Damn it, let's give our kids a shot at choosing exploration

In retrospect, this isn’t the vocation I was supposed to have. It was put on me, or at least started, by an act of God. But my path within the universe of organizations  - a mix of strategy, management, public service, and innovation - was never supposed to happen.

I had always, in my heart of hearts, set my mind on space. I knew I would probably never be an astronaut. For a multitude of reasons I would’ve never had a path to the launchpad - being an Air Force pilot or bench scientist wasn’t me. I won a scholarship to Space Camp when I was in 4th grade and I got to be the Flight Director for one of our missions. And from then on, I dreamed of being on a team that reached outward and put a fingerprint on the heavens.

Five years later, a mosquito was never supposed to bite my brother Nakul -when I was 13 - thousands of miles away in India. That mosquito was never supposed to give him Dengue Fever. He was never supposed to be patient zero of the local outbreak and die from it. None of that was ever supposed to happen, but it did.

And, when he died, I got hung up on something. I didn’t get caught up on curing the illness itself. I didn’t feel called to become a biologist, epidemiologist, or a physician. What I couldn’t for the life of me understand is how in the 20th century, with all its wealth and medical progress, could Nakul not receive the treatment - which humankind had the capability to administer, by the way - he needed to survive Dengue Fever? How was Dengue Fever still a thing, in the first place? How could governments and health care systems not have figured this shit out already?

The problem, as I saw it then, was institutions. His death, and millions of others across the world, could be prevented with institutions that worked better. And the vocation that called out to me shifted, and here I am.

—

Watching kids watch Christmas movies is interesting. You can see their body language, facial expressions and language react to the imagination and wonder they’re observing. Their bodies seem like they’re preparing to explore, just like their minds are. They light up, appropriately enough, like Christmas lights. It’s really something to see a child imagining. 

For our boys, right now, anything in the world is possible. Any vocation is on the table for them. They can dream of exploring. They can dream of applied imagination. They can dream of storytelling and art. They can dream of so much. At this age, I think they’re supposed to.

What occurred to me, while watching them watch Christmas movies, is that I don’t want them to be drawn into the muck like I was. 

I was supposed to be exploring space, but plans changed and now I’m firmly planted on earth, in the universe of human organizations. I am definitely not charting new territory, rather, I’m fixing organizations that should never have been broken in the first place. I am not an explorer, I am a reformer. There was no choice for me, the need for reform here on earth was too compelling for me to contemplate anything else.

But for our children, mine and yours too, let’s give them a choice. Let’s figure out why our institutions seem to be broken and do something different. Let’s figure out why our social systems seem to be broken and do something different. Let’s not let institutions be a compelling problem anymore. Let’s take that problem off the table for them. Let’s complete this job of reform - both of our organizations and our individual character - so they don’t have to.

Maybe some of our children will want to follow in our footsteps and be reformers, but damn it, let’s give them a chance at choosing exploration instead.

I hope our kids are not happy, but rather happy enough

I think there’s a shift happening with Millennials that is still mostly invisible. It’s in how we’re raising our children. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think so. 

My parents, aunts, and uncles had a similar sentiment  when they described what they wanted for us kids. They wanted us to be happy. Since having our two sons, I’ve come to realize I don’t want that. I don’t want them to be happy. I want them to be happy enough.

Yes, I do want our kids be comfortable, safe, healthy, respected, and be able to enjoy some amount of luxury in their lives. But there was a time in my twenties where I had those things, and not only was I miserable, it was a waste.

Yes, when I was a young adult, I had a well-paid, high-status job. It afforded me a comfortable, secure, lifestyle and a lot of fun nights out at the pub. I exercised a lot. I had time to do whatever I wanted. So I was indeed happy.

But it turned out not to be the life I wanted. Every year since my father passed, my life has become harder. Like, every single year Robyn and I think it can’t get any more intense, and then it does. We’ve come to expect more pain, so to speak, with each passing year.

But even though life is more painful, difficult, demanding, frustrating, exhausting, and less “happy”, it’s somehow better. It’s because we’re having to make sacrifices - for our children, pup, family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and clients. All this suffering brings something, but I wouldn’t call it happiness, and it’s not even always a feeling of joy. It’s something that I prefer to happiness, but I don’t know what the word for it is.

Now of course, this situation would not be possible if we were starving, depressed, ill, wounded, freezing, wet, or alone. So to have a shot at this graceful suffering, we have to avoid the senseless stuff. We have to be comfortable enough. Safe enough, healthy enough, respected enough, content enough. Happy enough. Senseless suffering makes graceful suffering impossible.

Please, God, let our children’s suffering be graceful instead of senseless.

But I see the allure of wishing “happiness” upon our children. Seeing our kids unhappy - sick, despondent, or in unrelenting pain - is torturous to me. Literally, the best way for someone to torture me would be to hurt my children. Honestly, I am on the edge of weeping when one of ours just has “tummy troubles”. And so the sentiment of a person wanting their kids to be happy makes sense to me, because it’s a way to avoid torture.

At the same time, I’ve lived a life of “happiness” and comfort, and I didn’t want it. I don’t think our kids will want that, either. So I pray for them to not be happy, but happy enough. Maybe I’m the only one who feels this way, but I think it’s possible that I’m not.

What am I doing with my surplus?

My feelings about "privilege" are complicated.

On the one hand, the data is clear that certain factors that we are born into - like race, gender, sexual orientation, zip code, etc. - are predictive of how healthy, wealthy, and at peace we become.

On the other hand, those with "privilege" still have to avoid screwing up the privilege they have to become healthy, wealthy, and at peace. And that's not trivial, either.

On the other hand, privilege is used as leverage to exploit those with less money and power. That exploitation is wrong.

On the other hand, I can't and don't want to live in a perpetual state of guilt, apology, doubt, and shame about any "privilege" I have. I didn't choose to be born into privilege or non-privilege, just like everybody else.

So what do I do with these complicated feelings?

It seems just as wrong to skewer people with privilege as it is to suggest privilege is a conspiracy. And having some sort of atonement about privilege through acknowledgement or "checking" privilege seems okay, I guess. But I honestly don't know the material, sustained effects it has on our culture. It doesn't seem like enough to simply become aware of privilege.

I've been thinking about this idea of "privilege" lately because of Thanksgiving. I feel extremely lucky to have steady work, work that doesn't require leaving my house, and health insurance. I have a family that I love and loves me back. I have friends and neighbors that I love, and love me back. When people have asked me, "what are you grateful for this Thanksgiving?" these are the things I've talked about.

Talking with and listening to my brother-in-law on Thanksgiving, inspired a different path.

It was helpful to replace the world privilege with "surplus". I have a lot of surplus. I was born into a life of surplus. There are other people who were also born into a life of surplus.

Nobody chooses what surplus they were born into.

But everybody chooses what they do with the surplus they have.

What am I doing with my surplus?

Am I trying to get more? Am I trying to shame others because they have more surplus? Am I trying to reallocate surplus after the fact? Am I trying to convince myself that I deserve the surplus I have? Am I using my surplus to enrich my own life and that of my friends and family with ostentatious luxuries? Am I wasting my surplus? Am I trying to acknowledge and atone for my surplus? Am I trying to stockplie it? Am I trying to bequeath it?

Or am I trying to use the surplus I have to enrich the lives of others?

I honestly don't know if this is the best answer on what to do with these complicated feelings about privilege. And maybe there doesn't have to be one "answer" in the first place.

But the best I can come up with is not worrying so much about privilege itself, and who has more of it than me. To me, it makes more sense to worry about whether I am enriching the lives of others.

"To who much is given, much is expected" is an old idea, but it seems like an enduring and worthwhile principle to apply to this befuddling idea of privilege.

Dreams, from joy and the conviction of their own souls

Raking leaves is one of those chores I don’t want to do until I’m doing it.

Until I’m with rake in hand, I’ve forgotten the crispness and soft chill of the air, and the sound of the brushing leaves. It’s sweatshirt weather. But I also forget that sweatshirt weather is also “thinking weather.”

