A Story To Tell, 2019

I wanted to share musings from this magnificent year with my friends and family. This was a year rich in introspection for me — I battled through developing a nervous system issue, left my career and path in finance, graduated business school, traveled, and started in a perfectly fitting role at an exciting technology company. It was a lot of life to squeeze into 12 months, but I wouldn’t trade it away. I’m glad to have gone through it; I’m happier now.

P.S. — this isn’t meant to be (overly) prescriptive, retrospective, or prospective. If you find a smile, or a moment of pause, then it’ll have been worth the share.

P.P.S. — it’d also be a timely opportunity to wish you and your family health, wealth, and peace in the coming years as we enter a new decade. Happy new year!

We need each other

This is one I get wrong all the time, but easily the most significant lesson I learned this year. There isn’t much meaning, in anything, without the relativity of having other people in this shared experience we call life.

We need each other not just on the micro-level, but on the macro-level, too. Civic duty feels like an antiquated concept in pop culture, and we need to change that. Our well-being depends on complex systems of man-powered work, i.e. health systems, power systems, water systems, emergency responses, transportation systems, etc. that help keep ~7.7 billion (!) of us alive everyday. Careers, business news, and scientific progress in these important sectors is given disproportionately little attention relative to their systemic importance.

Spending meaningful time in medical, educational, and enterprising institutions this year has made me understand that all of us are going to need to reinvest in civic mindedness in order to continue living well, communally. There is no free lunch, and civic engagement can can often be rewarding in both worldly and spiritual ways.

Qismat

Everything comes to us that belongs to us, if we create the capacity to receive it — Rabindranath Tagore

Once after prayer ceremonies in lower manhattan, a friend who would soon become an older bother and mentor told me the above quote. It really sent me on a ride. I leaned on this quote a lot coming out of questioning why hardship had (then, and ever) come my way.

It’s the second part of this quote that moves me. My interpretation of it is that we are, at all times, surrounded by truths and opportunities. Why then, do we unlock certain things at certain times? Because who we are, what we receive, and how we perceive are all variables and filters that are constantly changing throughout life. What is “coming to you” is a function of what you have been preparing to receive (perception is reality).

I chose to answer the question of why challenging things happen with a positive filter — because it is the lessons from struggle that I have been preparing to receive, and they have now come to me because they belong to me. Learning valuable lessons makes us stronger, healthier, and wiser — I am grateful for all of what has come to me.

Longevity

Since we might soon be able to engineer our desires too, perhaps the real question facing us is not ‘What do we want to become?’, but “What do we want to want?’ — Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens

In the face of brevity, I had to reflect on longevity. I realized that it’s a fundamentally new paradigm for humans. Life expectancy, population, and quality of life are not just at their high water marks, they’ve gotten there at an unparalleled pace. We haven’t just grown, we’ve grown the pace that we grow at, too (i.e. acceleration, velocity).

I’ve started to respect longevity as both an old and new concept. Though there is tremendous leverage gained from learning by metaphor, treating longevity as a new concept enables creative pursuits around how we view our lives. It helps us to not get stuck in paradigms of the past that may have been best suited for a different circumstance and magnitude of society. Longevity is a principle that we should approach with respect to what we have learned to date, with a keen and open eye to what is necessarily beyond the horizon.

Live your truth

The closer one gets to realizing his Personal Legend, the more that Personal Legend becomes his true reason for being — Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

I have advertised the book When Breath Becomes Air in almost every moderately deep conversation I’ve had this year. I couldn’t pick just one quote; the entire book made me think about the need to find personal priorities with what to do with my time. I’d be remiss to recap this year without reference to the book (even though I read it late last year).

I’m still learning about personal truth, identity, personality, and decision making. I know that I feel much more excited and work with vigor when I believe that my story (and therefore anyone’s story) has unique value. So for the time being, this has been a theme in my life and I invite discussions of view points on this topic over coffee, anytime.

Things are going to happen.

This year brought me nose-to-nose with how quickly, or suddenly, things can change. Interpersonal, intrapersonal, and natural calamities can, within an instant, affect our day, our week, or even our lives. In the face of what we cannot control, find strength in what we can control. Find joy in a smile, in a hug, in silver linings. There’s magic all around us, if we create the capacity to receive it.

Our most direct way of promoting healing and peace is to become mindful of our habits of judging and blaming. It is a brave activity, because to do this we must let go of our most familiar, comfortable reference points. In the moment of releasing blame, we step out of the story of self and other, the story of good self and bad self, and discover the spaciousness and tenderness of being alive. Blaming distances while acceptance connects. When we let go of blame, we open to the compassion that can genuinely transform ourselves and our world. — Tara Brach

Finally, I need to say thank you for supporting me and loving me; I feel grateful for you every day. I hope you continue to chase your dreams and find life in between the moments.

Keep g(r)o(w)ing,

Sohel