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Observations on Human Connection & Contribution

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Seeking: Observations related to pursuit of self and purpose

#102: Daily caregiving (India Diaries)

Continuing my India observations…

Another contrast between my life in the States and India is the daily collection of people that come in and out of my mother’s home. The cleaning lady, the cooking lady, the elderly vegetable hawker who calls her cellphone everyday like clockwork to pester her to buy something from him, even if a few potatoes. And his son, who runs up the five flights of steps to deliver them, who once requested I charge his phone for a few hours. This seeming entourage of help is common in India and not just a luxury for the wealthy. Our ad hoc infrastructure has developed over time in such a way that contemporary professional life is powered by this collective of daily care givers. People couldn’t work the long hours with the insane commute times if they didn’t have someone helping with cooking and cleaning. Most Indians I know also live in multigenerational families with more people, so there is more daily cooking and cleaning to do compared to the States.

I can slice this infrastructural and socio-economic dynamic in many ways but my point here is this: An offshoot of many different people coming in and out of one’s home is the human connection and engagement it creates for anyone who is at home, including the elderly.

In India, caregiving isn’t just reserved for when people face difficulties of old age. When the same people come into our homes daily over the years, bit by bit, we get to know about them and their families. We share food, tea, and old winter blankets. The stuff we’ve outgrown or don’t have room for doesn’t go to unseen people; the people who care for us get first dibs and we can see the impact of our generosity, which trains us to be more generous. There’s an oiling of the machinery with conversation, food, laughter, tears and some reprimand. People who rarely leave home end up staying mentally and physically engaged, even when alone.

The comparatively smaller daily care footprint of nuclear families in the west, supported by an array of gadgets, makes life practically and emotionally simpler. And it has the potential to distance us from interactions and slowly train us out of caring for more types of people; that is, the everyday interactions that help us become more humane.

“Humans interacting with humans in a human way”
― My friend Avishkar’s pithy summary of psychological safety, a concept developed by Prof. Amy Edmondson.

#101: Two structures of human life, and how they obstruct relationality (India Diaries)

My recent India visit was my longest since I left home 20 years ago. While I had a long list of tasks, there was space to spend agenda-less time with whoever and whatever showed up in my days. As if plucked from responsibilities and daily priorities, I was suspended from life, hovering above everyone else while they went about their routines, commutes and deadlines.

I saw the universal rhythms, transitions and evolutions embedded in life. Meal times, menus, get-togethers and health exams; caregiving and care taking; oscillations of attachment and detachment; happy and sad life transitions; the evolution of people and their relationships; hope and grief. I observed both the mundane and the moving. But I wasn’t a distant observer, I engaged with my full emotional repertoire without even trying. Because I was surrounded by people I had lifelong histories and memories with―a high concentration of those I loved―I had moments of deep emotional resonance pretty much daily if not several times a day. There was a lot of love and some frustration. I soaked it all in.

But here’s my main point: all of the above played inside two main structures, the practical and the emotional. 

  • The practical structures: These are the things we do everyday, whether paid or unpaid, whether at home or outside. These are the spaces we show up in and contribute to in tangible ways. These are often the more visible parts of our days. We can think of the practical as the “hardware” or the “what” of our lives. The practical gives scaffolding, purpose and busyness to our days.
  • The emotional structures: These are the things we feel, which are of course driven by our circumstances but more than that by the people that populate our lives, including ourselves. They are our family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, acquaintances, those we run into periodically (like the pharmacist), and even complete strangers (like co-commuters on the metro). Our emotional structures are a source of our most beautiful and terrible moments, offering both love and pain, hope and despair. They’re like oxygen―invisible and absolutely critical. This is the intangible “software” that runs the practical hardware of our lives. Think of the emotional as the “how” to the practical “what”.

Now let me thread one final thought to bring this home:

Our lives are fundamentally relational (this is backed by social scientists, leaders and humans of all stripes). That is, we become who we are and do everything we do with and through other people. We’re happier when we tap into relationality regardless of context. So what gets in the way?

  • Our main relational obstacle when we feel secure is busyness. When all of life’s practical needs are going well and we are generally feeling good about things, what gets in the way of relationships are the practical things (time, distance, schedules). We feel comfortable showing more of ourselves, if we only had the time.
  • Our main relational obstacle when we feel insecure is vulnerability. When life’s practical scaffolding starts crumbling, when things aren’t going so well and when we are more likely to be in the emotional dumps, we don’t fixate on the practical as much. We seek people out or they seek us. Then what gets in the way is the ability to show more of ourselves, to be vulnerable.

Regardless of the obstacle, tapping into impermanence has the power to bring us back to relationality. This may be counterintuitive but remembering that we, and everything we see and experience is fleeting can re-tune us back into our shared humanity. For proof: see the point on benevolence (chapter 2) in the 2023 World Happiness Report.

———————

Sidenote: I’d love to hear your thoughts. I’ve been playing with these ideas for a couple of years and they are core to my work. Ping me directly to let me know if they resonate or if I’m missing anything.

“Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way to begin
the conversation.”
― “Start Close In” by David Whyte, Poet

#89: Beginner’s mind (forced)

I randomly tuned-in to the US open tennis tournament while at the gym. Not having followed tennis closely for a few years, these players were new to me so I didn’t know their styles and strengths. I wasn’t connected to the audio so could only see the score and the body language. I had chanced upon the tail end of the match; the final set and match point. The player in the lead was leading by a lot and had to take her match point serve. She kept starting the serve but not taking it. She would toss the ball but then decide to let it drop to the ground instead of hitting it. She did this several times, enough for me to pause and notice. She looked calm, she was ahead, she looked very strong, she could win the match in under 60-seconds. What was hard in that moment? And then I realized: she has the weight of expectations on her. I thought, wouldn’t it be great if she could erase any internal chatter and noisy history and just serve with a beginner’s mind? Shortly thereafter, she served, she won. This match was over and the screen moved to another match. 

