Project PUSH Forward Update

Thanks for all the love regarding Project PUSH Forward. Sorry I've been away for a while. First off, I'd like to allow time for more people to join, so I'm going to continue the challenge until Tuesday, December 8th.

As far as scoring goes, it shouldn't be a competition. It's also not meant to be super regimented. The point is to find balance by forcing yourself to categorize positive and negative activities in your life. Feel free to score however you like too. We all value things differently, so it makes sense to me to make your own scoring system. I wanted it to be simple and I didn't want to think about the scoring all the time, so I've been giving myself 1 point for roughly every hour I complete a PUSH forward activity and subtracting 3 points for every PULL back act. STAKES IS HIGH homey!

One common question I've gotten:

"Is facebook a PUSH forward or a PULL back?"

Facebook is a complicated animal. You know when you get on facebook and you catch up on what people are doing? You wish Billy a Happy Birthday. You read about Obama doing something quirky. PUSH forward my friends. But wait. Then there's the point where you're looking to see what people are up and you start wishing you were doing what they were doing. You start checking out profiles to see what the girl/guy you got your eye on are up to. That's a PULL back!

I'll start posting my daily activities and scores next week. Until then I'd love to hear about what you consider PUSH forwards or PULL backs.

Also, I'd like to welcome the Small World's newest citizen, Mr. Henry Bailey.

Project PUSH Forward

To me, ideas are like appetizers. Strike that. To me, ideas are like those little taste samples at Costco. To all my Indian readers, Costco is like a giant Big Bazaar, where they often hand out tiny hot samples of their food (they also sell amazing hot dogs with a soda for $1.50!). You rarely end up buying the full blown version of the frozen chicken enchiladas you just ate but a lot of times the tiny morsel makes me think of something else you’d like to buy or helps you remember something you forgot to buy. Sometimes the value of an idea is not in whether people believe in it or not. Value lies in the ability of an idea to make people hungry for something. Value often lies in the questions and concepts that result from a given idea.

That being said, I’d like to present a tiny new dish for you today.

This Friday, October 30, I’m going to try a cracked out version of my 30-day challenges, Project PUSH Forward. For those of you not familiar with these challenges, every now and then I like to create 30-day experiments for myself. In the past, I've become vegetarian for a month (which led to me being vegetarian for a year), cooked everything I ate for a month, ran two miles a day for a month, sent two personal emails a day for a month and a bunch more. Over the years, I've learned more about myself through these challenges than anything else I’ve experienced. They’re not about depriving myself and they're not about testing my discipline. They’re about isolating a part of my life and becoming conscious about it. They're about being extreme for a short amount of time in the hopes of finding a long-lasting balance.

So the newest challenge? I’m going to keep score of my life for a month (smile). Hey, don’t laugh. Hear me out. Here’s how it’s going to work:

I sat down a while back and made a list of buckets that daily activities would fit into. For example, playing basketball would fit under the ‘Fitness’ bucket and cooking would fall into a ‘Food’ bucket. I came up with 8-10 buckets. Then using the buckets as a starting point, I brainstormed a lot of the common activities I do. For example, the ‘Fitness’ bucket has ‘playing basketball’ and ‘going for a run’ in it and the ‘Finance’ bucket has ‘taking a taxi’ in it. I then went through the list and categorized each activity as either positive (which I call PUSHes forward) or negative (which I call pull backs). Positive activities are actions that are productive (don’t think of productivity in the traditional sense. To me going out for drinks and being social is productive, so is therefore positive. Going out for drinks and drinking so much I lose half of the next day feels like a step back and is, therefore, negative.). I’m going to spend the rest of the week deciding on point values for each activity. From Friday onwards I’m going to keep track of my actions during the day and tally my positive and negative points at the end of each day.

As robotic as this all sounds, the challenge is going to make me decide how to spend my time. It's going to force me to think about the opportunity cost of my actions and although that's not incredibly sexy, I think it's going to cut out a lot of things I do subconsciously and don't actually enjoy that much and free up more time for fun shit!

So what's the motivation? We live in an age where we have become so overwhelmed with future goals and talking about what's on the horizon that we are rarely are in the moment anymore. What's up with that? We complain about our situation instead of taking the tiny steps needed to move towards our goals. We also go through the motions of so many things in our lives. This is my attempt to be more conscious of those things in my life. It's an attempt to stop talking about the life I want to live and instead to be proactive with small steps each day towards actually living that life.

I've included some of the buckets and actions I've come up with below. I plan on adding to the list throughout the week. You're all welcome to join the madness too. You got till Friday to come up with buckets and activities to fill the buckets. I'll post my updated list on Friday and we'll see where this craziness leads.

And remember, this is not about depriving myself of actions. I'm not trying to become lame! Negative things are necessary. This is about balance. Whether you want to join or not, I hope this was at least a little snack to whet your appetite.

