Doing RIght

I am a lite user of Airbnb with mixed experiences. Reading this open letter gave me much to think about. Recently we were guests in a home in an old neighborhood in a historical building. Our host had inherited a piece of property that is simply too large for her to manage on her income as a yoga teacher. Each room she rents out comes with an attached bathroom and all her guests are welcome to share her kitchen. During the few nights we spent there we saw a few other guests move in and out. The place is too big for anyone to be in each other's way. 

It was a delightful experience living in a home that was several hundred years with strange and unexpected quirks at every turn. My favorite was the elaborate contraption with a latch twisted backwards, a hinge and a ribbon to lock a door that would keep the cat from coming into the house from the terrace where he was meant to live. The cat turned out to be crafty and made it in despite such barriers and had to be carried back to his home on the roof. Our host is likely the perfect Airbnb use case - she owns the house, needs some extra income to care for it and she gives her guests a very unique living experience. 

Owning Colors

Interesting article about trade-marked colors and the right to use them or not. The notion is colors should be set free:

..Semple is not giving up the fight for Tiffany Blue—whether or not anyone else is fighting back. “I see the art materials as more of a cultural critique, a piece of critical art [rather] than a business,” he writes. “My studio runs on a not-for-profit basis, so we put anything we might get back into fighting for freedom of expression, and opening up colors for everyone.”

Never thought about the right to use colors that are the signature of a brand. A saree like this one could be the same color palette as the FedEx logo for instance. It's not the first thing that comes to mind because the match is not perfect. This one is branded as Tiffany blue. When I think about colors and artistic expression, sarees come to mind at once. Some of the colors that come together in a beautiful saree could inspire logo design and brand palettes. If only the weavers could trademark their ideas for how colors could come together - that would only be fair.

Home Town

We have a museum of fine arts in our town with a pretty decent collection considering the relative obscurity of the location. J and I have spent many wonderful hours browsing through this museum and having lunch in their cafeteria. It used to be one of our favorite things to do on Sunday afternoons after she got off from her job nearby. We also had the opportunity to visit some world-class museums home and abroad. The most time we had for these collections was a day or two. The marquee items are always mobbed by hundreds of tourists trying to take selfies and we stayed away from these hot-spots to go see things less well-known but dazzling all the same. 

Even when spreading the experience across two days it was a sensory overload. J loves museums and she valued any and all time we spent there. When I compare the home town experience of knowing every exhibit and the stories behind them in a tiny museum that is orders of magnitude less impressive than a Prado, in some sense the home town wins. Being able to form that strong connection with a piece of art over time is a very different feeling. It's like the difference between the comfort of sleeping in your own bed and spending a light in a very nice hotel. I wish virtual reality tours of museums around the world would become a more immersive, high fidelity option giving everyone a chance to have that strong connection to a piece that resonated with them - seeing it many times over the years, experiencing how your own mood and stage of life impacts how you see what you see. 

Attention Harvesting

This is news we can all use - how to get a hamster to out-perform the S&P 500. The story is a winner at so many levels. First off, it is a great lesson in marketing - how to write a headline (or email subject line) that will grab the reader's attention immediately. In this case "A hamster has been trading cryptocurrencies in a cage rigged to automatically buy and sell tokens since June - and it's currently outperforming the S&P 500"

The audience will fall in one of few categories - trades crypto and stock, trades crypto, trades stock, everyone else. Since this is in business insider the readership has basic understanding of both crypto and stock even if they are in the group that does nothing with either. That being said, that line has something for everyone. If you are trading crypto you want to know if the hamster outperformed you along with S&P 500. The stock traders among the readership will want to know if displacement by hamsters is looming in their future. For folks that dabble in both they may experience a crisis of confidence reading this line - maybe they are leaving money on the table that the hamsters are mopping up. 

Everyone else is peanut gallery in this context and experiencing a bit of schadenfreude - this is indeed the proof point of blindfolded monkey theory: “A blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper's financial pages could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one carefully selected by experts.”

So no matter what group you fall into as a reader, you will want to read the rest of the story. And you will learn that the hamster has a Twitter handle and is livestreaming his work for the world to see. The idea is to draw the reader in as a participant and it will likely work. At the time of writing Mr. Goxx had about 3000 followers on Twitter and Twitch. Strictly speaking this story is not attention-harvesting but it is how to do it right, not leave the target feeling depleted. It gets their attention, gives them something to chuckle about and leave them with food for thought. 

