new year resolution
I have always been too impressed by intelligence / wit / talent in people … to the point where I forget to notice how empathic (or not) they are. This year, I will begin to change that. See I have come to believe that kindness – towards yourself and others – is the beginning of wisdom. Okay, I know. Not only is it beyond mid-January, I am old enough to know this already. May sound pretty basic, but this psychologist is just about getting it. Better late than never!
ramble free
Feel the need to write today. About nothing specific, just to write.
I wonder what the act of writing does – psychologically. While you are writing, there is a heightened sense of belief in your thoughts, a strengthening of conviction in your feelings. There is also an evolution of existent thoughts and feelings that might not ordinarily occur.
Most important for me: there’s a withering away, whether fleeting or lasting, of self-doubt. And the thought of creating a starkish black and white, from your typically thousand shades of grey, is nice. After that, you glide back in to a kind of cognitive twilight from where you came.
The twilight is neither a dark nor claustrophobic one. In fact, it is a space without boundaries – quite different from the world of words. There are no letters and no word is set in stone. Thoughts are malleable, grammar has little to say, vocabulary is only as big as the next word, and you are free to place commas (or not) between a myriad visuals. It’s that one place where there is utter freedom of thought.
While that freedom does not vanish when you articulate something, there are certainly great constraints put on it when you do. Suddenly, you are limited by something inane – like the last preposition you used or your resistance to the semi-colon. Sometimes there comes along a metaphor; it lets you roam a bit more easily.
All this, of course, happens as you write. After you are done, there is that sweet sense of accomplishment for having been a composer. No matter how the composition turns out…
“told me love was too plebeian”
Those words from Ella Fitzgerald’s song Cry Me A River get at ideas that have been swishing around in my head for a few months. Is love really too plebeian?
I remember an instance when a dear friend of mine sounded distinctly like he was in love. I said, on hearing him speak of it, “Wow, I’ve never heard you sound so giddy!” He quickly admitted that he was indeed feeling giddy. Then there was a pregnant pause after which he came back with “Ah, that’s so embarrassing!” I asked why ever would he feel more embarrassed than pleased, to which he said with his characteristic half-joking half-serious charm, “Oh, because. Because love is sooo bourgeois!” 
More recently, I hung out with people in Bombay after many years. These are folks in their late 30s and early 40s, most of whom are married, some single, others divorced. The unanimity of their attitude towards romance in marriages startled me. Their jargon revealed a certain irreverence towards love and it was a rude surprise. How openly they stated that men and women were not really designed to live together! They spoke nonchalantly of how monogamy is unnatural and how marriage is something they would advise only if and when kids are involved. I detected an odd acceptance of extramarital liaisons and I realized that phrases like ‘fuck buddy’ have migrated and are proliferating in the East – not just in the upper crust but in the middle class as well.
When I challenged their stance, they said “But it is like this in the West. Why are you so surprised? You are being a tad naive. Surely you have lived in the States for long enough to realize that romance and marriage are incompatible! It’s all an illusion.” To that my response is: I agree that marriages are often not held as sacrosanct in the West either. But the brazenness about these issues seems to be greater in Bombay (where I was born and lived till my early 20s) and in Dubai (where I’ve been for a year now) than in the US (where I spent close to a decade)!
What exactly, I keep wondering, is going on? Yes, we all know that virtually 50% of marriages in many a cosmopolitan city end in divorce. Still, I am continually alarmed at the explicitness of (what I find to be) the cynicism. And I don’t consider myself a prude of any sort!
Perhaps it is because I have not been married before, and that I’m in my early 30s, but I still hold an idealized image of it in my mind. Or perhaps I have been swept away by the Hallmark-and-Hollywood fantasy of love over the years. Or even more likely is the fact that people who trivialize love are merely all talk; maybe it is a defense to preempt getting hurt by love? Whatever the reasons, the truth is, I sense a disregard towards the concept of happily growing old with one someone – and that shakes the foundation of what I (want to) believe vitality is all about.
