Motivating Children

My daughter has a “Spell Bee” competition (this is a competition on getting spellings right..) coming up in her school in Feb. Yesterday evening my wife complained to me that she was not preparing in spite of her repeated pestering and demanded that I interfere.

 I have always thought that my wife’s approach to getting things done was wrong (as with all women); she was too nagging. Whereas I am a strong believer of the fact that children should be motivated than forced upon. Well, here was my chance to prove the point; so I decided to have a  conversation with my daughter about this.

 “How has your preparation been going on for Spell Bee?” I asked

 She mumbled something in response; indicating that she wasn’t really enthusiastic about the conversation.

 “You will have a surprise gift from me if you get the first prize” I didn’t have a better choice for motivating her than this age-old proven tactic of offering something.

 Her eyes lit up briefly (OK, I was on the right track)

 “You will get a pair of nice Cinderella shoes in you win the first prize” (She has been behind me for that expensive shoes which I obviously thought was sheer waste of money)

  Now, I am waiting for to explode with joy, but…

  “Not needed papa”, her response was cold and for moment I went blank

 “Pink color shoes with golden laces..”, maybe I had not made it look attractive enough

  “Listen papa. If I win the “Spell Bee” contest, I will get a reward of 12 lakhs. So we will have lots of money, we can buy whatever we want…..May be we can also buy bigger home, more comfortable car… Or expensive clothes…”

  I had absolutely nothing to say; there was just a deep pain somewhere.

 Few months back when I had been to my ancestral home, I found a “pencil-case” in an abandoned cupboard. I had won it as a prize in a competition when I was in 3rd standard. It was something unearthly to me and meant everything in the world for quite sometime. When I saw it after several years, I was amused at the details that flooded my memory- the smell of the plastic, the pictures on it, the glossiness of the packet, how it feels and everything about it. I brought it with me back to Bangalore and it’s lying on my table. A strange joy fills my heart whenever I look at it.

 So much has changed in 30 years. I can understand generation gap, but can’t really understand it when our own children are generations away from us…

Intelligent Creepers

(Continued from the previous post…)It’s not just the trees alone that are intelligent. Something that was really amusing in the forest was the large creepers. If you look at them, you can see that they go from one tree to another. The trees are several meters apart and the creepers are several meters above the ground.

One thing that amused me was how these creepers reach from one tree to another. One theory that came to my mind first was that these creepers had climbed on to the trees when the trees were pretty small, and then they grew with them. But that didn’t relay look like a prabable theory, because in most cases it would have taken several years for the creepers to reach such heights.

 

The most important observation against this theory was that it did not look as if this happened by chance. It looked very deliberate.

 A friend of mine who lives near a forest area gave me this explanation. These creepers actually reach out to the adjacent trees first on the ground. Once they climb to a certain height, they tighten themselves and lift them up to the desired height.

This seems plausible, but stillone question remains? Why would they lift themselves up like this? Because the probability of being destroyed is very high on the ground?

 Then the fundamental question remains, how do these creepers know that such a risk exists and then know what needs to be done and does it in such a brilliant way?

Intelligent trees

Do trees have intelligence? I think most of us will agree that they do. But can they think the way we humans think? Here are some examples from my recent trip through a forest. It’s really amazing and it’s hard to believe that they cannot think.

In the picture above, the tree is leaning on to the pathway, probably to get more sun light. But then the probability of the tree falling down is very high. To prevent that, the tree has put in a special root (see the red arrow) in the horizontal direction, to compensate for the tilt.

Here is another example

This tree too had the same problem. It is leaning on to the pathway. But this is very huge tree and it cannot use the same technique the other tree used.  So it did something different. It developed another set of fresh supporting roots (see the red arrow) that sort of acts like a pillar.

How do trees figure out such issues and take corrective actions?  We think our intelligence is in the brain, but where does the intelligence of the trees reside? Or are we mistaken, is every cell of our body carry that intelligence?

On dreams again

I had this dream today early in the  morning. I was living in Germany. In the street where I was staying, pillars were being erected for a flyover or overhead railway line. I was enquiring with someone if the prize of the apartment I was staying would go up if the construction was complete. There were two small restaurants nearby and I vividly remember choosing between them and picking some specific stuff like juice from one of them. Then there was a room, where there were two Indians apparently changing their cloths. I had picked up some conversation with them, but can’t recollect. I woke by then and was out of the dream.

