Category: Purpose

  • 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!

  • A space-time freedom continuum

    Spoiler 1: This has nothing to do with science! Signs, maybe.

    Spoiler 2: This has a lot of quotes. What can I say, smart people have already framed things so well. 

    I got an interesting response to Change Signalling – Sriks7 asked me what are the values based metrics you are thinking of for yourself? He also mentioned that in his case, they are seen to boil down to where to spend your attention and time. I can relate to that. In the words of Dylan, “A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” I have noticed that my overall sense of well-being goes up when I allow myself unstructured time. I watch random things, torture D and twitter with bad wordplay, listen to music, and sometimes just watch clouds float. The last one is slightly more dynamic than paint drying. 🙂

    But my answer would have at least one more layer.  Though time is definitely a key element here, I think of it being part of a broader umbrella – freedom. My working definition of freedom is related to one of my favourite quotes “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ~ Viktor E. Frankl. Freedom, to me, is that space – to be able to choose a response that I can live with, always. Or, to paraphrase a bunch of Jean-Paul Sartre’s quotes, freedom is nothing but the existence of our will.

    As I wrote earlier, one approach that I have used is to reduce the stimuli. But increasingly, I find that there’s a limit to that.”The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.” ~J.R.R.Tolkien. My introspection therefore, has been in the direction of the response. I have found that my power to choose a response depends on how secure I feel. I further explored this “security” and realised that it boiled down to money. It seems like when I can afford it, and that’s almost literal, I am nice to those around me. When I feel that our financial independence plan is threatened, I tend to react badly. It doesn’t help that I am blessed with a scarcity mindset.

    My belief is that by the time we are ready to activate the plan, I would have an abundance mindset. That is based on the changes I have seen in myself in the last few years. But I am also reasonably sure, from experience, that though there are these small wins that happen organically on the way, a mindset switch requires effort. A couple of challenges are immediately visible. One, since I do have a few more years of a full-time professional life left, there are trade-offs on a daily basis, and they require a balancing act between knowing who I am and being who I need to be. The challenge is being rooted on the first while executing the second. Two, while the ego might have been reasonably tamed, there is self image which has its own demands. In this dual tussle, there are choices and actions that might derail me.

    When, between changing circumstances and myself, I have learned to increase that space (in my earlier definition) I’d have achieved the freedom I desire. I do wonder about Loki’s (surprisingly) deep thought though – “Freedom is life’s great lie. Once you accept that, in your heart, you will know peace.”

  • The half of it

    It’s that time of life, when there are a bunch of reunion invites – school(s), engineering, MBA. The sudden influx makes me realise that it’s halftime. We are pausing – to collect our thoughts, to take a deep breath. I wonder aloud to D if the journey is like a mountain, and halftime puts you closer to the peak. The way is downhill and you can read that in more ways than one. Maybe that prompts folks to look back at the journey and savour the moments – the significance and insignificance, the hits and misses, the gains and losses. Or maybe it’s just a moment taken to catch our balance in a world that’s changing at a dizzying pace, and to seek the anchor of certainty that the unchanging past provides.

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  • Certain, simple frames

    I read an article recently on decision making, which among other things wrote about how instinct could beat analytical thinking. An insightful heuristic that I found in it was this – ..if you are in an uncertain world, make it simple. If you are in a world that’s highly predictable, make it complex.

    While the article focused on decision making in the business context, I could relate to it in the personal context. I see the world at large as an uncertain and complex place, and have spent a lot of time in the last few years trying to contain its influence on my own life. It has been an evolution. The expectations frame  I have written about does a fairly good job of reducing the variables, but it isn’t perfect. There are people and events that frustrate me, I sometimes lose my cool, and my remorse later doesn’t really change anything for anyone, including me. (example) (more…)