This image has been doing the rounds on social media and news outlets around the world.
The Suez Canal blockage is holding up $10B of goods a day.
There are many pieces of thoughtful analysis on the causes, possible solutions, and potential impact of this.
This note isn’t one of them. Instead, my reflection when I learned about this was – shit happens.
It is a helpful reminder from time to time about just how much is out of our control. The best we can do is learn to focus on how we respond.
Someone I know was the victim of a crime recently. She was beaten and dragged while attempting to stop robbers from stealing her purse. Luckily, she escaped without broken bones and has emerged with her spirit intact.
She sent a note reflecting on the lessons she learnt. One of her observations was about the many bystanders who chose to whip out phones and take videos of the event rather than help her. A couple of her lessons spoke to some of the challenges she (and many other) Asian Americans are dealing with right now.
It’s been a heavy few days in the United States with the many attacks on the Asian/Asian American community.
Perhaps a better way to describe these few days is a heavy few days amidst a heavy few months amidst a heavy few years. Racism and bigotry received a big global “like” for the few years following a series of events in 2016 – with Brexit, various elections in Europe, and the American Presidential election. There’s a price that we all pay for those likes – some more than others.
Fittingly, I’ve been reading “Caste” by Isabel Wilkerson over the past weeks. Isabel Wilkerson draws powerful parallels between the caste system in India and race in the United States. Those parallels ring true.
Now more than ever.
In the first decade of writing on this blog, I valued novelty. I used to try and share new notes and lessons and did my best to avoid overlap with old posts.
I did so because I thought that was the best way to push myself to absorb concepts. New ways of thinking, new patterns, etc.
In this second decade, the pendulum has swung the other way. While I don’t share duplicate posts (or at least haven’t as yet), I’ve changed my mind on repetition.
The most important lessons are the hardest to learn because they involve changing our habits. This doesn’t happen because we make a commitment on new year’s day. It happens because we commit to obsessing about this change. We then stumble and fail a hundred times, repeat that commitment to ourselves, and ensure we recommit every time.
So, novelty is helpful. But, if we’re obsessing about a change we’re seeking to make, repetition might be what we’re looking for.
A few years ago, someone shared that they prefer replacing “Q&A” or “question & answer” sessions with “Q&O” or “questions and opinions.”
The explanation was simple – we probably don’t have the answers to the questions that are asked. But, we can at least aim for a more realistic outcome -> offering thoughtful opinions.
Since then, I’ve replaced “Q&A” with “Q&O” in every event I’ve organized.
#impact.
“It is a sign that you’re healthy and that you’re doing important work. It means that you’re trusting the process and doing it with generosity.
Confidence isn’t the same as trust in the process. Confidence is a feeling we get when we imagine that we have control over the outcome.” | Seth Godin, The Practice
This note struck a chord. I appreciated the distinction between trusting the process and confidence.
Thank you, Seth.
When our instincts tell us something is wrong, they are generally right. We tend to underplay these feelings to our detriment.
However, our instincts’ understanding of the size of a problem are generally wrong. We tend to overreact to small problems and worry about things that never end up happening.
Thousands of years spent as hunter gatherers have honed our instincts for danger. For most of us, they just routinely overestimate the danger present in our lives today.
David Letterman interviewed Shah Rukh Khan (SRK), a popular/successful Bollywood star, on his Netflix show. As part of this interview, SRK shared an anecdote about how he spends time with his kids.
“But jokes apart, I spend a lot of time with them. They always want food at 2 or 3 in the morning. So I am learning Italian food. So whenever that nine number of the kitchen goes, I say ‘Yeah! What do you want? You want some pasta? And I quickly go and…’”
So, when his kids come home, they go to their rooms and hang out. When they’re hungry, they dial 9 on their home phone to reach whoever works in the kitchen. And, SRK jumps into make pasta and spends time with them in the process.
I had multiple reflections after hearing this anecdote. Two stood out.
First, normal is relative. To some, dialing a number to speak to someone in their home is normal.
And, second, we often make too many assumptions about the correlation between wealth, love, and happiness.
This isn’t to say SRK isn’t happy or is deprived of love. I don’t know him and I have no idea. Instead, it is just likely that such moments of closeness and bonding with those we love are accessible to the many of us with far lesser wealth and fame.
Listening to and synthesizing good feedback is a lot like cutting an onion.
When we first start working with it, every chop results in a few tears.
But, once we get past that, cook it, and eat it, we realize we’re better for the experience. (We may even have enjoyed it more than we expected.)
To get all those health benefits, we have to make our way past the discomfort.
Our daily happiness is inversely proportional to the time we spend making comparisons between ourselves and others.
Over the past few years, my birthday posts have been product release themed. I copied this from a blogger I appreciate. Thinking of a birthday as a new product release is a lovely way to think about the evolution of our thought process.
As I look back on the year that has passed, I realize that the word of the year has been gratitude.
Over and over this year, I’ve been reminded of just how privileged I am to have the choices I have every day. My response to the “how are you doing?” question over the past months has been along the lines of “All problems are first world problems. For that I’m incredibly grateful.”
We’ve had our ups and downs as we pursued what we have pursued. But, those ups and downs are the essence of the human experience. As tempting as it is to wish for fewer challenges, it is a reminder that what we wish for is often not what we’d want. That pursuit of something bigger than ourselves is what makes life worth living.
The biggest sign of our privilege is the amount of choice we have in this pursuit. That choice shows itself in the kind of problems we get to solve. And, the problems I got to solve in the past year were often challenging, sometimes difficult, and never hard.
Never hard because they didn’t involve making choices that determine if we manage to have shelter for the light, to get food on the table, or to be able to afford medical care if we need it.
The absence of these sorts of choices have afforded me the time and space to attempt to contribute in areas that I thought were worthy, build meaningful relationships, and learn along the way. All incredible privileges.
I hope to make them count in the time I have on this planet.
Thank you for being part of the journey.
