Heartcrossings

It just so happened that a work trip ended up being right before a vacation we had planned for months. It would be unwise for me to postpone the meeting so I said yes even though it made things tight. Once I start optimizing I don't always know where to stop. Since I was going to be in town for four days, I reached out to a few friends who live there to see if they might be able to meet. It ended up being a flurry of seeing people and long conversations that I did not know were meant to happen. I got a few excellent book recommendations, learned about pain suffered and wisdom gained from it. I was able to share lessons from my own life that I hope serves V well.  She has chosen to completely bury herself in work, chase after the most challenging assignments to make sure she has no capacity left to process her loss and grief . I told her that I had done similar for a decade because I was not brave enough to confront the void in my life and acknowledge only a miracle would save me (w

Met H for dinner after a decade a few days ago and got to experience that same inner brightness that I had always known her for. No amount of adversity can take that away from her and she has experienced more than most people ever will. She was married to the love of her life but the man suffered from an illness that decayed him slowly and there were any number of medical emergencies over the forty years of their marriage.  When she finally lost him she would only talk about how well-loved she had always been and how he always had surprises that warmed her heart. I have stayed in touch with H over the years because she shows me how to age with grace, turn adversity into a source of energy to pour into people and things you love. I learn just by watching her and hope that in time learn to be something close to the person she is. The evening will now be a memory of H across the table at the Greek restaurant at across the street from my hotel. Her laugh as the waiter encouraged us to try

My friend B brought me a home-cooked Bengali meal one day as a surprise. She is a prolific cook and I have long admired pictures of her dishes she shares with me. So that day, I got to taste it for real. Her cooking reminded me of a grand-aunt who passed away several years ago. The same attention to detail, the perfect balance of sweet, salt, spice and heat. This is not a meal cooked in a hurry and certainly not a meal cooked without love. Just like that one rainy evening in a hotel room, far away from home I was transported to the last time I had a meal in my grand-aunt's home. I remember the polished wood of her small dining table and the spread of dishes I loved. It was as if she knew this would be the last time and she wanted it to be memorable. I did not recognize the momentousness of that meal but in years since, that has been the benchmark of the perfect Bengali meal. I compare my own efforts to it and it inspires me to improve every time so I get closer to my ideal. B was m

While packing food for a road trip recently, I found myself thinking how we decide if something makes sense to take for a trip and now easy or difficult it would be to find a place to sit and eat it. Sandwiches in their own bags and something to drink from a spill-proof bottle are the reliable and fail-safe options. Reasonable people would settle for that because it is sensible. But for me, eating like I was still at home is a big factor in choice of food - I am creature that likes being comfortable and will prioritize comfort over commonsense sometimes.  This also means carrying a lot of extra things to make it all work. When I pack for a road-trip. I am often reminded of a story my mother used to tell of one of our distant relatives. The man had eight kids and worked for the Indian Railways post-Independence. He travelled close to free with his large family with his railway pass but food still had to be paid for and he was known to be thrifty.  Apparently they had a huge custom-made

Great story about taking action instead of experiencing climate anxiety, having a skill and putting it to use: “I’ve been jumping for 25 years, and I’ve always pushed the limits with risky jumps,” he shares. “Now, I’m 51 years old, and I don’t have that drive for danger anymore. I want to do something to help. Like the seed drop, this next project will have real meaning behind it.” Reading this got me thinking about things I have seen people his age do drive change where they can and how they can, gifting their time and talent. There is E who left his senior executive job in a large bank to become a high school math teacher. His kids had left to college and wife after decades of staying home to raise the kids, had returned to her physical therapist job she absolutely loved. There was no pressing need for his big salary and he decided to go make the best difference he could - get kids to love math. It's been almost a decade now and he still at it and loving it.  The way E tells it,

Came across this via LinkedIn a few days ago - the question is a valid one but the response not so much. I often try to think back to the time when I was among the youngest in the workplace and see if I can recall how I treated those who were then my age today. The thing that comes to mind that we generally ran in different circles but sometimes there would be overlap. The folks I was hanging out with socially outside work were more like me than not. We had things in common, kids of similar age, relative challenges. It made sense to learn from each other and even get tactical help and advice. Someone with children who were already married was not the right target for the questions I had about dealing with J's kindergarten issues. That was not about leaving them out - it was just not a intersection of what I needed and what they could offer.  Yet, we did go out to lunch and happy hour with a wide assortment of people, sometimes generations apart. There was a lot that I learned from

The Hot Zone is a great read and I am glad I got to it. During the pandemic and after, I have wondered like many others why Ebola was able to be contained and Covid was not. For the layperson the answer is not obvious: In any case, the Ebola Sudan virus destroyed a few hundred people in central Africa the way a fire consumes a pile of straw—until the blaze burns out at the center and ends in a heap of ash—rather than smoldering around the planet, as AIDS has done, like a fire in a coal mine, impossible to put out. The Ebola virus, in its Sudan incarnation, retreated to the heart of the bush, where undoubtedly it lives to this day, cycling and cycling in some unknown host, able to shift its shape, able to mutate and become become a new thing, with the potential to enter the human species in a new form. There apparently no such thing as a virus sensor. So if there is something deadly, species-threatening level even, we would never know. We could breathe it, come into contact through a m