 Though it looks like one of those common strange dreams, I was amused by the complexity of it. Last night I was watching a film depicting the struggle between an Indian King and the Britishers. There were many English men in the film and only when my wife pointed out, it occurred to me that this had probably triggered the dream. The last time I was in Germany was 2004, but the memories were still intact. The image of the pillar erection comes from Bangalore itself, where the metro rail project is going on. Yesterday afternoon, I had been to a shop right outside the office campus. The place was extremely crowded as I waited in anticipation for the shop keeper’s attention. The shop that I saw in the dream, resembled this shop (the way it was designed). The place I met the two Indians probably (this I am not really sure) came from a movie I watched last week where two Indian medical students turn in to serial killers in the US. They were staying in a similar room in the film.

 All these events had taken place at different points of time and seemingly not related at all. Why the mind tried to connect them in to a dream? Was it just a trial and error going on in the mind to see if it made any sense? Or is there an underlying connection between all these things?

 My experience is that mostly the dreams are triggered by something very recent; something that’s caught the attention. But then what is the mind doing with it during sleep? Is some sense making process going on? And can’t the mind do any sense making without connecting those things together?

How does the mind choose what memory to be recalled in connection with a particular trigger?  Is there a logic that the mind uses or is it just random firing of neurons? Is the mind trying to resolve something? So in reality what is unresolved? The current trigger or some thing unresolved in the memory? In other words is the mind trying to make sense of the current trigger using stuff in memory or is it the other way?

 I happened to catch the dream because I woke up in the middle. But I am sure this must have been happening several times during the night, just that I wasn’t aware or I cannot remember. Is there a result out of these dreams, something like a conclusion, understanding etc, that gets stored in to the mind. In that case it’s very likely that the mind is being programmed without our awareness.

 In the east they say, in deep sleep activities are absorbed in the root ignorance. Probably there is a point.

Action and Reaction

What’s the difference between acting and reacting? – This was our topic of conversation over the morning coffee yesterday. Do we ever act or we only react?  We tried to think of some activities where we were only ‘acting’ without responding to anything outside/inside. Here is an example how the discussion went:

 I drink water when I am thirsty. Obviously I am responding to the thirst. But if I am filling my water bottle so that I would be able to drink water whenever I am thirsty, is ‘filling the water bottle’ an action or reaction? Though at first sight it looks like an action, am I not reacting to the thought of ‘needing water’ in the future?

 Soon it became more and more obvious that there is actually nothing like pure ‘action’. Whatever we do is actually some sort of reaction; either to an external stimuli or to the stuff in the mind. The only difference I could think of is that there is an element of ‘choice’ that distinguishes between action and reaction. But then the choice was only influencing the quality; the basic idea of reacting still remains.

 Though it’s well known that most of our action are in fact reactions, it is really scary to think that we only react. Because in order to react, I need an ‘environment’ around me to react to and I need time that separate the two acts. My mind that reacts has also come in to existence as a result of reacting to the environment and time. So, if there was no environment to react to, there would be no mind, no action and no me. This means when I say I exist, that’s not completely true. It’s the environment that exist and I am just a byproduct of the reaction to it. If the environment does not exist, I too do not exist.

 Now shift your perspective a bit. The environment is not one entity, but is rather made of people, their thoughts, objects, events etc. Extending the same concept, each of these entities only exist because they react to their environment. For these entities I am also part of the environment.

 This now takes the problem to another dimension. This means that the environment also does not exist in reality; it’s also a byproduct of reacting to its environment . So everything exists through responding to everything else. Then in reality what exists?

 This is what the Indian mystics call Maya or the illusion…

 It may be far easier to imagine that we are actually ‘acting’ and not ‘reacting’ and live with that belief. It’s going to be an ‘action’ because I am going to choose it. Great me!

No Parking

That’s only for vehicles; humans are free to park themselves where ever they want!

Inspired design

We know nature; animals, birds, plants etc, have always inspired and influenced many things that humans have designed. What if an Ape was the inspiration? I think that’s what’s happened here…

 

Not for comparison, but with due respect

Identifying with thoughts

People say, identifying with your thoughts is the problem. But what does that really mean? When I think, it’s not that there is thought out there that’s different from me. I am that thought.