PUSHes forward

Community: volunteering,

Exploring: visiting art galleries, seeing a new part of town, photography,

Fitness: playing basketball, going on a run

Eats: cooking

Language: studying Hindi, studying Kannada

Martha Stewart: cleaning the house, doing laundry before all the clothes are dirty

Reading: books, the paper, blogs

Writing: blog posts, short stories, personal emails

Pull backs

Finance: taking a taxi when I don’t need to

Fitness: napping during the day,

Eats: drinking enough to cut way into the next day, eating right before going to bed

Barefoot

I stood there with no shoes on. Feet were all dirty and wet. They had been that way for the last two days or so. I couldn’t find my shoes! The only sounds were the lazy raindrops that had yet made their way to the pavement from the roof.

I sat on the bus ride from Bangalore to Puttur (a small town near Mangalore) and thought hard about life. Somewhere along the 8 hour ride, I fell asleep and woke up to a faint sunrise and the familiar billboards painted with Konkani-sounding last names near the main Puttur bus stand. A short rikshaw ride later I was laying down next to a bunch of family and faded to sleep to the chatter of them catching up on the events of the last few days. I woke up a few hours later to the sounds of one very special little person. One of the main motivations for moving to India was to have a connection to the next generation of kids in my family. Last time I visited, my cousin's daughter didn't recognize me at all!I jumped out of bed and jumped into the family room. She kinda looked up at me with super droopy sleepy eyes and super curly hair. I reached into my backpack and pulled out the pink butterfly wristband I had gotten her months before in anticipation of seeing her. She screamed with the kind of excitement that only a 3 year old year could muster, "BUTTTTTTTTERFLY!" and then laughed and smiled a lot. Her grandma asked her if she recognized me and she said, "GULLIMAAAM." (My nickname is Gulli and maam means uncle).

Bout an hour later I was sitting out on the stoop. When I'm older, I hope to have a stoop half as amazing as this stoop. It has a 3-person bench swing that's surrounded by lush garden plants and overlooks a bright red clay field that's circled by coconut trees. Next to me was a woman that might as well be my third grandma. I sat and read a magazine as she strung together a bunch of jasmine flowers for her hair. Between our individual activities we chatted about our favorite things to cook and eat. She gave me lots of old school cooking advice and I filled her in on some of the San Ramon Kamath home brews and kitchen remixes. We also complained about how some people just totally mess up certain recipes. I kinda felt like an old grandma for a little bit. It was awesomely weird. In one of the rooms in the house, her husband is bedridden and not doing so well. I still remember when he was the lion of their family. When I was super little, he would hold my hand and walk me into the middle of town. He seemed to know everyone along the way.

My plan for the rest of the trip was to enjoy the festivities for Ganapathi Chathurti, a Hindu festival celebrating the birth of Lord Ganesha. There were so many great moments on that Sunday of poojas. Families that hold poojas in their homes will sculpt their own Ganeshas out of clay. The level of detail in the sculptures is always amazing and this year it was pretty cool to see that the next generation of kids had taken over a lot of the sculpting process. There was delicious food and lots of relatives. There was an overwhelming sense of community everyone around town. The list of cool shit is quite long. I may or may not remember all of that. What I will remember though is something that happened at the very end of the night.

The day had begun around 5am for most people. Most people had helped build something, cook something, move something or partaken in some other odd job. People were exhausted and it must have been around 11pm. There was a pooja for my immediate family and I went up to the altar to accept the fruits and flower offerings. Whenever I get something in a temple, I quickly hand it over to my aunt because I don't know what to do. She's quite a woman. She's always making sure that EVERYONE else eats or everyone else is taken care of before she worries about herself. I handed her the platter and she took a banana for herself. It might not sound that crazy but she really never takes anything for herself without offering it to someone else first. She turned around, walked over to the servant that was sitting in the corner (hidden away from most people. she had been working hard since the morning too) and gave her the banana. I've seen a few home owners offer their servants food but I've never seen someone offer a servant an offering from a pooja. I felt pretty proud of my aunt.

India's not about perfection. It's a country that forces you to evolve and adapt and adjust to find happiness. If you don't allow yourself to be flexible, you're not going to survive. I have to remind myself of that almost everyday as something or other is always frustrating the hell out of me. I have to remind myself that it's about appreciating the everyday magic that only happens in simple interactions.

We ate dinner and everyone went off to bed. I walked back down the dark narrow corridor between houses. My family has lived in that house for generation after generation and I thought about how many people had walked the same path.

The rainwater had built a shallow puddle in front of our house. The water washed some of the dirt off that had build up on my feet. I stood there with no shoes on. Feet were all dirty and wet. For the first time I forgot about my shoes. I looked out into the courtyard, turned off the patio light and went to bed.

