Hope when the moment comes you say “I did it all, I swear I lived” – One Republic #MondayMorningWakeUpCall
The song says it all.
I lived.
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Author Archives: sandeepdotburman
Busy does not equal important
The idea is not to become a busy bee. The idea is to just be #MondayMorningWakeUpCall
“Busy does not equal important” – Seth Godin
I often see people priding themselves with having to skip lunch because they were so busy solving world hunger problems. Flashing the number of missed calls because they tuned out ‘just’ for an hour for some peace of mind. Not being able to take out 2 minutes to breathe because lo behold, the spinning of the world depends on them.
But then “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare” – W.H. Davies
Equally important I wonder, if this ‘busyness’ is a facade to appear important or an inability to plan and manage time or even worse, a desire to fulfill insatiable greed. The answers we will know only if we ask ourselves the questions.
And if we do try and answer in all honesty then I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to find 14mins a week to share some doughnuts 🙂
Which road should I take?
“Sometimes the road less travelled is less travelled for a reason” – Seinfeld #MondayMorningWakeUpCall
This was a joke Seinfeld cracked in one of his episodes when he could not make it for a performance due to a blizzard. Little would he have ever imagined that he would have to cancel a performance because the organizers couldn’t make arrangements for parking.
I don’t know any of the inside details but whether it was reasons related to the organizer’s incompetence or the bureaucracy and the corruption of the authorities in power is moot. These kind of incidents, excuses and practices do no good to attract explorers to roads less tread upon. If anywhere, they end up leading to the opposite direction of progress.
For our part.. I hope we continue to take more less travelled roads despite *%$@ trying to ruin the scenery by adding man-made obstacles.
True Colours
Our true colours, however chaotic, are far more pleasing than 50 shades of grey. Be yourself #MondayMorningWakeUpCall
True colours vs 50 shades of grey. Which do you prefer?
I love colours. I suspect most of us do. Yes, once in a while the odd picture or the noir movie looks classier in black and white, but I’d be hard pressed to imagine us (and a world) in grey once we’ve seen the rainbow.
Yet we are often tempted (sometimes even prefer) to live in the grey and hide our true colours. We are embarrassed by what others will think of us, seek glory even though we ‘break bad’, are wary of being judged.
Apparently the Gods were also not immune to this. One of the stories around the origin of Holi is about Krishna’s insecurities of the colour of his skin.
The story goes…In his youth Krishna used to worry whether fair skinned Radha and other Gopikas would like him because of his skin colour (he was blue). His mother, tired of his incessant cry for self-approval, asked him to approach Radha and colour her face any colour he wanted. This he did. Radha and Krishna became a couple. And we continue to celebrate the festival of colours.
I wonder if Krishna formulated this story into his life as a lesson for us, so that we at least once a year we use artificial colours to let our true colours come out and remind ourselves of the joy it can bring.
Be your true colours… even if they are 50 shades of grey.
Offer me some wine before you offer to opine
We are oh so eager to offer our opinions, It helps us nought save make our breath reek like onions. Especially when we speak on subjects we know of none, To be satisfied with only shallow minds won. “Of course there should be a #beefban” “BBC news! I’m no longer a fan!” “Did you see the crass roast show from AIB?” “No, but I am all for never allowing those jerks to pee!” Thinking ones with the strongest opinions are hailed wise, We force ourselves to take stands that are nothing but true lies. For we forget the maxim so pure, That “Only the stupid are cocksure” I say, “There is no harm in sitting on a fence And having a hearty laugh at all this nonsense.”
That’s my opinion on opinions.
Need vs Greed
Don’t let NEED become Greed #MondayMorningWakeUpCall
Whether you have a Maruti or a BMW, the road still remains the same. Whether you travel economy class or business class the, your destination does not change. Whether you have a Titan or a Rolex, the time is the same. Whether you have Apple or Samsung, the people who call you remains the same. There is nothing wrong in dreaming a luxurious life. What needs to be taken care of is to not let the NEED become GREED. Because needs can always be met, but greed can never be fulfilled.
