Working Meditation

Observations on Human Connection & Contribution

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#115: Who we become on the sidelines of conflict

I’m part of many different professional tidepools, each with a group chat on Signal or Whatsapp. The Israel-Gaza conflict has surfaced in these spaces over the past month with layers of aches and perspectives. The personal and collective histories like a messy bundle of electrical wires: inextricably enmeshed and full of charge.

While Israel and Palestine isn’t the land of my ancestors, my elders experienced identity-driven geopolitical conflict alongside the fear, anger, hate and violence it generates. Their forceful expulsion from their birthland is full of stories of slaughter. I was also raised in a beautifully plural society and have experienced the turmoil that sometimes rears its head in true diversity. I’ve seen the nature of individual and collective conversations we have with each other during such times.

Our first step is ususally to share and explain our side. If we are genuinely and fully met in our grief, we feel more secure stepping out further to try and understand the other side. Most conversations get stuck at the first stage because we don’t typically acknowledge another’s pain in public (or private) discourse. We also shy away from acknowledgement because it invites action of some sort; which may be unclear, hard, or even impossible.

So the spaces for shared sense-making—where people bring in their deepest emotion, truest thoughts and questions, with a desire to shape a healthier future—are rare. This shared sense-making is hard enough face to face with people we love and issues we have known about all our lives. It’s even harder in group chats or social media with people and issues we know little about.

Although we all sense that group chats are a choppy tool for perspective sharing and sense making, we have the constraints and tools that we have so we engage. And like most spaces, a few voices step into the circle to share, some with more comfort and assertion than others. Whether we are inside the circle or silent on the periphery, we listen and digest. We learn about human nature and our own nature by coming to terms with our comfort, discomfort and boundaries. We gain a sense of how we like to learn and engage. We create perspectives about ourselves, people groups, and whole cultures. Often without realizing, we veer towards hope, helplessness or cynicism. All these become muscle memory.

Then one day down the line, even if we stand quietly in this conversation, we will step inside some other circle and share our thoughts. We might do this with nuance or binaries, with an attitude of sensing or ripping apart another’s perspective. One thing is for sure, how we behave when we enter that circle in the future will be guided by who we are becoming while on the sidelines today.

“At our best, we serve as inadvertent triggers for each other’s eventual illumination.”— Mark Nepo, Poet

PS: This is a good one about not having a hot take on everything, which forces us to have a definitive stance on issues when first a posture of learning and inquiry is better suited— Pick a Side. Pick a Side. Pick a Side. Now.

#112: What do you see?

I was speaking with my mom on video a few days ago, and she kept looking away from me. We live on different continents and sometimes our calls conflict with a TV show she likes to watch. She looks forward to it and I like that this show brings her joy. I also like that she feels comfortable expressing her eagerness to watch this show. It signals to me that my mom is secure in our relationship and, while she misses me, she feels connected enough that she can hang up and go about her day with ease.

So knowing this, I see my mom looking away repeatedly during a particularly connective conversation. I felt our loving bond and I wanted her eyes to return my gaze…but she kept looking away. We’ve done our almost-daily calls for years and this time it was my turn to comfortably express my need, so I asked her.

Me: “Ma, where are you looking?”

Mom: “Oh, there is something on the iPad screen. I’m trying to clean it…so I can see clearly.”

How many times do we think that someone we want to connect with is, metaphorically speaking, “watching TV” while all they are actually doing is “cleaning their screen”? We may perceive disconnection and get stuck in hurt but we rarely know what’s happening on the other side. If something is bothering us so much, could we just reach out and express our need instead? With sincerity, curiosity and without accusation.

Trying to see what they are seeing might just open the door to moments of real connection we seek.

“Words are the most powerful thing in the universe… Words are containers. They contain faith, or fear, and they produce after their kind.”— Charles Capps, American preacher

P.S. I hope my writing pauses aren’t coming across as a loss of zest. I participated in this mind-opening incubator over the last two months (link to our cohort page). My writing will be a life-long pursuit and a loving search for truth, and sometimes I’ll need to pause for sustainability. This was just one of those moments.

#108: The emotional dust of creation

We don’t create things all at once, fully formed. Whether it’s an organization, a community, a tiny human or ourselves, creation takes time and the build is always unexpected. That’s a big reason why we subconsciously hold back from creating anything new: it feels risky to invest emotion and effort and not even have the guarantee that this thing we want will actually happen, or happen the way we want it to.

If we make a plan before starting (which is always a good idea), it’ll orient us in the right direction and help take suitable steps, but it likely won’t reflect the nuanced terrain we’ll actually walk. That’s because neither the terrain nor our creation remains static. Both respond to our actions and the events in our larger environment. Similarly, we ourselves respond and change; what we thought last week or last month will shift a bit when we engage in the work. Finally, we never build anything alone. Ever. There are others right next to us co-creating and going through the same push and pull of change and creation. So we’re changing, our creation is changing, our co-creators are changing and the environment is changing. This happens simultaneously and repeatedly. This dynamic is called emergence, and it asks for emotional flexibility. 

The work of creating something new is less like driving a self-driving Tesla on a traffic-free highway, and more like walking a dusty backroad full of brambles alongside others. It’s never a cool and collected experience of just sitting back and arriving. We all get scratched, stumble, bump into each other and kick up dust as we walk.

To make matters harder, we regularly pass through invisible gates that change the scenery and the terrain. What we did before needs to be adjusted in unexpected ways. If we were too absorbed in the work of creating, we may not even realize that we passed a gate. That’s when the emotional dust peaks―we all scramble to make sense of the new terrain, run furiously into the brambles and each other, kick up more dust, and make it harder to see things clearly. 

Knowing this, what if:

  • In addition to drawing maps, we prepare for that dusty and brambly trail with unseen gates.
  • Instead of a heroic solo journey, we note others who walk besides us.
  • Our commitment isn’t to one specific outcome but to staying on the dusty path. We develop resilience, integrity, and might I add―joy, so none of us opt-out in favor of the cushy Tesla path.
  • We invest time in creating trust: holding a hand, mending a wound, or offering a sip of water on this twisty path.
  • Most importantly, we create the capacity to be ok with emotional dust as we blind each other with it.

“The mighty oak was once an acorn that stood its ground.”― English Proverb, Author Unknown 

It may not happen.
If it happens, it wont happen the way you imagined.
If it happens, it’ll be its own thing: emergent and separate from you, uncontrollable by anyone.
Bringing it to life will dent you and others in unseen places.

So, why do it?
Because you came with these fertile seeds.
And if you hold back, first the seeds will wither…then you.
― A little ditty, by Suparna

#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