Here is a beautiful story (by Osho from From Unconsciousness to Consciousness, Talk #19) that I came across that illustrate what this means beautifully. He talks on what it means to be to a ‘watcher’ than to be identified with thoughts

A man who has gone out of his town comes back and finds that his house is on fire. It was one of the most beautiful houses in the town, and the man loved the house. Many people were ready to give double price for the house, but he had never agreed for any price, and now it is just burning before his eyes. And thousands of people have gathered, but nothing can be done.

The fire has spread so far that even if you try to put it out, nothing will be saved. So he becomes very sad. His son comes running, and whispers something in his ear: “Don’t be worried. I sold it yesterday, and at a very good price  three times…. The offer was so good I could not wait for you. Forgive me.”

But the father said, “Good, if you have sold it for three times more than the original price of the house.” Then the father is also a watcher, with other watchers. Just a moment before he was not a watcher, he was identified. It is the same house, the same fire, everything is the same , but now he is not concerned. He is enjoying it just as everybody else is enjoying.

Then the second son comes running, and he says to the father, “What are you doing? You are smiling and the house is on fire?”
The father said, “Don’t you know, your brother has sold it.”
He said, “He had talked about selling it, but nothing has been settled yet, and the man is not going to purchase it now.” Again, everything changes. Tears which had disappeared, have come back to the father’s eyes, his smile is no more there, his heart is beating fast. But the watcher is gone. He is again identified.

And then the third son comes, and he says, “That man is a man of his word. I have just come from him. He said, ‘It doesn’t matter whether the house is burned or not, it is mine. And I am going to pay the price that I have settled for. Neither you knew, nor I knew that the house would catch on fire.’” Again the father is a watcher. The identity is no more there. Actually nothing is changing; just the idea that “I am the owner, I am identified somehow with the house,” makes the whole difference. The next moment he feels, “I am not identified. Somebody else has purchased it, I have nothing to do with it; let the house burn.”

Knowing and Happiness

I was standing on the balcony in the 11^th floor of my office building. It wasn’t raining yet there, but I could see the rain advancing towards us from far off (see the red arrow in the picture). I estimated the rain to reach us  in about of 10 minutes. In a moment my mind was busy with several thoughts.

Rains are never welcome in Bangalore as it makes the ever chaotic traffic more messy. I was debating whether to leave quickly before the rain arrives. But then I had something to finish; would it be good idea to do it tomorrow?  Or should I wait till the rain is over? What happens if the rain is going to last long?

My attention was then drawn to some loud cheer from below. There were people playing football in a ground (see the red circle in the picture). They couldn’t see the rain coming and were completely involved in the game.

Rain

I was disturbed, because from that height I could see the rain coming and I was already planning what to do. But the footballers, who had no idea that it was coming, were least affected.

The rain arrived shortly and the footballers did what is needed to do when it rains – took shelter. And I was back to my desk and back to my work. I had to wait because I had work to finish and all that planning was of no use to me.

It’s generally believed that strategic thinking, higher perspectives, ability to perceive risks in advance etc are very important qualities that make us successful and need to be cultivated. But seldom we realize that they simply take away the fun from the present moment. We are definitely capable of doing what is needed in any situation. Knowing things in advance only feeds the stupid planning mind. 

No wonder CJ Jung was extremely jealous when he met those native american tribes. They were extremely happy, though they had nothing in their possession.

Dreams and Feelings

So much has been written about dreams, but it’s still a great experience to dream. What do dreams convey? I have had several experiences where subtle feelings are expressed in dreams. Here are two recent dreams.

1)This happened few days back. I had been working in the balcony in the evening and left my laptop there. As I went to bed at night I remembered that the laptop was left at the balcony and someone could steal it. I got up, brought the laptop in and went to sleep. And that night I had the following dream.

I had boarded a bus at a strange hilly region. The bus had travelled some distance when I realized that I had boarded the wrong one. I decided to get down. My bags, including the laptop bag, was kept at the back of the bus. As I moved to the back to pick them up, some strange people rushed past me. I reached the back to realize that the bags were missing and then it struck me that those people who rushed past had stolen my bags and laptop.

I think I woke up at that point….

2) I had an early flight to catch today morning. The taxi was to arrive at 5.00AM and this meant that I had to wake up at 4.30. Waking up early is something that I really hate.

I had set the alarm at 4.30 before I went to bed. I was in deep sleep when I heard the message alert tone from my mobile phone. I immediately understood that it was the message from the taxi company with the chauffeur details and confirming the pickup. The alarm was yet to ring (but I knew it was close) and I drifted back to sleep. Then I had this dream.