As I raked yesterday, I escaped to thinking about dreams. And my subconscious drew me not to thinking about what my dreams are, but rather, “what influenced me to have the particular dreams that I do?” And for me, so much of my dreams are wrapped up into my parents’ dreams for me.

To be a “big man” or a man of great community respect. And I wondered why they had those dreams for me, and I think it must have been, at least in part, because of how they were treated when they arrived in this country. As immigrants, I don’t imagine they ever felt accepted or welcomed, at least for the first few decades of their arrival.

And when you’re an “outsider” respect and wealth protects you from harm - whether that is rude service or dirty looks in public, or more unfortunately, a brick through your window. I imagine my parents’ pain is something that influenced me to want the dreams that I wanted early in life. Pain is a powerful influence.

But my dreams were also influenced by the broader culture whose collective opinion skews toward a hedonistic, lowest common denominator and accepted malaise . Let’s call those the dreams of “the herd”.

The herd wants me to hold its dreams as my own, because it’s a mechanism of justification. It’s harder to criticize the herds hedonistic aspirations if they convince me (and others) to be part of it. The more people the herd co-opts, the more their dreams - however dishonorable they may be - become normal. Just like pain, the herd is a powerful influence.

So early in life my dreams were influenced by two things, avoiding pain and succumbing to the herd’s mentality. That’s where “I want to be a Senator” or a “social entrepreneur” came from - those were two dreams that pain and the herd led me, specifically, to.

And I’ve let go of those dreams, not because I grew out of those dreams, but because I grew out of pain and the herd’s mentality. Mostly through luck and blessing, some very special friends and family helped me to discover joy and my own soul. It’s a journey less like climbing a mountain, and more like a long, lonely walk.

It’s a journey I am still on, but my dreams are now about a growing family, goodness, the honor of public service, and sacrifice for a community bigger than myself. I still fall into the traps laid before me by pain and the herd, I am after all a mortal man. But these dreams - borne of joy and what lies within the core of me - are a far cry from the version of myself that was nakedly ambitious, longing to be on the Crain’s 20 in their 20’s list.

Honestly though, the point isn’t about me, nor should it be.

The point is this: I can only hope - for our children, and the children of our friends, family, and neighbors - that the generation up next spends less of their life having their dreams influenced by pain and the herd than I did. I hope, deeply, that more of their dreams, and really their lives, are instead influenced by joy and the convictions of their own soul.

Here’s how I’ve been thinking about how we do that.

Preventing violence and madness, through abundance, strong institutions, and goodness

If we live in a community, rather than isolated in the woods fending for ourselves, conflict is inevitable. We are all imperfect humans, after all.

And in my mind that leads me to suggest one, bedrock aspiration that we all must have to live in a community: the conflicts we can’t avoid are settled without violence and a dissolution into madness.

But how?

To do that, I think we must create three supra-public goods: abundance, strong institutions, and goodness.

Abundance is important because it creates surplus. Surplus is important because it prevents us from squabbling over the fundamental resources we need to survive and have a life beyond mere subsistence. It also creates the space for generosity, culture, scholarship, art, and human flourishing.

Strong institutions are important because they create norms. Norms are important because they provide guardrails to ensure nobody behaves so peculiarly that they cause widespread and unbridled harm. Norms are also important because they provide accepted processes for mediating conflict when it inevitably happens.

Goodness is important because it creates trust. Trust is important because it prevents conflict in the first place. When people are good to each other, they give each other the benefit of the doubt and are more likely to let things slide or work out an issue, rather than skipping straight to punching their lights out. Trust is also nice because it reduces the need for concentrated bodies of power to enforce the norms laid out by institutions.

The big eureka moment for me is that we really need to grow in all three areas simultaneously. One or even two of this three-legged stool is enough.

A society without abundance is starving and fragile. A society without strong institutions can’t ever grow in size or manage the challenges of diversity. A society without goodness is lonely and without meaning.

To live in a society that resolves conflict without violence or dissolving into madness, these are the three things we - whether that “we” is us individually, our friends and families, or the formal organization we are part of - must all be trying to bring into the world: abundance, strong institutions, and goodness.

And again, we need all three. Not even two are enough to create a world where our children’s dreams are borne from joy and the convictions of their own souls, rather than from pain and our lesser-than-honorable impulses.

Every culture is misunderstood

Most people don’t understand the depth of Indian culture. For example…

Most people don't understand that there’s much more to Diwali than lighting pretty candles. Most people don't understand that there's more to yoga than it being a good "work out" with an emphasis on breathing and stretching. Most people don't understand that there are a LOT of Indians (and Indian-Americans) who don't work in medicine, IT, or engineering.

Most people don't know about the rich tradition of art, music, poetry, philosophy, theology, and governance on the Indian sub-continent. Most people don't understand that the range of our cuisine is so diverse and wide, that saying "I like Indian food" is similar to saying "I like ancestrally-white people food".

Our culture goes much deeper than the caricature that most other people believe it to be.

I assume that virtually any group feels similarly sometimes. The sentiment of "our culture and people aren't stupid, you just don't understand their depth" is not unique to people of any descent - Indian or otherwise.

But I've learned two things about this:

One, if I believe any culture or community is dumb, antiquated, or backwards - i probably don't understand that culture's depth.

And two, nobody is going to understand the depth of my culture - whether it's the culture of India, America, Michigan, Detroit, or even our family - unless I welcome them with open arms and share something beyond the caricature they already have in their mind.

Your Dada's American Dream

It is time I told you boys the story of how we came to America.

Your Dada was the first of our Indian family to arrive here, by way of Ottawa and Chicago. But similar to the histories of many immigrants, his story doesn't begin in North America, it begins on the shores of a distant land, halfway across the world.

Bombay is a city on the sea. I have never been there, but I have heard of its vista many times. Your Dada loved the sea, although I'm not sure whether he's always loved the water or if he began to love it because he moved to Bombay. Which is not where our family is from, by the way - we are not Mumbaikars, ancestrally - but it is where the tale of our family coming to America begins.

Your Dada was at university for engineering there. He was in a hallway, probably on his way to some class, and a forgotten piece of paper was strewn across the floor ahead of him. This paper, at least from the way he told me the story, made quite an impression on him. As it turns out, the paper was a list, of colleges and universities in the United States and Canada that offered scholarships for foreign students.

And the idea to leave India in search of a better life, was probably a seed in his head before this moment. But this forgotten piece of paper is what caused that seed to take root, strongly, in his mind.

Your Anil Dada was a longtime friend of my Papa. They went to school and college together. And Anil Dada once told me that Papa's nickname among his school friends was Ghoda. It's the hindi word for horse. And that's what your Dada was, a work horse. Once that paper came across his path, and that idea of a scholarship rooted in his mind, it was only a matter of time before he got here.

And despite your Dada facing extraordinarily difficult circumstances, here we are.

If you could ask him yourself about why he came here, as I have tried to, he'd tell you that he came here "for a better life." I've thought many years about what he meant. It's a haunting thing to wonder - about what drives your father - because it is after all, an inevitable part of what drives his sons.

When he said a better life, I think he meant prosperity. And part of that means wealth. But prosperity - in the way I think your Dada meant it, and the way I mean it here in this letter - is not only wealth. It is much more than that.

Prosperity is thriving. It is reaching the height of our potential as human beings. Prosperity is creating surplus, and then having the honor of spreading it humbly and generously to others. Prosperity is what’s beyond the essentials needed to have our physical bodies survive - it is the jewels of knowledge, culture, art, virtue, and the audacity to dream of a better life. For ourselves, yes, but more importantly for ourselves and others.

In America, prosperity is intervening to end a world war. It is vaccines and splicing the gene. It is going to the moon and brokering peace on earth. It is bringing children out of hunger and into love. It is the freedom to think beyond our daily bread and our tired and our poor. It is seeking to understand the mysteries of our universe.