That said, I am glad that people are talking about these things. It’s SO much better than sweeping such stuff under the carpet. But it brings up more questions than answers for me on further introspection. Like is love merely a pedestrian idea that we, as a society, propagate to facilitate couples getting together? And does love really have nothing to do with people staying together? Is romance slowly but surely devolving in to a relic of the past? Is it truly unsustainable?
the good life
Anyone who has visited this blog more than a couple of times may have sensed my tremendous reverence for Sir Ken Robinson’s speech at the TED 2006 conference in California. A few months ago, JK Rowling delivered another wonderfully inspiring speech at a graduation ceremony at Harvard. This address by the Harry Potteress, if you will, comes extremely close to evoking the resonance created in me by Robinson.
Their themes are similar in part. The overlap lies in their descriptions of how people are typically held back from finding their talents. Robinson talks of how kids are often pushed in to doing things that they are not designed to do. This detracts from their uniqueness and leads to the feeling of having failed from within – no matter how successful they may appear to be from the outside.
JK Rowling speaks of her own experience as a mother in a financially dire situation who finally found the courage required to live her life with authenticity: She said: “So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”
Robinson gave the example of Gillian Lynne, now a British ballerina, who was taken to a doctor when she was still in school for being miserable at her studies. The doctor was wise enough to tell her mother that her child didn’t have ADHD but that she did have the fidgetiness of a dancer. He encouraged her mother to enroll her in a dance school. In Robinson’s words: “Gillian was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet school. She became a soloist and had a wonderful career there. She founded her own dance company. She met Andrew Lloyd Webber. She has been responsible for some of the most successful theater productions in history. She has given pleasure to millions. And she’s a multi-millionaire. Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.”
Bravo to both speakers!
Rowling took the idea a step ahead. She spoke of how getting in touch with ourselves then helps us to get in touch with others. She talked about how it enables us to use our power of imagination to empathize with those less fortunate than us. That, most beautifully, is her definition of a good life – which is what she eventually wished upon the graduating class of 2008.
I have always thought that “the good life” is not one in which you have acquired material things and been a conventional success, but one in which you have been true to yourself; it is the only way in which you can be true to others. Believe me, I know how tough it is. But I also deeply feel how vital it is, not just for our own wellbeing but also for that of those around us; for our children, our spouses, our families, our employers, our employees, our countries, our world – whether strangers or friends.
Finally, Rowling had an important point to make for the youth of ’superpower’ America – which figures in this moving excerpt from her speech.
“Amnesty International mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
Hear hear! Powerful thoughts and words indeed.
making it work
Back to work culture like I said I would.
I think one of the most important qualities to engage in the work place is flatness. By that I mean – a strong check on hierarchical behavior. Everyone has contributions to make and worrying about what the boss might say/think/feel is the best way to bring about clamming up of employees, or even worse – them expressing thoughts they believe will be favored by those “in power.” This creates a space where people are motivated by fear, leads to a fake consensus, and culminates in a non-progressive environment. What we need are work cultures in which people are intrinsically motivated. Every job is a self-portrait of the person who does it. Autograph your work with excellence. Sucking up is not conducive to this kind of sentiment.
A facet related to the first is this: companies must be very careful to inculcate an atmosphere that is not idea-killing. The role of two-way communication needs to be deeply underscored. It’s easy to be dismissive of thoughts that are not articulate enough or stated confidently enough or are perhaps slightly tangential to the topic at hand. But true respect is always due to input offered – so value all that is said, dig a bit deeper to get at the essence, certainly don’t discount anyone. Someone once said: The paradox of innovation is this: CEOs often complain about lack of innovation, while employees often say that leaders are hostile to new ideas.
The next thing I can think of is affirmation of who employees are – in a holistic sense. It is not often that people feel known/understood where they work. (There is plenty of research in organizational psychology showing that verifying people’s sense of self is greatly useful.) So, for example, let’s say you have an engineer who can paint, let it be known. Perhaps a showcasing of employee’s talents outside of their job descriptions is worthwhile. People are unique and should be seen as such; cliques should be avoided at all cost. A related aspect is of giving people autonomy. Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what needs to be done, and then let them surprise you with the results.
An openness to change is vital. A great quote speaking to it: To survive in the future, every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does. The world is engulfed in a revolution, on a social and psychological level, and this must reflect at the organizational level as well. I’m obviously not saying the focus should be on abandoning everything, but that there should be a readiness to doing so, if need be.
