Sometimes I get too tired. Mentally and that affects me physically. In fact I have been trying to understand my true purpose. What is it that I am supposed to do here? Am I supposed to do what the company wants me to or do what I think the company desperately needs? The thing with this is that I know that I can do much more than what the company wants or expects me to do. Performing to expectations is difficult because the expectations are so dam low. So how does one motivate oneself to come to office and deliver on low expectations? I am sure I don’t want to deliver on these low expectations. I have to do better. My benchmarks are something I create on my own. Now this brings me to the interesting conundrum. How do I get up in the morning and push my self. What is my reason to live? What is it that makes me get up everyday, face all the pressure and push myself?
I thought I found a new ‘ikigai’. People. My people. I was always in love with my team. In fact many years ago I struck upon a mental formula. No matter how irritating the person or no matter how much the person and I are not likely to get along, always say to yourself – no, I must make this work. That is the only way to work. Sometimes great luck comes your way and you are blessed with a great team and sometimes you are not. And I can’t even take credit for great teams because I have in the past handpicked outstanding people and complete misfits. So I have no statistical evidence to prove my superior people picking skills. I might believe to have it but the truth is that I don’t know. Possibly what I can say is that the people that I tend to pick in the team are slightly better than average and definitely more aggressive than most. I tend to abhor meek employees at interviews.
So now I come in to office trying to mould this team, trying to create careers and mindsets for this team. Trying to push this team into doing better. That is something that drives me. The problem with the approach I have is that it seems to be arrogant. Who on earth am I to play God with this team. Why should I be the deliverance? What makes me qualified to do so? Is it in their interest that I do so? And do they even want it or ask for it?
To which I think possibly not. Possibly they don’t want it. Possibly they don’t ask for it. Possibly they even hate me for it. They probably don’t believe in it and possibly think of my attitude as condescending or overbearing. So while it works with some it completely becomes a cropper with others. I understand this and I don’t even have a great issue with this. What I do recognise is that I must not let this show up as arrogance. Come I have come to teach you. Sometimes I am sure I would be guilty of throwing this arrogance around, but I also realise that I must change. It must begin with deep introspection. The bigger thing is not the pain associated with dealing with criticism. That is still ok to handle. I have been made a villain many a times in the past and probably rightly so. The biggest challenge is the energy that something like this takes up, or should I suck up.
When you talk to someone and try and bring about change it not possible at this moment for me to take a disconnected stand. I am outside and helping you. How must I be away from it all and yet feel deeply. Every time I try and help someone move along, push them and urge them, I end up losing a bit of me. As if I have left a bit of me in every person in my team. That is where the trouble starts. Now by leaving a bit of me everywhere I am in effect tying my emotions to them. I am open to them. I am vulnerable to them and their growths, feelings, disappointments and such. How much emotion can I have?
That causes more stress than anything else. How do I love without attachment? How do I care with bothering about being cared in return? How do I speak the truth without worry that my words could be misconstrued? These are tough questions that I have no answers to. Jaininsm is interesting in a way that it says that at the highest level, the monk must not be bothered about teaching. He must live his life as he seems right and must not even have the desire to preach. He merely lives and his life serves as an example to those around, inspiring by mere presence and not by intending to inspire. Hmmm.
Wow. Can that be possible? Can one love so much so as to conquer love itself? Can one have so much faith in oneself? What about mere mortals like us? Can we achieve bits of this? Possibly yes. Can I simply state an axiom from time to time and let people drive their own meaning. Should I talk less when I teach? Should I leave people to find their own meaning in words that I found deep meaning in?
Its possible, isn’t it? When I teach Jispa science of mathematics I have a desire to be precise in my teaching and in her learning, but when we talk about other stuff, about behaviour or attitude; I let her get it herself. I talk much less and let a lot of things hang. Possibly I do that because she is still to young. But possibly there is a lesson in there somewhere. Must I merely state and leave things to interpretation. The biggest lessons one learns when understands the meaning of words oneself, through ones own discovery.
My gurus have been teaching much after I left their shadows. I have learnt by their absence much more than by their presence. In fact slowly slowly their truth has dawned upon me. By experience and by the wisdom that their words come back to haunt. They ring hard in my ears.
My yoga has suffered by my thoughts. I end up clearing my mind through the time I spend doing yoga. But that is not the ideal yoga. Yoga is being able to keep it all at bay. My yoga is my active period. Its when I can see clearly and think straight. But I know that the mind free of thought is most clear. I promise to try and not think. I should be clean of thought and of office and of life.
I think I have this desire to be understood and understand. Possibly I am asking too much. interestingly, right now I am reading the book The Moral Animal. This tries to explain our behaviour using Darwin’s natural selection. Hopefully I would be better placed to understand myself. Hopefully I might get a better explanation of what I desire, think and act. Why we do such things. Why we humans are so queer. Hopefully that would bring me to some senses. Hopefully it would put my mind at ease.
This blog has been quite strongly introspective. And I have been noxiously short of mental energy right now. The day is starting and a lot is left to be done. Hopefully I would be able to channel my energy right. Hope fully I would be able to make some difference to my life starting today.
How many times I have used ‘hopefully’ and ‘possibly’ on this blog? I know I use that often. And the reason I do so is because I don’t know the truth. And the density of these words reflect my mental state. But you know what – one of the traits of mine that I truly thank god for having – resilience. I know whatever I get I will be back. No matter how bad it looks, I will bounce. BOUNCE BOUNCE. That is good. Yes. The ability of a crazy ball to bounce back. To use the spin every time to spin like crazy and in opposite directions. The more you spin it the crazier it moves around. I love that analogy. I am a crazy ball. I will be back.
I started this blog with a slight hunch in my shoulders and a certain loss of energy and I am ending it with some verve in my breath. The crazy ball is back. Wow. Let’s see what I do today? Thank you blog. It great to write this stuff. I don’t even care who reads it. I don’t most would. It’s too long and too emotional. I don’t think Jispa might also read it too much. I don’t anybody but I would get any lessons from it. But the fact that I am writing is helping me clear my own thoughts, my own actions.
Let’s see if I can run through my new found enlightenment without running afoul of too many people.
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