Modern Day Sanctuary

When I first moved to Chicago, I had a lot of trouble finding positive outlets. I didn't know a lot of people and didn't know the area very well. The combination of spending a lot of time in my head and not having a place to release that energy was a really lonely feeling. I wouldn't want that feeling ever again but I ended up learning a lot about myself, those first few months out there. As self-defined as I feel sometimes, it's hard to go weeks without your regular outlets. I can't get in my car and go for a drive. I've spent the last four days looking for a basketball court and everyone one I find is either private or has no rims. (I actually went into a bar the other day that had one on their patio. I must have looked like a little kid because I was so excited). You can't run on the street because it's uneven and stray dogs would chase you. My computer and internet have not been working for the last few days. So I have felt a little trapped.

I've been having fun going out and exploring some of the nightlife here. When your outlets and your social scene become the same space though, it's usually not a good thing. So this lack of outlets at the moment got me thinking about the places in my life that help me release.

If you had to name 5 places that you consider your personal sanctuaries (places of peace, places of intense rest, places to refresh) , what would they be? What do they have in common?

I'm excited to ask people here this question because I have no idea what they're going to say. Older folks might say their temple or ashram but I don't understand yet where younger people go to recenter themselves. I'm kind of scared that they won't have an answer or that they're going to say something messed up.

I've been thinking about my list the last couple days. Here it is:

Two of my sanctuaries, interestingly enough, are temples. My family in India visits one of the temples every morning (as they've done for over a hundred years). It's quiet and people don't bother you to make donations. One corner of the temple is outside and surrounded by palm trees. I like to sit out there during the day and just take the day in. I've only been to the other temple a few times but it has the same intense quiet feel to it. You can hear yourself move around and if you sit still, you can hear yourself breath. Neither temple actively asks you to donate and the priests are super laid back.

I thought I would lead with the temples, since I'm in India. The rest of the locations on the list come from back home.

Two of the remaining three are taquerias (are you surprised?). Pollo Vagabundo (Elmhurst, Illinois) and Angela's Burrito Style (Chicago, Illinois). Carlos' food at Pollo has made me happy in my worst moods. I usually get up four or five times to hit the salsa bar. I believe in the healing properties of his salsa. After eating, I go to the counter and talk to him about life for a little bit and then head out totally refreshed. I've written about the other taqueria before. Guerzo, the owner of Angela's, became part of my family in Chicago. His taqueria was right down the street and we would talk about all sorts of stuff when I was in there. Both places were such escapes from my normal life.

The last sanctuary is a basketball court. There is one particular court in my hometown that I've spent years of my life on. My buddy David and I joke that no other humans have spent as much time on that court as us! (it's true!). I started playing ball on the court when I was 5 or 6 and it's still one of the first places I go to when I go home. So many conversations and memories about life have gone down there.

There's something about each place that quiets my mind and makes me feel free. I hope I find some new places in my journey out here. So, what are your sanctuaries?

Entitled

I consider myself a very open-minded and accepting person. I love learning about other cultures and about other religions. There is one group though that I've been rather closed-minded about in the past. Growing up they were never around. I had only heard stories. I knew my first full-blown exposure to them would be in college. Before I left for school, I asked a few people I respected about them. "They're drama," they said, "be careful." Or, "the guys like to get in fights," said another person. "Fights?!" I asked. "Yeah, knife fights," they said (were the Indians at UT hella shady in the late 90s or something? did they like to get stabby?). I know some of you that know me well are laughing right now. I'm talking about Indian kids in America.

To be honest, I unfairly grouped them all together when I was younger. I decided they were all into bhangra and superficial Indian culture and didn't really have an interest in India itself. That was really unfair of me. I think a little part of me will always wonder what it would have been like to get involved with the community in college. For some reason though, I just never identified with them. I didn't understand that people were able to be outwardly Indian and still balance their non-Indian sides. I saw a few people wanting to be around people with whom they felt a common connection.

I still didn't get it. I never felt like a minority. Sure, there were times growing up here and there and being teased but it never registered with me. It's interesting because I've talked to people that have also grown up in towns where their ethnicity is the extreme minority and people seem to either feel very welcome or very alienated. Either way, outside my house, I was just another one of the guys and inside my house I was Konkani and wanted to marinate on all things Indian. I didn't think I could be very Indian and very American at the same time. I identified with my Konkani culture strongly at home and didn't think about it much outside our house. The three have always been separate in my head. (interesting side question for you: "If you had to choose between calling yourself American or whatever ethnicity, culture, etc you identify with, which would you choose?" Without hesitation, I am American. I'm very proud of that and I hate when my parents make a separation between me and "Americans."

So why am I bringing up my past reservations here? Because I know I have unfairly judged in the past and I've grown a lot since then. I've come to India with an entirely open-minded. (I've also pinpointed what it is that bugs me about those few that do actually suck. I'll get to that in a bit). I'm hoping to meet at least a few of the Indian-Americans out here and I've done my best to erase my reservations. I'm excited to meet the folks out here. Really excited! The idea of hanging out with mostly Indian people still really weirds me out but I'm getting more used to it. Interestingly, locals weird me out much less than people from the states.

