As I sit here today, in the wrong side of my 20s, I think about where I thought I would be and where I actually am.
I did not ever think about exactly how life would be at 26, but there were some places I thought I would have been to, some milestones passed, some boxes checked. I had always assumed I would be married by this time, and I am not. I had thought I would somehow be serving my country in some way, now I don’t even pay taxes to her. I had thought I would live in Bombay only, now I almost don’t care about ever going back for good. I had thought I would be an active ex-student of my school, now I pass by sometimes without 5 minutes to enter the gates and look for familiar faces. I had thought I would have life figured out completely; I am now more thirsty than I have ever been. I thought that if I made a decent living, lived in Bombay, somehow had a job that contributes to making India better & was married to a good guy, my life would be perfect. But today I want so much more. Yes I want more than a ‘decent living’, but more importantly I want to live in many of the great cities of the world; yes I want to contribute to my country but much more fundamentally than by being a civil servant; I want to find happiness with someone special but even more, I want to find happiness within myself.
If a chemical reaction completely & irreversibly transforms the object, I wonder how many of those one goes through. And I realize how grey life my life would have been without them. Just like the innocence of a toddler’s eyes, the colour of the twilight sky, the feel of a summer breeze cannot be replicated by the most sophisticated of man’s interventions, I wonder if a life totally under my own control & direction could be ever as fulfilling as that which unfolds by itself. I feel no disturbance by the ever shifting sands of my own aspirations, how can one who belongs in a desert?
I have come a long way but have only just begun. I have many dreams for the future, but a stronger love for the here & now. I am far away but yet completely at home.
Standing on the threshold of tomorrow, I have never been more in the today.
Showing posts with label perspective. Show all posts
Showing posts with label perspective. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Vantage point
We do know cerebrally that all of life & all knowledge is interconnected. However, it is sometimes the silos which protect us from the vast stormy seas out there and we take refuge. A non-marketing person like me hears the word ‘positioning’ and decides to sleepwalk through the class because it is a marketing subject. I don’t need to know more than enough to answer my exam. Or do I?
Some random unconnected cells of my brain decided to talk to each other – so many things around were pushing them to make the awkward social contact. Some of those I am about to write about.
A certain company recruits some greenhorns and tells them that at the end of the one year long road, they will be sent away to the northern most populated country in the world. A few harmless jokes about the inexpressiveness of the people & the long dark winter are enough for those greenhorns to kick up a big fuss and not want to go there. Then the company wisens up and takes a different position for the next set. They are told that they will get to go to the land of a thousand lakes if & only if they drive along the one year road very well and arrive at its end successfully. It would be their reward for a job well done, to go to the magical land of Moomin and corporate Himalayas. This set is suddenly dreamy eyed about that very same land. It promised adventure & excitement, but more importantly, going there will be a symbol of success, of having met expectations, of having done well. It meant validation & confidence. It was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow – it made them want to run towards it. It was a goal to strive for, not a bump in the road their predecessors thought they must brace for. Just changing the rhetoric and nothing else changed the meaning of the experience.
It’s the same reason I have always loved Tom Sawyer. The little kid understood the power of positioning & got his fence painted & managed to get paid by other people doing his work without lifting a finger himself.
It’s like society collectively positioning marriage to women. The ring, the party, the status. ‘You will never be an old maid’. The impact of marriage on an individual woman can be debated endlessly. But it is mere positioning that makes little girls dream about princes, white weddings & picket fences.
Positioning is an art for anyone who wants to sell – products, services, ideas, thoughts, ideologies… It is about knowing those who you sell to, knowing what it is that you are selling and knowing how to marry the two. It is to know which parts to light up and where to let the shadows fall. The simplistic & the pessimistic could call it manipulation. I think it is genius. If all of life is a jagged surface, then positioning is to find the smooth strip where to land your copter on.
This makes me think about something organizations do. Faulty & incomplete as it is, it’s common colloquial practice in organizations to segregate work/jobs as strategic or operational. Consciously, we do understand that planning & execution are too tightly linked & looped to have a real dividing line. But habit & ease have made it commonplace to use this distinction.
