Week 28
Do you love what you do, 80 contacts, teaching in parallel, reflection to inform action & reaction, being humbled by experience and some powerful words.
Another one of those tightly packed weeks.
It is 1:37 am right now. I arrived back in Mumbai about 8 hours ago. 8 hours that were then spent on household chores, a light dinner, unpacking and then repacking for my next trip tomorrow morning. This little whitespace in the night has become my little sanctuary, a place of calm between the two storms.
I had a lovely time in Delhi. I feel grateful to be privy to other people’s exploration of life, as I explore my own. I can largely say that everyone is equally lost and found, albeit for different things. Your friend may have an iron-clad career plan but may have no clue what friendship means. You could be the exact inverse.
The sameness, yet stark distinction between lives has become such an active zone of personal inquiry for me. Now that I think about it, this juxtaposition has always fascinated me. Whether it was my exploration of what ‘home’ means as an 18-year-old to my academic inquiry as a 22-year-old into the basic needs of human beings, I have always been fascinated with what brings everyone together while the world wishes to divide.
[Thoughts] Can you love what you do?
This past week, I found myself coming back to this question as a differently-phrased response, over & over again.
I have had conversations around process, tools, thinking, future plans, motivation, drive, meaning and some more words that all try to derive something meaningful from my life that people would like to include in theirs. I can assure you, in all honesty, questions such as these put me up on a pedestal and I sit there wondering why.
People would like to work more, write more, experiment freely, reflect, become fitter, and be consistent … all while never actually wanting to do those things. We’ve become so accustomed towards wanting things that we believe the world desires more of; all while developing a gradual estrangement from what we actually want, had we been in better touch with ourselves over the years. Toko-pa Turner expresses something similar, in a much more beautiful way, in her book Belonging:
“at a certain point each of us, some sooner than others, experiences a gradual or sudden estrangement from our native relationship to magic … maybe you were made to feel necessary in only one way, while the true inclinations of your belonging were sent like fugitives underground.”
I think the question is quite simple. For everything that you do in your life, do you love what you do? Whether it is your profession, your office, your walk to your office, your work, your views of life, your wanting to have views of your life, the activities you spend your time in … everything; is it driven by love or the fear of being socially unacceptable in today’s world?
I have experienced that the things that you are in love with, will happen regardless of whatever happens in your life. We are all a bunch of cupid-struck-love-crackheads who are built to be consumed with things that they love doing, should those things be courageously found & pursued.
[Experiences] 80 contacts
At my mum’s place in Delhi, my grandma had long been awaiting my arrival for a very important task: to import all of her contacts into a new phone.
She elaborated on how difficult it had become, to first look for a number in the phonebook, dial it up and then converse because the new devil phone just didn’t show all of her contacts automatically. I thought what an arduous struggle and wondered how she was managing with so many contacts, given that she has been alive for a considerably longer time than me. I, at the moment as a 22-year-old, have 625 contacts on my phone and this is after me labelling temporary contacts as “Temp” and deleting them so that I don’t fill up my digital space with unnecessary stuff.
When I opened my grandma’s phone, I expected to see a huge number. She had 80 contacts. I confirmed whether these were all, with a bewildered look on my face. These were all. 80 contacts.
If you look at the course of life, we spend so much time wanting to impress a mass of people. More followers, more friends, more partners, more fans. When you grow old, as I have heard and observed, only a handful of people matter to you. It is almost like life itself is laid out in a diamond-like model; much to the fascination of all us designers, the double-diamond-loving folks.
[Thoughts] Is it possible to teach in parallel?
I haven’t quite developed this thought yet but I just wanted to record the existence of it in this week.
In the class that I teach, one of the students was asked to explain their experience of the course so far. They said, “We’re learning A, B, C, D but we’re also learning Apple, Ball, Cat … at the same time”. I found this thought quite interesting.
What if there could be a way that you could look at teaching again? What if fundamental concepts are built, while students simultaneously process more complex tasks; instead of the traditional way where fundamental knowledge is thought of as a foundation to then build more complex knowledge on?
I think I should study this thought a little more; try and understand what the student meant by “A, B, C, D” and “Apple, Ball, Cat”.
[Projects] Class title sequence
This past week, I also saw a few episodes of the new Netflix show Class. I still remember being exposed to the title sequence for the first time and going, “Oof”.
What I really enjoyed about the sequence was how fresh and polished it was, something that Indian TV shows have not quite achieved till now. The typographic work is also very interesting. When I dug a little further, I realised Pragun Agarwal worked on the type for this.
Interesting work. I think rapidly changing type styles for a word is an interesting, although quickly to be overused (I predict), visual style. Something to experiment with!
[Thoughts] Reflection to inform action and subsequent reaction
This was a small thought that I had while conducting a class on reflection on Thursday.
If you build on Newton’s third law of motion (every action has an equal and opposite reaction), you can think of reflection as a method to inform the next action (which then leads to another reaction).
I don’t even know what this could be. A method to explain reflection maybe? Or why it’s helpful?
[Experiences] Being humbled by experience
The class I conducted the last week had no precedent to it. It came about due to a gap that my mentor & I noticed in the existing structure of the course and we decided to propose changes. Since it was a novel session, and that too about a subject that my mentor feels strongly about, we decided to include her in the session as well.
Soon into the session, I could see that it wasn’t working as well as I had intended it to. A little bit after, I thought of cutting it short and not wasting anybody’s time. My mentor, however, stuck to it. As I became more of an observer during the later parts of the class, I noticed how wonderfully it had made sense in her head. It was almost like she could see some sense being made at the end of the present chaos while I could only see the chaos itself. Sure enough, she manoeuvred her way through the confusion in a way that resulted in everyone visibly experiencing a profound sense of learning.
I realised that had I conducted the session alone, the learnings of the students would have been so different. Would they have got to a space of profound learning as they did with her? Or would it have been more direct and ‘normal’?
I still have a lot to learn as a facilitator. Foreseeing, I realise, is an important skill that can only happen once I have taught, experimented and seen where it has led the students. I can’t wait for these learnings in my life.
[Words] Some powerful words from Belonging, by Toko-pa Turner
I’d just like to record some words that I had the pleasure of reading from Belonging by Toko-pa Turner. She has come up with some incredible word pairings. I wish I can write as powerfully as her someday. Here are some from the first two chapters:
May you be willing to be unlikeable, and in the process be utterly loved.
May you know for certain that even as you stand by yourself, you are not alone.
May you recognise with increasing vividness that you know what you know.
fractured in spirit
unmetabolized grief
As a small person of eight, my heart broke for my mother.
a gradual or sudden estrangement from our native relationship to magic.
(while describing teenagers) their insides are a colourful explosion of hormones and passion, desperation, and longing, they do whatever it takes to pretend they don’t care about anything. And it works!