Too Early

Caught with my former colleague C after years today. He had been out of circulation for a while so there was much to chat about. His son, A is now in college and likely the youngest one in his class. This kid is one of the home-schooled prodigies you read about in the news - no surprise, this child has been in the news himself many times. Winning any number of competitions in any number of areas - there is nothing that he is not great at. C's wife gave up her flourishing career to home-school their son, once it became evident that public school would fall far short of his needs. A completed high school at 14 and started college before 15. Anyone observing A's progress and endless stream of accomplishments would assume that it's a foregone conclusion that the top colleges will vie to get him. He is not just an academic superstar but an all-around one. C told me that college admissions reality was quite different from his expectations. A's top choice schools did not accept him - apparently he was not special enough for them and also they declined to give him any credit for being 4 years younger than the average applicant. This was a something C and his wife never expected. 

With that, A was treated like any other applicant in the pool and started to look less than stellar given a a complete absence of internships and work in his resume. He was just a smart and talented kid but had not proved himself worthy enough for consideration. He made it to a great school but it was nowhere close to what was aspired for him. It is no surprise that A is firing on all cylinders in college and doing everything he possibly can. That is the only way he knows to operate since he was three years old. The pandemic turned out to be a blessing in disguise - A was able to spend freshman year at home and is looking forward to going to college for real this year. Still very young but atleast he has had some practice with it even if from afar. C's wife continues to manage A's life and work in college much as she had done in his home-school years. After we got off the phone, I could not but help thinking about other kids I know who are freshmen and sophomores in college, the lives that they are able to lead independent of their parents, the adventures they are able to have because they are old enough for them, the relationships they get in and out of and so much more. A will experience none of that at least not in a safe way. 

Puppy Quandry

What Seth Godin says about not thinking through actions that are easy to initiate but much harder to get value from apply in so many different ways in life too. The gym memberships that are got with the best intentions and never used, the self-help books that are read and never executed upon, the classes that are signed up for and never completed - the list goes on. The easier it looks to take the plunge the harder it is to get the real value. 

Compared to bigger decisions - getting married, having kids, changing careers and the like, none of them is as simple as getting a puppy and people usually have the time to think through what they are signing up for. Given the effort to get into the situation, they are likely to try much harder to get value out of it. 

This made me thinking about driving and parking experiences in different countries I have lived or traveled to. When the process is easy and predictable, chances are you will go out more, explore. Needless to say, the process will be fraught with redundancy and waste. 

Compare this to a place where driving is complicated because the streets are hundreds of years old, too narrow to fit even one small car comfortably. Every missed turn adds another half hour to your travel time because you have to trace your way way through a labyrinth of one-way streets. And after you manage to do all that, parking that car is high-stress acrobatic feat besides being expensive. In those conditions, the yen to explore and be fancy-free is tempered by reality. If you don't need to drive you won't. You will likely put a lot more thought into where you are going and why. You may have less freedom of movement and the trips you do make will be imbued with far greater meaning.

Dark Gratitude

I read this poem by Jericho Brown many times savoring every line and word in it. This is not experience I can relate to but it completely draws me in:

No one on earth knows how many abortions happened
Before a woman risked her freedom by giving that risk a name, 
By taking it to breast. I don’t know why I am alive now
That I still cannot impress the woman who whipped me 
Into being. I turned my mother into a grandmother. She thanks me 
By kissing my sons. Gratitude is black—
Black as a hero returning from war to a country that banked on his death.
Thank God. It can’t get much darker than that.

This got me curious about the poet himself and I found this interview where he talks a bit more about his relationship with his mother. The fact that this poem can exist along with his love for her gave me much to think about. We are products of many parenting flaws and when we in turn become parents, we continue that cycle and add our unique defects into the mix. I have a few friends who worked relentlessly to make peace with their parents at their end of life - it was not easy but they labored on their cause for years until they achieved some sense of closure. 

