WHERE IS MY BODHI TREE?

I am writing this because it is cathartic!

I am no Machiavelli in articulating deep, profound thoughts but I do know this – It is extremely hard to introspect in a meaningful manner and harder to do so systematically. Even harder to identify what you think you could better about yourself and actually action it.

Whew, I wish introspection was as simple as this soliloquy.

And the importance of introspection comes to every human being, as it did to me, at a time when you feel your centre of gravity shaken – normally occurs when some deeply affecting incident has happened…. or for some folks, because nothing of consequence has happened over a long period of time.

For me, it was the last 12 months, when I found myself, well..... not being myself. To put it more demonstrably understandable – “in a weird space”. The parallel, not sequential, events that may have triggered this “phase” was my dad’s passing away, moving to a new city with my daughter due to the buy-out of my start-up and finally, more lastingly, splitting a 3 member family (kid, wife and husband) in a ratio of 2:1, 2 of us in Bangalore and 1 limited to weekend visits due to the move. Oh, it’s not as terse as it sounds – the buy-out was a good exit and the move was of course only the side effect. However, death of a parent shakes most of us at the very core. Especially, if you have had an intense relationship with this person. And when this happens at a time of other transitions, things get ambivalent!

What is the connection with introspection, you ask?

Plenty, my friend. When you start challenging everything you have believed including the simple monotony of your everyday life, there occurs a certain storm inside you – it may start with some negligible confusion and at some point may lead to such behaviour toward your family that they may have rarely encountered from you before. When it comes to blazing guns, after all, they are the first line of infantry to bear the full brunt.

I went through this, and still sometimes go through this, ambivalence. It impacted the way I conducted myself as a parent, as a spouse and some cases as a friend and most importantly as a leader in my organization. I often thought about Vasupal Yadav (Stayzilla - read here) and his imprisonment! Would it have been that trigger incident for him? – to focus on how he could have steered away from – what the “I told you so” bunch with the power of the hindsight, would have said” – inevitable?

The duplicity of it all is the fact, that as human beings, we can totally mask our turbulence in a wave of superficial dialogues and habits. But it was getting to me!

I had to stop and rethink – what would my dad have said? Well, there were many things he said I did not agree with, nor relate to :) - of course he was the one who made me realise the power of perspective and that it was OK to disagree. I needed to introspect! Not in the cool, meditative, yoga style - but in a systematic & actionable introspection with the simple aim of, cliched as it sounds, to make me a better person that I am.

In the book ‘Inside the Third Reich’(The book), Albert Speer, a confidante of Hitler and someone who was convicted 21 years imprisonment for war crimes, beautifully articulates his assessment of his own predicament. He says that much of the reason for his complicity in the heinous crime (Holocaust) was the fact that he chose the easier route of not evaluating his situation & surroundings more thoroughly and was fully absorbed in a work that required less mental & moral assessment! While it is easy to brush aside this argument as simplistic or even escapist considering the gravity of the crime, I think there is merit in the point he makes.

I read many books in my period of, for the lack of a better descriptor, “confusion” – Richard Dawkins, War Books, Autobiographies etc – every book had such a raw impact in a manner that layers of my own experiences and collected opinions did nothing to reduce the influence. For example, for days after reading Richard Dawkins, I questioned the need for me to go for my regular temple visits or even pray. Prayer, I reasoned, did little to change the eventuality of what was to happen, so why pray?

I thought I was introspecting, but it took me a while to realise that changing course/tact from status quo without adequate consideration & evaluation is a sign of simply imbibing change for the sake of change itself – a thought well-articulated by Speer, in my view.

One of the many aspects of introspection, I realized, is to re look at your past in a bias free manner and figure out your own behavioural patterns and how it had shaped up the results. The question I started asking is what traits worked and what didn’t in the context of its impact on my relationships, business and even on myself. The irony is that it is easier to learn from failure than from success, for the cause-effect is more pronounced in the former than in the latter.

Let me try and give you a concrete example – As an entrepreneur, one of my pronounced philosophies is to get things done as of yesterday! Generally, one starts believing in any format (philosophy) if it has, in the majority of times & according to you, yielded good results. To me, this philosophy worked best in times when I needed serious self-motivation, especially in the early days of my start-up, when deadlines were my prerogative – “reach out to that potential customer ‘now’ or start working on your, even if rudimentary, website ‘now’, forgo that afternoon nap to pretend play the timings of a proper functioning office and your role as the CEO of the 3 member team ‘now’”. Here, one can’t argue for the need for urgency.......to achieve. 

I continued applying this philosophy across time including when we grew bigger, a time when more, and often tough, decisions had to be taken. I can so relate to Speer (Caveat: I am no anti-semite and abhor any form of violence) when he philosophizes about how it is easier to comfort yourself with a decision, which you can justify whichever way later, and avoid the painful mathematics of analyzing pros and cons before such decision were to be made.

In this context, I looked back at how I applied my “do it yesterday” philosophy across board. And in such an analysis, I realised that all those successes I directly credited to that philosophy may be fewer than my original assessment. Why? Because, the decision itself is different from the time spent to make the decision and the analysis that went behind it. What if I had lucked out in some of those? Sometimes the randomness of success misleads us!

I can quote numerous examples of such realizations, which to many of you may have been elementary, but to me was indeed a revelation accentuated in my own process of self-discovery. Especially, as a parent – I was more worried about my style of parenting than my philosophy of parenting, probably because philosophy requires more structured thought! When we focus on mere style rather than philosophy, we could become more inconsistent in the message we send to our kids – confusing them. I am, as I write this, figuring out my philosophy of parenting, something I can relate to and deliver – whether it be towards the intellectual stimulation of my child or her emotional development.

In the emotional ambivalence I experienced, although I may still not be out of the woods, I truly discovered the power of structured introspection & the importance of working on yourself. It is hard to first figure out what you need to work on as a human being.

So, I guess I am carrying my mythical Bodhi tree around and maybe I do not want to be out of the woods!

PS: I am still fun, always ready for a beer & even better, if you throw in some dancing, and I still do not understand modern art!