On Life, Love and Things Like That
Year wrapped: A look back at the things we build, and the people we become
Dearest op/eder,
First things first - I know it’s been a (LONG) while, but there’s not a single weekend (as the name of this stack goes) that I didn’t think about writing to you.
Yes, all 73 of you. What began as a virtual home for my musings, is now, also a home to 73 of you - thanks for making me want to write more.
As I type away this New Year’s, here’s a stack reflecting on a few things I have learned over 23 such years. As always, learnings are personal, so as you read - feel free to love some, debate some, and keep some, for in case they resonate with you some other year, if not this. :)
Shall we?
1/ Do more of what you love.
What a shame if that extra time cannot be used doing things you love?
Remember summer holidays? Sorry to break it to you, but if you’re done with college - then this concept is already archaic, and won’t come back again.
Adulting is when you realize that while a summer holiday may not find you, what you need is some time in your everyday life to do more of what you love.
It need not be elaborate. Start with baby steps. Always liked going to concerts? Find small events happening locally to attend more of those. One of my friends volunteers for Soul Jams Bangalore, and the happiness he gets out of it is so evident. Always liked sports but couldn’t stay consistent at it after you started working? Consider reintroducing it in your work circle. One of the many things I am proud of people at CRED, is the sports culture. I’ve seen folks wake up at 5 in the morning to make it to the inter-office tournaments.
For me, I loved writing. Wrote 100+ poems when I was 13 up till 16. Got back at it again at 22 through this stack. :)
Keep fostering habits and let what you love find its way into your daily life.
2/ Call dibs. Even when there’s none to call.
2023 for me, was so much about navigating, and donning different hats at work. And boy do I feel grateful for the immense compounding this year.
As I look back at what made it special for me, here are my two cents for those in their early 20’s, finding their footing at work.
Say yes. People are respected for saying yes when they are young, and no when they get old. Be it at work or in life, say yes more often. There’s an allied problem with the one you’re currently working on - take it. Your boss is swamped with plethora of projects and wants to outsource some to you - take it. That colleague at work needs your help with a problem statement that you don’t have time for - moonlight it. Do more, learn faster.
Go deep. Assuming you did the above, sure you have breadth, make sure it’s not coming at the cost of depth. If you’re doing 5 projects at once, you may build depth in 2, learn more about 1, and might just have a natural flair for the rest. What matters is for you to know what you want to build depth in, and do more of it over time.
Problems don’t come bearing names. There’s a problem statement that’s keeping you up at night. Don’t wait for it to be served to you on a platter. Call dibs, work on it or towards it. Remember your contribution is most when you zoom out and then build, than when you tinker continuously without knowing what you’re tinkering towards.
If you don’t ask, the answer is no. Want to learn, be better at something, or simply reset at work - just ask. Ask your peers, mentors, seniors, anyone who could help you. Remember, asking is a skill set you develop over time. The more credibility and equity you build, the more radical can your questions be over time.
3/ Say yes for every no.
When I moved out for the first time in 2019, my sister tucked-into my bag that Sunday’s HT Brunch. It had a Shoba Narayan column called “letter to a child who is leaving home”. Years hence, I am so glad she did.
In a typical Shoba style, Narayan pushed me from my comfortable cocoon to a more unfamiliar territory, almost coaxing me to say yes for every no I’d say.
College was offline only briefly (thank the pandemic), but a journey where if I were to look back - I see my hand raised, saying yes to everything that came my way.
Saying no is easy, tell me about it, I’ve done it many times. Saying yes is hard.
Mostly because you’re saying yes to something you don’t know yet, people you’ve never hung out with, situations you’ve never been in. Do yourself a favour, and make yourself uncomfortable (and no, I don’t mean doing something you principally don’t want to). Be uncomfortable in pushing your envelope, taking every shot there is, making a fool of yourself and laughing when others do too.
Just don’t take yourself too seriously, and always (I repeat, always) be open to changing your views. Sure, you might be called someone who doesn’t have conviction in one single thing, but as long as you are getting better by discarding old perspectives, it’s all gonna be worth it.
4/ Freedom in detachment.
One of my favourite books/movies is “Eat Pray Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert. That led me to watching her Ted Talk on “Your Elusive Creative Genius”. What is elusive? Elusive means evasive, shifty, hard to track down.
Take a good look at your own life. The things you value the most, or which worked out well, are so elusive. They just happened. In retrospect, you can back-track it, but deep down who or what seeded it there, is a function of so many things that just went right, of course along with your own effort, blood and sweat.
What Gilbert says is that, after she published her bestseller, there was this enormous pressure of publishing the next one which was also expected to make it to The New York Times Bestseller. Why the pressure, you ask?
Anything which is outcome-first is a lot of cognitive pressure for the human mind. That perfect SAT score, that job you wanted to land so bad, that relationship you wished would last forever. The obsession we have with end-state is unsettling. For we are trying to control that which is the culmination of so many unknown variables.
The freedom then lies in detachment. An absolute obsession with inputs (everything required from you in the journey), yet least attachment with the destination (outcome).
As Gilbert puts it, “you have to do your dance, do that dance anyway”.
5/ Don’t fill when there can be void.
Okay, I will take one for the team. I confess, on behalf of all GenZs and Millennials - our generation has a problem in doing nothing.
Don’t blame us, we are the internet age kids, we’ve never had dearth of options when it comes to passing time. So yes, we function differently.
What we suck at however, is being okay doing nothing.
No, your mind doesn’t need continuous stimulation. No, a weekend doesn’t necessarily mean boozing out. And yes, it’s okay being with yourself doing nothing.