– Rajnikanth (while this has been doing its rounds on the net attributed to Thalaiva, I suspect this may have been first posted by a Prof. K.K.Patel – https://kkpatel7.wordpress.com/2014/11/08/thought-of-the-day-do-not-let-the-need-become- greed/
I couldn’t have said this better so I took the liberty of re-posting. I’m super lucky to have a team that understands this, at least in the bootstrapping context of our startup. Thank you guys for switching off the lights when no one is in the room, not cribbing about using old laptops or handsets, selecting the least priced products, exploring free software tools and platforms and a bunch of other stuff that I’m sure I end up missing.
I also want to add that greed is often mistakenly just solely attributed to the ‘Material Girl’. I don’t think it ends there. It creeps into our relationships (expectation from others), our pseudo thirst for knowledge (it becomes a chip on our shoulder), our achievements (they become pride in the name of glory). Even an altruistic greed to serve others could result in an unattainable horizon chase.
There’s a thin red line between need and greed. Let’s watch out for it.
20 movies with no love from Mr. Oscar 2015
“To get an Oscar would be an incredible moment in my career, there is no doubt about that. But I don’t make films for Oscars, I make them for the audience.” – Peter Jackson
In the midst of the Birdman flying high with the big Oscars, here’s a compile of movies (my favourites) that never stood a chance of getting any love from Mr. Oscar last year. I am in fact getting more and more inclined to agree with some who say that Oscar movies are pre-dominantly the arty farty types. Which is not to say that I don’t love most of them and I would be hard pressed to label them such, I am failing to find reason in Mr. Oscar’s prejudice against ‘Blockbuster Entertainers’
Anyway, I digress. This topic shall be broached another sunny night. I’ve picked 20 movies that I thoroughly enjoyed from last year. They aren’t ranked strictly in order of favourites, but higher up in the order would mean that I’m showing it a bit more love than the long tail. I’m also throwing in my tweet from after the movie to get you to follow me in case you like them – @sandy00014
1. Fury – A 5 man crew, including a rookie soldier, in a tank, behind enemy lines, against an entire army. (‘Tank’ you Brad Pitt for your Fury is all I want to say. #iLikeMuch)
2. Lone Survivor – Story of four Navy SEALs on an ill-fated covert mission to neutralize a high- level Taliban operative who are ambushed by enemy forces in the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan. (At times it’s best not to be alone #iLikeMuch)
- Edge of Tomorrow – It’s Groundhog Day in an action movie avatar starring Tom Cruise & Emily Blunt… and if you haven’t watched Groundhog Day then I’d rather you watch that first before you even read the rest of this post. (I’m still on the edge. Go watch, enjoy, repeat. #iLikeMuch)
- The Fault in our Stars – Two teens who have cancer fall in love. (Don’t start thinking ‘mush mush’). (Didn’t find much fault with these stars. #iLikeMuch) Bonus Tip: My favourite music album from last year.
- Chef – A chef who loses his restaurant job starts up a food truck in an effort to reclaim his creative promise, while piecing back together his estranged family. (I’m still smacking my lips, second helpings banta hai #iLikeMuch)
- The Lego Movie – An ordinary Lego construction worker saves the world (Lego World) from an evil tyrant. (All I can say is ‘Everything is Awesome’ #iLikeMuch)
- X-Men: Days of the Future Past – Wolverine goes back in time to change history to prevent. (I had a blast, tip, go watch it fast #iLikeMuch)
- Guardians of the Galaxy – A group of intergalactic criminals are forced to get together to save the world. (All I can say is ooga chaka ooga chaka ooga ooga chaka #iLikeMuch)
- The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies – Finale of The Hobbit trilogy. (If all battles were so beautiful, poets would write about war & not love. #iLikeMuch. Action Jackson, please learn from Peter Jackson).