Ofcourse it’s true that operational work is as important to the success of an organization, but how many of us aspire to do it? Does it have the glamour of thinking ahead, thinking different, being pioneers in our own way? If operational means mechanical means routine means boring – is it sensible to allow the nomenclature to exist? What is the cost of inaction? If most of the employees will do operational jobs – can an organization allow them to think of their jobs as mundane & bring only part of their minds & hearts to work? If all employees are internal customers, is the faulty positioning cutting into customer delight or in this case employee engagement?
If work needs to be broken down to make it intelligible, divisible & doable, is the parameter of operational & strategic the optimal one? The work remaining the same, we need to find new eyes to look at it. So what is the solution? I think it is not merely about a cosmetic change of name. I don’t know what it is, but it will be one of those Eureka answers – simple & beautiful.
Some random unconnected cells of my brain decided to talk to each other – so many things around were pushing them to make the awkward social contact. Some of those I am about to write about.
A certain company recruits some greenhorns and tells them that at the end of the one year long road, they will be sent away to the northern most populated country in the world. A few harmless jokes about the inexpressiveness of the people & the long dark winter are enough for those greenhorns to kick up a big fuss and not want to go there. Then the company wisens up and takes a different position for the next set. They are told that they will get to go to the land of a thousand lakes if & only if they drive along the one year road very well and arrive at its end successfully. It would be their reward for a job well done, to go to the magical land of Moomin and corporate Himalayas. This set is suddenly dreamy eyed about that very same land. It promised adventure & excitement, but more importantly, going there will be a symbol of success, of having met expectations, of having done well. It meant validation & confidence. It was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow – it made them want to run towards it. It was a goal to strive for, not a bump in the road their predecessors thought they must brace for. Just changing the rhetoric and nothing else changed the meaning of the experience.
It’s the same reason I have always loved Tom Sawyer. The little kid understood the power of positioning & got his fence painted & managed to get paid by other people doing his work without lifting a finger himself.
It’s like society collectively positioning marriage to women. The ring, the party, the status. ‘You will never be an old maid’. The impact of marriage on an individual woman can be debated endlessly. But it is mere positioning that makes little girls dream about princes, white weddings & picket fences.
Positioning is an art for anyone who wants to sell – products, services, ideas, thoughts, ideologies… It is about knowing those who you sell to, knowing what it is that you are selling and knowing how to marry the two. It is to know which parts to light up and where to let the shadows fall. The simplistic & the pessimistic could call it manipulation. I think it is genius. If all of life is a jagged surface, then positioning is to find the smooth strip where to land your copter on.
This makes me think about something organizations do. Faulty & incomplete as it is, it’s common colloquial practice in organizations to segregate work/jobs as strategic or operational. Consciously, we do understand that planning & execution are too tightly linked & looped to have a real dividing line. But habit & ease have made it commonplace to use this distinction.
Ofcourse it’s true that operational work is as important to the success of an organization, but how many of us aspire to do it? Does it have the glamour of thinking ahead, thinking different, being pioneers in our own way? If operational means mechanical means routine means boring – is it sensible to allow the nomenclature to exist? What is the cost of inaction? If most of the employees will do operational jobs – can an organization allow them to think of their jobs as mundane & bring only part of their minds & hearts to work? If all employees are internal customers, is the faulty positioning cutting into customer delight or in this case employee engagement?
If work needs to be broken down to make it intelligible, divisible & doable, is the parameter of operational & strategic the optimal one? The work remaining the same, we need to find new eyes to look at it. So what is the solution? I think it is not merely about a cosmetic change of name. I don’t know what it is, but it will be one of those Eureka answers – simple & beautiful.
Monday, September 24, 2007
One step at a time
On a car ride from Gurgaon to Delhi, a wise man once told me ‘Travel, oh naïve one! If you live here forever, you will think that the mountains mean north. But that is not the case. ‘Cause even the Himalayas are south for someone. Just depends on who he is and where he stands’
True and true. It’s a well recorded, documented fact. So I guess it’s pointless to talk about it. I can’t tell anyone anything new about the merits of travelling (especially since till very recently, I needed to be told that myself). But then, why are parents excited when their child says his first words or takes his first steps? He is neither the first nor the last child to do so. Likewise, I am taking my first steps towards understanding how travel builds perspective. Doing what everyone must do to grow up. Such a day brings happiness and hope and excitement. It’s a big day for me!
