RELATIONSHIPS: COLUMNS AND STORIES
Relationships
My life is a web of relationships. The great Indian joint family.
Messy, loving, crazy, contradictory, complex, never easy
But it defines who I am and what I value.
Connections: between people, place and time.
Do relationships make you or do you make them?
With love comes the ability to forgive. Only if you are able to forgive can you overlook slights, flaws, mistakes and miscommunication
While the Dalai Lama talks about loving-kindness meditation as a way to bridge divides, it is essentially about assuming goodwill.
Relationships are defined by connection
Connections can happen perchance but require care to flourish. Ultimately, it is these connections that define the human experience.
This web of connections floats to the surface in cultures such as India, where people are forced into proximity, thanks to density. What you do with (and to) the people around you defines character.
How you behave in times of stress depends on how you value what is at hand.
Relationships and connections are supreme in the path to happiness.
Relationship columns
Hindustan Times: Show your love
An uncle passed away. At his funeral and subsequent days, I witnessed an outpouring of love and from his family, relatives, people he mentored and neighbours. All of which led me to wonder about the age-old question: what will your obituary say? What will people say about you after you are gone? What will they speak about at your memorial service? Which is another way of asking: who are you and what do you project to the world?
WisdomCircle: Mental Models
No matter what the field, there are three things that all of us need for success. The first and the foundational factor is content, by which I mean talent, knowledge, expertise, rigour, all of these that each of us have learned and cultivated since childhood in our chosen field. The second is attitude, which is the set of character traits that each of us have, either through genetics, through how we were parented, or because of the circumstances of our particular life. The third factor is projection, which has become increasingly important in this digital age. It refers to how comfortable we are with being well-known, either in our chosen field or adjacent ones.