Money is an unavoidable but surprising variable in creating a good work culture. Another neat quote that talks to the point: There is no contest between the company that buys the grudging compliance of its workforce and the company that enjoys the enterprising participation of its employees. You could pay people a ton of money and not have their faithfulness. (Employee turnover rates are not as muted by high salaries as one might like to think.) Or you could value an employee tremendously and have his loyalty forever, even if you couldn’t pay him the best that is out there.
Management must develop a clear ideology and let it be implemented by all – from the guy who wheels the coffee and croissants in to the conference room to the one who heads the table. It is more than vital! A powerful quote that I believe gets at it most thoroughly: A visionary company creates a total environment that envelops employees, bombarding them with signals so consistent and mutually reinforcing that it’s virtually impossible to misunderstand the company’s ideologies and ambitions. This ties in inextricably with giving meaning to the work employees do. A vision is exceedingly important.
Finally, a thoughtful and honest Corporate Responsibility policy is imperative today. When institutionalized right, it can cover almost all of the points touched upon above – and more! The idea of Corporate Responsibility is NOT anti-profit, as many like to believe; it is just a more long-term orientation than the short-term one to which we are accustomed. Ultimately, CR is about nothing but profit, actually. I will write about it some more in another post.
ditch it
I’ve grown certain that the root cause of lack of fulfillment – and the sense of futility that goes with it – is fear. (Needless to say, I’ve been in a contemplative phase for the last couple of weeks.) To live life with authenticity is tough, especially in the smoke-and-mirrors world this often is. And underneath the fear of being true to yourself lie the fears of failure and rejection. They make us give in to the status quo, to not speak our minds, and to not bring to any situation what we might uniquely bring, in their absence.
It is very early on in our lives that we become afraid of being wrong or looking stupid or feeling inferior. These are very real and very human fears, and once they set in, discovering who we really are becomes an uphill battle. We lie to ourselves and others, we hide and we hurt, we deny and we demean. We all do; it’s not a question of if but how much.
Now consider the flip side. Is courage the absence of fear? Seems to me it’s more like courage is simply the acknowledgment of fear. Once you admit to a fear, it tends to lose its bite, which is liberating. You gradually become free to be aware, free to not unthinkingly conform, free to be and believe in yourself. (One of my great fears is of being perceived as too idealistic and only very recently have I begun to confront it.)
I recently came across a related and rather neat quote by Nietzsche: Fear is the mother of morality. That got me thinking about how rarely we find ourselves doing what feels right – not what we are told is right, or what is generally considered right, but what intuitively feels right deep down to us. If we could make more of a habit of it, then we might have no use of the so-called morality that often leads to brashness towards ourselves and others. I deeply believe that being gentle is part of being brave, and requires even more of those proverbial guts. Think not just about us as individuals, but also about how we behave collectively – for example countries that are at war…
I know I am rambling, guess it’s because I’m not used to doing this. I tend to avoid getting too personal on this blahg – perhaps in the fear that I will be judged as childish and over-emotional or even worse as boring. (All this fear, my being a psychologist notwithstanding!) But this is how I feel and this subject is at my core. So hear hear then, here’s to facing fears. Slowly but surely, even if just a fraction of one at a time. Good night. =)
dissatisfied?
Consider the following aspects of job satisfaction.
1) The EMOTIONAL (i.e. people are doing work they personally enjoy and when they know that the outcome of their work is meaningful)
2) The SOCIAL (when one works with people one likes and respects, where feedback is appropriate, and where the motivation to perform is positive)
3) The PHYSICAL (whether it be manual labor that is not abusive or about a comfortable, easily accessible office for a white-collar worker)
4) The FINANCIAL (I realize how subjective the phrase “well-paid” is; but let’s say that “well” implies a cool savings of at least a fifth of monthly pay.)
I have a feeling that a strong fulfillment of just one or two of the above could lead a person to say they are pretty satisfied at their job overall. For example, let’s say you are getting remunerated at a high level; that might negate the ill effects of all other aspects. Or for example, if you aren’t, but you adore your colleagues, you may grin and bear the fact that you don’t absolutely love your work either. This might be a tad simplistic, but you get the drift…
And yet, the percentage of people who are extremely dissatisfied at their jobs these days is spectacular. Well, why?
