Mediocrity - underrated?

The other day a friend of mine asked me - "When does a man know that the most he achieves in life will be mediocrity? Late 40s? Late 50s?" I thought that was a very thought provoking question. He asked it with a very muted tone sounding as if mediocrity was a sign that someone has failed in life.

I like to think otherwise. Excluding the lazy bunch who waste their talents and find pleasure in couch camping, I would say the majority of us are termed "mediocre". But is that bad? Isn't mediocrity way underrated? Yes, life is indeed a race - and considering the starting point, we have come far. Now, if the finishing point is not out of the ordinary, that does not mean we have not run a good race. All of us are born with tools to mould life. Some of us with power tools and others with just a chisel and hammer. I say we do best with the tools we have and what we build out of it is ours to own. There is only room for so many greats in this world. Besides, we are never mediocre for people who care about us. Striving for greatness is perfectly fine, but make sure that achieving greatness is not the only way you will ever be satisfied in life.

Now you may be thinking - "You will never make money as a motivational speaker". I agree. Thankfully, I did not choose that profession in life and the world is a better place to be in precisely due to that decision of mine. However, I am mediocre in most of the stuff I do, but I do give it my best shot.

Be great at achieving greatness, but if mediocrity is what you get, never let the label take away the fun of  appreciating how far in life you have travelled to reach it.

Until next time - when I meet with you at the crossroads of another mediocre article on this mediocre blog.

image courtesy: http://www.justynsmith.com/2011/03/the-mediocre-kidmin-leader-part-2/

Acceptance Speech

Then we kissed. Lips, tongue, saliva and all.

I reveled in the moment, then let go of the presenter and moved closer to the microphone. "Ah, thank you all, thank you! I never thought I would win. Really!. Thanks to all of the other entries that were not as funny as mine. I am truly humbled - and oh let me not forget I would also like to thank all the little people."

You may be asking - "What baloney? You won something? Impossible!" to which my reply is "Yes, I did win something, but the description above is just a fabric of my imagination :)". Yes, I would have loved to have a stage and an audience and a podium for my acceptance stage, but for this time I had to do with a winner email.

What did I win? How did I win it? You will find all the answers here -

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/04/19/celebrate-ooma-purevoice-with-a-free-ooma-telo-handset-and-1-year-of-service/comment-page-3/#comments

Finally my wife agreed that being a pervert (or at least having perverted thoughts) pays - and you get paid in voip phone sets and minutes. Well, may be my love of voluptuous women helped too (you have to agree that Salma Hayek is as good as they come; and no, agreeing doesn't make you a pervert!)

And about calling Salma - I am working on first steps - losing about 100 lbs to look like I am starved. Without a global famine and drought, I don't see that happening. Meanwhile, I will appreciate tips on setting up a Voip phone.

See you next awards season!

Image courtesy : www.theonering.net/scrapbook/view/6856

Pause. Reflect. Play.

She quietly opened the door so the noise would not waker her parents and brothers. She then put down her heavy backpack on the living room floor and  tiptoed her way into the sink. She washed her face to remove all the dirt and black stuff that had found its way from the factory floor. It was after a cold shower that she realized she was starving. She never had enough time to eat properly at work. Her parents could not afford to get enough to feed all their kids, so she always ended up with leftovers. After getting her hands on what little food she could get, she sat down and gently massaged her feet which was aching from all that walking at the assembly line. After a while, as she slowly slipped into her bed, she thought to herself - "My manager did seem impressed with my ideas to improve productivity. Hopefully that promotion should come through". She fell asleep knowing that the prospects of her ambition - becoming the VP of her company - were getting better each day.
-=-=-=-=-
Quietly, she opened the door to the kitchen from the garage and cursed as it made a loud squeaking noise. She hoped that the sound had not  woken up her husband and kids. She put down her heavy briefcase on the granite kitchen counter top and tip toed her way to the sink. She quickly washed off all the heavy makeup that seemed to suffocate her pores all day. She was never a fan of too much makeup, but in her corporate world of meetings and high profile clients, she always had to present her best face forward. It was then that hunger pangs struck her, and she proceeded to see what was left over in the fridge. There was plenty of food in the fridge, but her diet only allowed her to snack on the leftover salad. After a short while, she found herself  immersed in her high-end spa, gently massaging her feet to relieve them from the constant harassment they received from her high heeled shoes. She then sipped her favorite red wine and thought to herself - "The board of directors seemed pleased with my plan of growing exponentially through acquisitions - maybe my ambition of becoming CEO is not that far away. After all, there's only a couple of steps from VP to CEO."
-=-=-=-=-