- Begin Again – A young singer-songwriter’s (Keira Knightley) love for music, love for her estranged musician turned celebrity boyfriend and the discovery of her talent by a washed out record label executive. (I won’t mind watching this again #iLikeMuch)
- Maze Runner – First part of a three book trilogy. Trapped in an unknown place with memory wiped out and a maze that changes every night, stands in the way of their escape. (I wasn’t a-mazed. But I didn’t mind the run while my popcorn was done #iLike)
- Oculus – A psychological super-natural horror film in which a young woman is convinced that an antique mirror is responsible for the deaths in her family. (Mirror mirror on the wall, this is the deadliest mirror of them all #iLike #scary)
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier – The second installment of the superhero dedicated to defending America’s ideals. (I won’t end up reciting “O Captain My Captain’ for him, but I’ll give him a feather to put on his captain #iLike)
- Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 – The first part of the last part of the series. (It’s darker, less action, more brooding, still gripping #iLike)
- The Amazing Spider-man 2 – Superhero saves the world (New York city) from evil villain. (I guess I won’t grow up #iLike)
- The Raid 2 – Picks up directly from part 1. Rama goes undercover to bring down the syndicate and uncover the corruption within his police force. (Action choreography that rivals the grace of ballet dancers #iLike)
- Pride – U.K. gay activists work to raise money for the miners despite the prejudices they faced from the miners during their strike in 1984. (If you thought gays had it hard but never quite comprehended how hard watch hard, watch this. #iLike)
- Big Eyes – A true story about painter Margaret Keane life as an oppressed wife and her journey to freedom. (A look at art with fresh eyes and a marriage with unfiltered lens #iLike)
- Skeleton Twins – Reunion of estranged twins. (Phoolon ke taron ka sabka kehna hai, ek hazaaron mein meri behna hai #iLike)
- Nightcrawler – A driven man desperate to excel in his work as a crime reporter blurs the line between what can be crossed and what should not. (The twisted thriller trend continues #iLike Gyllenhaal crawls and creeps under the skin. Think he’ll stay there 4 a bit)
Any movies you enjoyed that didn’t get any Oscar love and isn’t on this list?
Secret to the impossible
I don’t wake up for early morning flights but I’m up for the Oscars @ 5:30am. Love makes you do impossible things #MondayMorningWakeUpCall
And I’ve been waking up (happily) for the Oscars since they started getting telecast live here.
We inherently know that when we do things we love (or even for someone we love), work doesn’t feel like a chore and time goes into hiding. Yet, more often than not we tend to forget the simple truths and we end up chasing our non-existent tail.
Thought a reminder to ourselves would be good on a day when the quality of art is celebrated and not the quantity of money it rakes in.
The meaning of ‘meaning of life’
“Ya, it’s Greek to me!”
“People have enough to live by but nothing to live for. They have means but no meaning” – Viktor E. Frankl posits in his book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’. In the book, he narrates his life as an inmate in the Aushwitz Concentration Camp during World War II and his theories on what made some people endure the atrocities and come out alive while so many others just gave up.
He says “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.” However this ‘why’ is not always an easy answer. This ‘why’ has been a source of existential angst from Siddhartha Gautama to Calvin, not necessarily leading to enlightenment or even peace of mind for most people.
This ‘why’ could be for reasons as varied as love or revenge, accumulating wealth and power or changing the world for the better, fame or family, unabashed hedonism or spiritual enlightenment.
As varied as the reasons could be, we still find people from 7 to 70 wondering what their purpose in life really is. Some even make it their purpose to find their purpose.
But I think obsessing over it isn’t as helpful as obsessing over ‘to be or not to be’ or which lingerie to wear on your date. The attitude that’s helped me not go insane while trying to figure ‘why the fc*!’ am I here’ is to keep looking for the answers but not seeking them, questioning even the most mundane but not getting hung up on finding the answer.
Doing this with an open mind has led me to intuitively traverse Tony Hsieh’s (CEO of www.zappos.com) 3P’s Pyramid which he spells out in his book Delivering Happiness (A book I’d highly recommend for entrepreneurs and all humans too).
According to Tony Hsieh, there are 3 types of happiness or the 3P’s Happiness Pyramid (Fig. 3.pee)
Fig. 3.pee
If there’s one thing in common between all the 6 billion homo sapiens in the world, it’s probably that we all have a common purpose of looking for ways to be happy. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I’m no different.