It would be easy to primarily blame issues with the last factor on the list – inadequate compensation is indeed a major concern in most economies today. But how about we focus on the first two for a bit.
The kind of work you choose to do obviously influences to a great extent how much you enjoy your work. Do your aptitude and abilities match your profession? If not, you are probably not alone. People are often socially pressured to take up jobs they are doomed to dislike. Many of us have heard things like: “Don’t do music, you won’t get a job doing that!” or “Where’s the money in studying art?” or “Whatever would you do with a degree in language when you grow up?”
Sir Ken Robinson has given a remarkable speech (Do schools kill creativity?) on what the consequences of discouraging kids from their natural affinities are. I do not blame society for putting pressure on their children to become engineers and accountants. I see that the advice is well-intentioned – but it is not necessarily right. And what ends up happening is the creation of a world where people are not synched up with their jobs, which then contributes significantly to job dissatisfaction – and ultimately reduces commitment and productivity at personal and organizational levels.
The issue above is a huge one and needs much attention. Even so, let’s say you chose to do what you want to, or even if you chose to do what you can at least tolerate doing. Unfortunately, there’s a bigger hurdle that often creeps up. Typically, after the initial novelty of a work place has worn away, you begin to grapple with a work culture that is far from ideal.
It’s not often that workplaces elicit the kind of sentiment that companies like Google do…
More on work culture in an upcoming post.
quote
“What good fortune for those in power that people do not think.”
Interesting thought, especially when you consider the role of the music or movie industries or even advertising in popular culture. I often find people in the biz that consider others – especially consumers – as fools. Then they deliver mediocrity of a kind that is really unacceptable, but it is often lapped up!
Unfortunate that those words are Hitler’s and we still see his vision play out day after day around us. Isn’t it time that people became less naive to the phenomenon? It might be wise to heighten awareness and learn how to see through sugar-coated manipulations. But more than anything else, I wish we would all pay just a little heed to to our intuition.
bloody mary
No matter how delightful the concoction, I’ve always found its name vaguely distasteful. Some say it refers to Queen Mary I of England who was known for her violent persecution of Protestants. Others say it is just a cheeky reference to the color of the drink. I sense from it (especially when you consider its non – alcoholic counterpart, the Virgin Mary) a mild irreverence for Christianity. It’s funny, sure, but also sort of irreverent…
I’m no proponent of church (or for that matter any temple, mosque or synagogue), but I’m no fan of deriding religion either. In fact, I find organized religion fascinating – from a marketing perspective. Seems to me that the need for something like it is a hallmark of humanity and I am curious about why organized religion “sells.” (I apologize if this is way too simplistic or mundane or offensive to some, but I had to start formulating my thoughts on this somehow.)
So, I believe, organized religion tries – and usually haplessly fails on the whole – to satisfy a few very basic human needs:
Our need for congregation. Simply getting together with other people regularly, for the sense of community, being part of a social group, hanging out with likeminded others, call it what you will. When I was little, my parents held traditional celebrations of a couple of religious festivals, and the aura of purity and cohesion during those times at home was lovely. But we also satisfy this need at places of non-worship, such as the cofffee shop down the street, where for instance, some of us to the left might congregate and then complain about those to the right.
Our need for devotion. We need an earnest, almost mindless attachment in our lives, whether it is to a person/s, pet, cause, or a hobby. Really, art could be a great substitute for organized religion. Unfortunately, the focus on artistic passion is in dire need the world over.
Our need for hope. What guarantee do I have that I will be or keep being happy? None whatsoever. So maybe I should pray to someone/something outside myself in order to truly believe that it is all going to be okay. But perhaps I could also find that within myself somehow, and I could also perhaps learn to enjoy (or at the very least, accept) the present moment a little more. (So could I have that Bloody Mary now please?) 
Our need for harmony. I believe we have a need to feel that we are one with the universe. I went to a Christian private school, and singing hymns was a part of our daily morning routine. We called it assembly, and raising our voices together in praise of ‘Him’ was one of my favorite parts of the day. I realized, when I was a teeanger, that the feeling I got waving a lighter around with thousands of other people at a Europe concert satisfied (albeit in a slightly different way) that same need for harmony.