While this was happening, a story was unfolding closer to me on my elliptical machine. While I was watching, my run was picking speed. I was starting to break sweat, feeling fluid in my body after having taken a break. I glanced at the speed and distance to see if I was actually building stamina again and then the machine stopped. I was distracted by the match and had pressed the wrong button. I had done about 10 minutes, so not my full planned time. “No problem” I thought and started again with a clean slate. I tuned in to the body, checked for alignment and pain. My body felt good after a long time. Then I tuned-in again to speed and distance. Distractedly, I hit the same button after another 10 minutes or so and the machine stopped. I lost track of my speed and distance once again. This time I noticed…what I wished for that player, I was getting in a very forced way. I was getting unplanned fresh starts. I kept having to let go of my agenda and tune in repeatedly to the here and now, to my beginner’s mind. By the third set, I had stopped monitoring speed or distance as a gauge of my health. I was just feeling the increased stamina in my body compared to the last few times when I felt absolutely sluggish. In the first set, I was having my own micro moment of success and perhaps the pressure to outdo my past self. But the unplanned pauses and erasure forced me into a beginner’s mind repeatedly. I had no clue about my distance or speed, I just got to savor my strength that day.

Practicing beginner’s mind might be the most pragmatic way to experience the full-bodied potential and delight of our endeavors. The measurements and markers, while helpful, then become secondary. When we lead with the markers, we behave like brains on a stick and often exit the visceral experience of being alive. I know beginner’s mind is easier said than done…but it’s easier done after repeated practice.

“But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” ― Steve Jobs, 2005 Stanford commencement address

#87: The actual distance

If we zoom out enough on any interactive map, the cities of Seattle and Portland seem to merge. The ~180-mile, multi-hour driving distance gets erased. Someone planning a visit solely from the zoomed out view of a map might think they can cover key West Coast hubs from Vancouver, British Columbia all the way down to San Diego, California quickly. They might dream of popping in and out of Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles along the way to get a feel. But of course, no one really does that. We know a trip like that would require more planning, time and resources. We know this because we have experienced the reality of navigating our own cities and countries, with their roads and delays. If we’ve left home base to explore, we’ve likely experienced upset stomachs from novel food sources, we know that the same piece of luggage can feel heavier as the days go by, we get the strain of finding and relying on an unknown doctor or mechanic mid-travel. In short, we understand the physical, mental and emotional fatigue that accompanies any significant exploration.

But we seem to forget this wisdom while planning explorations related to daily life. In imagination mode, our mind seamlessly zooms out to dreamily plan our days with vibrant work and social life. On a bright and sunny Saturday morning, after we are well rested, it can daydream that we’ll go from epiphany to functioning business in a couple of years. That from here on, we’ll wake up fresh and early everyday. That we’ll have energy to meditate and move in the morning, then give our utmost focus to work, and have energy left over in the evening for family and friends. We might even imagine everyone around the table sharing a lovely meal with laughter. In those moments, the mind is doing what interactive maps do. It zooms out to see the highlights but doesn’t factor in the actual lived-distance between them. It doesn’t see us getting offroaded by home maintenance, echos of grief, unexplained allergic reactions or a sick child. It doesn’t factor in those happy faces needing our support or that meal needing our effort.

It’s a silently harsh experience to fail ourselves because our dreams took longer than imagined to manifest. When in our life’s geography, the highlights aren’t happening so close together one after another. Our daydreams should come with a caution like some maps do: “This map is not to scale”.


“If you can dream — and not make dreams your master
If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same”― If by Rudyard Kipling: writer, poet and journalist

#82: Nested commitments

Recall a time when you really wanted to start doing something. Maybe workout a certain number of days a week, learn to ride a bike as an adult, experiment with building a robot, or see friends more consistently. There would have likely been a moment of intense and condensed emotion that helped you imagine and ache for the new normal. Then, if you followed up this imagination with action, you might have encountered initial roadblocks. It’s likely that the imagination was still strong enough to help you summon willpower and bust through a few initial bumps. Hope was still strong and you powered through and did well; maybe for even a few months. Results came but so did more twists and turns on the path. You had a baby, busted your knee, a loved one passed leaving you shattered and scared, and you had little energy to give to this thing you still crave from deep within. Life happened and it feels like you took a few steps back and are now seemingly exactly where you started.

Then you come back to the practice after the break but this time your desire is less acute, more chronic. It’s transitioned from soft youthful hope to a more subtle, less shiny but a deeper-felt hardened goal. Brute willpower won’t cut it anymore because you’ve seen how things out of your control can easily keep interfering. As if imagination and hope held your hand early on in the path but their arms aren’t long enough and as you walk further and further, their fingers slip from your hands. This is when you let go of imaginary perfection and summon adaptation. You ease your clutch on over-monitoring against a set plan and develop a radar for in-moment adjustments. The practice now seems to have a cycle, a going and coming, a breath-like timbre. It’s not actually one foot in front of the other, more like one hop to the side, one step diagonally. Enough of these steps, jumps and hops and you meet another ally called self-compassion, who reminds you to ease your grip on the dream and let joy and ease flow as you get to do this thing you value.

The commitment to begin comes from imagination, the commitment to push through from willpower, but the commitment to stay on the path comes from adaptation and self-compassion.

“The only journey is the one within.”― Rainer Maria Rilke, poet and novelist