen was tiled

Maybe two kids and a loving spouse
Or how you just wouldn’t budge from that house

Your favourite icecream flavours or how you liked your tea
The recipes you willingly shared with every one and me

When it’s time to leave this Life unkind
Is that all that you manage to leave behind?

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