E's father died from dementia and her decade long quest for peace with a man who was alcoholic, physically and verbally abusive to his wife and kids came to an unsatisfactory end. In his pre-dementia years, he was impossible for E to deal with - there was no shred of remorse or regret in him for all the harm he had caused to his family. As he started to lose his mind and become vulnerable, E found him easier to access but there was nothing left to hope for. Her struggles came to and end five years ago and she is soaring free like a bird now - which is so gratifying to see.

Perfect Balance

It was a hot afternoon in Grenada and we had wandered from the narrow alleys of the old town over to a small square full of people enjoying their tapas and drinks under the shade of tall trees. We found an empty table and took it promptly. The place was a hive of activity and the thrum of people talking and laughing filled the air. Just about everyone other than us was local. We had wandered into the more mundane part of town, where locals were going on with their lives and were out for lunch on a workday. No one paid any heed to us and that is the sign I look for when scouting for a place to try local food. This was also the afternoon we discovered Tinto de Verano too. It was not listed on the menu and yet all around us people had this lovely looking drink we wanted to try as well. 

We asked the waiter to get us what the folks at the table next to us were having. There is something about the hot summer sun, the pace of Spain in that weather and some other intangibles that I can't describe that make this the perfect drink. One is not enough as we were to find out. There are super market brands of the Tinto, each restaurant has its one variant of it, they are all delightful but some are truly standouts. That afternoon in Grenada we had the standout kind. The waiter explained it had more than the standard ingredients one mind find in a recipe. A bit of vermouth was involved among other things. Sometimes perfection can be encapsulated in a moment like that - the balance of all elements to make an afternoon sublimely memorable.

Inspired Departure

I don't know about contagious quitting but the phenomenon I have observed over the decades in the workforce is more like inspired quitting. Often there are a few folks in key roles in the organization who act as a bell-weather for disaffected employees. They usually have tenure and influence and form the bedrock of that company's culture. 

The disaffected people are always watching the bell-weather types to decide which side of the fence they need to be. Usually these folks are new to the company and feel like they don't have enough information to make an intelligent leave or stay decision. Once one or more of the bell-weathers quit, it starts a minor tsunami of resignations. People on the fence act with great decisiveness after such events now that they have the signal they had been waiting for. The wave does not propagate much further. 

Not sure if these events are good or bad for the company in question. In the short term it is chaotic and disruptive for the culture as hiring managers scramble to fill the gaps and prop team morale the best they can, try to impede the momentum to leave. Longer term, the dust settles leading to lasting change and not always for the better. In smaller companies, the old guard gets sharply separated from the post-tsunami hires, leaving a chasm between the two sets. 

I know three mid-sized companies in my home-town that experienced multiple waves of resignations each following the departure of a pivotal figure - someone others were watching to make up their mind. Each of these companies has turned into something unrecognizable from the pre-tsunami times, CEOs and entire leadership teams have moved on and such. Just about no one I know from the old times works in these places anymore. 

Thinking Calm

Read a couple of articles recently on the nature of intelligence. One was about a study done on cuttlefish where they are shown to have a demonstrable ability to delay gratification. The other is this essay about how we measure intelligence 

By intelligence I mean only that the mind react to happenings with a certain sharpness and precision, that the radish not be perpetually seized by its leaves, that the gray not be confused with brown and, above all, that objects in front of one be seen with a little exactness and accuracy, without supplanting sight by mechanically repeated words.

A is one of the most Zen people I know. In the middle of a crisis, he can remain absolutely calm and help navigate out of the chaos, He is also a very positive person. No matter how bad the situation, he will focus on the bright side and what good can come out of it. On average A makes good decisions and arguably there are more intelligent on account of his frame of mind while he makes them. Those who know him rely on his good counsel in crisis. Is A the most intelligent person I know, perhaps not but his outcomes are definitely on par or better than those who are way "smarter" than him. 

Calculating Risk

This is an interesting way to access risk as we go about our lives trying to decide what's safe and what's not these days. The project's motivation: 

We want to help as many people as possible feel more empowered to make decisions around COVID risk by helping them understand how COVID is transmitted. We hope this tool will help hone your intuition, lower your stress levels, and figure out good harm-reduction strategies.

A great idea and if well-adopted and trusted could go a long way in easing back into normalcy. I was trying to set up a scenario for school going children as I happen to know a few and hear the parents worry about their safety. The age, general health and the pre-existing medical conditions of the person would be a factor too. Even with those things not in place, this is a useful way to gauge if your worries are warranted or not as you go about the routine business of life. Partying with 80 people in a closed indoor venue is still not a good idea. 

