A Letter to Nabil (Pt. 2)
My dear Nabil, while reading an article recently, I saw a question: “if you could change the world, what things would you change?” An interesting - if grandiose - question and one to keep in mind, as you read this letter. There are many things I would like to say, some more important than others. Getting my thoughts together has been increasingly difficult, with all the chaos in recent months. Still, I would try to distill, as well as I can, my thoughts. Perhaps, from the many scattered lines, you could make sense of what I think is important, and what I think is not.
I have always been fascinated by the concept of time and journeys. Time never stops. You can be ecstatic or moody, just given birth or just lost someone. The continuum breaks not, and as sure as we need oxygen to breath, night follows day and on it goes. Journeys are the paths of transformation, no matter how small. Do you ever stop to think of how much (or how little) you have changed since you moved to a new country, or had a kid, or took up your old job earlier this year, or even since the beginning of this week? Change can be imperceptible but it’s there, and it is through our journey through time that we run towards our destinies. Thanos has this great line about destiny: dread it, run from it, destiny still arrives.
Talking about destiny, I am not a great believer in singular destinies. Still, the idea that there’s a story-line, a plot, already written out for us, a movie in which we are the lead characters has its attractions. It fuels belief that what is ours will be ours, since God wills it. I am not quite sure I buy that. My working thesis is that there’s an infinite set of possible outcomes for each of our lives, and what we (don’t) do, second-to-second, changes our path and thus the eventual outcome. I’m not certain that there is any one maximum outcome, but I do believe that there is a reasonably small set of optimum outcomes, local maxima so to say, whose elements balance our strengths, flaws, dislikes and desires just delicately enough to leave us satisfied. Not many of us get anywhere close to this, I’m inclined to think, with many instead having to make the best of average-to-terrible situations and stringing out livable lives thus. As Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats”.
I think it is this that is one of the challenges faced by humans and perhaps where a significant chance for advancement still exists. The allure of motivational literature and religion is sugar for the soul, hope packaged in books and audiotapes which come at a pernicious, significant cost to the buyers. In some ways, hope is the most addictive drug. Still, there have been more thoughtful approaches to hacking psychology for daily use that go beyond surface words. Thinkers such as Daniel Kahnemann, Dan Ariely and Jonathan Haidt, amongst many others have tried to break down the human thinking process and how both bias-driven and reactionary our actions are. Of course, even the very idea of biographies and auto-biographies derive their interest from trying to chart a clear map to answer the twin questions of why and how our lives become what they are.
To trace better paths, and avoid desperation, it is important to have options − and where they do not exist, work to create them. Whether it is by making more deliberate decisions about our lives or careers, or where we are and where we are not, having options can be the singular difference between a life with near-optimal outcomes and one with near-dismal outcomes. For the privileged amongst us, when possible (preferably more often than not), I believe we should help create an environment in which more people can have options and opportunities available to them, to facilitate upward economic mobility. How this can be achieved is something I am still trying to figure out, but longer term, I believe something related to this would be my pivotal life’s work.
If you could change something in the world today, what would it be? I would like to hear your answer. Mine is simple. I would start with me, as I am already doing. We all have spaces we occupy and energies we exude. Continuously aligning these, to fit with whatever principles we hold dear, is a form of continuous change. In the process of doing these, we have impact on our immediate society and the larger world. I believe true change starts with the internal; it is not for external validation. I think everyone should try to destroy themselves internally, from time to time — destroy old ideas bugged in myth and fallacies, old fears and misgivings, old boundaries and boxes. I do not do this as often as I would like, unfortunately, and it is on this that I am taking deliberate action.
Another of my firm beliefs is that we all are cells in this huge organism, and each cell has a role to play. Say you meet Nika, a friend of yours, this month, you have your role to play in her life, for a short or long while, for good, neutral or bad. This role is not pre-destined, of course, but it is no less important, because it may have a direct impact on the path she takes, going forwards. The same goes for other people: family, friends, acquaintances. We all have energies — waves — and interactions with others can either lead to constructive or destructive interferences. I would like to think that as the years have gone by, our waves, yours and mine, have produced a fairly constructive interference.
I would stop here, for now. Perhaps I would write another letter when I am more certain of other things; there is still a lot I do not know. Until then, while you push on each day, and we make our way through the bedlam this year has wrought, I hope that you continue to find the kind of happiness that makes the heart full.
P.S. If you would like to read it, you can find the first part here.
