Working Meditation

Observations on Human Connection & Contribution

#100: Yoda on demand

On a particularly busy day, I wanted to exercise my body so quickly jotted a calendar reminder for yoga. I added the words “on demand” to remind myself to follow a pre-recoded class vs. a livestreamed one from my studio. When I opened my calendar later in the day though, I saw that I had typed “Yoda” instead of Yoga.

For those unfamiliar: Yoda is a fictional character from Star Wars. He represents intelligence, wisdom, courage and is known for his deep connection to the Force (life’s energy field), which he deftly channels against evil of all sorts. Yoda-isms are embedded everywhere, the most memorable being  “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”. The creators of Star Wars seem to have put the wisest parts of humanity in this tiny and ancient creature.

My error sent me on a thought experiment…what if we all had a Yoda on demand? And almost immediately I saw my Yoda on demand.

For years I’ve had this mental model of being inside an arena or a boxing ring; I likely created it from Teddy Roosevelt’s The Man in the Arena speech where he applauds the brave striver fighting in life’s arena and daring greatly for a worthy cause regardless of victory or defeat. In my mental model, I see my face marred with blood and sweat like Teddy did, but I don’t see myself alone. I see the brave me being coached by a Yoda-esque figure, like a ringside coach in a modern boxing game. My coach Yoda is me, not someone else.

When we operate in the arena, it’s often uncomfortable and lonely. When it feels like we’re getting punched in the face by life, our first and most frequent source of wisdom is the self. And in those moments, our wise Yoda-self draws from the wisdom we have exposed it to ― from the wise thinkers, brave doers, timeless sages, to our own everyday practices that regenerate and strengthen us. What we feed our brains in our downtime is what we call upon when we step into the arena.

We’re always fed by a legion of other Yodas but when we enter the ring, we are our own Yoda.

“…and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world…”
― “The Journey” by Mary Oliver, Poet

#99: Becoming a person through other people (India Diaries)

I was back home in India for a few months. As is to be expected, the longer visit allowed for more quality time with loved ones and the long absence that preceded it made me more aware of their impact.

People often brought up something I said or did as a child, a teenager, or even on a prior visit. Frequent interactions like these and it started to feel like my actions had turned into memory confetti, spread out in the minds of my loved ones. And when they reflected back, I received a piece that I could recombine with my pieces to get a glimpse of who I was at a certain point in my life. I was especially taken aback when I remembered little and they remembered much. I saw this old me, sometimes with surprise and at others with delight. Still similar in some aspects and changed in others.

For instance, I had little memory of writing letters to a dear cousin as a teenager and was touched that she saved them all. I’m still that person. I still write cards and save the meaningful notes written for me. Another cousin remembered a long-forgotten teenage crush in much detail; I’ve moved on from that one (Ha!). I also noted how much my moods and moments impacted others, whether it was humor, angst or anger.

Our daily attention is mostly tied to lining up the wobbly set of resources we’re given into a life path. As we blaze through that path, we embed memories in each other through interactions. The closer we are, the more those memories are cherished and when we circle back to these beloved humans, we see ourselves more fully. We add back long-forgotten details to our psyche, color to our life, and meaning to our path. If we never circle back to those we’ve walked the path with, we forget big and important pieces of ourselves.

The African philosophy of Ubuntu is summarized as “I am because you are” and I felt the full force of this wisdom surrounded by the many who shaped and continue to shape me.

“Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.”
― “So Much Happiness” by Naomi Shihab Nye: poet, editor, songwriter, and novelist

#98: The loves of our life (India Diaries)

You might have heard this proclamation that “so and so is the love of my life”. These statements are often reserved for romantic love and sometimes extended to cover children.

I wonder though if this language limits the full expression of our love. Why do we have to limit to one person or one type of love? Who is to say that the bond one shares with a sibling or cousin (often our first potential friends) is any less than bonds made later in life. A best friend can be the most nurturing relationship we’ve ever had. Ties with parents and grandparents can grow into friendship and delightful affinity. We’re blessed with many different types of loves, all rich in their own ways. Why the compulsion to rank and reduce through comparison?  

A fulfilling life is one with many loves. I just spent three months with several loves of my life and I’m better for it.

“What was said to the rose that made it open was said
to me here in my chest.
What was told the cypress that made it strong
and straight, what was
whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made
sugarcane sweet…”
― Jalal al-Din Rumi, 13th century Persian poet

#97: Compounding effects of innovation

Techno-social optimists tell us that humanity is in a good place. We hear that our innovations have reduced human mortality, increased quality if life across the globe, increased our ability to feed the growing world population and so on. All of this is true.