Connecting Right

We stayed in an Airbnb recently that stood out for the level of attention paid to the needs of a traveler. The place was in the middle of an ancient town. The exterior was still historical but inside was completely modern. This was a smart and connected apartment where everything could be controlled by an universal remote. At first blush it seemed excessive to have everything remote controlled but with a couple of hours of settling in, it started to make sense. If you had a question about how anything worked, there was only one answer - the remote had a button for it. The blinds, the appliances, the bathroom, the garage - everything managed the same way. F, the owner of the place is a young geek who inherited some prime real-estate from his grandparents and decided to turn that into a source of income. He did a job the grandparents would be proud of - the old world charm remained intact while making the living area very usable and comfortable. 

We extended our stay because the place had such a cozy vibe and was a perfect stop to rest and recharge on a road-trip. I am no fan of smart and connected anything and would never implement this in my home. But this was a situation where it made perfect sense. You rent your place to a revolving door of strangers and want them all to be comfortable, know how to make things work in your house. F had done this exactly right. Living in the quaint part of town is usually an experience once has to develop a taste for. Nothing works like it is supposed to, there are many tips and tricks you need to learn to do the simplest things - like open and closing a faucet in the bathroom without flooding the house. Describing all of that to a guest who will live there for a night can get quite arduous. We are generally up for such adventures but F really combined the best of both worlds in a way I have rarely seen.

Zealous Burnout

Learned the phrase from reading this article. I was burning out in my own way for decades not quiet or zealous but some hybrid of the two. The core of me craved peace and tranquility and the circumstances of my life strictly made both an impossibility. So I was seeking what was impossible and driving myself crazy in the process. It got me into being obsessively focused on the few things I could control, where I did have some agency. That lead then to zealous burnout. When I look back to the years that had been, I see the bad habits I picked up along the way and the triggers for anxiety that I recognize well but can't always manage. 

There are both short and long term consequences of burning out and not being able to stop it. Reminds me of a forest fire I saw recently and the frenetic activity to quell it. Choppers will lifting water in pails from the nearby ocean and dumping it on the core of the fire in the hills. It was woefully inadequate for the job and the gash had opened through the woods where the fire glowed an angry orange. The smoke billowed as far as the next town. In the short term the fire-fighting efforts would likely dampen some of the frenzy but the scars from the burns would remain for a long time. Such I think is the case with burnout too.

Free Will

Traveling by plane for the first time since the pandemic hit was like a dystopian dream. The virus is everywhere but not everyone feels the same way about its presence or the consequences to their life. There are people in N95 masks wiping down every surface, avoiding everything that can be avoided. Others including me stayed masked because we were required to but did not go overboard. I did not see any blatant non-compliance. Sleeping on a trans-Atlantic flight has always been a hit or miss for me but with the mask it became hellishly difficult. Many time I woke up breathless and each of those times, I asked myself if anyone had the right to request another person to make such a trip without an emergency. In my case we were traveling to spend a few days with J and explore a country we had not seen much of. 

I was doing this of my own volition and yet this felt like so much effort. It made me think of articles I have read written by doctors who have been masked up way worse and working nearly non-stop for over a year and feeling completely worn out. I had some theoretical understanding of what all that meant but just a few hours of trying to sleep while masked and not having the choice to remove it brought those accounts way closer home. One has to walk even a small distance in another's shoes to know where it pinches. The whole experience left me feel blue until I landed, got into our rental car and could breathe free. Those doctors don't quite have that right and they can't just up and leave. 

Love Letter

If only every man who loved a woman could write such a letter upon her death or every woman who was loved in life could be so adored even in death. There is a certain tragic, melancholic sweetness to the first loves of our lives specially the ones that did not bloom into a full life together. 

Feynman perhaps had it better than many but not nearly all that he might have dreamed of when he married his high school sweetheart. Even in this love letter, the amazingly simple way he could express his genius seems to shine. This is a letter to read and remember, think how lucky was the woman to whom it was addressed: No. I am alone without you and you were the “idea-woman” and general instigator of all our wild adventures. 

