Month: February 2021

Near yet far…

~ Rishi ~ Leave a comment

The highlight of my week was Missus and Daughter returning after a couple of months at my in-laws. It was an anticipated event for some time now, with the return planned earlier this month, but the sheer high of seeing them in person after 2 months was indeed exhilirating.

I met them at the airport and as we spent time talking about all sorts of things on the way back home, it was refreshing to have that familiar buzz back in my life. And it reinforced my thoughts from earlier this week where coincidentally, I had personal conversations with a couple of colleagues and friends around the theme of family and their closely knit nature. We had discussed about how as a family we always strive to stay close and together but sometimes it becomes necessary to move out to a different place for professional or personal reasons. And how that impacts the bonds within the family.

As I reflected back on those conversations and my own experience over the weekend, it occurred to me that most of us by design want to stay close by, in a comfort zone. That allows us to predictably live our lives and be the support system to our family that we want to be. That’s our basic necessity, to be loved and cared for, and to love and care for others we are bonded with.

However, there comes a time (or some times) in our lives, when we are left with no choice but to separate from them for a given period, owing to work or studies or any other personal matters. And when that happens, how we keep that bond strong constitutes a great deal of how the family functions in the years to come.

I have seen it first hand. My father was in a banking job and had to move every 2-3 years. In the initial years of his service, when I was young, he always moved to new places alone, preferring to leave us in our home town with the extended family. Ofcourse it helped that we had a joint family and everyone was closely knit. But I sometimes wonder how he managed to serve his work requirements and still place family on top priority to ensure that they always had him nearby whenever needed. That is one of the reasons why we are still as closely knit as a joint family even today, although everyone stays in different places.

Today, with a better connected world, a lot of us travel and stay for work in a different place, leaving our families behind, as an accepted practice. However, we as individuals or as a society, often neglect the long term consequences of this movement to our family life. Be it the warmth and shelter that a family home provides, or the cosy feeling generated by being near our loved ones, or the simple fact of having someone to talk to, we do miss a lot in life.

Some of these are things that we often let go in our quest for a better life or career. We console ourselves that it is only for a few days/months/years and we will go back to a better life. And with all the communication tools to talk, see and hear each other, it is just like normal. However, it is not the same. Being in person as opposed to being virtually present isn’t always the same thing. Specially, when it comes to families.

With the kind of busy lives we lead these days, as time passes by and everyone gets busy, somewhere priorities shift. Perspectives change. Bonds start becoming weak or breaking up. Until we make an extra effort to keep up the normalcy and the intricate bonds connected. Or we build a ground to stand up on together, near yet far.

Or better still, we move our families (or ourselves) nearer, to partake in the new life we are creating for ourselves and for them…

Special-i-fashion!

~ Rishi ~ Leave a comment

Reading books is always special. Even if it isn’t too good a read, you take away something from it. But in a few cases, you read a book that strikes a portion of your brain deeply. And that stays with you for time to come.

This past week, I finished reading a book titled ‘Range’ by David Epstein. It’s about the fundamental premise of what is better – depth or breadth; and the author makes a case for breadth over depth, or range. As I read through, some of the examples stuck a chord…

Now, I am a person who has always valued breadth or range more, which is perhaps the reason for me liking the book more. But as I looked back at my own life and thought through on the experiences, I realised the breadth of experiences I had have helped me shape up to what I am today. And even though some of those experiences were not to my liking, they have nevertheless made me.

That’s true of other friends and acquaintances too. I see that those who have had varied experiences and gone into different directions have a much better point of view on new things and are never hesitant to take upon a challenge. It’s not that they have any more confidence than someone who has been focused on only one subject matter. But somehow, they intrinsically believe in themselves and are ready to try their hand at something new and give it their best shot.

Not to take away from those who focus on depth, I think such people are equally important to have by our side. Whether it comes to medicine, or any other aspect of life where specialization is the key to success, focus on depth is what separates the best from the rest. And in such fields, specialization is what matters the most. However, for the rest of us, normal folks, varied experiences count for much more.

What surprises me the most though is that having gone through a wide learning curve ourselves, when it comes to our children, why do we always try and push them towards some specialization. I have seen a number of parents pushing their child to focus on only studies or only sports or some form of art. There is a lot of noise in the media also with this constant messaging to focus on developing skills in children as early in their lives as possible, which doesn’t help!

Even when children grow up, we try and steer their career choices and push them to take decisions early in life, when they perhaps aren’t ready to decide whether they want to be a specialist or not. And in that haste to get them to settle, we perhaps take away the rich experiences that they could have had on their own.

Or for that matter, our young professionals. I fail to understand the urge for people to specialise early on in their careers. While it may help them get paid more or land a better role/company, it for sure constrains the field in which they can operate in. And while they may achieve all the success through the specialized route, wouldn’t it be better to have a larger field to play in initially and narrow down your choices as you grow along?