OK, so I am not much of a storyteller, but more often than not in life, the begin and end points of our ambition feels the same - it is the journey to achieve it that gives the kicks. So when you are fast forwarding through life and everything feels automated and mechanical, press pause, take a deep breath, reflect on what you have achieved, enjoy it to the fullest and then proceed to play the rest. Just sayin'.

Image Courtesy : http://trcs.wikispaces.com/Analysis+of+Poems?f=print

Is your heart a Lake or a Marsh?

It was the summer of a year that marked the beginning of this millennium. I locked up my apartment in a hurry and walked down the stairs. My heart was getting heavier with each step I took downstairs. As I walked around the block to my friend's apartment, the phone call I received from him a couple of minutes earlier was still ringing in my head.

"I got a phone call from India," he said in that call. "My Dad passed away". As he went on with more details, my brain was already processing fond memories of his dad  - a very funny, intelligent and compassionate man who also happened to be a doctor. The news sank into my heart instantly - bringing out emotions that I never thought I had in the first place. With each passing minute, the news was digging deep into me; generating a whole bunch of questions - how could this happen? How would it impact my friend, his sister and mom? Had they already found out about this? How did they react?

I lost my father at a very young age, so I knew how the loss of a father figure could affect a person's mentality. It is not just the loss of a person - it is the loss of a friend, a support system and most importantly, a brutally honest critic. All of this cocoons into something that makes you want to be a better person all your life.

As I entered my friend's apartment and hugged him, I completely lost it. I was in tears and and held him tight, looking to console him out of his sorrow(as if that was possible). He then patted on my back and said, "It's ok, It's ok". It was then I realized something - the news had not struck him yet; he was still in no man's land, coming to terms with what had happened. There were no tears, just a blank look which, to an outsider,  would give an impression that he had everything under control. But I had known my friend for sometime now and I knew that there was a void that was created which could only be filled in by accepting the dreadful fact of his loss.

After making arrangements for his trip to India, some of my other friends and I saw him off at the airport that night. This was before 9/11, so we could go all the way up to the gate. We rehashed some memories of  the man, there were complaints about the long flight and a few laughs out of my friend. I thought to myself - "Ok, he still has not grappled with the news yet, but maybe the 18 hours of flight will do it".

It has been 10 years since then, and I have to say that not only did the news sink in for him, but it has been with them since then. I get a sense of it from the conversations that I have with him, the blog posts that he writes and the off hand impromptu remark that comes out of him.

Which brings me back to the post's title (it's about time) - when it comes to your heart is it a lake or a marsh? When news comes your way in the shape of a black stone, what does your heart morph into? A lake in which the stone sinks fast, but can be easily taken out by undercurrents? or a marsh where in the stone sinks slowly, making marks along its way and hard to move around? Or a mix of both?

Let us hope that whatever shape our hearts take, it never gets a bad news stone thrown at it. I know life is not full of happiness, so if something has to be thrown at it, may it be pebbles - that skip until it crosses the lake, and are so light that they could never sink into the marsh.


Image courtesy :www.myspaceantics.com

Don't be a disaster journalist...

at least when chronicling life, that is.

Today, I was showing my daughter (who is almost a year now - time has the pace of a concord) the pleasure of being thrown up in the air. She was pleasantly surprised as was evident from her smile revealing her two small teeth. There is something in a baby's smile that attracts you like none other - may be its the innocence that they seamlessly possess or maybe its the fact that they are so un-adult (I know, its not a word) like.