This letter is not so different in spirit that the his famous lectures in physics - the same luminosity and simplicity in how he expresses his ideas - be it the love for his wife or the uncertainty principle

The uncertainty principle “protects” quantum mechanics. Heisenberg recognized that if it were possible to measure the momentum and the position simultaneously with a greater accuracy, the quantum mechanics would collapse. So he proposed that it must be impossible. Then people sat down and tried to figure out ways of doing it, and nobody could figure out a way to measure the position and the momentum of anything—a screen, an electron, a billiard ball, anything—with any greater accuracy. Quantum mechanics maintains its perilous but accurate existence.

Last Change

Talking of love and miseries
On the bridge of kisses 
Some wounds to cleave 
Others to turn whole.
Pain sears the half life
Lived only half in light
What is left of good years
Two decades maybe less
We speak different words
For that last chance to change
And then waiting it out to end.

Lunch Box

 A listicle like many others but an informative read - specially the comments. Much to learn as such things go. Getting ready to complain to the PTA about fruit being served not being the ones in season is a such a great stretch compared to experiences I have had here with J going to public school. The school meal if it contained any kind of fresh fruit at all was a big win. Any expectations above and beyond would sound ridiculous even to the most over-zealous PTA parent. The only other experience I have of school is my own in India. The food we all ate for lunch came from home. A lucky few among us owned thermoses so their food was warm. The rest of us had tiffin-boxes of various kinds, some tiered others not. Opening those boxes would fill the air with aromas from different cultures and cuisines. It was a fantastic experience and never grew old. 

I cannot remember any kid's lunch box as being sad or boring. There was the mother's creativity and desire to feed the kid a filling meal. Some meals were healthier than the others but none were disappointing. We were happy to share with anyone and everyone. The standout feature of anyone's lunch-box would be the home-make pickles and chutneys. There were some mothers who were particularly gifted and their productions were in great demand. The poor kid had very little left after all the sharing was done. But they loved that everyone wanted what they had - it was a point of pride. Fresh fruit was in the mix - mangoes, guavas and papayas. Kids were not too thrilled by this part of the meal but it all got eaten in the end. 

Celebrating Life

We happened to invite B and his wife to dinner last Saturday which happened to be 9/11. It was the only weekend in the month that worked for everyone. Half way through the evening, they told us it was also their wedding anniversary and they were glad to be out with us. Had we known, we could have organized a better celebration but they were clearly happy even with what we had arranged. This is a couple that has been married decades, have five grown up kids and multiple grand-babies. The marriage has survived a lot and B still dotes on the lady he first met a party forty five years ago. Clearly a relationship worth celebrating on its anniversary. 

Yet 9/11 clouded over their big day for two decades now. They said they hoped their kids would think of something next year - apparently that had not happened as often as they might have wished. Its a date people want to get past, not celebrate. Yet for many this could be a very significant day in their lives and to deny them the chance to be happy or celebrate seems wrong. If we marked every tragedy that befell a large number of people around the world, there would not be a single day left unblemished on the calendar where an average person might feel they have the right to celebrate their own happiness. I was glad we made our friend's otherwise half-forgotten day a cheerful one. 

Birthday Song

Remembered this morning hearing this song that playing for me on my birthday was the subtlest most endearing way to remind me why love endures and why the pain of having some dreams big and small shattered is still no reason to feel wistful on a birthday. The years accumulate and with it the disappointments. I have rarely been where I imagined I would at any given point in my life - maybe lacking the right vision or perhaps misunderstanding the larger plan in which the universe had made me an infinitesimal part. Yet I have received the unwavering love and affection of a few that made up for everything else. Each birthday, they are the ones who give me reason to stay in the fight, they are the ones for whom I made a difference and just for them I do matter. 

This year, it so happened that my father is so disappointed in me that he wrote me message to wish me on my birthday but did not talk to me when I called. We can't seem to make peace with each other and all illusions of rapprochement fall apart the first time we don't agree about something. It unleashes his full fury and I realize am no longer able to tolerate it. In times past after such episodes I simply stopped talking to him for a while - a few days to a few years. In these difficult pandemic times, that is no longer and option -  I need to accept him for who he is, the irreparably broken state of our relationship that is not possible to mend and just carry on. 

