Category: Choices

  • Zoned Out

    On hindsight, I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. A little over 150 days after Comfort Zoned appeared here, 2021 did a 2020 to me with a heart attack. Yes, literally. There is no hidden wordplay, as most of my friends assumed when I let them know! Should have done Anjuna to angina, since we had just returned from Goa the previous week! For someone paranoid enough to have done a genome-based preventive health assessment to detect and insure, this was insulting. I hadn’t expected it for at least another 3 years.

    Heart attacks seem to be common now, and I checked in and out after a 3D/2N (Columbia) Asia sojourn. But cliched as it sounds, I had a lot of time to reflect. More so because while in the ICU after the angioplasty, I could hear the man who lay opposite my bed, in throes of pain and anguish, trying to find some meaning in the life he had lived. Maybe he sensed something. He became silent in an hour, even as nurses and doctors frantically tried to save him. A few minutes later, a long beep was all that remained.

    It made me revisit the luxury (and privilege) of my comfort zone, and since this will be published after my second angio (done on a date that has other life-changing memories), I thought a good way for me to figure out the next chapters would be to frame the story so far.

    Money

    • D and I arranged our own marriage, and began our lives in Bangalore with a 1 lakh loan from Citibank. Everything that followed – the hard work, the decisions – was to prevent dependence on anyone. This is not an easy responsibility and probably what led to a scarcity mindset.
    • It has an effect on many things, including career choices i.e. how you make money. If I had to “follow my passion”, I would probably be a travel writer, try my hand at script writing, and maybe even aspire to blink-and-miss roles. But that’s a bet. You get paid a lot if you’re in the top 1%, but the world is mostly the 99% who didn’t. Instead, I chose financial security as my North Star, and thankfully marketing isn’t the most boring career. In terms of learning, it never stops, but the focus for 20s, 30s and 40s – explore, expand, and extract respectively. See, alliteration! It’s important to keep your side interest alive. 🙂 You’re fortunate if you manage to do both.
    • I think financial security is underrated – there is a trade-off, but it gives you the agency to lead the life you want. Even when you’re only moving towards it, you will become increasingly comfortable investing in things you like – in my case, books, travel, good food and alcohol, ridiculous decor… And I think, if/when you’re able to tame your ego and self image and get rid of delusions of significance, things become even better! The biggest trick in the book is starting early – compounding is an extraordinary phenomenon, and it needs time.

    Relationships

    • One problem with the scarcity mindset is that it also tends to define relationships. It was only after I got to a certain comfort level in terms of our “f*** you money”, that I even let most people in. Because early on, I had at least a couple of experiences when a friend/relative borrowed money, and only after a couple of missed deadlines told me about their philosophy of “Do I even have to pay you back?” That led to exits – money and relationship, and I became cynical about the value of relationships.
    • Only recently, I realised that the early mindset of being independent and not taking help might have caused a judgmental “not giving help” side effect. Funnily enough, this isn’t applicable to causes and the world-at-large, but instead, directed at friends and relatives (The intrigues of my empathy). I am still cynical, but more conscious of it, and its machinations.
    • Find and hold on to people who can give you non-judgmental company. It’s a treasure. I think you have to be lucky to find new friends in your 40s! That damn ability seems to shrink with age. And once you have made certain consequential and irreversible choices – the kind of apartment you buy, being parents (or not, like us) – it adds constraints. On a side note, I think folks who are parents are better at compromises and negotiations!

    Health

    • Back in 2006, I first came to know about my stratospheric cholesterol levels. Since then, in one form or another, I have been exercising five days a week. I love my beef and chocolate, and my rum and whiskey, but everything is consumed in moderation. But fitness and health are different things that we tend to conflate. Also, the genes have a will of their own, and despite reading a lot about it, I thought I could beat it with a diet and exercise regime. Nah.
    • Do yourself a favour and at least at 35, start an annual checkup habit. Yes, you might have to do trade-offs, but at least to me, being in control of the narrative seems like a better choice than a take-it-as-it-comes approach, because the latter also has an effect on your spouse/partner/family. One realisation is that we have a remarkable ability to normalise things, even those we thought we could never change/live without.

    Navigation

    A couple of things that are applicable to all three aspects above

    • Habits: Another underrated phenomenon. And they work as a force multiplier in both directions i.e. the good ones will give you superpowers, and the bad ones will pull the rug from under you. Take the time to understand what kind of person you are, and want to be. And build your habits around that. The caveat to that is moderation. For instance, I am a compulsive planner. The good part – I could guide D while experiencing a heart attack, because I had the scenario planned. The bad part – irritation when things don’t go according to plan e.g. not enjoying a vacation because the plan is chockablock. On a related note, it is in the nature of things to change. I can assure you that you will laugh at the things you decided/did when you were younger. In that context, acknowledge that habits will need rewiring too. To borrow from another context, “we first shape our habits, then our habits shape us”. A good idea to revisit them every once in a while, and look at them objectively.
    • Trade-offs: Many things in life are finite, include time and money. While “All I want is everything” is a perfectly normal stance, reality most likely will include trade-offs. Some conscious, and some that you realise only later. The higher the ‘conscious’ tally, the better I feel. You will need to find your own balance. A related application is in decision-making. A friend taught me to ask myself “how important will this be in five years?” For the past few years, my optimisation has been to give myself optionality, with a broad idea of where I want to be. Reality is a full contact sport, and there’s only so much control you have.

