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Archives for May 2021

#32: Changing our minds

My dearest uncle was a general in the Indian Armed Forces; so my cousins and I spent our childhood summers in varied and gorgeous military cantonments across India, following our uncle to wherever he was posted as the commanding officer. One of his postings was to Shillong, a small town in Northeastern India, replete with the most luscious greenery I’ve ever seen. This included a seemingly endless bounty of pineapples, which all the other kids feasted on for several summers and I religiously avoided. I’ve never been particularly fond of pineapples. Maybe it was the overly sweet taste or the texture…I’m not sure.

Propel my life a few decades and somehow a bit of frozen pineapple made its way into my morning smoothie with raw cacao, banana and chia seeds. The taste combination was divine and it was the pineapple that gave the blend an extra dose of oomph! Since then, I randomly toss in frozen pineapple in my smoothies as a treat. And last weekend…I bought the first ever real pineapple of my life. It just looked gorgeous sitting there in the grocery store and I couldn’t keep my hands off. The next day when I walked by my Pacific Northwestern kitchen and saw this majestic fruit sitting unexpectedly on the counter, looking all sorts of tropical, beautiful and inviting, I had to pause and reflect on the pretty sudden U-turn. What changed?

I found the right on-ramp for the pineapple. That is, the right context and dose for my taste buds. But my taste buds have also evolved to allow for that on-ramp in the first place. Perhaps you have a “pineapple” in your life? Something you avoided in the past and now are intrigued by? What changed? Allow yourself the space to embrace your pineapple. Mine is making my life sweeter.

“To grow, you must be willing to let your present and future be totally unlike your past. Your history is not your destiny.”― Alan Cohen

#31: The sonar of diversity

A friend and I helped another postpartum friend with chores related to new motherhood. While cleaning the house, organizing the baby’s space and helping with the car seat, we quietly absorbed our friend’s new cadence and flows. We saw how laboriously she walked, climbed stairs and bent after a caesarean section. Nether of us have children and this was the closest postpartum view I ever had. We wrapped up as evening came and as we walked out to our cars, my co-helper friend commented on how the hastily-parked rental bike outside the building was blocking stroller and wheelchair access. How quickly she had created a bridge to what our friend would need from her environment as a new mother! It was the most organic and kind realization.

Diversity and inclusion conversations often come attached with strong emotions and fear; and they can be perceived as tools of righteous reckoning and moral anger. Could we instead think of diversity as life’s best sonar? No matter how well-meaning, empathetic or brilliant we may be, it’s simply impossible for any of us to have all potential life experiences. It’s these lived experiences that allow us to understand something from the deep crevices of its insides; they create a clarity of thought and language that helps translate ideas into meaningful actions. Without this hands-on knowledge we often grasp things superficially, lacking vital details around the aches, needs and dreams of those we seek to serve. Creating space for diverse experiences and voices helps us deep-dive into life.

In a complicated world, diversity is a formidable environmental scanner and compass. It’s a precursor to path-building.

A sustainable world: “I call the transformed world toward which we can move ‘sustainable,’ by which I mean a great deal more than a world that merely sustains itself unchanged. I mean a world that evolves, as life on earth has evolved for three billion years, toward ever greater diversity, elegance, beauty, self-awareness, interrelationship, and spiritual realization.” ― Donella Meadows

#30: The limited runway

I lived in very sunny Miami for eight years. Not once did I fear the onset of winter or worry about endless overcast days. Because it was always sunny, I also don’t recall ever rushing outside to feel the sun on my skin. I had plenty of time and opportunity to enjoy the warm sun and water and I certainly let a whole lot of it slip; I didn’t grasp the bounty that was being offered to me. Then I moved to Seattle and realized how good sun could feel. The overcast winter makes it so that when sun does arrive, I instinctively pause to feel its warmth on my skin. I don’t have to try very hard, it just happens. And not only to me, to everyone I know. We all rush out on vibrant days to inhale the bounty of life that strengthens our bones and hearts. I have never adored sun like I do when in Seattle.

The same can be said for life. We often don’t realize the unbelievable bounty that is life until we come face to face with its slippage. The hard knock of loss of a love that irreversibly changes our lens and we notice that we’ve started hungrily absorbing the contours of those we love, fully realizing how precious every moment with them is.  Or the drastic change in health that reminds us to savor the mobility and ease of painless days.

Really, how else would we grasp life’s value? How can we know we have abundance when we haven’t encountered lack, or fully appreciate our physical vibrance when we haven’t experienced ill-health. We come cloaked in this body―breath, bones, tissue, dreams―and the main job of our early years is to get comfortable being in it. We’re surrounded by faces we think will always be by our side. Acts of survival demand us to embrace rhythms and over time, without ever knowing, we get completely absorbed in them. A part of me sometimes craves that mirage of stability; this seemingly “normal” life before the veil was lifted. But over time I have also come to see loss as life’s amnesia-busting tool. On better days when the dust of grief is more settled, we might see that our seemingly ordinary lives are cosmic jackpots! That a very specific confluence of factors in time and space led to us being born in this body, with these people, with these experiences, skills, hopes and dreams. It’s immaterial whether we believe our presence to be due to divine ordinance or an atomic fluke. The fact that we are here as we are feels precious if we allow ourselves the space to really sink into the reality of our limited runway on earth and the mindboggling potential this presents.

Impermanence creates a powerful womb for intentional action.  Only when we hear the echo of the ticking clock do we gain resolve to stand up. Only when we understand that the runway is limited do we muster enough courage to take off.