American prosperity, I believe, is so much bigger than riches and spoils. American prosperity is the idea of creating the surplus we need so that we can then set our sights higher: on challenging the injustices of the present and enriching the future we may never ourselves benefit from, but others might. This unique notion of American prosperity - a prosperity that is for ourselves and others is what I think your Dada thought of when he contemplated a better life. A dream he ventured across the ocean and into an unknown land to be part of.

Because in America we are not just handed a brush and asked to paint something, we as a people, are driven to create the canvas on which others, namely our children, can paint. In America, we are called not just to be the consumers of prosperity, but to also be its producers.

Prosperity for ourselves and others.

I tell you all this because yesterday was an interesting day.

Yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris became the President and Vice President-elect of the United States, our country.

This is what your Dadi said to me in a text message last night:

Me: Did you watch Biden’s speech?
Dadi: Yes. Biden & Harris both speech was outstanding. I am happy. First time in my life I enjoyed president results.
Me: It’s crazy how much of a difference it feels because our VP is half Indian. It feels like we belong here now.
Dadi: Yes beta. You, Bo & Myles will touch the sky in this country. I see that. Papa’s dream will come true.

This week, 74 Million Americans asked someone who looks like you, and who looks like me, and who looks like mommy to serve the nation. 74 Million.

But why I tell you both this is not because I want to emphasize that some barrier has been broken and a glass ceiling has been shattered, though it has. I want to tell you what that ceiling shattering means.

It would be easy for us to feel today that this ceiling shattering is an opportunity for us individually to grow and thrive and become more prosperous, because an invisible barrier is now gone. That the broken ceiling is for us.

That is not the lesson of today.

The lesson of the day is that there is no more doubt that we belong here, and that does provide us more opportunity. But there are no more excuses to be made out of not belonging, either. We can no longer claim to feel that we don't belong and let it be a reason we don't contribute.

The lesson of today - with the shattered glass of broken ceilings - is that we have an invitation and obligation to live out the broad, ever expanding notion of American prosperity - a dream your Dada risked everything for - not just for ourselves, but for ourselves and others.

Whose shoulders am I standing on?

I stand on the shoulders of many.

My parents, my wife, my high-school teachers and club advisers, my professional mentors, civil servants that have worked in my community, scholars who have created knowledge I learned, my friends, my grandparents, veterans of war, veterans of peace, artists, kind strangers, and probably many more that I don’t know.

When asking myself, “whose shoulders am I standing on?” it compels me to keep pushing through adversity. Because, how could I insult all those who lifted me up by giving up now?

But it also raises another question in my mind, “who am I putting on my shoulders?”

Both questions are worth asking. Spending five minutes with those questions brought me to a place of peace, gratitude, and service.

How we make big decisions in our household

This is how we, meaning Robyn and I, make decisions in our household. It’s a technique that I learned from Prof. Maxim Sytch during our intro Management and Organizations class in business school. In his course, we learned about how to make good decisions, even though we humans have cognitive biases. It’s a process.

The key to making good decisions is to think about the criteria we should be using to make the decision, before evaluating the decision itself.

To this day, it’s one of the most foundational and important skills I’ve ever learned. Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Capital, talks about this concept a lot too.

Lately, I have been thinking about how we make voting decisions (we generally make them poorly), and I will dig into that later - without advocating for a particular candidate. But before that, let’s talk about buying a house to setup the concept.

How we bought a house

To buy a house could’ve seen a bunch of houses and made a pro and con list with the ones we liked. The problem with that approach is that not all pros and cons are equally important. And when you make a list of pros and cons, it’s hard not to think of each factor as being equivalent.

If we hadn’t thought about which factors mattered most, in advance, we would’ve been susceptible to getting hustled by someone trying to sell their house on the factors they wanted to emphasize, rather than the ones we cared most about.

More concretely, this scorecard is we used to make our decision:

This logic is fairly simple. We created a list - in advance - of all the factors of the house we wanted to score against (not all are displayed here). As we attended showings of each house, we scored each house on a simple scale of 0 to 3.

Deciding the scoring criteria in advance was helpful, because important things like “commute”, “proximity to greenspace”, and “neighbors” were not obvious to us as important considerations until we started making a list.

You can’t see this directly from the image, but there’s a very simple weighting to create the weighted average. The average of all the house features (like bathroom power outlets, move-in ready, etc.) are weighted at 50%. Then our very subjective criteria of “feels like home” (which was a feeling of coziness, and being able to imagine raising a family there) was 50%.

This is not a perfect scorecard. In fact, in retrospect it’s quite flawed because the weighting is not specific or particularly robust.

But notice this: check out the scoring of houses D and E. If we looked only at the average of house features, house E was a better choice. When we included the “feels like home” weighting, house D was a better choice. And guess what we ended up picking - house D. If not for this scorecard, we might’ve ended up in the wrong house!

Either way, house E would’ve been a lovely place to live, but we often think how lucky we are to have landed where we did. The scorecard prevented us from making a lesser choice, based on the factors that mattered to us.

Job Hunting

The most recent time I used this decision-making approach (and actually wrote out a scorecard) was when I was job hunting. Here’s the scorecard I used then:

You can see that this scorecard is a little more robust. Every factor is individually weighted. I started by scoring my current job, and then all other alternatives. And, thank goodness I listed out a set of weighted criteria because:

• There was a time I was thinking about taking over my family’s small business. It was really attractive because it was lucrative and I could be an entrepreneur. But when I scored it, it became obvious that I would never be able to see my family because I’d have to commute 1.25 hours every day. The scorecard prevented me from making a switch for the wrong reasons.

• During my job search, I found a really cool job that I had a good shot at. But when I scored it, even though it sounded great and was pretty high status, it was a bad fit because of skill set. When I became really honest with myself (Robyn helped me do that) I walked away from the final round interview. The scorecard prevented me from making a switch out of desperation and because my ego really wanted a flashy title.

• You can see some greyed out factors. Those were factors I had from previous job searches. By being specific about factors, I realized that my life had changed and that some factors didn’t apply anymore. It was okay to use new criteria for a new situation! This realization was huge.

The moral of these two stories is simple - thinking about the factors to consider and putting a weight on them in advance was a way to make a less-biased decision. In our house decision or my job search, we could’ve talked ourselves into anything - so much played into our biases, egos, and the expectations of others we felt we had to live up to. Making the scorecard thoughtfully in advance helped us keep our heads right when the pressure was on.

The Lesson

Robyn and I now have repeated this process over and over, every time we make an important decision. We don’t start with the decision. We start with asking ourselves, “what are the criteria we should use when making this decision? What are the most important criteria?”. We learned that this was a way that made it much more likely that we’d make a good decision.

We used this approach when deciding when we would send our kids back to day care (or not). We used this approach when deciding how to negotiate interpersonal conflict with family and friends. The decision, we learned, is all in the criteria and the weightings. Once we debate those, we quickly figure out what data we still need to make a decision. Once we plug those data gaps, and put them into our decision scorecard, the decision becomes very easy.

And now that we’ve put this approach of really debating criteria into regular practice, it’s easier to apply the approach, on the fly, for littler decisions.

In fact, if you want to give this approach a test run, here’s something to try. The next time you’re choosing a basic item while grocery shopping (like soup, salad dressing, or pasta sauce) try to lay out some criteria and weights. It will feel oddly challenging, but the results of your reflection may surprise you.

The Lesson for Voting

As I said at the top, I’ve been thinking a lot about this for voting. The most important parts of this post are already covered, so if you’re not interested in hearing about how this applies to voting, please stop now. Thank you for reading this far, if you have done so.

—

It seems to me that for the vast majority of my life I debated the pros and cons, and perhaps policy stances, when deciding who to vote for. Which as we saw above, is not a great decision making process because it’s pretty easy to fall into my own biases. This election, I tried something different. Let’s take the presidential race for example.

I knew that I would be biased for/against certain candidates. So I forced myself to think about the criteria to vote for President in advance. I didn’t do a formal scoring on a piece of paper, but here’s a representation of my rough model (without weights):

• Executive / Managerial Skill - will they be able to effectively run the executive branch?