    P.S. A good book to read on many of these things – Morgan Housel’s The Psychology of Money.

  • Default in our stars

    The thought first occurred to me a couple of years ago, when I realised that thanks to outsourcing and automation, we would struggle today to do many things that were once life skills. We also lost a little more than that – learning.

    Sometimes directly, and sometimes, through the interactions with the world, they facilitated a learning experience that taught one how to navigate the world and the different kinds of folks that made up its systems. 

    Regression Planning

    It was continued with a bit more specificity in a subsequent post.

    Instagram, Facebook, Tinder, Spotify, Netflix, Amazon – everything is a feed of recommendations, whether it be social interactions, music, content or shopping! Once upon a time, these were conscious choices we made. These choices, new discoveries, their outcomes, the feedback loop, and the memories we store of them, all worked towards developing intuition. 

    Intelligence, intuition and instincts. The journeys in the first two are what have gotten the third hardwired into our biology and chemistry. When we cut off the pipeline to the first two, what happens to the third, and where does it leave our species?

    AI: Artificial Instincts
    (more…)

  • Incognito, ergo sum

    More than a year ago, in a post titled A plan to be, I wrote about how at different stages of life, one has the need to stand out, and the need to belong. Both driven by various combinations of happiness, self-image, and of course, the gene that just wants to get to the next generation. Though I didn’t really express it in the post, the “plan to be” had belonging as a large part of it. Exactly a year ago, I wrote The half of it, in which I took the thread further. I found “relevance” being rooted in “belonging”, and wondered whether we settle for that. At the cost of meaning. (more…)

  • Success measures

    Kaamyaab is a wonderful movie – the subject, the performances, the sensitive portrayals, not to mention the nostalgia of seeing familiar old faces. Sanjay Mishra, playing Sudheer, a side-actor who decides to come out of retirement after realising that he is only one short of acting in 500 films, does a fantastic job of bringing to life the minds and lives of struggling actors. But, to me, good movies make you think beyond the scope of their narrative, and this one was no different.

    Before Sudheer began his mission of a 500th movie appearance, his life has settled into routines, and I found it difficult to fathom whether he regretted his career choice. For instance, he describes himself and others like him as “aloo” actors who can be added to any film. But he is also chuffed when he is recognised by people. And then there’s the alcohol. Is this how Babulal Chandola (Sudheer is a screen name) imagined his twilight years?

    We’re surrounded by success stories, not just from the movie business, but other walks of life too. Success, as we commonly define it, takes hard work, and luck. It requires the tenacity and perseverance to break through what Randy Pausch calls the “brick walls”. Bahut hi bekaar shahar hai,” Isha Talwar says in the movie, “Rejection ki aadat dalwa deta hai.”

    Kaamyaab draws attention to the not-so-successful, and brought up the question to me, again. What really is success, kaamyaabi? Being true to yourself, becoming exactly what you set out to become, but having to deal with the consequences of your trade-offs? Or being malleable with your trade-offs such that many a time your own desires are secondary, but being melancholic about the roads not taken?

    In the larger canvas of history, individual successes are blips, even the very best of them. But that’s philosophical, and it’s inevitable that as your film roll nears its end, you will analyse your role. Something that came up in an earlier post – The half of it. One which took me to whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal (Hunter S. Thompson).  My take for the future was to float with the tide and seek small goals while at it.

    I now realise that the questions of “why” and “what” still need an answer. One framing I have used in this context is FML – fame, love, money. Not by design, but the irony of the more traditional definition is unmistakable. Meanwhile, at a certain stage, after one’s biggest adversary is self image and not others, the love for something is the obvious answer (at least to me). Despite that, the motivation is not easy. I could really relate to a tweet by Orange Book, “You are not talentless, you just fell in love with comfort.” There are also the “false securities” that SRK eloquently framed in his tweet. Not completely past it. Related to that is the notion that one has done enough (for even the self image) to take a breather. All challenges to overcome!

    It almost seems like the opposite of life is not always death, it could be a lifestyle too! But then again, that depends on how  one measure success – happiness or contentment? At one point, they seem to be opposites too!

  • Signals, Trade-offs, Outcomes, Perceptions

    In S2E6 of The Good Fight, which was our first go-to drama during the Corona lockdown, the focus is on Adrian Boseman (played superbly by Delroy Lindo ). Thanks to his appearance on a cable news show as a legal pundit, he becomes a viral sensation. They invite him back for a couple of shows and increasingly try to channel (pun unintended) his angst into a stereotype. In his third and final appearance on the show, Adrian rebels and lets it fly, causing the channel to let him go. The episode’s last scene has him looking in the mirror, without the greasepaint. I really liked this story arc. It’s almost as though, after he experiences viral fame, he sees it for what it is, and how he can’t play along, and gives the system the finger.

    Or maybe I am projecting. Not that I ever became a viral sensation, but my favourite phrase in this context has been “Popularity is the slutty little cousin of prestige.” (Edward Norton, Birdman) Now that’s a very arguable point of view. In my defence, I don’t think of it in the scathing, condescending manner of the original quote. It’s a tempered, mellower, “I can’t bring myself to do this sh*t” perspective. (more…)