The sun was shining bright through the window and its rays ignited a sparkle in her eyes. There it was - a moment I would  like to cherish and store - my daughter and I having a great time together.

But then , the inevitable afterthought had to ruin it for me. In life, we tend to be like disaster journalists when we chronicle our life. Flip through the photos in your mental photo album - have memories of unfortunate events registered  more than the pleasant ones? We tend to remember how friends, kith and kin were mean to us, how we got the short end of the stick in our lives and how hard it is to get through a normal day. When we grow old, will we talk about our kid's rebellion or will we talk about  all the fun time we had with them?

I don't know the answer, but I sure would like to capture the beauty of the moments that were pure joy and bliss, rather than focusing on the spectacle and ruin of moments that I would rather forget. The  truth is that bad moments hit us hard and the more we try to forget them, the more etched they are in our brains. Maybe the key is trying hard to forget the pleasures we own now, thereby digging it deeper into our memories.

BTW, did I tell you about the motorcycle accident I had? Oh wait...

What could be the story behind..?

He was leaning against the sign post of a bus stop. Clearly, today was not a cheerful day for him. As I drove past, I noticed that he almost collapsed onto the small seat in the bus stop. Shortly thereafter, he broke down in tears and all I could see in my rear view mirror was the image of a man wiping his tears, trying to prevent an outburst of emotions. Though my car had left the scene, my brain was hooked on it. He must be in his 30s, I thought to myself; so what could be the cause of his sadness? Did he lose his job? Was he hitting the now cliched "mid life crisis"? Did he just hear some devastating news?  

Careful! A red light..I must stop thinking about strangers and their problems and concentrate on the road.

That's me - a big sucker for flashbacks. I am always interested in moments that are out of the ordinary, since they usually have an equally interesting story that culminated the moment just preceding this one. What could be the series of events that led to this? Does it have to do with how the person reacted in that situation? Or does it have to do with society and its practises? Or as many who believe in a superpower say - is it all a part of a giant play that is orchestrated

with immense precision, skill and forethought?

At the next traffic light, I saw a bunch of boxes scattered on the road.  They were small wooden boxes and their contents (which was some kind of vegetable - as you can figure out I am a carnivore, hence the lack of skill in identifying a lesser known vegetable)  had spilled out in all directions on the road. I wondered why people were not paying attention to this - perhaps they were in their own little wooden boxes trying to get through their daily grind. But my mind wandered again - Was it an accident? Did somebody knock off these boxes when their vehicle hit a bump? Or did someone forget to tie down these boxes carefully? No matter what the situation was - how did bystanders and passers by react? Were they helpful?Or did they just ignore it? The undoing of these small wooden boxes is no small matter, it requires deep afterthought and analysis. (At least, I thought so!)

This obsession for flashbacks has ruined many a good movie for me. When friends mention a scene in the movie that is particularly good, my rebuttal goes somewhat like this - "Well, he was raised in a rich family and had a good education - So I don't think the portrayal of his reaction was accurate". I would have constructed his whole life for him based on the facts mentioned in the movie - and eventually conclude that the flashback does not lead to this particular scene. I also find faults with situations that are the reverse - the flashback shown in the movie conveniently ignores some facts of the present. Well, my dear director friend - you cannot deceive me - I have identified the traits that must go in the flashback, and it should be depicted as I perceived it to be!  

I must really seek some professional help.

I parked my car at work, headed up to our floor and slowly walked to my section. The scene I saw  stopped me on my tracks and got me in the ever wondering flashback mode - a messy laptop docking station, a cup that was  half full with old coffee and an empty cube- what could be the story behind..Wait, that is my cube - and I am late for work. I better get on my tasks or else someone else could be wondering about this scene  - " A teared up version of me walking down the stairs with a pink slip in hand". 

No, I definitely would not want that. So long, wandering mind. Now go rest in peace.