There are many small and big things I learn everyday. They all tell me the same broad story… its all about context & perspective. Here are some things that struck me today… So obvious yet so huge… I choose to be amazed at them…
Like a Finn told me that her 85 year old grandfather who got widowed 3 years ago now has an 80 year old girlfriend who sent him a mushy SMS on the first mobile he ever owned! And in my own family, a 38 year old widow is told that she now has no purpose to live but to bring up her daughters. Another relationship for her is simply unthinkable.
A more routine instance crosses my mind. The so called successful people in India brag about how they see their children awake only on weekends. On other days, they leave too early, get back too late and are generally too occupied to spend time with their children. Such people are not considered successful in Finland. Infact this is one of the very, very few things you can say to a Finn to completely put him off. Its one of the few things where Finns don’t mind commenting or judging someone’s personal life.
I know of both sides. There are both right in their own ways. I have lived or seen both perspectives. But this is just two. I hope to be a student of human nature and culture. Are two chapters of one book enough for me to be a budding scholar? I know there is a long way to go. But how long? If knowing different people and living in different places builds perspective, how many places are you expected to see before you have enough perspective? Or as Bob Dylan has famously said
“How many roads must a man walk down
True and true. It’s a well recorded, documented fact. So I guess it’s pointless to talk about it. I can’t tell anyone anything new about the merits of travelling (especially since till very recently, I needed to be told that myself). But then, why are parents excited when their child says his first words or takes his first steps? He is neither the first nor the last child to do so. Likewise, I am taking my first steps towards understanding how travel builds perspective. Doing what everyone must do to grow up. Such a day brings happiness and hope and excitement. It’s a big day for me!
There are many small and big things I learn everyday. They all tell me the same broad story… its all about context & perspective. Here are some things that struck me today… So obvious yet so huge… I choose to be amazed at them…
Like a Finn told me that her 85 year old grandfather who got widowed 3 years ago now has an 80 year old girlfriend who sent him a mushy SMS on the first mobile he ever owned! And in my own family, a 38 year old widow is told that she now has no purpose to live but to bring up her daughters. Another relationship for her is simply unthinkable.
A more routine instance crosses my mind. The so called successful people in India brag about how they see their children awake only on weekends. On other days, they leave too early, get back too late and are generally too occupied to spend time with their children. Such people are not considered successful in Finland. Infact this is one of the very, very few things you can say to a Finn to completely put him off. Its one of the few things where Finns don’t mind commenting or judging someone’s personal life.
I know of both sides. There are both right in their own ways. I have lived or seen both perspectives. But this is just two. I hope to be a student of human nature and culture. Are two chapters of one book enough for me to be a budding scholar? I know there is a long way to go. But how long? If knowing different people and living in different places builds perspective, how many places are you expected to see before you have enough perspective? Or as Bob Dylan has famously said
“How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?”
And to complicate matters further for me, one of my favourite lines (told to me by a friend on a train journey from Jamshedpur to Bombay, but that’s another story…) is ‘The only thing the human mind cannot tolerate is complete perspective’.
So I need perspective, lots of it, but not so much that it’s too much. That’s tough. Or is it? It’s just like sunshine or exercise or water or love. I need lots of it, but not too much! The right amount will strike me… When the time is right, the truth will reveal itself…
And to complicate matters further for me, one of my favourite lines (told to me by a friend on a train journey from Jamshedpur to Bombay, but that’s another story…) is ‘The only thing the human mind cannot tolerate is complete perspective’.
So I need perspective, lots of it, but not so much that it’s too much. That’s tough. Or is it? It’s just like sunshine or exercise or water or love. I need lots of it, but not too much! The right amount will strike me… When the time is right, the truth will reveal itself…
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