Our need for distinction. All of us want to feel like there is a difference between us and them, to see ourselves as one of those who know the difference between right and wrong. I am a Christian/Hindu/Muslim/Jew/atheist… religious affiliations and non-affiliations are great identity-generators.
Our need for indignation. We unfortunately have some misguided need to enhance ourselves (and those we associate with) and derogate those we feel are not like us (i.e. those we don’t or can’t associate with). Organized religion satisfies the need for an ego-boost particularly well. Consider this however: I tune in to preachers on the radio on and off. Besides giving me fodder for thought, it also allows me my self-righteous indulgence of the day. How am I different from the rest of the world? “Well, don’t you see, I can see right through those manipulative sermons. Oh, the poor suckers who fall for that stuff every week…” One might say some of us are religiously irreligious.
Our need for rituals. There’s something very gratifying about doing something familiar regularly, whether it is eating a bagel every day, taking your dog to the park every Sunday morning, or praying every night. We are creatures of habit, and again, organized religion happens to step in and satisfy this craving exceedingly well.
Our need for tradition. This one is close to but not quite the one above. Tradition makes us feel like we have a legacy, that we are of historical value, and so we must do things a certain way. For instance, I can’t imagine being married in a purple outfit, no matter how much I like the colour or how anti-establishment I’m feeling. Ah, tradition, good old tradition.
Our need for escape. It is a harsh reality sometimes, and we all need a break from it on and off. So some might escape with alcohol or drugs, others with exercise or food, and yet others with religion.
Our need for mentorship. So we are all a little lazy and would like someone to help us with our homework, in this case with something that should be as personal as spiritual deliberation. It’s not just that though; it really is nice to be able to trust someone we look up to in guiding us in the “right” direction. However, should we not pay a little more attention to the credentials, intentions, and wisdom of who we trust? (I’m thinking of the likes of Ted Haggard and Raj Thackeray, ugh.)
Our need for awe. This one I find particularly interesting. When you look at a beautiful cathedral for instance, you might see how it is designed to inspire a feeling of awe. It juxtaposes a tiny little you against a massive and beautiful monument often times associated with some sort of “creator”. Awe has two components: a sense of utter humility mixed with a paradoxical sense of upliftment. I think it is a very addictive emotion. I realized this more so in Los Angeles – there are tons of newagey religious outfits around (the L.Ron Hubbard building on Sunset Boulevard is huge and straight out of a sci-fi movie), and yet the worship of celebrities is way more pervasive than any other in the city. The awe generated by nature (think of the Grand Canyon, a magnificent sunset, or a really pretty tree) could be a great substitute for that created by religion or Paris Hilton. Sad thing is, it is nature (catastrophes like hurricanes/floods and natural diseases like the plague/cancer) that religions are created to “explain” and superstitions come about to “control”.
The point is this: we could satisy all these needs in ways other than religion, if we just bothered ourselves with a little curiosity, observation, engagement, and introspection. But therein lies the irony, doesn’t it? The garden-variety of most religions drastically curbs introspection, ceremoniously puts blinders on people, and systematically detracts from our innate curiosity about ourselves, our worlds, and how deeply personal spirituality should be. Simply obey, do not question, practise rituals, live your life just so, be afraid, feel guilt, look down covertly if not overtly on other religions, proselytize, fight wars for your beliefs. This is how religion usually manifests itself today, when in reality, it should be classified under philosophy, and each religious text just be considered somebody else’s point of view – one that you are free to agree or disagree with, so long as you are discerning and careful to avoid a herd-like mentality.
Let’s say cheers to that.
PS: Just in case you were misled here by the title of this entry, then I hope this recipe will leave you a little less disappointed!
1/2 fresh lime juice
1 tsp wasabi, 1 tsp hot pepper sauce, or both if you are brave
6 cups low-salt tomato/veggie juice
3 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups vodka
Combine lime juice and wasabi with a whisk, until wasabi dissolves. Pour into a pitcher, and add juice, Worcestershire sauce, hot pepper sauce and salt. Chill. Stir in vodka and serve over ice, with a stalk of celery or pickled asparagus. Sprinkle on some crushed pepper. Serves 8. Enjoy.