  • Can they pick a competent team to fill appointments?

  • Are they able to hold other managers accountable for results?

  • Are they able to cast a clear vision for the organization?

  • Do they seem to understand operations, metrics, scorecards, and other managerial systems?

  • Do they even care about their role as the chief executive of a workforce with hundreds of thousands of people?

• Political Skill - will they be able to form coalitions with the Congress, the States, industry, interest groups, and other nations to solve important problems?

  • Are they able to build rapport with stakeholders and constituents?

  • Do they understand how to use public politics, the press, and the bully pulpit effectively?

  • Do they understand public opinion and how to navigate it?

  • Do they have a demonstrated past of forming effective coalitions?

• Character and Integrity - are they fit to wield tremendous amounts of power?

  • Are they going to follow the law? (e.g., others won’t abide by the law if the President doesn’t)

  • Do they embody the virtues and culture I hope for the whole country to have?

  • Will they do the right thing, even when it’s difficult or not convenient? Do they have the courage do what’s right, even if it means being unpopular?

  • Do they admit when they are wrong, adjust, adapt, move on, and do better next time?

  • Are they able to have good judgement during a crisis?

• Intent - assuming they are able to accomplish results ethically, would they move the country in a direction that I agree with?

  • Do they prioritize effective government?

  • Do they prioritize government integrity?

  • Do they prioritize long-term problems like infrastructure, climate, R&D, and budget?

  • Do they see the world through the lens of freedom, welfare, and American families thriving?

I thought about what my scorecard of criteria was for weeks. I honestly considered both candidates (I hope). And I came to a decision. And, I had a much different set of criteria for other races, because the criteria I would use to evaluate a Senator, a Judge, a University Regent, or a Prosecutor is much different than what I would use for the presidency.

I don’t say all this to try to convince anyone to vote for a certain candidate for any office (I would happily do that in person, and if you know me, you’ve probably voted already anyway so I’ve missed my opportunity even if that’s what I wanted to do).

What I would suggest though is that the lesson of buying a house and job hunting applies to voting. What we should be debating is not individual choices (and getting into nasty fights about those candidates), we might do better by debating what the right criteria are. What I would hope is that you challenge my criteria of factors as being correct or bogus, and submit your own criteria to the same scrutiny.

That’s the kind of debate I want to seed. It’s what I think would move us out of pettiness and polarization. Actual candidates matter, but maybe it would advance the conversation more if we put individual candidates aside for a minute and talked about our scorecards - and then tried to thoughtfully learn from and persuade each other about what we think the correct criteria should be.

Talking about decision criteria has completely transformed how Robyn and I make decisions in our marriage and for our family, I suspect that it could have similarly transformative effects in our civic lives.

We get to watch things grow

How do I live?

How do I live without you?

Will I ever?

—

These are the three questions. Making sense of these is the challenge of our lives. I know you know this, but I wanted to say them anyway. Out loud, so that they’re more real. So that we can confront them. Maybe together we can figure them out, enough at least.

How do I live?

What kind of man do I want to be? Should I be? What does it mean to be a husband, father, citizen, and strategist? What is my calling? What is my purpose? Why am I here? Now that I am here, what do I do? How do I act? What is my duty, my dharma? I want to be good, but what does that mean?

How do I live without you?

There were days that I thought I would never meet you. So many nights out at the bar, wondering where you were. And then you were, and we were. I knew you were somewhere, but for those hard years - where were you? And now that you’re here, and we’re married, and have sons, and a home together…I can’t even imagine…how do I live without you? I don’t know if I ever could. If I had to, how would I even start?

Will I ever?

At some point, I will die. I don’t know when it will be. Will it be before you? After you? Before or after the boys? Will I ever have to live without you?

—

It is worth trying to make sense of these questions, even though I’m not sure that we ever will, fully. We’ll just do the best we can. We’ll be able to make peace with them, I think. And we will hopefully have many days and nights together to talk about them; think about them.

—

Scene 1, Brotherly Love

I want you boys to know what you both were like together this year. Bo, you’re about to turn three years old. Myles, you just started crawling. And it is one of the joys of my life to see you two together, in brotherly love.

Yesterday, you both were playing together on the floor in the family room. Side by side. Brother next to brother. And someone said something, and you both started hugging each other. It was just what you did, even though Myles was barely able to hold himself up, he just hugged himself into his brother’s arms.

it was not planned, or prompted, or staged. It was an involuntary response. Bo, you love to help your brother to laugh. And Myles, nobody makes you laugh like your brother does.

I think by seeing it up close, I finally understand a little bit of what it meant by the phrase brotherly love. It gives me a deep peace to know that you both have this love, as it is one I always wished for. I have it now, through you both.

It is one of the loves that is pure. It is special. I am deeply grateful to have it residing in our home, in your two boys.

—

Scene 2, Stolen Moments

These days we have to steal away moments together. We haven’t been on a date, maybe in 10 months until this week. We went to your company’s drive-in movie event. We stole away for just a few hours. And it was lovely (even though you thought Ghostbusters was weird).

One of my favorites is when we steal away a little dance in the kitchen, usually after the kids are in bed - between when I wash dishes and you fold laundry. A little song, a little dance, a little kiss, and an “I love you”…that’s what we steal away and keep safe to remind us of different times, and to make new memories with old songs.

And yesterday, we stole away a special few hours. It was a special occasion (it being Saturday night will always be enough) so we opened up that cask ale bottle we’ve been saving for a few weeks. We snuck into the loveseat on the other side of the room that doesn’t face the TV, and we just talked. We stole away a few hours. Talked about our boys, our lives, our hopes, and what we’ve been feeling lately.

And we’ll not remember exactly what we said past tomorrow, probably. But we’ll remember how it felt. Because it felt like together. We stole that feeling from just being part of our forgotten history. And it was lovely.

—

I write all these scenes from our week to make a broader point, so let me make it before I lose your attention, even though I’m lucky that you still listen to me even when you ought to be bored instead.

Those three questions, the really deep ones: how do I live, how do I live without you, and will I ever, are ones that frighten me. They make me want to stop time, so that we can just stay in these blessed moments forever, and we never have to think about them again.

But these scenes from our week also put me at peace, because they reminded me we get to watch things grow. We get to watch our boys learn, get bigger, figure out their mistakes, make jokes, fall in all different kinds of love. And we get to watch our marriage grow old, and become distinguished and deeper as the years pass.

We get to watch things grow, and I say all this to say, I think that’s a fair trade for having to struggle with the hardest questions. Because even though we can’t stop time, we will eventually die, and we don’t know when - we get to watch things grow.

Terran address to the 3rd Symposium of Intragalactic Cooperation

Address to the 3rd Symposium of Intragalactic Cooperation, Earth Date: October 11, 3020.

Friends, it is a great honor to be addressing this esteemed body on the occasion of the 3rd Symposium of Intragalactic Cooperation. Prior to the beginning of my remarks, your interstellar translators were to set to English, which is one of the classic languages of Earth - the home planet of my species, located in the Terran system.

It thought it fitting to address you in this way, because I will be sharing with you the last 1000 Earth-years of my species’ history. Why? Because the trajectory of my species in this time is a fitting metaphor for the important decisions we are about to make as we sign the accords which outline the principles all our species have agreed to as we engage in trans-galactic exploration for the first time.

1000 years ago was the beginning of our 21st century of demarcated history. My species did not realize it at the time, but we had been deteriorating as a civilization for nearly one thousand years. The 21st century was was when my species finally starting bearing the costs of that millennia, which we now call the age of subjugation.

That millennium of subjugation was when my species came of age. We grew the population of our home planet into the Billions. We made pathbreaking progress in science, physics, philosophy, and art. To terrains living in those times, it seemed like that our species had reached a pinnacle point of thriving.