So let's get back to those few that suck. The last few days, I've been thinking about what it is that annoys me about certain Indian people I know. Revelation. I realized that it's a trait common to most people I don't care for back home. They all seem to live life with a sense of entitlement.

In the states, I'd be in a bar or a club and the Indian people I'm with or another group of Indian people, more often than not, would get into an argument with a server or a bartender or a valet driver. Acting like they were better than the workers. Acting like the worker was extremely subordinate. I'm starting to notice it here too. There is a HUGE class distinction between customer and server here. It really fucking bothers me. It might be the thing that's the hardest for me to accept. I worked at Carl's Junior when I was younger and to know that some service workers support their families through that work has stuck with me. I think about that every time I go out. I think it's important to remember that people are people and to not wholeheartedly buy into the whole customer/server power relationship. (By the way, if you're taking notes at home, a huge turn on to me is when ladies are super loving and respectful to service people.)

A little while before I left Chicago, I ran into my buddy Vivek at a party. He's been living in Mumbai for the last few years and just came back to the states recently. He says, "Hey Vaman. Remember what you said about the Indian kids in college?" I laughed nervously and thought, "Good god, that could be anything." He said, "You said you felt like a rebel. Like an outsider." But it's true. That is how I felt. I know now that it was mostly my own fault. I never tried to connect with them. I totally judged them all based on the few wack people I knew.

The great thing about life is that you can have realizations and evolve as a person. I know you can outwardly celebrate multiple cultures. I plan on giving people a second chance and treating people as individuals instead of labeled members of a group. Oh wait, unless I meet you and you're wearing a very unbuttoned vertical stripe shirt with overly moussed hair. Vivek has assured me that those dudes do not decide to work in India. I'm kidding, you guys are cool too.

My First 10 Days

People like to joke with me that things I get myself into resemble a movie (is it a romantic comedy, a drama or a thriller?). I don't know how true that is or how much I actively try to put myself in ridiculous situations. Either way, the first 10 days in India did not disappoint.

I came here for two main reasons: 1) I've always wanted to live in India 2) My obsession is helping people create and deliver a clear message and there's a huge market for that here. You know how when you move though, you have things you're excited about experiencing once you get to the new place? I had lots of those.

Well, on my second day here, I heard some bad news about one of the activities I was hoping to spend a good deal of my free time on. I had imagined how great the experience would be. To see it kind of fall through before I really settled in was really disappointing. You know when you let yourself get excited about an event or an activity prematurely? How much does that suck? At this point, I definitely felt uneasy. To make things worse, I had to board a 12 hour bus ride to Goa. I fell asleep and woke up on a sunny morning.

Life is funny. Sometimes the smallest events (or people) can offer the most perspective. I arrived at my cousins' place in Goa to see their baby daughter sleeping. She's a tiny little thing with super curly hair. I wasn't sure if she'd remember me after 3 months. She woke up and was super shy for a few minutes. Then she finally looked at me and said, "GULLLLI!" (That's what my family and old time friends call me. My middle name is Gururaj and my sister couldn't pronounce it and said Gulli instead. All the little kids here call me GULLLLI). I hung out with her the entire day. At one point, she stood on a pillow and screamed, "Haav big usa!" (which means I'm big) and then she jumped off the pillow and screamed, "Haav saan usa!" (which means I'm small). We both couldn't stop laughing.

Later that night, my cousin took me out to the coast. We stood on the beach under a sky full of stars. I kind of smiled to myself and thought, "I am standing at the Arabian Sea looking at stars." We ate ridiculous seafood and drank our share of Kingfisher outside near the beach that night.

To get a kid's world view and then to experience the universe, in a sense, on the same day was a great feeling. The next few days were filled with a really fun wedding in Goa (filled with some amazing conversations with a really diverse crowd), a sunrise conversation with a good friend back home and more cousin time. I boarded my bus back to Bangalore excited to sleep. As soon as I sat down, the guy next to me started chatting me up. This is rare but I was pretty annoyed at first. That is until this guy started telling me about his life.

If my time in India had not already been surreal enough, get this story! He's a fish salesman in Panjim, the capital of Goa. He wakes up at 2 or 3 am every morning to take a bus to Margao, a neighboring town, to buy fresh fish. He works 6 days a week. One day a white looking dude was walking around the fish market and points over at him. Turns out the guy is a director and casts this boy for a part in an independent film. I was really skeptical of the story. I ate dinner with him that night at a rest stop (where he offered to pay) and he told me about his experience at SUNDANCE! Then he showed me a magazine with his picture on the cover. Anyway, his life has been less than wonderful. He's dealt with all sorts of shit most of us never have to think about. He's not well off by any means. He gave the money he made from the movie to his mom and sisters and kept a little for himself. He was on his way to an interview about the movie in Bangalore. I was really happy for him.