Thinking Carrots

I have a bag of carrots sitting in the fridge for a while and every time I consider it when thinking about what to cook, inspiration fails to strike. My search for something interesting to do with these carrots took to this recipe which seems quite perfect. As I read this, memories of dinner with my young friend P and her then boyfriend L came to mind. L was the one with the creative ideas and the patience to cooking complicated dishes. 

When they visited us, they came with all the supplies they needed to prepare one of L's signature dishes. This included any special salts, peppers, oils, spices, cooking and serving utensils that might be needed. My job was to give them the workspace in the kitchen and ofcourse I was welcome to help or just watch. One of L's dishes involved carrot, goat-cheese and some Moroccan spices. It made for the most perfect balance. It disappeared fast once it landed on the dinner table - a crowd pleaser for sure. L and P have since broken up. 

L had become my friend too and still is but its no longer possible to have him over and cook dinner with us - it feels awkward. I felt an impulse to share this carrot recipe with him and say, I thought of the way he cooked them and how well they paired with the Andalusian wine he had brought along. We liked L and we miss him as a friend, someone who we know only through P. As much as he knows we wish him the best and enjoy his company, it is no longer the same. It was interesting that a carrot recipe triggered thoughts of P and L in love as they were in at the time. I can't deny I imagined they would be married some day and have babies - they looked so comfortable together that it was hard to believe that they might part ways one day. 

Object Reseller

I often interview out of curiosity about what's out there in the world, what conversations are happening in my space that I am not hearing about. The informational interviews are a great way to meet new people, some of whom are worth staying in touch with. I get the opportunity to tell my story many different ways see what resonates and what does not. These things don't always work well - when dealing with recruiter who is tasked with filling a role and doing it quickly, they don't see these conversations as being useful. 

Others see an opportunity to build a network they can tap into at a more suitable time. I have introduced friends and co-workers to the later type of recruiter - people who want to invest their time in others, have the natural curiosity and ability to understand the human behind the resume. Recently, I met one that was a disappointment despite her long career and many accomplishments. We also have a ton of mutual connections some of whom provided glowing recommendations. 

She looked at me only as a reseller of an interesting object, not even interesting to herself but to whoever would pay for it. The transaction was completely devoid of human feeling. Once she realized I was not actually in the market and certainly did not think the opportunity she described would set me or anyone else up for success, she was quick to wrap up the discussion. I hope she got some value out of our thirty minutes, I certainly did. 

Enough Beauty

Read this beautiful Yeats poem today A Prayer for My Daughter. Specially loved these lines:

May she be granted beauty, and yet not   

Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,   

Or hers before a looking-glass; for such,   

Being made beautiful overmuch,   

Consider beauty a sufficient end,   

Lose natural kindness, and maybe   

The heart-revealing intimacy   

That chooses right, and never find a friend.

It reminded me of something my grandmother used to say of girls and beauty. There is a threshold beyond which it turns into a burden. A very beautiful woman does not end up having a happy home or family, no one man is adequate for her. She becomes an object of art in a sense and there is a presumption of access by many to her. 

That was a her explanation of why celebrities and movie stars often have very difficult married lives if even they have one. There is an optimal level of beauty as Yeats prays for his daughter - its sufficient and not overmuch - that brings all around contentment. If my grandmother is to be believed, such beauty can be cultivated by any woman through kindness, good thoughts and deeds because they turn into physical beauty others can see and appreciate. As a teen-ager I remember found that idea very empowering - there was a path for any woman to attain the level of perfection that it takes to have a good life. 

Car Wash

Meditative moments come to me quite randomly even though I struggle to quiet the clamor in my brain most of the time. Recently, one came unbidden why waiting inside my car in the carwash. I contemplated the passage of time, how taking care of things that take care of us matters and why growing old does not mandate growing irrelevant. Each car I have owned has been about a discrete phase of my life - there was the starry eyed newly-wed car that was a gift from my ex-husband. I had no specific affinity for this car, did not feel any pride or joy of ownership but valued the freedom it afforded me. All of that was true of my marriage as well. There was a car that served most of J's growing up years and then the one I have now that came at a cusp of change - a second lease of life, J growing up and then leaving to college and now and an empty nest. Once the car was washed and dried,  it was time to leave. It made me think about the parallel to my life today. There is no new and shiny, or relentless daily strife to overcome. Life could be old, weary and if unattended even dusty. But with a little effort, it could still sparkle, inspire and bring satisfaction. 