As I reflected on these topics and thought through, I realised that it is upon us as individuals to decide how we want to take things forward. For self and for others we are responsible for. While specialization is in fashion, how do we let it wind down it’s own course and take decisions naturally rather than forcing them.

Specially for our children. It is contingent upon us to give them the breadth of experiences that they can get and let them choose their path by themselves. Even if it means they fail a few times. For what is failure if not an excellent teacher!

Sprint or Marathon?

~ Rishi ~ Leave a comment

I was caught on the wrong foot. Having run it like a sprint for the past few years, I had suddenly realised that life was a marathon!

All of us have our own thought processes about how life should pan out for us. And what should it lead to. As I came out of b-school and started working, I came to a conclusion that my life had to be in the fast lane and lead to massive success early on.

The next few years were spent chasing that dream. I set up my own business, worked extra hard, and burned myself going that extra mile to achieve success.

While the business did give me success and satisfaction, it was the thrill of being your own boss and running something for yourself that kept me going through a gruelling schedule and running the sprint.

It wasn’t until I decided to close down my business after 3 years and the hectic activity slowed down, did I start noticing that there were some gaps in my theory…

For one, I had neglected my health and had serious trouble on that front. I had also not been able to spend as much time with my family as I would have liked to. And I had spent most of what I earned, living life in the fast lane!

It was devastating to know that I had been running the race all wrong. Forgetting the dream that I had nurtured and closing down the business was in itself a painful process. Adding to it were all these other factors which were making me realise that I had been mistaken.

The next couple of months, I spent in introspection and thinking through on what went wrong and right for me. And while I carried rich experience that I couldn’t have got anywhere else, I realised that I could have run the race differently and had a more wholesome life.

After all, life is not a race to be finished, like a sprint. It is a marathon to be savoured and felt, going through the easy and tough phases. And it is above all an experience.

As I re-integrated with the corporate life again and got back to work subsequently, I made a quiet resolve that I will never be lured into running a sprint again.

And while the last few years have been busy, at the bottom of my heart and in my mind, I am running a marathon rather than a sprint.

As I spoke to an ex-colleague this week and we talked about this aspect of life, it made me realise that I have to keep course correcting myself from time to time to ensure that the bigger picture is not lost.

And to continue to live life to the fullest possible, enjoying the scenery and the road!!!

Social Levels

~ Rishi ~ Leave a comment

We all live in a society. And the society has its peking order. That’s what we have all seen in our lives. And that’s how we behave mostly!

This weekend, as I finally finished watching ‘Rome’, a series covering the history of the Roman empire during the times of Julius Ceasar and Octavion Ceasar, I grappled with these thoughts in my mind. While I always enjoy history and the stories that it tells us, it was most interesting to study the intricacies captured in the series related to different social levels, ranging from the nobles to the senators to the plebs (common people).

As I thought through, I realised that the same structure has been theorised in all the ancient cultures, whether it is Indian (recall Shabri in Ramayan or Karna in Mahabharat) or others (circa Rome). It is as if all through our history, people have always been divided into social levels based on who does what or who owns what.

And that’s been a cause for strife. Whether the fights that have happened through the ancient history centered on religion, or the wars and battles in the medieval history emerging from the fight for ownership, or the revolutions in the modern history focused on rights, all have one thing in common. The oppressed and the downtrodden have risen and revolted against those who are in power or are better off, to take back what they think is rightfully theirs.

Now it’s not in my domain to comment on what or who is right or wrong. People have fought and continue to do so because we humans can’t live with each other for long before disagreeing.

But what I realised is that before all of this, when we were still evolving and had to survive in the wild jungles, there surely wouldn’t have been so called ‘social levels’. Yes, there would have been a leader of the pack (assuming animal behaviours that I know of), but otherwise it would just have been an equal footing for everyone. All working together to fend off danger and survive to the best of their abilities.

As an analogy in our current world, often when we are faced with a danger, we group together and fight it, forgetting if the others are of the same social level or not. People who aren’t likely to sit together, help each other in crises like a terror attack, a flood, a famine etc. But go back to normalcy, and the camaraderie also goes away…

These social levels permeate our behaviour in many ways. Whether its deciding where to live or what to do and how, we all try and abide by the societal norms of our level and aspire to grow to the next level. Be it in our kid’s education, or the company we wish to keep, or the way we change our conduct as we start progressing in life. Even when it comes to marriages, we solicit a match for our sons/daughters based on our social level and seek someone higher up if possible.

This psyche unfortunately divides us into splinter groups as a society. And creates fissures. The servant or maid who works for us doesn’t get the same opportunities for his/her family and while serves us faithfully (?), despises us and secretly wishes to rise up and show us some day that s/he is an equal. Or the people who assume an air of superiority and try and showcase their “upper class”, leaving some of us jealous of their success and ready to do anything to reach the same status.

Does it really help us as an individual or family? I don’t know. It probably is a very superfluous mirage to hold.

What it definitely does is create a sort of dissatisfaction within us about why we are not at the next level yet. And that’s troubling. Because, that takes away our happiness and the beauty of our lives in the present…