Geography defines so much

“The geography of where we are born and where we get to live defines so much. Not smarter or better. Just luckier.”

I saw this tweet from a friend and it resonated.

I’m still processing the Russian invasion on Ukraine and have had a collection of thoughts swirling through my mind in the past 2 days.

In the meanwhile, though, this note on The Atlantic – “A Prayer for Volodymyr Zelensky” resonated deeply. The courage of the Ukranian people and their President has been incredible to see.

Accepting constraints so they don’t feel constraining

“Some Zen Buddhists hold that the entirety of human suffering can be boiled down to this effort to resist paying full attention to the way things are going, because we wish they were going differently (“This shouldn’t be happening!”), or because we wish we felt more in control of the process.

There is a very down-to-earth kind of liberation in grasping that there are certain truths about being a limited human from which you’ll never be liberated. You don’t get to dictate the course of events. And the paradoxical reward for accepting reality’s constraints is that they no longer feel so constraining.” | Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks

Beautiful and true.

Narratives and consistency

I have followed the English Premier League closely for the best part of two decades as a Manchester United fan. There were years when I used to catch every Manchester United game – that hasn’t been the case since our kids arrived. But I still catch highlights as often as possible and follow the news closely. I’ve learnt three lessons along the way:

(1) Don’t read too much into early excitement/narratives without proof. This is the most enduring lesson I’ve learnt. It is so easy to get excited about the new thing. New manager or player comes in. Everyone gets excited. The first three games go great. More excitement – the new person can do no wrong. Then reality hits. Before you know it, the narrative flips. Everyone moves onto the next thing.

This has happened so often that I’ve learnt to completely ignore early narratives without proof.

(2) Consistency in the long run is the only thing that matters. The quote I think of is – people come for the magic and stay for the math. In the long run, it is the consistency in delivering numbers (goals, saves, points) that counts. The rest is gravy.

(3) Most things look cooler from the outside. In my years following the Premier League from Asia, I used to envy supporters who got to watch matches live. You can imagine how excited I was about an early career opportunity to live in London. It felt like a dream come true.

I watched some really exciting games during my time in the UK. It was a great experience. But as I got close to the culture around watching games live, I realized it wasn’t for me. There’s a lot of identity wrapped around being a fan that does funny things to people. For example, I had a friend send some fairly hostile messages during a game where we were on opposing sides.

Then there was another incident where a player got hurt and I heard the opposition fans chant “Let him die.” Turns out that is far from the worst chant you might hear in high-profile games.

I’d still love to watch a game or two live in the coming years. But that’s about as close as I’d want to get to being a live supporter. It isn’t for me. And it has been a great reminder of the idea that most things look cooler from the outside.

A lesson – like the other two – that applies well beyond football.

Truecaller

At some point in the past couple of years, the number of daily spam calls I received went up noticeably. All of a sudden, I was dealing with multiple spam calls every day.

While some of these were recognizable (they had the same area code as the place where I first got a sim card – which is different from the area I lived in), others weren’t.

Enter Truecaller. I re-discovered Truecaller and, right after installation, it changed the game. I still get ~2 spam calls every day (I think Truecaller blocks the rest) but they’re marked as “Spam Risk” or “Telemarketer.”

Every time I see a Truecaller tagged number, I am reminded of how a “simple” service – a working spam filter – can be magical when it just works.

Reframing mistakes

We tried something for the first time recently. We made a couple of mistakes in the process.

Just as we began talking about these mistakes, we chose to refer to them as learning. It was our first time – we were bound to make a few mistakes.

It is amazing how such a simple reframing changed the narrative and the tone of the conversation. It went from useless speculation about how we made the mistakes to what we needed to do the next time. From blame to constructive discussion in an instant.

If the narrative isn’t working for us, it might just be time to change it.

I don’t mind what happens

There’s a lovely anecdote from a talk by the late Jiddu Krishnamurthi, a spiritual teacher, shared by the writer Jim Dreaver.

Part way through this particular talk, Krishnamurti suddenly paused, leaned forward, and said, almost conspiratorially, “Do you want to know what my secret is?” Almost as though we were one body we sat up, even more alert than we had been, if that was possible. I could see people all around me lean forward, their ears straining and their mouths slowly opening in hushed anticipation.

Krishnamurti rarely ever talked about himself or his own process, and now he was about to give us his secret! He was in many ways a mountaintop teacher—somewhat distant, aloof, seemingly unapproachable, unless you were part of his inner circle. Yet that’s why we came to Ojai every spring, to see if we could find out just what his secret was. We wanted to know how he managed to be so aware and enlightened, while we struggled with conflict and our numerous problems.

There was a silence. Then he said in a soft, almost shy voice, “You see, I don’t mind what happens.”

So much of learning to live better is learning to make peace with what we don’t control.

It resonated.

Discipline during breaks

Growing up, I associated discipline with things that sounded like work – study, exercise, etc.

Discipline matters at work of course – it defines our work ethic.

But I’ve since come to appreciate the importance of discipline in relation to breaks as well. Prioritizing breaks and making sure we’re switching off and staying present in our break is also discipline that counts.

Now more than ever.