I was at some strange place with a group of friends. We were all leaving to some other place in what looked like early morning. Then suddenly I looked  at my watch and realized that it was only 1:30 AM (or so) and we had misunderstood the time. I informed my friends and proceeded to my room to sleep further.

The alarm went off and I was awake.

What had happened is when I heard the message alert tone, subconsciously I knew that I will need to wake up shortly. But then the subconscious mind expressed its desire to sleep through the dream

 What remains in the mind after the dreams is a very subtle feeling. In the first case it was fear and the in the second case it was a relief. Probably the unconscious mind attempts to express its feelings through dreams!

Familiarity

Yesterday, my wife asked me to visit a particular shop to pick up some special things on my way back home. So after my office I was at the shop with a friend of mine. After we finished our purchase and were returning to my car, my friend remarked, “you seem to know that shop keeper very well”

“What makes you think so?” I asked.

“The way you both were interacting; it seemed as though he knows you well”.

I am not a regular customer at the shop and was not really familiar with the shop keeper. But then I also realized that we were interacting as if we had known each other quite well.

Several, probably hundreds of, people visit the shop on a daily basis. How would a shop keeper remember them? It would really be tough. But a shop keeper definitely had to remember his key customers, because they make his business flourish. So he will need to some way of figuring out who were his regular customers. When one walks in to the shop, there is a moment when the shop keeper is looking for some signs of familiarity, like a friendly smile. If that’s there, he assumes that the person is a familiar customer and then behaves as though he knew him well. He is not faking but is really genuine. So all that one needs to do is offer that first sign of familiarity nothing like a genuine smile.

This was the explanation I gave my friend about this. I happened to be in a good mood that day and probably he had ‘mis-read’ my expression for familiarity.

But as I was writing this post, I was thinking about it again. Will it be possible that the people we meet at the street or office also have this problem? I decided to check it out at office. I walked around the office today with a smile (as genuine as possible) and to my surprise several people I happen to meet on the corridors reciprocated with a smile, a wish or many a times with a ‘how are you’. We must have crossed each other several times in the past, ignoring. But I think unconsciously everyone is looking for that first sign of ‘familiarity’.

This is perhaps an instinct built within us to differentiate between friends and enemies. But what’s also interesting is that everyone looks for that sign during an encounter. No wonder I have so many whom I do not like!

Identity and two amusements

I recently came across two very amusing things. They happened at different times, but essentially was on the same theme.

Amusement number 1: Is to read the resumes of people  you know well

I was going through a bunch of resumes in the process of designing our expert locator system. These were the resumes people submitted to the company when they joined. There were a few resumes of the people I knew and couldn’t resist the curiosity to have a detailed look. It was  really amusing. Not really because some of them have done things that you would never have imagined from him/her. But more because there was a clear disconnect between what they were and what was written in the resumes. It seemed people were trying to project an identity that they were actually not. That means if you know the person and you read his resume, there is every chance that you cannot connect them.

Strangely, this does not happen the other way round. That is if you read the resume and then meet the person, you don’t feel similar disconnect. Probably because what you read in the resume sort of biases your impression. Another strange observation (I am not really sure of this) is that wherever the resumes looked very neatly laid out, I found the disconnect was more.

 Amusement number 2:  Is to read your company’s job classified advertisement in the newspaper

If you ever read your own company’s job advertisement, you will almost feel that you have been going somewhere else all these days. If it was a company that you worked for some time back, there is at least the  benefit of doubt that things have improved after you left. But with the current company, there is no hardly any chance.

 Be it an individual or an organization, what is the need to project a different identity? I remember a question recently asked on linkedin – why social networking sites are so popular? . I guess this is the reason. We want to keep telling everyone what we are.

 Or is it that we want to hide from everyone what we really are!

Destiny

I grew up in a remote village. Our school was about 1KM away from home and all the boys and girls in the neighborhood used to walk in a group to the school. There was something interesting about these journeys. There was no fixed route to the school. The village didn’t have any roads at that time; there were just walkways. These walkways went through everyone’s property which at the time were not separated by fences. Whenever a new kid joined the school, our route would change to connect his/her house. In different seasons, we took different routes to the school. When the mangoes were ripe, the route changed to touch the mango trees.