I spent the next night at another cousin's house. She kept telling stories as I was falling asleep. She was speaking in Konkani and it felt like she was telling us a bedtime story. After a while, she turned to my unmarried cousin and said, "You know what your problem is?" I thought, "Oh Lord, here we go with some wedding stuff." She backtracked a little and said, "You know what all of our problems are? Whether we choose to participate or sit back and watch, life is still moving on. Sometimes an event occurs. Sometimes something bad happens. We get so stuck on the outcome of that event that we stop participating. Life is going to go on either way. You guys should participate."

I have a bunch of other posts coming up about business prospects that are in the works, food, bathroom adventures, and lots of other stuff. After 10 days though, what have I learned? Life brings about events that are both good and bad. More often than not, we don't have control over the outcome of an event. We do however, have control over how we react to that outcome. We have control over what we learn and that allows us to become proactive in the future. I don't know if I've ever been this excited about something I've worked on. I know that all of my expectations are not going to get met. Movies always have twists and turns though right? Just wait until you see the surprise ending.

Welcome to India

I kept telling people that everything wouldn't hit me until I got off the plane in Bangalore. Strangely, I got off the plane and felt normal, almost comfortable. I stood outside waiting for my ride and that's when things sunk in. I saw a Kati Roll, which reminded me of New York and people back home. Then I heard a family speaking a language I didn't recognize and then laughing together. I looked around and EVERYONE was Indian! I mean every last person. I started thinking about how much I was going to miss diversity and peoples' sense of humor back home. That night I got to my uncle's place and ate an amazing Konkani (the language of my people) dinner. I went to my bathroom, turned on the light, said what's up to my roommates (the two cochroaches that I knew would be in the bathroom everynight), and got completely naked to use the bathroom. The bathoom situation out here deserves it's own future post! I looked in the mirror, kind of laughed, turned off the light and went to bed.

Storytelling and the Mind's Eye Picasso

"Our eyes are basically a window from which we view the world. The collection of our experiences create the back story with which we define what it is we're seeing, feeling, and interacting with at any given moment."

I wish I made that up but I didn't. The concept was brought up during a class discussion back in the day and was apparently profound enough to stick in my head this long. The statement is not all that accurate though.

Here's another attempt:
"Our eyes are basically a peephole through which we view the world. The collection of our direct experiences and the narratives we've been offered by the people around us create the back story with which we define what it is we're seeing, feeling, and interacting with at any given moment."

From a window to a peephole is better but I'm still not too excited about it. Sounds kinda like a stripclub peephole too with booty bouncing on the other side. It doesn't quite express the extent to which, whether we accept it or not, we're shortsighted about the world either.

So here's the EXCLUSIVE remix to the remix:
"Our eyes are basically a pinhole (damn, that's tiny right?) through which we view the world. Everything we're able to see through this tiny hole is initially colorless and blurry. The collection of our direct experiences and the narratives we've been offered by the people around us create the back story with which we're able to color in little by little and bring focus to what it is we're seeing, feeling, and interacting with at any given moment."

Wow. That's a lotta words. Here's the cliffnotes version:
"We decide how to define and take action on things around us based on what we have personally experienced and when we're inexperienced at something, we rely on the stories we've been told about the something."

I am constantly thinking about this simple idea because it makes so much sense. A seemingly illogical action taken by someone around us, is perfectly logical to them based on their experience. Also, people around me have been through all sorts of interesting shit. Maybe I could learn something from them!

Marinating on this idea has made me realize that we all interact with the world with a sort of personal tunnel vision based on our preconceived notions. The readily available cure? Listening to people and allowing them to color and bring focus (for better or worse) to an otherwise drab landscape.

1) First in Flight:
I've been to Bachpe Airport (near Mangalore, India) enough times to know that it's terribly small. Small enough to ask passengers to step directly onto the tarmac when landing. During lunch with an elderly relative, we began talking about his childhood. He smiled and said, "I remember the day that Bachpe airport first opened. Nehru was to be the first passenger on the first flight landing at the airport. I took three or four buses and a few boats to get there from Udupi. I didn't even make it on time but I do remember one thing clearly: There were a few car accidents because everyone was staring up at the sky. People had never seen a plane before!"

He went from never seeing a plane to reading the news on the internet everyday today.

2) Under the Covers:
I got to know a girl a while back that I found quite amazing. She was cute, had a great personality, and a great sense of humor. My favorite thing to talk with her about was poetry. She had this passion for poetry that made me want to sit and really contemplate what the writer was trying to say.

She danced in college too. I think she was in one of those cultural shows. She talked about her friends a lot. She spent her free time running and biking around town.

She never seemed to let any guys get close though. I never really understood and kinda wrote her off as a hater. In reality through, she had been sexually abused by a family friend when she was in high school. That experience had altered her view on so much. Continual self image issues and guilt issues over the things that happened. She seemed to feel like it was her fault. It affected everything she tried to do. I hope she's doing really well today. She's pretty awesome.

