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#79: Organic signals and the paradox of overengineering

June 13, 2022

I drink plenty of water because I naturally crave it. I often wonder after a refreshing drink whether plants feel the same way after getting watered: nourished from within. And then I wonder why, despite my affinity for water, I too sometimes fall into a pattern of forgetting and getting dehydrated.

I read somewhere that we can mix up our thirst and hunger signals. When I first read this, I thought “hum, interesting, that’s never happened to me”. But now that I’m cultivating a capacity to observe, I see it happens quite frequently. The common thread in these moments is that I’ve lost my connection to thirst signals because of busyness or distraction (likely missed or overrode initial signals). When I haven’t had adequate water in several days, it feels harder and harder to trace my way back to that faint signal. Then drinking water becomes a task; another thing to track and remember, and not something I do naturally.

I notice parallels with a number of other habits including meditation, writing, movement, sleep, and human connection…essentially anything that feels lifegiving. When I lose that organic signal from within because of modernity’s squeeze, there is pressure to start tracking the when, the how and, the how much. There is pressure to engineer the optimal routine. But once designed, it all backfires. Rather than following that engineered routine, part of me stops wanting to do something that comes so naturally to me.

There seems to be an experiential difference between leaning into the organic nurture of a practice and over-monitoring it for output. For me atleast, one seems to release the creative expansion of the practice and the other somehow robs it. One makes the habit magnetic and the other a bit repellant. It feels as if my psyche is saying: “Give me the tools to make healthful choices, but set me free to interact in those lifegiving pockets without a script.”

I want to build evolving gardens and not static skyscrapers.

“When I refer to ‘creative living,’ I am speaking more broadly. I’m talking about living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert, journalist and author

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#77: Sustainable is inherently relational

May 16, 2022

Transaction: An exchange or an interaction between two or more things or entities. It’s a communicative action involving two or more units that reciprocally affect or influence each other.
Examples: Paying back a friend who covered our dinner when we were short on cash, scheduling a meeting on someone’s calendar and them accepting, saying hello to a neighbor and getting a smile in return, negotiating a business deal.
1. Transaction has a broader definition than simply buying and selling. Our lives are dominated by convenient acts of buying and selling, appropriately called transactions, so we may forget that these acts represent a subset of the exchanges humans conduct daily. Transaction is an exchange, an interaction. We transact not only as consumers but also as friends, parents and collaborators. 
2. Transactions require trust. Throughout human history, we transacted with those that we had (varying degrees of) relationships with. Transactions were simply one part or the last mile, so to speak, of an ongoing engagement.
3. It’s only in the recent past that we’ve been able to transact “facelessly” with another. As more and more of the world opens up to us (more people, more internet-enabled tools, more geographies), we’ve leaned into the comfort of anonymity, distance, and low commitment. We exchange ideas, conversations and goods without any of the relational tethering that transactions and exchanges were historically built upon.

Relation: An existing connection or a significant association between two or more entities or objects.
Relational: The way in which these entities or objects are connected. Anything that is connected will have a cause and effect relationship. Push or pull on one object and you’ll create a reverberation within other related objects.
Examples: Collection of related data in a database; relationship between fertilizer, soil, and plant; our relationships with family, friends, colleagues and neighbors.
4. In every transaction, we look for markers of trust while interacting. Reviews, photos, fidelity of those reviews, public upvotes etc. Even when our tools our designed for the last mile of the engagement, i.e. the transactional part, we look for markers that are typically revealed over the course of a relationship.
5. Our businesses, tools and even societies are mostly designed for the last mile transaction, not the upstream relationship. Our workplaces, healthcare systems, communal areas, shopping, dating, communications – everything – is geared for convenience and efficiency so we can cram in even more transactions into our lives. Be productive, do more, be more. 
6. We thrive when transactions nest within a genuine relationship. We crave to know another and to be known by them, to offer our best and be valued for it. This is only possible if we shift our paradigm from seeing people and places as a means to an end to valuing connection as a fundamental end in itself.

Sustainable: Being able to maintain something at a certain rate or level over a period of time. Sustainable implies continuity for a long period of time.
7. Continued thriving in the long-term (i.e. the definition of sustainable), is possible only if we create relational societies, products, services, and mindsets. We can’t sustain joy, contentment and hope by endlessly taking and moving on. An overly transactional life weighs on our psyche. Thriving depends on nesting transactions back under their larger relational contexts, it depends on expanding our perspective to see human and environmental interconnectedness. In the absence of this, it’s easy to keep harming and depleting ourselves and our commons.