The same was true with other walkways connecting houses. If you wanted to go somewhere, you could simply walk as you wished creating a narrow trail. When used often this becomes a walkway. But it is not a permanent one. This changes as the intentions change. If I was more friendly with someone, I would have a trail leading to his house. But if the relationship turnt sour, and I found a new friend, the old trail would be abandoned and a fresh one created.

The beauty was that there were no fixed paths. One simply created them based on the need and will.

 The thoughts came when I was reading something on ‘destiny’. Do human beings have a pre defined destiny or we create it out of our own will?

Much has changed over the years. I live in the city now. Every house and property is protected with walls. The whole city is connected with a network of roads. I can go anywhere if I know the route to take. But the whole fun of creating a path on my own is gone. I drive everyday to the office through the same roads, and back. But I hardly take notice of anything on the way. They have stopped amusing me long back.

 This might seem a very trivial thing, but I see that it has extended to every aspect of my life. The job is defined, processes defined, daily routines defined, eating habits defined. There seems to be almost no choice.

How I long to put my bare foot on the wet grass and start a small path on my own! I do not want a destiny.

Understanding

“Papa, Anna Hazare is arrested”. My daughter was getting ready to go to school and abruptly told me this as I walked in to the room.

 “Who is Anna Hazare”, I asked, curious to know what she knew

 “He is a disciple of Gandhiji”

 “Why is he arrested?” I am more curious now.

 “After Gandhiji died, he started collecting money and gold. And cheated people. So people wanted to beat him. But the police did not allow that, they arrested him”

 I burst in to laughing. But she didn’t seem to care, probably because it didn’t matter to her whether that statement was true or not.

 But the logic is interesting. I think the word ‘arrest’ had a negative connotation in her mind and logically if Anna Hazare was arrested, he must have done something wrong. That he was a disciple of Gandhiji was probably inferred from how he looks. And she cooked up a seemingly logical story why he would be arrested, that fitted the context.

 What is interesting really is the order in which we form associations tend to influence the way we form opinions. If the original news was something like ‘Anna Hazare was garlanded’, I am sure the story would have been something different and positive.

 Look at the amount of opinions and stories we form about people and situations around us. Probably at the deepest level, there is a ‘first’ association we formed that has influenced the whole story. The first association definitely is influenced by memory. But why do we need to form that first association? I think the mind has a compulsive need to understand things; need to label, judge, analyze, categorize and compare.

 If the need to ‘understand’ drops, will all the stories drop? If they all drop, what would life be left with?

 Ignorance is bliss.

Meaningful work

I don’t exactly remember the exact trigger, but the topic of ‘two snakes swallowing each other’ came up during yesterday’s lunch. I was having lunch with some friends from the Organization Study team. These are the folks who study manpower requirements, productivity, resource utilization etc in the Organization.

This is a hypothetical situation. Imagine two snakes exactly of the same size starts swallowing each other from the tail at the same pace(apparently this lead to the discovery of benzene ring). What would happen if they continue swallowing forever? Hypothetically, there should be nothing left.

Once I finished explaining, after a pause, one of them said “Why should you have two snakes? If one snake starts swallowing itself from the tail, the same thing would happen”

“So we have saved one snake, which means a 50% saving”, remarked another colleague.

The discussion then drifted off in to how we have created a value add that how we can project that saving in the appraisal etc.

But there is something interesting here. This is actually a representation of the work many of us do, especially in the corporate functions. The problem, the solution, the value add- everything is hypothetical. It’s all a kind of mental circus. It looks frightening at the same time very funny. Most of the work at corporate functions is to offset someone else’s dys-functionality. For e.g people are supposed to be productive, but then people aren’t. Then you need someone to study and tell them that they are not productive. The whole stuff is a mental game, but looks so convincing.

Just living around our thoughts is what makes our lives probably such a mess. I was inclined to think that the work needs to produce something that’s physical for it to be rewarding. But when I look at the Bangalore city and the traffic from my office on the 11th floor, I am forced to change that view. The vast expanse of the mess that’s stretched in front of you is simply a reflection of the chaotic human mind. It’s taken some physical form, that’s all.

I think, the way to end this potential insanity is to collaborate with nature. When you grow something, it’s a shared effort. You do your part and then nature does its part. I think that connects you with something deep and meaningful. Perhaps the biggest problem that this generation faces is that we are cut off from nature.