John Lennon and My Favourite Super Power
Some years ago, in the early stages of my career, there was a question posed to all the participants in the training session.
The question was, if you could any super power, what would it be and why?
Many people gave a variety of answers, some interesting, some predictable.
When I had a chance to speak, I said I would make everyone happy forever.
While being dismissed as impossible but good idea. I was asked the proverbial why?
I said, if you are happy, nothing else matters and if you are not, nothing matters then either!
Coming to think of it, it was not a bad superpower to have and probably much needed now.
It was only much later that I discovered that the great John Lennon echoed my words of wisdom ☺️
“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”
~John Lennon
Truth!
Steve Jobs on what seperates the doers from the dreamers. Be willing to ask and act
The Work of Happiness by May Sarton
Came across this beautiful poem by reading Marginalian
I thought of happiness, how it is woven Out of the silence in the empty house each day And how it is not sudden and it is not given But is creation itself like the growth of a tree. No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark Another circle is growing in the expanding ring. No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark, But the tree is lifted by this inward work And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.
So happiness is woven out of the peace of hours And strikes its roots deep in the house alone: The old chest in the corner, cool waxed floors, White curtains softly and continually blown As the free air moves quietly about the room; A shelf of books, a table, and the white-washed wall — These are the dear familiar gods of home, And here the work of faith can best be done, The growing tree is green and musical.
For what is happiness but growth in peace, The timeless sense of time when furniture Has stood a life’s span in a single place, And as the air moves, so the old dreams stir The shining leaves of present happiness? No one has heard thought or listened to a mind, But where people have lived in inwardness The air is charged with blessing and does bless; Windows look out on mountains and the walls are kind.
Truth however profound, when its not yours still remains untruth.
~Sri Bhagavan
2023
Jan to June, now its gone!
July to December, something to remember!
The Most Important Question
also the one you don’t ask enough…
Have you been around 3 or 5 year old kids or are a parent of one?
If yes, then you would observe something interesting. They are compulsive Why’ers or atleast most of them start out that way.
That is, all 5-year olds ask one question, again and again and again.
WHY??
I tell her not to eat chocolates, her response: why papa?
Other day we were all watching a 🎥 together and an actress was crying 😭, she asked, why is she crying? I
We had to stop at the red light, and while we wait, she fired her why weapon a few times.
Why was the car red?
Why are so many folks on the road?
Why were there pot holes on the road? She answered this as well, saying I think they didn’t construct it properly🤣
I told her not to touch power sockets and her response was, you guessed it, why Papa?
The curiosity of a kid is wonderful (for the kind of questions) and torturous (because you know you will not have answers) at the same time.
While the inevitable institutionalisation (schooling & society) is likely to drive out some of the curiosity out of every child, it may not be too late for us to stop.
Take a step back.
And ask why, more often than we presently do.
After all, accomplished author and speak Simon Sinek became world famous, pivoted his career and had the breakthrough insight to Start With Why
Or if you are still wondering why should you still worry about why! Here’s Taiichi Ohno the father of Toyota production system.
German philospher, Friedrich Nietzsche had this to say:
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
If you are still not convinced, here’s another quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson an American philospher and essayist to ponder upon especially if you (like me) are working for a boss and might be one someday.
The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who knows why will always be his boss.
Besides, he (she in this case) who has the last why also has the last laugh
Philosopher 1 neuroscientist 0. A 23 year wager ends!
We don’t just care about what a machine can say; we also care about what it can do.
~Mustafa Suleyman, DeepMind
Elon Musk seemed pretty impressed with our prime minister, no mean feat to achieve.
Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.
~Coco Chanel
How Karma Works 🙏
You were passing by beautiful orchard filled with delicious mangoes.
Your eyes caught them.
Your feet couldn’t stop from going in that direction and your hands couldn’t resist plucking a few.
The tongue needed to taste them and then stomach becomes the inevitable beneficiary.
That’s when the owner of the orchard sees you and gives breaks your back with a nice beating.
The innocent back suffered for no fault of its and shed tears from the very eyes where it all began.
A question worth pondering 🤔
Nitin Kamath on bootstrapping a billion dollar company shares his own evolution and reflects on the nature of business.
Victor or Vaniquished?
While being stuck in traffic I saw a bunch of kids in a school playing by themselves.
One game in particular caught my attention. There was this one guy standing in the middle of the ground with his back bent. All the other boys would just run up to him, place their palms on his back and just jump over him.
He was happy and they were too.
It made me wonder what this would look like out there in the real world? Would one of them be the victor and the other the vanquished?
My spiritual master once told me. It’s not enough to just be good but you’ve to also be strong otherwise you will be exploited and get crushed.
After all there must be a reason why they say, the world is not a fair place.
Straight trees are cut first
~Chanakya
Perfection is the enemy of done!
If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.
~Mark Twain
A remarkably objective take on the impact of AI on jobs in particular and our lives as a whole.
Kailash is the CTO of Zerodha and has his PhD in another interesting AI domain of neurocomputation and computational linguistics.