But it was not necessarily an era of thriving. There were religious wars. And then wars for power, wealth, and planetary domination. Later, we began to subjugate our living environment - our atmospheric gases, our liquids, and our solid naturally occurring elements. We harnessed the power of atoms and made explosive weapons, which are primitive by today’s standards but were capable of destroying our home world when stockpiled.

And then in the late 21st century, the millennium of subjugation pushed our species to the brink of extinction. Our environment, our politics, and our morals were pushing every person on our home planet to the brink of violence, starvation, or both.

But what also started occurring in the middle of the 21st human century was rapid progression in our understanding of information computing. We started to see the beginnings of what our species called “artificial intelligence".

And what saved our species from the brink of extinction was not the computational power we harnessed, but the cultural understanding.

Terrans, as you know, are some of the most emotional and irrational beings in the galaxy. We are messy, volatile, and downright nutty. We do not possess the physical strength, intellect, logic, or discipline of any of the species represented in this chamber today. And I say that as a proud terran myself.

What we are, however, is imaginative. We have tremendous capability to envision what does not yet exist - however illogical it is. In fact, our imaginations are at their best when we are.

Which brings me back to artificial intelligence. It gave us a quantum leap in information computing power, yes, but it’s most transformative effect on our species was to make us understand what made us unique and special in the galaxy. We could not out-reason the computers we built. We could not out-compute it.

But when contrasting ourselves with information computers, we realized what our souls and emotions were capable of. Advancing information computing technology, surprisingly made us understand what it meant to be terran (or “human” as it was said in those days) more than any other development in the history of our species.

When pushed to the brink of extinction in the late 21st century, my species finally realized that we were never good at subjugating, or even built for it - we were made to imagine.

And all across our planet, we started imagining. Our planetary government stopped every new activity for 10 Earth years and spent a decade imagining what the next millennium could look like for our species, so that we would not repeat the mistakes of our history.

And what a millennium it has been, it has exceeded our wildest dreams. In the past millennium we have established peaceful worlds across our stellar system, we have made contact with all of your species, some of which that have been space-faring civilizations for tens of thousands of Earth years.

And now, all our species, together, have explored the galaxy, peacefully for the past five hundred years. We are discovering the origins of the universe itself. We are doing something my species could have never even contemplated 1000 years ago.

And here we are, today, on the eve of the signing of the accords which will govern how we - for the first time - venture outside our galaxy. Even though we now know that those galaxies could be wildly different than our own - down to the very physics that have prevailed as truth in our galaxy for billions of Earth years.

And on the eve of this most remarkable occasion, I share the history of my species with you to illustrate that audacious goals are irrational by their very definition. They are laughable. They are unbelievably scary. But in these times of extraordinary circumstance, the lesson my species has learned - when we were on the brink of inevitable extinction, when we felt most pressured to be practical and modest - is that what we must do, even though it is foolish, irrational, and scary is to imagine.

And I speaking as the representative of of 35 Billion terrans across this galaxy, suggest to you that if we let our imaginations reach far and wide, when it feels most ludicrous, we can explore the next galaxies, together, and discover unimaginable beauty, prosperity, fellowship, and peace with all those we encounter.

As we sign the accords tomorrow, let it be a sign for all of galactic history that it was a day of extraordinary imagination.

Keeping Up With the Joneses or Answering Hard Questions?

The cycle of how life is supposed to work has always been presented to me like this, since I was a kid:

How we keep up with the Joneses

• Get the best grades and build the best resume you can in high school

• Get into best college you can

• Get the best grades, network, and internships you can in college

• Get the best, most prestigious job you can in your twenties

• Get into the best graduate or professional school you can

• Get the best placement you can and rise the ranks to the highest-paid and prestigious post you can

• Have kids and move into the best neighborhood with the best school system you can

• Repeat this process again and help your kids be the “best” they can be, so they too can keep up with the Joneses

I used to think this cycle kept on going because humans had some need for domination and power, status, or both. As in, we had this evolutionary need to be “the best”.

But after having a very insightful conversation this week, I wonder if using the tried and true MO of keeping up with the Joneses is attractive because it’s simple.

One of my best friends has been thinking about meaning and shared a remarkable insight with me. My friend said it better, but here’s the essence:

Life is messy and there are these difficult but inescapable questions we’re confronted with - about life, death, meaning, and purpose. These questions are exceptionally hard and scary to answer. And it’s not fair that the only people who seem to really have consistent help with these ineluctable questions are the religious and the pious. What about everyone else?

It had never occurred to me that so many of us may get stuck in a cycle of keeping up with the Joneses, not because we’re nakedly ambitious or because of social pressure. Maybe it’s just the easiest, most obvious way to feel like we’re not wasting our lives or doing what we’re supposed to.

Confronting life’s ineluctable questions (my friend used this word in her essay, I had to look it up, but I’m using it here because it’s a perfect word for this context) is so hard and intimidating to do.

Keeping up with the Joneses has its own drawbacks, but it’s less risky than confronting ineluctable questions.

How we keep up with the Joneses is clearly defined and relatively unambiguous. Society doesn’t flog anyone who tows the line and just keeps up with the Joneses. Our institutions (colleges, schools, corporations) all reinforce these norms too. Keeping up with the Joneses is not exalted but it’s rarely rejected. In the realm of figuring out how to live, it’s the path of least resistance.

But I worry that there’s an intergenerational debt accumulating here. If we repeat this cycle of keeping up with the Joneses - generation after generation - will we eventually forget how to tackle life’s ineluctable questions? If we do forget, is that really the type of culture we want to leave to our grandchildren’s grandchildren?

For me, the answer to that question is absolutely not.

High-performing Government

As a father, I’ve relearned how incredibly gifted, skilled, and virtuous human beings can be. There are so many good things that our older son does that we haven’t taught him explicitly. He makes jokes, he voluntarily shares dessert, he hugs his brother and watches over him. He figures out problems and makes inferences. He helps to wash dishes and tells the truth (most of the time).

It’s really quite amazing. And a big turning point for me was a realization that yes, I can expect a lot from him. So I do, even though he’s only two.

He is smart, capable, and motivated. There's a lot that he’ll figure out, I’ve come to realize, if I set high expectations for him and am willing to coach him up.

The interesting thing about high expectations for little kids is that they meet them, much more than we think is possible. They are growth and learning machines. My son regresses a lot when I don’t set high expectations for him.

It’s so easy in our lives to have low expectations. And then what results is thoroughly disappointing.

I feel this way so often about government.

It bothers me so deeply - it offends me down to my core - that we have such low expectations of government. Any of these sound familiar?:

• “It’s so inefficient”

• “They’re incompetent”

• “Every bureaucrat is lazy and dumb”

• “Government never accomplishes anything”

• “Every politician is corrupt”

• “Government is too slow to make this happen”

• “We should cut their budgets, they won’t use it well anyway”

• And it goes on and on

I think we’re getting the government we deserve. If we’re not willing to have high expectations, if we’re not willing to invest, if we’re not willing to make government reform a priority - the government we have is exactly the one we should expect.

And that’s partly - maybe even mostly - on us.

If we had higher expectations, and actually backed those expectations up with actions, we’d probably have a higher-performing Government.

What if what we expected was more like this:

• Our government (state / local / federal) will have a 10-year strategic plan that actually makes sense

• Our government will be filled with talented, competent people - truly the best and brightest

• Our government will administer services more efficiently than the private sector; because it is more important, it should

• Our government will truly represents the population it serves

• Our government will be honest, caring, fast-moving

• Our government will have effective leaders and managers

• Our government will be incredibly good at listening to the voice of the constituent

• Our government will set concrete goals and measure results

When I served in the Detroit City Government, I had the highest expectations I’ve ever been asked to deliver upon. This was because my chain of command (Residents, Mayor, Chief of Police, Assistant Chief, Director, me) had high expectations. And damn it, most of the time we hit them even though it seemed impossible to even try.

We met those expectations, more than we thought was possible.

As a citizen, I see how important those high expectations are. In Detroit we didn’t even have the basics 10-15 years ago. Streetlights, trash pickup with curbside recycling, timely 911 response. And even though Detroit has a long way to go to be considered high-performing Government, the difference the last few years has made is jaw dropping. In my opinion, it’s on a solid trajectory toward high performance.

We’re going to keep getting the government we deserve one way or the other. Let’s deserve a high-performing Government.

I am determined - 2020 will not become a hashtag | Hurricane-proof Purpose

I am determined not to let this year, 2020, become a hashtag. Every time I hear the punchline of a joke or a meme end in something like, “well that’s 2020 for you” I cringe. To me it’s defeat. It’s a resignation that we do not have agency over our own fate, or at least our reaction to our fate. I am determined not to let 2020 become a hashtag, even if it’s just in my own head.

In most instances, this is where I’d insert an “easier said than done”, but I don’t think so. It’s actually very easy to bounce back from a “that’s 2020” mindset. All it takes is focus on a higher purpose.

If a higher purpose for my life is clear, then all I have to do is focus on that purpose. And just consistently think about that north star purpose and work on that. Focusing on that pre-established higher purpose pushes all of 2020’s qualms - both the legitimate trauma this year has brought, and the whining too - out of my mind.

The key is that purpose can’t be petty, shallow, or ego-driven. It has to be deep. It has to stir to the core. A higher purpose is only higher if it can withstand the hurricane times, like the ones we are living in. 2020 is not the hard part, building a hurricane-proof purpose is the hard part.

For me, that purpose falls into two parts - one related to my private life and the other related to my public life. I have been thinking about this for years, I think, and it’s starting to become clear. But my personal purpose is a bit beside the point right now. What really matters is, “how?”

Three friends of mine, Alison, Glenn, and Nydia, were among a handful that sent me some transformative comments to an early draft of a book I’m writing. Their particular comments pushed me on this point: the difficulty in living a purposeful life is not just living it consistently. That is hard, but how do we even figure it out? What’s the mental scaffolding we can lean on?

I have much more thinking and writing to do on this, but where it starts, for me at least, is being really good at noticing things. And luckily our mind, body, emotions, and perhaps even our soul are very sensitive instruments for finding these purpose-fulfilling moments if we calibrate them properly. Just listening to our mind, body, and gets us pretty far. But for that to work, we have to know how to listen and what we’re listening for.

Step one, I think, is calibration. Perhaps a good exercise is thinking of 5 or 10 instances where you had very strong emotions or were deeply immersed in thought. Maybe there are a couple of moments that you think about obsessively, even though they were seemingly small.

And when I think about my 5 or 10, some of them are self-indulgent feelings. They are times when I had a strong emotional reaction because of external affirmations, power, recognition, and ego. Throw those times out of your sample, they are false positives. Those aren’t the moments that lead to a discovery of higher purpose, in my experience. Rather, those are the moments that have taken me in the precisely wrong direction.

And then, remember those remaining moments vividly in your mind. Really feel them. How would you describe those feelings? Let your guard down, and let the deep feelings of peace, joy, or courage flow through your body. Try to amplify the feeling until you feel it in your torso or your limbs. Get to cloud nine. Go higher. Get to the place where you know in your bones that something about this memory is related to a hurricane-proof purpose. This feeling is your filter to exclude the memories and experiences that are false positives.

Step two, I think, is adding data to your dataset. Think of all the times where you feel similar feelings of deep emotional courage, peace, and joy. Think of all the times where there was something that stirred in you nobly. Think of all the times you felt flow or a state of pure play. As you go through your day, take a pause if you feel the beginnings of those feelings.

Organize these moments in your mind, write them down if you have to. Get as many data points as you can, being careful to separate out the moments that are simply ego-boosters and not examples of the deep, purposeful stirrings we’re looking for. Try to filter out the false positives.

I find zen meditation techniques to be helpful practice for getting better at this type of noticing.

Then explore the data and find the patterns. Talk about it, journal about it, do whatever you have to do. Slowly, the right words to describe purpose emerges. And then it changes as you get more data. And as you get more data, your filter gets better too. It’s very bayesian in a way.

This post became something much different than I originally intended. Whoops.

But the point is, I am personally determined not to let 2020 become a hashtag. The best antidote I can think of is focusing on a higher purpose. It’s easy to say go do it, so these reflections are the best advice I have to offer, so far, as to what that higher purpose may be for you.

I don’t know what help I can be, but please let me know if you think there’s something I can do to support you if you’re on this type of journey. It’s kind of like applying an algorithm to ourselves and what we feel.

Management is moral

These are the three questions I think about a lot, with regard to my professional role as a people manager:

1. Am I here to enrich the lives of others (customers, colleagues, owners) or my own?

2. Are my expectations for my team (starting with myself) going to be high or low?

3. When my team doesn’t meet my expectations (which is bound to happen sometime) am I committed to coaching them, or merely shaming them into compliance with my wishes?

Don’t be fooled, these decisions are all moral in nature. Being a manager is not merely transactional, tactical, or even just strategic. Management is moral. Or I should say, depending on how one answers these questions, management might be moral. In my view, it ought to be.

As managers we are the stewards of whether the talent of the people we manage is wasted or not. And we steward tens of thousands of dollars worth of people’s time, if not more. For that reason, I think management ought to be a moral endeavor where we consider its moral implications.

And it starts with the expectations we set for ourselves and, in turn, others.

I persist, management is moral. We should take it that seriously.

The blessing of lightness

Boys,

For your whole lives, my objective as a father is only one: to help you become good people.

Yes, you will need to learn to clothe and feed yourselves, because if you do not live you cannot become more good, so I will teach you that stuff too. But the full force of my fatherhood, my whole purpose behind being your father is one thing: goodness.

But I can’t force you to take the long, arduous walk of becoming good. You need to want to. Here are a few reasons, in their most concise form:

• To please your parents (to be sure, this is a very bad reason, but it is a reason).

• Because other people will shame you for being bad (this reason works, but it comes with great cost. And I don’t think it’s sustainable or reliable, especially if you keep poor company).

• Achieving Moksha (or reaching heaven, avoiding hell, or achieving enlightenment - insert whatever equivalent concept you want. But this reason is only for the faithful, and therefore inadequate).

• Because it’s very difficult to live in a free society if people are wicked, so we have to do our part (but this reason has such a long payoff, and is so dependent on others it feels futile).

These are all reasons, and as you can see they are all problematic for one reason or another. But there is one more thing to understand on this matter.

Lightness.

I have felt lightness three times, in my entire life. I remember each moment like it happened no more than an hour ago, so deep was the feeling of lightness. It was something that appealed directly to my soul and held it warmly for a fleeting moment.

The first time was when I was little. We were on a trip to Gwalior - where your Dada and Dadi grew up. I was with them and after 2 days of travel, we were finally coming down the street to my Nani’s house. Almost our entire family (on the Bhansali side) was there, waiting for us, to see us because in those days we couldn’t afford to visit except for every few years. They all welcomed us, yelling, singing, all of us crying because the family was together again, finally. It was as if many generations of love were put straight into my heart all at once. And in that moment, I felt lightness.

The second time was on the day your mother and I were married. I was waiting at the altar for your mother to be escorted by your Granddad down the aisle. The organist started playing, and the back doors of the church swung open. And there was your mother in her wedding dress, wearing Grandma Lou’s necklace. And she smiled at me. And it was as if my soul lifted out of my body for a moment to dance with hers, and in that moment I felt lightness.

The third was with you, Bo. It was mid-June of this year. We had been under stay-at-home orders for the Coronavirus Pandemic for several months by this point. We just had a rough few days - you were anxious and I had been losing my temper a lot. But it was a beautiful day and your brother was napping upstairs so we had a few minutes to ourselves. We were listening to The Lion King soundtrack in the backyard, dancing together. And as the Circle of Life started to crescendo, I lifted you up and spun you around. The sky was so blue, the sun was so warm, and we were smiling. And in that moment I felt so completely connected to you it was as if we had all space and time to ourselves for a few seconds. And in that moment I felt lightness.