“You know what happens when you dream of falling? Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.” ― Neil Gaiman

#29: The art of transitions

“The art of sequencing is the art of transitions.” ― Melina Meza, my “art of teaching” yoga teacher

Melina shared these wise words early on in my yoga training. Since then, I’ve put effort in building parts of myself that I consider fundamental to showing up fully in the world. I launched this website which required development and writing, two very different skills; started teaching a Sunday class to my loved ones; and switched gears back into my entrepreneurial venture. All this while still in active physical recovery from life events. I have a tendency to spin a lot of plates at the same time. This time however I’m not only spinning plates that are new to me, I’m asking myself to exercise varied skills and tend to a spectrum of practices within a compressed timeframe. So, I’ve been transitioning a lot. Constantly walking from one room of creation to another, each room requiring me to lead with a different part of myself.

Effective yoga sequences ensure one pose transitions to the next thoughtfully so there is a through-line, a semblance of continuity to help us plant ourselves into a practice and not get uprooted by jarring changes. For instance, one would rarely change focus and altitude abruptly by going directly from a very active standing pose to a challenging supine pose without any transitional poses in between. If we did that, it would feel more like a discrete set of poses and less like a seamless sequence where one pose contributes to the next.

This idea of transitions has helped me better structure my new practices. I’ve started viewing my writing as a warm-up for the day, the new business work as a collection of active poses, and the Sunday yoga classes as the cool down from the week where I integrate ideas and reconstitute myself with a trusted community. Viewing aspects of the work with a lens of sequencing makes it possible to align them with my natural rhythms and allocate appropriate focus to each practice without risking the whole sequence. I’m still learning and struggle some days to keep the plates spinning but the idea of transitions has been useful in shifting the gears and resourcing myself repeatedly with intention.

Transitions are hard because it’s far easier to stay moving in the same direction, but our lives and days are filled with them. Knowing that a transition has arrived helps us switch to a different pose with more skill and maybe even tap into micro moments of rest.

“Every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force.”  ― Isaac Newton (Newton’s first law of motion)

#28: A place called home

This post lists resources to help India during the catastrophic Covid-19 surge

We all come from somewhere.

A place. That ground that we learned to crawl, fall, stand and eventually run on. The smells, tastes, sounds and textures that gave us nourishment and language. The stability of people, roots and a value system that helped us soar. These set of things called culture, that entered our lungs and bloodstream to bolster us from within. We come from this amalgam of place, people and culture called home. It becomes a touchstone over the years that we repeatedly return to whenever we are unsteady or injured. Like the tender hug and fierce protection of a mother. No matter how far we fly, we stay tethered to that bond of love and when that ground shakes, we shake with it. India is that for me. It will always be in my tissues no matter how long and far I live. And now, my motherland is shaking. That ground is shaking, knocking over what I love and my heart with it. And I feel the seismic waves of trauma, fear and helplessness this far. Over the course of my lifetime, I hope to tend to many people and places but―as its descendant―the pain of this land and the responsibility to tend to it is my right and honor. We simply belong to each other.

We all come from somewhere. You too have a home, and you may be called to tend to its pain one day. This is as it should be. If we buffer ourselves to the pain of home, we buffer ourselves to one another and thereby humanity. By embracing the hardest of our pains, we increase our capacity for empathy and resilience. Tending to our own grief creates capacity to contain another’s grief. Tending to our own pain tunes us into another’s as they tend to theirs.  This is precisely why humanity is such a powerful collective: our individual bodies weren’t designed to contain all the trauma in the world as digital media now asks us to do. If we truly absorbed all the pain thrown at us on a daily basis, we couldn’t function. Each of us is called to the frontlines at a different time and our job is to show up with grace and strength when called, and serve a backstop for others when it’s their turn to step up. Each of us are designed to tend to specific places and causes so the whole world can be enveloped with the care it needs.

You will be called to the frontlines one day. Please tend wholeheartedly to what you call home. The place, people and culture that nourished you to give you a ground to stand on and a sky to soar in. Be there when it needs you, however you can. And that day the rest of us will be there to hold you.

“Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.”  ― Sa’adi Shirazi

Sopa Images/Lightrocket via Getty Images

Below is a list of verified accounts to help India during the catastrophic Covid-19 surge. Every drop counts. Thank you!
Note: Some employers may offer a contribution match.

  1. Harvard Business School Alumni – Dr. Sahil Gupta, my friend and HBS alumni, has worked in the Indian healthcare sector for over a decade. He is using his personal resources to purchase oxygen concentrators so those in need can borrow at no cost. He has also assembled a team of doctors to advise patients on home treatment and hospitalization. 
  2. Mission Oxygen
  3. Hemkunt Foundation
  4. Goonj
  5. Milaap (various efforts) – Relief fund for daily wagers, help for healthcare professionals  
  6. Help Now (ambulance services) 
  7. MCKS Food and Hygiene Kits – https://mcksfood.com/covid19 ; https://mcksfood.com/donate
  8. Dharma Bharati Mission
  9. Help India Breathe
  10. Go Fund Me, verified accounts
  11. Give India – various projects – https://covid.giveindia.org/; Project started by South Asian Students in the US; Plasma matching
  12. Seva Kitchen
  13. UNICEF
  14. PATH
  15. The International Medical Corps
  16. Care
  17. AmeriCares India
  18. Indian Red Cross
  19. Oxfam
  20. Save the Children

News articles to help grasp how devastating this crisis is: