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Observations on Human Connection & Contribution

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#114: Recalibrating the everyday mundane

I find it easier to notice and make space for the big events in life vs. the everyday mundane. I found it easier to line up my attention with intention, and my actions with hopes when I was planning to relocate to a different country, give a job interview, or build exciting new friendships.

It’s the everyday mundane that trips me up. Where I find it harder to see how my current level of attention and action might support larger intentions and hopes. It’s harder to see how my small silent actions will add up over time. Harder to see how that one missed walk with a friend will turn into weeks, months, then years of not seeing her. How long work hours and missed workouts will turn into muscle tightness and loss of flexibility. That a weekly yoga practice will create unexpected strength for heavy gardening. That the sweetest friendship will turn into a life-nurturing marriage. That a few gangly flowers will fill the yard with blazing color all summer.

Culturally too, it feels easier to acknowledge our big visible moments of joy, loss and growth compared to the everyday delight, grief or momentum we silently gather in our pockets. We tend to acknowledge the small moments as children, and for children, but it peters out as we grow. First externally and then even internally. Yet, our experience of life—which is very subjective—is shaped by the ever-flowing quieter experiences.

A moment of misdirected volcanic-anger at a loved one followed by a vulnerable and healing conversation can be as much of a life-changer as seeing someone we love after years. Friendships lost to distance and repeated moves can be as hard on us as breakups. The slow buildup of a beloved new skill as an adult can be as delightful as painting our first full watercolor image as a child. But we’ve internalized the message that experiences capturable by cameras are the ones we should seek.

When driving, we’re only able to notice the big trees and not the small wildflowers. Speed and distance make it hard. That’s modern life in a nutshell. It feels as if we’re being forced to drive through life faster and faster. For this experience to be checked-off so we can jump into the next. It takes some practice, but we can step out of this car and walk amidst the fragrance and thorns. Into the messy field where our joy, creativity and wisdom live.

“Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”— Mary Oliver, Poet

#110: Communication is an act of trust

Communication training is now a cottage industry. We’re no longer limited to places like Toastmasters that promote public speaking through practice. We now have many nuanced options; we can learn how to become an impressive Tedx speaker or get voice training from the guy who coached Bradley Cooper for his singing role. I’m sure we can all benefit from these skills. After all, most of us speak to communicate for a majority of our lives.

I’ve communicated across contexts and cultures and I imagine like everyone reading this, I have been successful at times and failed miserably at others. I’ve been called both charismatic and a wallflower. I’ve wanted to step onstage and also hide. I’ve been complimented on my strong voice and I’ve also noticed a tendency to suppress/muffle it when I feel unsafe. I’ve felt a hoarseness and physical constriction of a sore throat just by not speaking up in my normal volume and timbre. The kicker is that all this happened within the same year without me changing anything about myself. I had different experiences in different spaces populated by different sub-cultures and norms. 

My personal experiences point to a missing piece in all this talk about communicating well. My ability to communicate fully without holding back in content or tone was impacted by my emotional state and the receptiveness of others. Here are the combinations of inputs I experienced and the resulting outcomes:

  • I was in my element in front of a receptive audience: things went swimmingly.
  • I had my internal reserves and faced a difficult audience: I spoke well enough and powered through. This powering through felt like a one-sided attempt at communicating and didn’t feel good inside. After many iterations of this, I started feeling a burnout and lack of psychological safety.
  • I was navigating a difficult life event (I’ll call it event 1) and was faced with uncaring and combative listeners: I found it much harder to get the words out and just wanted to be invisible so I could recover.
  • I was navigating an even more difficult life event  (event 1 above + event 2 shortly after) and found a kind space and an audience primed for listening: I found my voice and confidence again.

I’ve given myself fully to a space, a team and a message with courage even when I felt an internal trembling. I noted that the trembling would disappear as soon as I found my voice. And it was often in response to the faces that looked back with an openness and a commitment to listen and engage. I’ve held back when I felt unsafe. No one was coming after my life but I couldn’t help but turn inwards.

So, yeah, I’m sure all these communication tools will help me speak better, hold an audience’s attention, command a physical space, and deliver a powerful message to change minds and hearts. But what I fundamentally crave is spaces of trust where I don’t always have to be perfect and self-assured to share the messages I need to share.

Not everyone has the time or money to get these communication trainings but we all have the ability to deepen our listening. Because naturally powerful speaking, that we all are capable of, is because of other people’s ability to listen and not the other way around.

So I’d like to offer this framing to capture the underlying dynamic we miss― communicating well is an outcome of trust. Trust that you will listen and create a safe space for me to find my voice rather than squashing me at the first wobble.

“Giving does not only precede receiving; it is the reason for it. It is in giving that we receive.”― Israelmore Ayivor, Ghanian youth leader, author and speaker

A couple of practices that have taught me how to listen better. Listening better will be a lifelong practice but I’m learning. 

  • Non Violent Communication (NVC): Developed by clinical psychologist Marshall Rosenberg, NVC is a communication approach based on principles of nonviolence. It is a method designed to increase empathy and improve quality of life. It is not a technique to end disagreements.
  • Theory U: Developed by Otto Scharmer and his colleagues at MIT, Theory U is an awareness-based method for changing systems. It’s designed to break through unproductive patterns of behavior that prevent from empathizing with other perspectives, which often lock us into ineffective decision making. One of the tools they offer is a listening assessment.
  • My meditation practice: Even though I am learning and applying these new tools as best as I can, the dots connected when I sat in silence.

#109: The two core building blocks for everything we create

There are only two building blocks for all that we do and create in life: what we get from nature (sun, earth, water, plants and animals) and, what we get from humans (attention, ingenuity, effort…).

That’s it! Only two core building blocks1 and this is not an exaggeration. Look around. 

As an example, I’ll list out the building blocks for planning my week using my linen-bound notebook:

  • Me
    • My body, time, attention; which are impacted by my emotional, mental and physical state
  • My planner
    • Designs that humans came up with, using knowledge passed down from others plus their own creative riffs +
    • Computers to design and exchange information; also built from a combo of human and natural resources +
    • Paper and cloth from plants +
    • Manufactured in factories that were built by humans using their creativity using resources mined from earth +
  • My mechanical pencil
    • Made of plastic, rubber, metal, graphite and clay. Each of these parts is an amalgam of materials extracted from earth.
  • Bought online
    • Used the internet, ecommerce and shipping infrastructures humans built using the same two building blocks repeatedly

I’m keeping it high level because we can double-click endlessly with just this one example and find these two core building blocks everywhere. Seen with this lens, every physical artifact of human life starts appearing like a fractal2, built from the recurring partnership between natural and human resources.

And what’s a core feature of these resources? Some of these building blocks are non-renewable (like minerals and time) and others renewable (like trees and human attention). However, being able to renew something doesn’t mean being able to renew it automatically or immediately. It means that replenishment is possible over time and under certain conditions. If we keep chopping that tree repeatedly or keep binge-watching Netflix day after day, neither tree nor attention will replenish.

So, given our absolute dependency on these two building blocks for literally everything we do and create in life, it’s surprising that we don’t hold them more sacred.

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”― Wayne Dyer, author and speaker

  1. Nature is really the core building block because humans are also a part of nature. Even so, it made sense to call us out separately because we have an outsized influence on the planet.
  2. Fractals are infinitely complex never-ending patterns that appear similar at various scales. Snowflakes, tree branches, and coastlines are examples.

#105: Lucky, and we don’t even know it (India Diaries)

I was at SXSW* a few years ago and a corporate partner gave my team electric scooters to navigate the spread out events. Everyone hopped on and happily explored together, except me. The team bonding I had imagined never happened for me; while people rode, chatted, bonded and made plans, I walked and explored alone. No one I asked me why I didn’t join, and I didn’t feel comfortable saying that I didn’t know how to ride a bike.

It’s not just biking, I didn’t grow up running, swimming, rollerblading, playing any sports or musical instruments, with computers, or with access to endless books as one might find in a public library. The list goes on and it’s not meant to be a pity party. I’m simply pointing out that there are everyday things that we take for granted, and assume that everyone has them. If we note the disparity, we often attribute it to financial lack. Even if my family could afford bikes, running shoes and rollerblades (which we couldn’t), our city wasn’t safe for little girls running or biking around. Only the wealthy had access to swimming pools and computers, and there is still no concept of free public libraries in India. So the reasons for lack of access weren’t only financial, they were also social and structural.

The structures we grow up with massively influence our well-being throughout our life. Public infrastructure like parks, clean and uninterrupted water supply, public libraries, safe streets and friendly neighborhoods, and even clean air. And the valuable private infrastructure of our families: the financial resources for a well-rounded upbringing, the support of extended family or the guidance from parents’ professional networks.

My visit to India reminded me of my social and structural luck: progressive and loving parents who valued education; growing up in a close knit extended family with cousins, uncles, aunts and grandparents, which formed deep bonds of enduring love and care. My maternal aunt and uncle felt like a second set of parents and my cousins became siblings and mentors. Despite the early loss of my father and all the ensuing hardship, the unconditional love by not just one but many became foundational to my life. 

You may have grown up playing sports or musical instruments, or as part of a debate team. You may have been able to hone skills in a way all your peers did. You may have matured in the environment of a stable home and a good university, gaining access to internships and even more skills and confidence. Until one day, you found yourself next to a teammate who seemed capable and yet somehow unexplainably different.

The unique social, structural and cultural combo of our upbringing was likely mirrored by a big chunk of our peer group. They experienced what we experienced and our overlapping spaces became our ecological niches. It was easy to imagine that every niche was like ours. But everyone gets these inflexion points, where worlds meet and we get a view into the lives of others with markedly different histories. A vantage point that can help us see our ecological niche differently and hopefully value the things we take for granted.

Our niches and their associated luck can easily become invisible. It happens to me too. The longer I live in one niche, the more I forget how people live in other niches. I also forget all the ways in which I am uniquely blessed. While I was in India recently, not once did I feel alone, unloved, or that “it was all on me”.

I read somewhere that “if our ecological niche doesn’t change, we don’t change”. Most of us may not get the chance to change our ecological niche but a great way to understand our share of luck is to befriend people from other niches. Or step outside ours for a bit.

“It is every man’s obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.”― Albert Einstein, Physicist

*South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW, is an annual conference with parallel events for film, interactive media, and music. It take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas, United States. 

#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.