And Myles, for some reason when I first see you in the morning you light up. As your mother said the other day, it’s like “he’s been waiting his whole life just to see you.” And I don’t know if that feeling you seem to be having is lightness, but it might be. But just the beautiful, precious possibility of being a brief and small part of creating lightness in you is one of my life’s most sacred joys.

And I tell you both this, not because I think the reward of trying to become good is lightness. Lightness is not a reason to be good. It is not a means or an end. I do not think we could conjure it up, even if we tried.

It is a blessing of the long walk, born of the ardor, sacrifice, and suffering that is inevitable if we try to become good. And oh what a blessing it is.

Love,
Your Papa

One less reason, or, People Who Look Like Me (and my sons)

Yesterday, I came across this clip of Chadwick Boseman on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. It moved me to tears.

The scene is staged with a room that contains a framed moved poster for Black Panther. Fans are delivering video messages of appreciation to Boseman. What they do not know, is that the actor is behind the curtain watching them speak in real-time. He then surprisingly pops out to say hello, and the exchanges Boseman and his fans were emotional, funny, and for me transcendent. 

I finally internalized what it meant to have people of color who look like you, who are pathbreaking.

The appropriate context here (especially if it's you Bo and Myles who are reading this many years after 2020), is that I've never had a well-known Indian-American that I've related to AND been inspired by.

There are plenty of Indian-American politicians, but many are so far outside of the mainstream that I don't relate to them. The others seem like they've anglicized themselves to win votes.

The lndian-American cultural figures, like actors, businesses executives, and television personalities, either have played caricatures of Indians or are in fields (e.g., like Dr. Sanjay Gupta or Dr. Atul Gawande) that are already associated with Indian vocations, or, they're not American-born (e.g., like Satya Nadella).

And more than that, I've never seen any Indian-Americans that have had a gravitas, grace, or poise about them that have made them exceptional (at least in a domain that resonates with me).

When I saw the Fallon clip, I realized that Chadwick Boseman wasn't just a good actor that played the Black Panther, Jackie Robinson, and Thurgood Marshall. He had gravitas. He was exceptionally talented. He had grace. He was so profoundly regal when playing king T'Challa that his playing of the role was pathbreaking, especially when so much of what Black Panther was is unique and pathbreaking on its own. He persisted through serious illness, in private, to make a gigantic cultural impact.

I remember the second Halloween we had in our home in Detroit. It was 2018, after Black Panther had come out earlier that year. There were so many young, black, men who dressed as the Black Panther. They wanted to be like Chadwick Boseman / King T'Challa. And truth be told, I want to be like King T'Challa. Boseman's work inspired me, too.

And I think there are a handful of people who were not just good at their jobs, they are pathbreaking for one reason or another. People like President Obama, or Beyonce, or a in-process example might be AOC. Or JK Rowling, or Dolly Parton, or Oprah. Or FDR, Viktor Frankl, or perhaps even Eminem. These people did not just make exceptional contributions, they have compelling character or inspiring personal stories.

A lot of people talk about how it's important to have role models that look like you. The narrative around that idea is often something like, "if they made it, I can make it." But I'd put a different spin on it: if they made it my [South Asian ancestry, but everyone fills in their own blank] is no longer a reason why I can't make the contribution I want to. And honestly, it's no longer an excuse either. And that’s truly liberating.

And why I mention that reframe is because for me (and I think this is true with a lot of minority groups) I have this soundtrack in my head telling me that I shouldn't try to do hard things, because I'm destined to fail. Because I'm Indian, or because I'm short. Or because I didn't go to Harvard. Or because my parents are immigrants and don't have a rolodex full of connections. People like me don’t do stuff like this. People like me can’t make exceptional contributions and have grace and gravitas.

These are all these stories that I know are dumb to believe. But it's so freaking hard not to listen to those stories. Or not feel like you're an impostor that has to compensate for some deficiency. And by the way, I don't think anyone (even white men) is immune to this phenomenon. Everyone needs path breaking role models that are like them.

I didn't know until recently that Sen. Kamala Harris or Ambassador Nikki Haley were half Indian. And I was even more surprised to find out that both of them (in their own ways) haven't turned away from their South Asian heritage. They don't hide it, at least in my opinion.

And I suppose it remains to be seen whether either of them are truly pathbreaking, but I don't see any reason why they can't.

And I feel so relieved. I had been without role models who look like me for so long, I didn't realize how important it was to me personally, and how much having a role model that looked like me changed my perception of my own self.

But I am more relieved for my sons. If either Sen. Harris or Ambassador Haley becomes a President or Vice President (and serves with distinction), they are both very close role models for my mixed race half-Indian sons. And my sons will grow up their whole lives with a path breaking role model that proves to them that their mixed-race ancestry doesn't have stop them from making a generous contribution to their communities.

It is a wonderful gift for me, as their father, to know that even if there are so many other reasons for them to doubt themselves, with people like Senator Harris and Ambassador Haley, they have one less reason.

"Even if I don't like you, I will carry you."

There isn’t much about our lives that isn’t affected by how wealthy we are. Wealth is insidious, it creeps into every corner of our lives. Our health, our mental state, our life spans, our relationships, our vocations. It’s everywhere; every damn place.

I am very grateful when friends comment on questions I ask on facebook. And there were many thoughtful responses folks shared to, “what’s something that has little to do with how wealthy we are?”

One friend commented with, “the earth’s rotation.” Which is true, the natural world and the laws of physics have little to do with how wealthy we are. But, knowing her that answer was sincere but probably also a little tongue-in-cheek. Because if an answer is the earth’s rotation - that implies that basically nothing else on earth has little to do with wealth.

Even inner peace and integrity, which some people shared, seems to be affected at least somewhat. Yes, money can’t buy peace or integrity, but chronic poverty probably makes it so that peace and acting with integrity are orders of magnitude harder to achieve for some.

But especially after several friends talked about how they thought hard about the question and literally couldn’t think of anything, I was unsatisfied. I agreed with them, but I was unsatisfied because it’s really sad if no aspect of human life is untouched by wealth.

So I thought about it some more, and I don’t even know if this is correct, but it’s the best I’ve got.

—

Suppose you go to an ice cream shop and order a scoop of chocolate ice cream. Instead of providing the ice cream, however, the clerk becomes very angry and indiscriminately hits you with a wooden rod. No warning, no apparent cause - just blow after blow from the business end of a broomstick.

This, by all reasonable accounts would be a completely unacceptable behavior. There is no circumstance I can think of where some story like this would be acceptable. It is illegal, yes. But more than that, it violates a norm we have when living in a free and peaceful society. It doesn’t matter who you are - it’s not okay to beat someone with a broomstick indiscriminately and without provocation. It doesn’t matter how wealthy you are or how poor you are, that is NOT acceptable.

To be sure, things like this still happen, but to reasonable people it is not acceptable that they happen. Reasonable people do not think it’s acceptable to be on the giving or receiving end of a broomstick in this way. That’s just now how we live.

And, because this sort of thing happens in ways that are somewhat predictable based on race and class, I concede that lots of people perhaps aren’t reasonable by the parameters laid out in this thought experiment. But let’s just continue because that’s not the problem I’m focusing on here.

What this thought experiment illustrates, however, is that norms about what’s right and wrong exist. Norms we owe it to each other to follow, and that moral obligation has little to do with how wealthy we are. There is moral obligation that exists, that has little to do with wealth.

Now, we may disagree on exactly what those moral obligations are, but this preposterous example, hopefully articulates that there is some moral compact among reasonable people - in this case, not bashing someone’s head in with a stick without provocation or warning - that has little to do with wealth.

The most common discussion that advances from this fertile soil is the question of - what are our moral obligations to each other? And, that’s literally and endless, and important, but also a stupid, impractical debate. Not in the sense that we shouldn’t have this discussion, but stupid in the sense that we facilitate this discussion stupidly.

Because we often exclude people with inconvenient opinions from this sort of discussion and often go into discussions to discern moral obligation where at least one party is unwilling to admit they are wrong. So it’s stupid - because we start discussions without the possibility of reaching a thoughtful conclusion.