The gold-standard in business is to make our lives frictionless, so we can fit even more transactional handshakes in our cramped life, displacing the time we need to create relationships. So we get more and more seamless handshakes with more and more faceless and bodiless entities. Neighbors, coworkers, friends, all reduced to profile pictures, interests and demographic markers to ease the transaction. What nurtures us for the long-haul are the acts of being in relationship, not the endless transactions. We forget that we crave not just the hand but the whole body.  

“I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I will give myself to it.”  ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian poet and novelist.

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#67: Thriving alongside cobwebs

February 11, 2022

Simply being alive creates mental impressions. There is no way around it. What so and so said or did that was loving or hurtful. What we did, didn’t do, or couldn’t do. And the longer we live, the more impressions we file away in our brains. The present passes through the prism of time and inevitably turns to sweet memories, painful ones, or regret. Then there is the future, where our goals, hopes and fears that are yet to materialize keep churning dreams and worries. All of these threads tangle up to become mental cobwebs.

We are often reminded that life is lived in the present but that is also where the endless cycle of thoughts, emotions and actions live; one constantly feeding the other and being fed in return. Thoughts: the maker of every action and a gateway to sneaky emotions. Emotions: the often invisible contributor to action, the yanker of our most painful chains and fussy thought patterns. Actions: our primary tool of outward expression, the creator of mental impressions and the fertilizer for more thoughts and emotions.

Simply put, the act of living spins daily cobwebs that may cocoon our psyche and limit our potential to flourish.

Meeting each moment with curiosity and non-attachment is a big part of contemplative practices. We train to drop the weight of past and future so we can move through life lightly with more fluidity and awareness. Some other terms used to describe this idea— A fresh mind, beginner’s mind, child-like, the place of now etc.  The invitation is to show up completely present in the service of the now so we don’t color our actions with regret, worry or fear; so a fresh new trajectory can open up in the moment. A feeling of calm might be what drew us to contemplative practices initially, but we’d be remiss if we stopped there. A sense of calm fills only our vessel but a sense of openess and presence fills every vessel we encounter. Thriving happens when we channel the gift of the human mind, when new growth sprouts amidst the cobwebs.

“What does the Earth ask of us? To meet our responsibilities and to give our gifts. Naming responsibility is often understood as accepting a burden, but in the teachings of my ancestors, responsibilities and gifts are understood as two sides of the same coin. The possession of a gift is coupled with a duty to use it for the benefit of all.”― Robin Wall Kimmerer: scientist, professor, author of Braiding Sweetgrass.

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#55: The units of society

September 24, 2021

I recently attended a wedding where the officiating minister spoke of the importance of the family unit. I’ve heard such words before but this moment felt different. Over the last few years, I have been reflecting on the importance of social structures and the deep and lasting impact of relationships on our lives; I see the clear impact on mine. I’ve faced the repeated loss of loved ones, and after each loss I noticed how my larger family rushed in immediately―like white blood cells―to heal the open wound. These recent experiences merged with my childhood memories of loss and love; of how my family slowly and steadily put my life back on track after the loss of my father. My aunts, uncles and cousins who stepped in with affection, guidance and resources to support my mother, siblings and me. The thousands of contributions that made my life what it is today. They taught me to care and hope; to make real and non-performative emotional bonds and show up for people. My life would’ve taken a very different turn without this family unit. To this day, they cherish my quirks and smallest wins, and offer solace in tough times. No matter what happens in life, I have comfort in the knowledge that I’ll have someone to turn to and they will have me. This is the unit of society that I grew up with: my big family and close friendships, my wolf-pack.

Then like most people, I flew the nest and created more units. I moved between countries and cities, and rebuilt my social units with every move. Close trusted friendships, neighbors, acquaintances, healthcare providers, favorite coffee shops and restaurants where they knew my name and tastes. I created my emotional and practical footprint and brought the wisdom, values and social behaviors of my wolf-pack to my new friendships. Others that encompassed this social footprint did the same and in turn made an imprint on me. Before we knew it, we had formed a subculture of care and belonging that was an amalgam of each of our histories. This is naturally how we humans move through life. We are raised in a social unit, where we learn to bond with and care for others. And over time, we become capable of extending this care to other relationships–friendships, partners, children, coworkers, acquaintances, and even strangers.

We may not realize, however, that our small and seemingly insignificant social units are the building block of society1 and culture2. 