3) Table for Two:
"We'll seat him outside," one of my relatives said from deep inside her house. She was referring to the Muslim driver that had brought my family to her house. In this rather turbulent town in Kerala, Muslims and lower caste people are not invited into homes. "Then, you can seat me outside too," was my dad's response, who then ate dinner with the driver on the front porch.

4) Taqueria Therapy:
It's no secret that I love taquerias. In the two years I lived in Chicago, I hit up my neighborhood taqueria hundreds of times. To fall in love with a taqueria, it not only needs pretty damn good food but it needs to have personality. Guerzo, the middle-aged, Mexican owner of this spot is what sold me. Over the years, he's seen me in more emotional and mental states than probably anyone else in Chicago. Rough days at work. Life getting me down. Late night drunk eats. I slowly got to know Guerzo, his son and even met his granddaughter. I had never really sat down with him though and asked talked to him about his life.

It happened to be a really slow night on one of my last nights in Chicago. I told Guerzo to sit down with me while I ate and I told him about my plan to move to Bangalore. I told him about the business opportunity and lifelong dream. I also told him how I felt responsible to stay connected to my family in India (and the small towns we're from). Something resonated with him. I asked him if he was worried about his son losing touch with Mexico. Guerzo flashed his usual half smile, half "I'm deep in thought" expression. He began describing the town he grew up in. It was a tiny town just outside of Mexico City.

Hearing the cultural differences between Mexico City and his town reminded me so much of the contrast between Bangalore and our town. If I gave you a written description of the town my family's from and the town Guerzo is from and removed language differences, I think you'd have a hard time telling them apart.

5) Truth Fed Beef:
"Sai Baba of Shirdi (Unknown - October 15, 1918), also known as Shirdi Sai Baba, was an Indian guru and yogi who is regarded by his followers as an incarnation of God. Some of his Hindu devotees believe that he was an incarnation of Shiva or Dattatreya."

I've seen Shirdi Sai Baba's photo up in so many Indian homes. I have no idea about his history or what it is he did. I do know that people worship him like a God. You know what I've never heard about him though?! That's he was a practicing Hindu and Muslim!!

"In his life and teachings he tried to embrace and reconcile both faiths: Sai Baba lived in a mosque, was buried in a Hindu temple, embraced Hindu and Muslim practices, and taught using words and figures that drew from both traditions."

Eat it Hindu and Muslim extremists!

The last two days I've heard stories about dealing with an alcoholic dad, growing up in a biracial family, hiding relationships from your conservative parents, communication mishaps with a girlfriend, an immigrant's first impressions of America, and how scary typhoid used to be. All stories from friends I was kickin' it with and people around me.

We're all inherently different. Hearing the differences, as wacky as it sounds, helps us understand the people around us and understand ourselves better. It takes a conscious effort to not just accept what we're hearing as truth but to marinate on experiences and stories and decide for ourselves how the story applies to our lives.

Once in a while though our tiny pinhole viewers actually overlap. We find familiarity in the most unlikely person or thing. I think that's what humanity is: the common threads that are always there but often take a little deeper digging to uncover. Digging past the iphones, the ipods, the twitter, the facebook status messages. Past the makeup, the jewelry, and stunner shades. Past the Hills, the Kardashians, and reality TV. Only essentials are left. We're left with me and you, trying to understand each other through tiny pinholes with our experiences and stories.

So here's a challenge. What if we spent a day or even a week consciously trying to find the overlap of the pinholes instead of the obvious differences?

I'll be around for a month or so before I roll to the Motherland and hope to be writing more often. Thanks for all the love! Please feel free to comment on this post with your own experiences or short stories you've heard.

In Search of Success

Friday, April 3rd was my last day at work here in Chicago. As crazy as it sounds, I quit my job. I'm leaving a great job and an extremely comfortable lifestyle in a city that often feels as if it's been custom made for me (half off night at the Tin Lizzie, I shall miss you). So what am I going after? An ideal. A feeling. It's kind of a deep down intuition of what I'm supposed to do. A search for something that's been missing.

I'll be going after two lifelong dreams: living in India and starting my own public speaking consulting firm.

I can't describe the feeling I've had the last few weeks. It's been unbelievable and surreal even at its low points. To think about things for so long and to have so many conversations with people about them is one thing but that moment of clarity when I decided to quit and go for it is hard to describe. After my trip to India (which was a month ago but feels like it was a year ago), I reflected a lot about what success means to me.

It's always been difficult for me to accept the way we try to create a common ideal for defining what success looks like. When we do this, it's hard not to simplify things into metrics. We evaluate each other based on schools attended, lifestyles led, salaries earned, etc. We strive to someday get a piece of society's success pie. You want whip cream on that? But I'm starting to realize how insane and unhappy that makes us.