Spinning Wheels

Happened to re-connect with a few people I have worked with in the past in the last few months. These folks are about my age and in an ideal world they would like to retire and do something else. One of the reasons they have trouble pulling the trigger is the lack of a plan for that next phase of life. 

So they would stop pouring their time and energy into work and then do what?  Just not knowing that answer keeps people doing what they know to do. I can relate to that completely. There is this expectation (or should I call it hope) that at some point an epiphany will occur like it did to some of our lucky mutual friends. They found the right answer and have greatly improved the quality of their lives.

We tend to forget that most were not so lucky so they keep doing the tried and true even if it is hard to justify why that's needed. The other theme that came up for some of these people was compensation and a sense that it might be too much and based on that feeling alone, they are willing to work extra hard to assuage their "guilt". Some of these folks, I have known for a decade or longer. While I don't know what they exactly make but I am all but certain it is not to the indecent level of guilt inducing. I had to wonder if employers are subtly communicating this notion to keep morale high.

Based on what I hear from folks of a certain vintage these days, it seems like that they are choosing to stay put and spin their wheels as hard as they can to not be perceived as taking more than their fair share when in fact they are unclear on what "fair" looks like. The strife of youth fades over time for most people and they arrive at a point in their lives when the combination of higher income and lower responsibility gives them a sense of comfort. It almost seems as if people are not sure if that comfort is well-deserved so they try and remain angsty. 

Following Love

If the person was perfect for this job they could make 100K in four months and find something else to do another time. 

..They wake up thinking about tacos. They sleep to dream about tacos. In their opinion, every day should be Taco Tuesday.

If you fall into this second category, you’re an ideal candidate for McCormick’s first Director of Taco Relations...

The job description is a reflection of the idea in Marsha Sinetar's book Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow. Have never read the book because I don't believe the second part about money is true across the board. I have known many people doing what they love and more often than not, they don't think too hard about the money that comes through it-  their happiness is not related to fantastic remuneration. Such would be the case with the Director of Taco Relations maybe. They will have their ideal gig for a few months, make decent money and enjoy every hour of it. Other taco-related gigs may come and go over time. No matter what they do to pay the bills everyday, keeping that passion alive for tacos will only create happy opportunities in their life - money may not follow and that would be okay. 

Having Choice

Interesting essay on the gaps between perception and reality, the conviction of being free and actually being so. 

An enormous number of Americans have been persuaded to believe that they are freer in the abstract than, say, Germans or Danes precisely because they possess far fewer freedoms in the concrete. They are far more vulnerable to medical and financial crisis, far more likely to receive inadequate health coverage, far more prone to irreparable insolvency, far more unprotected against predatory creditors, far more subject to income inequality, and so forth, while effectively paying more in tax (when one figures in federal, state, local, and sales taxes, and then compounds those by all the expenditures that in this country, as almost nowhere else, their taxes do not cover).

The notion of having choice is generally a convoluted one at the individual and collective scale. The assortment of choices a person believes they have is already filtered by their tolerance for risk. I may be very attracted in abstract to the concept of someone who takes a couple of years off from their job without a plan, sells all their belongings and sets out to see the world. They are then transformed by that experience and find their true purpose in life, live happily ever after. There are many who have exactly gone down this path, but I never will. I have some choices too but this is not one of them. And that is just the start of it. Every fork in the road, people pick an option that is within their range further restricting options going forward. 

Maybe in America we are inclined to prefer some choices over others and that defines our overall quality of life. Maybe we prefer that we be hoisted by our own petard because that is a choice but refuse to have a "nanny state" look out for us as if we were incapable of decision-making. If that leads to poor health, insolvency and working multiple jobs just to get by, maybe that is choice we are capable of based on what we fear the most. 