And we can have multiple things be true at the same time.

Yes, we don’t hear of houses burning down or people dying because their couch caught fire. But we hear of people getting sick because of environmental contaminants, including toxic flame retardants on their couch, their car seat and pretty much every piece of furniture they sit on. Each piece has toxins way beneath any risk threshold. But combined, each exposure builds up enough toxins in our bloodstreams that we can pass them along to our unborn children.

Yes, we live in more comfortable homes and can afford more groceries and consumer goods compared to our ancestors. But we have to own a car to bring home that massive cart of groceries because the grocer is 20 minutes away. We can’t just walk to a store and carry that weight home. Over time, we lose muscle mass and joint health from under utilizing our body such that when our cities start becoming green, most of us don’t feel comfortable just hopping on a bike.

Yes, we can talk to our loved ones on video across the globe every night. We can exchange what’s happening in our lives, give long distance hugs and kisses and never feel disconnected. But the same piece of tech we use to engage with them also has news, entertainment, messages awaiting our attention and endless notifications. After a heated conversation, it’s so much easier to hang up and tune out rather than sit in discomfort and learning.

Yes, our farm equipment, irrigation and bioengineered seeds ensure we don’t starve. But we also have large-scale diversion of freshwater, depleting aquifers and river systems. We have excessive synthetic fertilizer runoff into the soil, water, air, and rainfall. We get toxic algae blooms in lakes, oxygen depletion and “dead zones” within bodies of water, where nothing can survive.

I believe people working at these diverse companies don’t wake up with dreams of harming the planet. But our innovation processes are typically siloed and growth-driven. Isolated innovation makes us move incredibly fast. We aren’t weighed down by anything and can keep experimenting, iterating and launching. One impactful product launch after another, in the service of humanity. But we can still come away with long-term negative impacts that are hard to clean up and reverse.

Our current framework for innovation asks us to zoom in, iterate, speed up, and think in fast approaching time increments. What would happen if we innovated by zooming out, by slowing down, by thinking of a future seven generations down, when we’re not even alive. I can’t help but get optimistic about the compounding effect of a more integrated approach to innovation.

“There is too much bad news to justify complacency. There is too much good news to justify despair.”― Donella Meadows, environmental scientist, systems thinker, educator, and writer

#96: Anatomy of micro interactions

I needed customer service from several companies over the last few weeks and had two contrasting experiences. This is an attempt to deconstruct that contrast.

My first interaction was through online chat. I got assigned to an agent named Oliver, who was not only helpful but had an effervescence that leapt across the chat. He gave me a link that I clicked through which, for some reason, disconnected our chat. I had all the information I needed at this point and the link was just extra. But instead of closing out the transaction mentally and moving on with my day, I felt the incompleteness of our interaction. Oliver had helped me but I didn’t get the chance to thank him.

The next day I interacted with Jeff, from another company. This time we were on the phone. It was clear early on that Jeff couldn’t help me because of his company’s policies. But what caught my attention was my rising internal irritation with Jeff. Yes he couldn’t do anything, and we’ve all been in such situations, but what stressed me was his incessant and pause-less talking and limited listening. He seemed to be repeating a talk track and clearly wasn’t skilled at handling customers yet. Part of me felt sorry for him but his talking at me made me want to shush him. I had to interrupt him several times to clarify my request and even after hearing me, he didn’t respond, he parroted the talk track. I desperately wanted to get off the phone and was amazed at the strength of my reaction.

The two interactions were only a day apart but my experience of myself was as different as night and day. I was relaxed and joyful in the first and had a knot in my stomach after the second. Below is that attempt at deconstruction that I mentioned.

In 2021, I arrived at an important conclusion about human connection through my research: The relational “table” is set before we even arrive for an interaction with others. Environmental and internal influences have a massive impact on how we relate to others and they can worsen the relational barriers that already exist.

We can see from the exchange above how some aspects of this table were set. My needs were at odds with the needs of the second company, but I also came to the interaction depleted in every way. Then, I got randomly matched with someone who didn’t listen at all. 50% of the table was set before the interaction and the remaining came into stressful existence during. It’s similar to how we’re born with certain genes but they trigger only in response to specific environmental stimuli.

Our lives are made up of endless micro interactions, where we’re not focused on creating a thoughtful relational space. Yet, we train ourselves and each other through precisely these low-stakes micro interactions…every interaction wiring and rewiring our neural pathways towards empathy and listening or distance and annoyance.

“Sometimes we’re responsible for things not because they’re our fault, but because we’re the only ones who can change them.” ― Lisa Feldman Barrett, psychologist and neuroscientist. From the book “How emotions are made”.