How can a group try to define something so abstract as the meaning of success? We all have different desires, likes, dislikes and aspirations in our everyday lives. So shouldn't our individual notion of what success means be just as unique as we are? I felt a lot better about life when I thought about it like this: Sit and think about what a few friends want to do with their lives. How they specifically live their lives now and how they would like their lives to be in the future. More often than not, we're not vying for slices of the same pie. We should be in line to order our very own personalized pie (I don't even really like pie, I hope the world hasn't run out of cupcakes).

I used to get kind of distressed when I heard about peoples' accomplishments. I would get really happy for the person but then start questioning myself. I asked myself, "Why is so-so and making shit happen and I'm not? When am I gonna do what I've always wanted to do? Why is Mark in China playing with Pandas and I'm sitting at work?" There were no answers to these questions because they have no actionable response. I'm not sure why, but one day the questions changed. "What makes me happy? What am I passionate about? What wouldn't I mind dedicating more of my time to outside of work? What would be the most fulfilling job? (whattup Dr. Phil) I answered the questions honestly and as crappy as the answers were sometimes, they forced me to be real with myself. And the result? I stopped thinking that maybe I should be doing what others were doing. You're a doctor? Awesome. You work at Google/Facebook? Sweet. You sell drugs? Questionable. I totally stopped thinking about alternative professions and paths for myself. All because the questions changed. That realization has given me all the confidence to take this crazy leap of faith.

The point of all this is that we should strive to define our own success pie. You might want to be the dynamic mom/dad you've always wanted to be or become the public service leader you've always wanted to become. The pie is ours to create and each definition of success is not limited to any one thing. You can mix toppings my friend. I won't tell. And we shouldn't feel bad when people don't understand our passion because as long as we're being honest with ourselves, success should mean something different to each of us.

Knowing that I'm going to be leaving Chicago and then leaving the Bay (again) has also made me think about the people in my life a lot. Like I wrote to my friends here in Chicago, I've always believed that I'm the collective reflection of the people and experiences I've come across in my life, so I can't thank the people around me enough for adding so much to that. Whether I'm here in Chicago or on the other side of the world, I'll always have those experiences to draw from. I get so much energy from people. I feed off them (I'm not literally eating them, seafood only for this guy). A friend came out to visit a while back and said how he couldn't wait to see what crazy thing I had planned to make the trip memorable. That meant a lot because I think that should be a big part of life. Being with people and experiencing new things. Tasting things you've never tasted and seeing things you've never seen and feeling a way you've never felt. That intangible that makes moments memorable. I'm lucky enough to have people in my life that are continually doing that for me.

A dinner conversation the other night kind of sums the last month. A doctor buddy and I finish dinner and here's how the conversation went.

Buddy: "Okay, we should probably head home. Early morning for me. I'm drilling into someone's skull tomorrow. Glad we had dinner. It's really admirable what you're doing."

Me: "Hey thanks that means a lot. Wait what, you're drilling into a live person's skull?"

Buddy: "Yeah. (makes drill motion) Right into their skull. So yeah, I would not have the balls to do what you're doing."

Me: "Dude, are you fucking serious? Wait, what if you hit their brain? What's the allowable margin of error on something like that?"

Buddy: "Really really microscopic. No worries though. Anyway, maybe it's my profession but I'm much too risk averse to take a leap the way you are."

But not too risk averse to drill into a human skull! Obviously he's got his pie and I've got mine.

If you're in Chicago.... it's been a ridiculous two years. It's going down tomorrow. Look sharp.
If you're in the Bay.... fire up the BBQ - dust off the beach chairs. I'm coming home for a bit.
And if you're in India.... get ready. I'll be there soon.

So to all of you out there trying to make shit happen: props to your success and continual effort towards new success. Thanks for the inspiration. I think I'm ready to define and try to reach my own.

The Moment

Two women that couldn't be more unrelated and yet what one said and what the other one did have defined who I am.

A couple thousand people gathered around Central Park in San Ramon on what I remember being a ridiculously clear May day in 1999. A few buddies and I put together a march to show support for the victims of the Columbine High tragedy. There were free shirts, and music, and politicians, and all sorts of hullabaloo. There were newspaper reporters, parents and school faculty. To be honest, I don't remember much of that stuff. But I'll never forget what Mary from Monte Vista said to me during the event. The entire day summed up in one interaction. That moment is so vivid in my mind. I can almost taste the air and see the way her hair was blowing in the wind. She caught up to me along the marching route and said, "Thank you for making me feel a part of something bigger than myself."

I don't fare well after I eat palau (kind of like rice pilaf with nuts and other stuff in it) in India. My cousin Vittaloo had a pooja in Mysore and I stupidly ate a bunch of palau. Almost like clockwork I started throwing up on the long ride back home. We stopped so many times, I lost track of how many times I heaved. We tried sticking a lemon near my nose and using hot towels on my head, but that palau wanted to party.