Perfect Repartee

Reading about this word - jouska, reminded me of a story about my great grandmother that I have heard many times from various family members. She was forty years younger than my great grandfather, a widower with a son whose wife was older than my great grandmother. So she comes into this marriage with very little means, chosen by the much older rich man only because of her looks. They proceed to have six children of which one drowns in the river trying to swim with his older siblings. And then as expected, husband dies at 80 leaving a 40 year old widow with five kids to raise on her own. The step-son being a lawyer takes swift action to ensure none of his half-siblings inherit anything from their deceased father and the step-mother is turned into domestic help for his family in return for room and board for her and her children. This miserable life continues until my grand-father comes of age and starts earning a living. He rescues his mother and siblings as quickly as he can. 

But this process takes over a decade and my great grandmother is a broken soul by the time she experiences life as a free human being. Back to josuka - the story that was told about her is that of her sitting in the dark corner of the balcony on her wooden chair and replaying conversations with her step-son and his wife over and over. She would be fighting with them for hours, in a soft mumble, this time coming up with the perfect repartee, the iron-clad rebuttal even the lawyer could not break and so on. At some point, she would grow tired and retire to bed. If anyone asked her who she was talking to, she would always say no one. She never discussed those years of her life with anyone. Family picked up bits and pieces from these arguments she had with invisible adversaries in the dark corner of the balcony. I have seen the wooden chair in question and for many years it just sat where it always did. No one felt like they had the right to use it. 

Witch Hunting

The TX abortion law that was recently passed is the modern day witch-hunting. Some people feel so strongly about the issue that they would enlist the entire populace to track down women who choose to abort so they may be punished by denial of service. This is no different that labeling a woman a witch to procure a license to burn her on a stake. The idea that such a regressive law could be passed in this day and age is unfathomable and abhorrent. When such law is juxtaposed against the freedom to go unvaccinated and unmasked in the depths of a pandemic, it is complete insanity. The vigilante culture TX will promote is aggressive:

According to the law, private citizens can sue the physician who performed an abortion after the sixth week, as well as anyone who helped facilitate it, from counselors to anyone providing financial support for the procedure to someone who simply drove the woman to the clinic with the knowledge that she was getting an abortion.

The complainant can receive up to $10,000 in damage compensation if the accused is found guilty, on top of any legal fees, even if they don’t have any connection with the woman who received the abortion. Depending on the verdict, the court could enforce the collection of the debt, which could include seizing property if the person found guilty doesn’t have sufficient available funds to pay.

This means that, as of today, every Texan has a financial incentive to track down almost any abortion, since at least two-thirds of all abortions occur after the sixth week.

Imagine a situation where the woman is the victim of rape or incest and in desperate need of mental health support to cope with the twin tragedies of her assault and her inability to make the choice to abort. The person who counsels her in this context or even facilities the process is liable to have their assets seized for their crime. This is bizarre, inhumane and only makes us the object of pity and derision around the world. It's good to see some action to put an end to this madness. This is one of those times when news headlines and satire become one.

Learning Baggio

Watching Baggio: The Divine Ponytail was a great experience. It brought back memories of watching him play and following news about him - one among his legions of his fans. Between Baggio, Platini and Maradona there was a dazzling amount if star-power in football back in those days. I still enjoy watching the game but feel far more removed from the personality of the players which was a big part of the experience - that must have been a thing of adolescence and early youth. The movie tells the story of Baggio the man and the football player. The former I did not know much about and found fascinating.

A great success like his quite often a combination of rare talent (one in a million as his father says), huge obstacles overcome to build strength and some unshakable inner faith that propels the person in their darkest hour. It's instructive to see the role parents play in the shaping of such greatness. Roberto Baggio had a complex relationship with his father and yet it served as a force that shaped his career and destiny. Was the man an exemplary father? Maybe not. Was he able to connect Roberto to his full potential? Very likely. So it is with such mixed and even questionable blessings that extraordinary talent is able to shine in the world. It made me think about much minor talent not being able to reach potential because the parents did not create the right amount to tension to urge it on. It was either too much coddling or too much commandeering. 

Thinking Mackerel

Reading this poem about mackerels made me think about the use of words to turn things sublime. At my local grocery store, mackerels do lie side by side on ice, always the picture of perfection. They are one of my favorite fish so I do spend time looking at mackerel on ice but never did I think of them quite this way:

Splendor, and splendor,

and not a one in any way

distinguished from the other

—nothing about them

of individuality. Instead

they’re all exact expressions

of the one soul,

each a perfect fulfilment

of heaven’s template,

mackerel essence.