But I think there’s another path this conversation can take. Instead of asking what our moral obligations are to others, we can ask something more hopeful. What if we asked: if we imagine the community we wished we lived in, what would that community believe they owed to each other?

And this thought experiment took me back to thinking about wealth.

Because I believe at the time we are conceived we all have equal potential. But then as the clock starts ticking, that starts changing. Because from what I’ve read, the wealth of our mother (or even if our grandmother underwent a period of famine) starts to affect us in the womb, before we are born. So from the moment we are conceived - the context in which we live, which is so strongly affected by our wealth - starts to influence our lives.

But I also believe potential is different than worth. And even though our potential as humans may be different (and unfairly influenced by wealth) our worth is equivalent. We all have equal worth. But more importantly, we all have immeasurably large worth. A life is not just worth something, and worth something equal - it is worth more than we can count or comprehend.

And that’s all fine and aspirational and mushy gushy, blah blah. Here’s what that means for me on the question of the moral standards of the community I wish I lived in.

Let’s ignore what moral obligations we have to the people we love and even the people we like. I’ve found, at least, that it’s much easier to treat people well if you love or like them. What really reveals the character of a person or group is how they treat people they don’t love or like.

I am not this man today, I know I’m not, but the man I want to be would live a creed like this:

I will treat you - whoever you are, whether I love you or not, whether I like you or not, whether I fear you or not - in the way that you would like to be treated. Even if it is difficult, I will treat you with respect. I will try to learn to love you or to like you. But even if I don’t like you, I will carry you. I will carry you without expecting your gratitude or the recognition of others. And if I falter, and need you to carry me, I will let you and be gracious for your kindness.

And ideas like this inevitably attract pessimism. “That’ll never happen. It’s not scalable. It’s not in people’s nature. That’s a waste of time. Let’s focus on something achievable.” I’ve heard phrases like these, over and over.

I think we should try, and try courageously to create a community that believes it has this stringent of a moral obligation to others.

The hope of a community like this is worth failing for. Because even if we only advance one inch in this effort which is equivalent to a journey of many miles, we will have moved an inch. And that inch creates the permission for others to try for two inches. And then for the generation after them to try for four. And maybe someday, even if it’s many decades after our own deaths, the long walk will be over and we will have arrived.

And this whole argument rests on the assumption that we have some defensible moral obligation to others we live in community with. And maybe that’s presumptuous. But I think that assumption is worth having faith in, even if it’s not decidedly proven. It is worth taking a leap for.

A Covid-19 Family Continuity Plan

For four months, when day schools were closed, we treaded water and tried our best to work with our boys at home. It will probably be 2-3 years before I fully process what just happened to us (assuming there’s not more weird stuff to come, which is probably wishful thinking).

A few weeks ago, we sent our kids back to school, and that was a really hard decision. A week or two after we sent our boys back to school, we had the presence of mind to think through what we would do if we needed to pull the kids out of school again. We made a sort of a family continuity plan.

Robyn and I had to put our family continuity plan practice last week. I highly recommend you talk about this with your spouse / partner. Ours is geared toward decisions around kids, but the underlying principles are generally applicable.

I have not shared all of our “answers” - but message me separately if that’s something that would be helpful for you to talk about. Instead, I’ve shared the framework we developed for making decisions for our family.

I hope it is helpful to you. Our framework is at the bottom of this post.

This most demanding part of this exercise was not figuring out what was best for our family. That was easy. And we’re lucky - we can work from home or pull our kids from school if we need to. I acknowledge that’s not a luxury everyone has.

The hardest part of our exercise was to answer a different question: what do we owe other families?

Robyn and I grappled with this question explicitly. Because in this pandemic especially, our decisions don’t just affect our immediate friends and family, our decisions affect the other families at our childrens’ school - most of whom we don’t know personally. But because of the nature of this virus, we depend on them and they depend on us.

And what makes this question hard is that it compelled us to prepare to make real sacrifices, like potentially pulling the kids from school (again) or isoloating from our friends and family (again).

We certainly didn’t write this plan down when we discussed it a few weeks ago. But we had to execute the plan last week, and talking about it before was extremely helpful. This plan - which is a reconstruction of our lived experience - helped us to live out the values we believe matter, and the value we expect of others.

Again, it’s tailored to our circumstances, but I hope it’s helpful to you.

Family Continuity Plan and Framework for Decision Making

Core Principles for Making Decisions

• Avoid becoming infected

• Avoid become an asymptomic vector of the disease

• If there is reason to contemplate it, assume we or others are infected until data proves otherwise

• Make decisions quickly, communicate transparently

Triggers

• If there is a likely exposure at work

• If there is a Covid exposure within our school community

• If there is a Covid exposure within our friends and family that live locally

• If there is a substantial change in local case / death data (e.g., government mandates change)

Questions to Ask

• What are the facts?

• Who was exposed to whom, and when?

• What was the nature of the exposure? Was transmission possible or highly unlikely?

• Has anyone involved taken a test? What were the results? When were the tests taken?

• Were we exposed when someone was likely infectious?

• Is anyone showing symptoms?

• Where have we been since exposure who have we seen?

Evaluate answers above against pre-determined core principles. If necessary, execute relevant steps in the protocol.

Protocol

• Take a deep breath.

• Who do we need to notify to prevent spread? School, work, family, friends? Contact them.

• Do we need immediate medical attention? Seek it.

• Do we need to take a test to determine our health status? Schedule It.

• Do we need supplies? Provision them, and request help if necessary.

• Determine who will manage child care if kids are pulled from school.

• Come up with a workable schedule for managing work and home responsibilities.

  • Cancel / reschedule necessary social events.

  • Cancel / reschedule necessary work meetings.

  • Determine minimum home responsibilities / chores.

  • Reset expectations on bigger projects (e.g., yard, home improvement)

• Set a schedule for check-in on information updates. This is important so we do not overconsume information in a crisis.

• Lay out key milestones for next 2-3 weeks. What are big events that cannot be messed up.

• Determine level of information the kids need to know and can understand. Explain what is necessary.

• Determine criteria that have to be met to return to previous activities. Document them so it’s not as easy to “cheat” if things are difficult.

• Take a deep breath.

Joy, Sacrifice, and Cattails

“These are cattails, Papa!”

When we were at the Metropark, I had another one of those moments where I can see the world through our sons’ eyes. “Dang,” I thought, “Bo finds joy, somehow, wherever he is.”

And I began to contemplate, how does he do that? Bo was as happy, peaceful, and silly-seeking as he ever is finding Cattails with Mommy and chasing Dadi around a tree, on this grassy pointe we were on at this lake, on an otherwise unremarkable Saturday morning. 

And I was nostalgic, perhaps even a bit jealous as I watched him, laughing and enjoying the outside.

What happens to us along the way that makes it so that such little pleasures aren’t enough?

Later that week it hit me, one day our sons will grow out of this mindset too, and it will be my fault. 

As they grow, I will teach them to sacrifice for the future. I will have no choice but to. Trade one cookie now for two cookies later sort of stuff. Or, study now so you can earn a living later. Or, that kid came a long way to play here, want to help him up the slide instead of going yourself?

All the examples, and more, are ones that hold the basic structure of: invest for the future so the future can be better, it will be worth the wait.

And that point of view, will probably lead to him believing that there’s more to life than cattails, so to speak. 

As part of this growing up and learning to sacrifice, he will form beliefs on what “better” and “worth the wait” are. And my big gasp came when I realized that he will learn that from me. 

As he learns to make sacrifice, his perceptions of why we should sacrifice will come from me. Should it be to lift up ourselves, or lift up others? Should we always strive for more? What is valuable, money and status? Character? Nature? Family? Being popular? Faith? 

My example will dramatically influence what our boys will perceive as valuable and therefore what they sacrifice for. 

I hope we can live up to that responsibility. And with any luck, at my age, Bo will still find joy in little things like cattails on a sunny day at the lake.