One stop was different than the rest. I ran out of the car and threw up only to realize I had thrown up on someone's doorstep. It was makeshift house made from garbade bags and gathered materials. I had basically desecrated what would have been the equavalent of their porch. A woman immediately saw me. I didn't know what to do or say. Without hesitation she walked out of sight. Moments later she came back with a bucket full of water and motioned for me to wash my face. I washed my face and rinsed out my mouth as she cleaned off the front of her property. She was so calm and when she wasn't calm she was worried. She was worried about my well-being. I tried to say thanks but she didn't understand or care for accolades. She did what she thought was right. She never spoke a single word to me and yet I make a point to think about her almost everyday.

Life is about feeling a part of something bigger than yourself. Humans crave those moments. The moments where we see the humanity in others and they in us. We understand what "together" means. My life's dream, began with two chance events. A girl spoke, a woman acted and an insatiable hunger to create similar moments and similar feelings for the people in my life was born in me. If someday, people feel like they've gotten that feeling from things that I've been apart of, then I've succeeded. I talk and talk about this idea or that idea. There's really not much stopping me. It's time to eat.

Prelude: The Next Movement

This is the first of two posts leading up to an invitation for a social experiment that I would love for anyone interested to accept. This post lays the foundation for how my thinking has changed over time and how this small change has made me feel empowered and crazy about life.

The last two years have been about experimentation. Experimentation mostly with drugs and lawlessness.... I'm totally kidding. Experimentation with small adjustments and readjustments in my everyday life. Running before or after work. Not checking email at home. Drinking X number of water cups before lunch. If a pattern emerged over time with certain actions (consistently feeling awesome after drinking a huge glass of water early in the morning), I incorporated it permanently into my life. Things with not so awesome results (like trying to live off $45 per week), I just adjusted or abandoned. Either way, every tiny experiment gave me lots of insight into all sorts of things about myself and the world around me.

The funny thing about being in control of these tiny things in your life is that they give you the most insight into the gigantic things in your life like defining what's important to you. Lots of people around me seem to be futility trying to come define the most gigantic of these topics, "What do you want to do with your life?" I after messing around with a few experiments, I have come to the conclusion that the question should forever be remixed from, "What do you want to do with your life?" to "What are you doing with your life?" The first question seems to ask for a specific answer that feels very final. Life doesn't work that way though. It's more like an organism that's always evolving. The new question is focused on being productive today so that you're better off tomorrow. Are you moving you towards a better future?

We've become obsessed with the finish line. So much so that the path we take is slowly losing more meaning. Take a step back and we see that the path is composed of laps and each lap can be broken down into meter increment markers. It's a group of strides that allows us to step over each one of these increment markers. Each stride broken down further into individual steps. So why I spend so much time stressing about what career I would like to have next? Why do I anxiously marinate on how insightful living in this country or working for that company could be? This obsession with the finish line has been tripping some of us up even before we can get into our initial stride. We fixate on answering that first question from before so much that it takes time away from moving towards the answer. So why not instead think about goals and back up a bit. What if we then defined a general direction to grow. This direction would have wiggle room and this direction would be evolving as we evolve.

I realized this about half way through 2008. I started whispering "baby steps" to myself when I went on a run or had a productive day. For a long time it didn't really mean anything to me except to bite off small chunks of my goals each day. So I would spend a small amount of time on each step and the rest of the time daydreaming about how sweet it would be if I accomplished my goals, again the finish line. Then one day the "aha!" came.

Babies crawl for a while until one day they decide to move to the next level. Not so different than jumping from college to a career or from company to company. The initial step is foreign yet exciting. The next one feels unbalanced yet good. Here's where babies win out in this analogy. Unlike us, step after shaky step, the toddler is not thinking, "Damn these steps are tiny, I can't wait to run." They're thinking "Holy shit. Wait I can move?" and maybe, "I don't need to cry for those lame gigantic people as much anymore." It's about faith. Not in the guy in the sky sense but in the feeling you have within yourself. Sure the end goal might be to find balance and then run but it's putting foot in front of foot that gets you there. That's what I've been trying to do in my like. To define broad directions I'd like to evolve towards. I'd like to learn languages. I'd like to start my own company. I'd like to live in another country. All very broad paths. Then on the daily I try to keep faith in the fact that if I move a little bit in a direction that feels good today, I'll be better off tomorrow. The result is a growing feeling of clarity and empowerment.

Think about your goals. Understand the direction you need to travel and then have faith in yourself. If you crave another path later, your perspective is still richer than if you were stagnant since, there is no replacement for each individual step.

People sometimes comment that I have strangely random interests but they are actually more calculated than I realized before this year. They subscribe to my inner toddler. I try to do things that make life feel more rich and that make me feel good. As lame as that sounds, I wasn't actively doing that before. I tried to cook dinner for friends a lot last year. Maybe I'll own a restaurant in many years. I took Hindi last quarter. Maybe I'll travel all over India and be able to socialize with the locals. I went on a run last week. Maybe I'll finally reach my fitness goals this week. Each might just be one step towards the finish line but tomorrow brings another step and the day after one more and...