Our small daily interactions create invisible ripple effects on many people and lives, and not just on those that experience our actions directly. How we interact at the gym, during a potluck dinner, while driving, at the watercooler at work, or in the comments section on YouTube can help build or deplete culture and society over the long term. We live in a constant state of osmosis and observe, absorb, react to and repeat one another’s behaviors; the culture we help build turns back around and impacts us in subtle and obvious ways.

We may not realize that we have the power to determine how others experience life and vice versa. That it’s an endless give and take. That it’s important to become intentional about our everyday interactions and the tone we are feeding our own different units of society.

  1. Society: Involves persistent social interaction between individuals and groups that share the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same dominant cultural expectations. Societies are characterized by patterns of relationships between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions. A given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its members.
  2. Culture: The beliefs, social behaviors, norms and practices of members of a society.

“Society is a dialectic phenomenon in that it is a human product, and nothing but a human product, that yet continuously acts back upon its producer.” ― Peter L. Berger

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#54: The container of love

September 20, 2021

My summer vacations growing up were some of the most memorable times of my life; surrounded by the voices, laughter, and tears of cousins of all ages. My uncle was an esteemed general in the Border Security Force, a part of the Indian armed forces and the largest border guarding force in the world. So every summer, between 7 to 11 kids would descend on the sprawling military campus wherever in the country our uncle was posted. Together we concocted endless escapades that were sometimes fun and sometimes injurious but always memorable.

During these visits, we also got valuable exposure to a mix of Indian cultures and places—the jeep excursions into the rainforests and waterfalls of Shillong, through lush mountains of Jammu & Kashmir, and over desert landscapes of Leh and Bikaner. The farm picnics in Punjab next to gushing tube wells and the endless cold coffees with ice cream. The parties that went late into the night, set to an eclectic mix of music, surrounded by handsome uniformed men with impeccable bearing, and charming women in beautiful saris. Adults with technicolor stories from their saturated, adventure-filled, lives. This only begins to get into the nooks of experiences we had as a pack of kids. Each experience became a cherished lifelong memory and a shared language of connection, a brick in the strong foundation of love upon which our current lives sit.

Then there was this other sad and distressing side to life…when my mom, siblings and I went back home, acutely aware of the gaping hole my father’s death had left in our lives. The sustained psychological and financial impact of losing him weighed us down. The impact that could have completely decimated our lives. But what kept it together is the genuine and lifelong support of family; of my aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins who with their simple everyday acts of warmth created the strongest sea wall that no tsunami of pain could dismantle. With every wave of grief and financial lack that tore at us, they added more stones, more boulders, more cement. No single action might stick out to an observer, they might just note a family hanging out together, but to those of us inside this cocoon of love—especially those marred by grief—these moments of togetherness were profound gifts of care. It’s the stuff you read about in extraordinary tales of love, the stuff they make movies about.

What allowed these actions to germinate was a thoughtfully and lovingly created container. A physical and emotional space that set the ground rules of who was welcome (everybody), how they were treated (like old friends with compassion and generosity), and the tone of everyday life (one of patience, care and adventure). And the people who were instrumental in creating this space for all of us kids were my aunt and uncle, who I started seeing as my second set of parents. My aunt gave me courage and unconditional love, fended off juvenile attacks from my siblings and cousins, and squarely had my back…even when I was the troublemaker. My uncle epitomized courage, sociability and intellectual curiosity—whether about geopolitics, travel or farming. Both were examples of patience and unmatched generosity. Despite the adulation and professional respect he received daily, nobody was too young, old or poor for my uncle to engage with. And while we kids crawled all over his house, he was out there addressing some of the most violent terrorism in the world.

My uncle passed away recently, leaving an enormous legacy of love and impact. Even as our family reverberates with pain, each of us is grateful to have his rare example of care and generosity. There are many generals in the world, but we had our very own Clark Kent with a superhuman combination of strength, integrity, love and humility. We all looked up to him. He was also charismatic and astonishingly handsome. We are blessed to have a first hand blueprint of a very well-lived life. 

Everyone has ancestral lineages, influences and teachings. Mine brim with exemplary love, care and true accompaniment that make a life worth living. Life’s rhythms create busyness and we sometimes forget the nurture that was passed down to us. The last few weeks have brought my family visceral remembrance. No matter where we live in the world, my pack of aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters and nephews have acknowledged my uncle’s container of love in amazingly similar terms. My wish for us is that we embody his traits as we move through life, that we welcome everyone like he did and create a sense of meaningful connection, curiosity and joy wherever we go. That we go on creating more and more containers of love. 

“Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”— Abraham Lincoln

In loving memory of Ravinder Singh Mehta, our real-life Clark Kent.

Seattle, September 2018

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