Looking at my own calendar and the things I write in my to-do’s makes me wonder, what our generation is running away from. Finding meaning in every action is not as important as finding solace in solitude. Simple acts such as cleaning your wardrobe, doing laundry on a weekend, making that meal that you’re so used to ordering-in, need not give you meaning, but can give you immense satisfaction in being in the present, all by yourself, just doing nothing.
So next time, you’re force-filling the void, try experiencing a nothing?
6/ Sanity in Insanity.
Tell me why are we adulting, again?
Sure - it’s important to be all smart and responsible and cultivate the logical, more rationale side of our brains. But why does it have to come at the cost of losing the child-like awe and adventure we had.
TLDR: please retain that kid. Retain the whims, the crazy hopes, and fantasies that the child in you had. For life is boring if it weren’t for believing in things you have no clue about.
Remember, the things which never made sense to the logical human mind, are all inventions of a few creative geniuses who were not believed in their time. Sure, not all the things you so wackily believe in will cut it for a century-changing invention, but there’s no doubt that it will add colour to your life while it exists.
So add 1 cup full of a romantic, 2 big spoons of a dreamer and a pinch of mad-man energy. You never know, it may be the recipe to a road less travelled. :)
7/ You are the lover you’ve been looking for.
The best relationship of your life could be the one you have with yourself.
Let’s get some perspective - in these 60-70 years of our life, we’ll see people come and go, places, and panoramas changes. What’s constant throughout is your own company. If you’re so particular about who you spend few hours of your day with, shouldn’t you put some effort in being the best company that you can offer yourself for a lifetime?
Self talk is important. It’s easy to become someone else, especially in a day-and-age where we’re constantly consuming everyone’s life digitally, but it’s hard to know who you are, and who you are not. Those few minutes before you doze off, take some time to talk to yourself, as you recap the day, also recapitulate your reactions, responses to the various situations that presented themselves to you. Knowing the “why” behind what you think and how you operate can help you be more rooted to your reality - allowing it to soften, and change for better.
Personal check-ins. Once you’re acquainted with yourself, and know what drives you, hinders you and more, it’s easier to notice patterns when some thing is off. This could be a sudden and significant change in life, or even gradual yet prominent. Whatever it is, mentally block those 1:1s with yourself, where you’re taking time off to get a lay of the land, or just simply get things back on track. Remember, sometimes change is the only constant, a personal check-in’s purpose is not to make time stop, or for things go back in time, but to help you rediscover your centre even when things are in motion.
Inside out, than outside in. We become the compliments and critique we receive. This holds true especially when life is more outside-in: being affected by what peers think, what common public opinion on something is, whether we fit into a particular stereotype or not. Human are adept at defining themselves through outside-in methods. It’s “fitting-in 101” - if there is a label or stereotype that defines you, you become that for easy interpretation by society.
You spoke less some years of your life, you tagged yourself as an introvert. You didn’t take interest in sports, you’re called indoor-sy. You weren’t good with algebra, now you will probably screw up tax filings too.
Inside-out is to know what you value and what you want and become that through identity change. The success metric of this approach is not whether you’re able to become something by going inward first, it’s to unbecome anything you ended up being only because the world had a better, easier label for it.
Expect more from yourself. In the words of Elizabeth Gilbert, “a soulmate’s purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life”. Analogise this to your relationship with yourself, and you’ll know that you truly love yourself when you’re capable of expecting more from yourself. Expect more from yourself at work, in the gym, in love and relationships. Be harsh with yourself like a parent, yet understand yourself like a partner. Loving yourself is not a one-off positive reinforcement that you stick as a wallpaper in your room, but a continuous work in progress.
8/ Try not being an ungrateful prick.
A more cliche way of saying this would have been “be grateful”, but I guess it doesn’t convey the sentiment that in absence of gratitude, we’re just half-empty pricks.
Without sounding like a self-help-guru, my experience with gratitude has been super liberating simply because it helps me disassociate myself with myself. For a moment, I zoom out and am super grateful for everything that has happened to this “self” I am embracing. There’s a feeling of agency, but no attachment, which in itself is liberating.
As we grow older, life is only going to get more populous from here. And in the middle of this ever growing noise, it’s only human to lose sight of what we have, and how wonderfully special it is. Gratitude thus, is just another anchor that keeps us rooted and centred.
We are often grateful for the visible hand (what we want to be grateful for) than the invisible hand (what we already have, got, or what happened to us when we least expected it).
There’s a lot that leaves me in awe when I acknowledge that so much of my life is the work of an invisible hand doing its wonders - the beautiful people who compose the day-to-day of my life, and even those whom I met briefly but left behind an indelible impression on the canvas of life, the mentors, the critics, the neighbours, the strangers, and even the person I was a year back, and the person I have become today, and all that led to the change.
The musicians, writers, poets whose existence helped me find missing parts to my own story. The bed, the pillow, the nights and the mornings that know my dreams and disappointments. The body that’s supporting me in this endeavour of life, and the mind for continuously changing, becoming and unbecoming.
I’ve teared up when I have been the happiest in my life, sometimes even in the most jejune of moments like a speech by Sister Elba in standard 8th, an ordinary morning assembly in standard 11th, and when dad would magically make all the problems go away from a disrupted telephone line sitting miles away in Ladakh.
This new year’s, take out some time, just to be grateful for how unique and immaculate your experience of this life has been, the people you’ve met, the places you’ve been, the things that fell in place as if only for you, and the outcomes you had never expected but turned out for good.
Wishing you a year full of more such serendipities, dear reader.
Happy new year, see you in 2024!