My happiness chasing started at the bottom P for ‘Pleasure’, ‘Pleasure’ being synonymous with girlfriends and money, thinking hedonism is the ‘soul’ purpose of my existence. Soon realization dawned that hedonistic pleasures were all short lived. Like Tony says. “The moment the stimuli goes away, the happiness levels drop immediately. In other words, this type of happiness is the shortest lasting.”
I sensed this even more so in my first corporate role. I was blessed to be working with a company many in my B-school batch would’ve happily traded their porn collection for. I was also blessed with a couple of clients who sucked blood for a living in my first year itself. While I was busy trying to stop the blood sucking, the pleasures were somewhere getting sucked out of my life.
Added to that, I realized that there was no way I could survive more than a leap year reading Gartner and IDC reports (“I barely managed to not flunk my Engineering Exams and now you want me to learn about ‘not so tasty chips’ all over again!”).
Somewhere I became clear that I definitely didn’t want to spend 50% of my waking hours sans passion. I did however love just about everything about movies and music. A little bit of introspection and a little help from the Universe later (she works in mysterious ways, not always like-worthy, in the short run at least), I transitioned to the entertainment industry where I spent a decade ‘not working’. ‘Passion’ outlasted ‘Pleasure’ by 10 years.
The Universe has ways of making the uncomfortable comfortable as well as the comfortable uncomfortable. There was a phase in one of my companies where I was lucky to work under a Hitler incarnate. Even though the experience turned a dream role into a nightmare, I say lucky because it was probably the genesis of my questioning existence.
I became certain I wasn’t born to be a slave. We are all born free and freedom is what we all intuitively seek. Armed with this thought I started my quest for entrepreneurship. Somewhere along this quest it became clear to me that I want to make a difference in as many ways as possible, to attempt to change the world for the better. This ‘Purpose’ has stayed with me and is what drives me to create value in what I’m building.
And if we were to believe Tony Hsieh or Viktor Frankl then this ‘higher-purpose’ (life revolving around something bigger than yourself that has meaning to you) type of happiness is the longest lasting.
While it’s still early days for me, I would tend to agree. This also in no way makes me (or anyone driven by a higher purpose), holier than thou. No pseudo modesty here, it just truly doesn’t! Some of the most interesting people even at seventy have never known why they graced this world. All it means is that the chances of longer lasting happiness is higher if there’s a purpose behind your raison d’être
This also doesn’t mean one needs to live sans ‘Pleasure’ or ‘Passion’. Pleasure will still exist. It just means one needs to question the need to chase ‘Pleasure’. It’s something like what Viktor Frankl quite eloquently describes about ‘success’. He says, “Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.”
It doesn’t end here for me though. Like Calvin says, “Happiness isn’t enough for me, I demand euphoria.”
Enlightenment the answer to euphoria?
The more I explore, the more it points me in the direction of spiritual enlightenment. Which in simple Pali means finding out ‘Who am I?” and ‘What am I here for?’ So my search for the meaning of ‘meaning of life’ continues. I also suspect this is the mother of all ‘Meaning of Life’. If we can find the answer to this then…
Magic
Your clients, customers, boss, better (or worse) half, everybody including Calvin believes in magic. It’s time you did too. #MondayMorningWakeUpCall
“You can see it if you look for it”
“My delivery needs to reach before 6:47am.” (I live in Leh)
“This presentation has to get done in the next 2 hours.” (There are 77 slides)
“Sandy, our house help isn’t coming today. Can you be a sweetheart and do the cooking and cleaning please? And ya, take Mel to her dance class. I want to watch the Ind-Pak match.”
Everybody believes you can magically do the impossible. Look back at your life and you’ll see they aren’t wrong. How you arranged for money for your higher studies, lived alone in a foreign land, created a company from nothing that’s now putting a smile on million faces, beat that disease or simply win her heart.
So the sooner you learn the magic words ‘I can do it’, the faster you’ll see magical things happening – building a self-dependant, self-sufficient city for the poor, buying a house over-looking Marine drive, being the next Tolkien or travelling the world with your family.
Yes, it is a magical world!
Arbit Musings 