Thinking Out Of The Box

On my recent trip back from the US to India, we transited through Hong Kong. I decided to spend a day with a friend of mine and he came to pick us up at the airport. He is a wonderful person and we walked to his car as he was going to take us back to his house. I realized that we were walking towards this beautiful sleek Tesla Model S. I was intrigued not having seen one before at close quarters. It was such a sleek model. As we walked towards it, all of a sudden, the handles lit up and extended out. Prior to that, they were totally flush with the car. When we got in, they retracted again. As we began to drive into the city, there wasn't a sound in the car. I started asking him questions about the model and he said that it gave about 270 miles range on a full charge. It had a 17" high-definition touch screen right there in the front with a built-in web browser, Wi-Fi and Internet connection and even more. He said, "Would you like to see where all the Tesla cars in the world are?" He pulled up a screen and there they were; all the Teslas. You could just go to a particular city and see where every Tesla car was. And beyond that, to see where the charging stations were. Just a wonderful experience! We went into a mall later and were able to charge the car.

As I walked away from this experience, I thought about Elon Musk and the way in which he has revolutionized thinking, 'out of the box' thinking, in a short span of time. Look at him – University of Pennsylvania, Wharton's School of Business, then went to Stanford to do his PhD and lasted all of 2 days. He left there to pursue the dreams that he had. He has built an empire. Today, his net worth is $17.4 billion, at the age of 46. An enormous fortune, incredible wealth – just the ideas that have come from him have been mind-blowing.

Dream On, Strategically

The other day, I was sitting in my office and made myself a cup of coffee. It's a daily ritual for me, one that I really enjoy—fresh coffee percolating through the machine, the aroma filling the office. I had an appointment in a couple of hours, so I was dressed for that. I very gingerly picked up my cup of coffee and sat down. As I leaned forward to take my first sip, I held the cup away from me so that nothing would spill on my white shirt. The next day while sitting at home enjoying a cup of coffee, I realized that I hadn't gone to any of the extra pains that I had taken the previous day in drinking my coffee. I just sat there in my home clothes, not really concerned whether or not I spilled anything on myself—I just enjoyed the coffee!

As I reflected on these two scenarios, I realized that intent was at the very center—to be very careful on the one hand, and not being bothered by it on the other hand. Without intent to be careful or to do something, we are very much like people without a rudder. We just let the wind take us where we want; it really doesn't matter. Yet, life is not lived that way. Life is lived with intentionality—taking the oars in our hand and steering our course, not letting ourselves be carried around by the vagaries of wind or weather.

Take That Risk

Music is one of my passions. I love listening to it, conducting it, and shaping it. Some time ago, I had the opportunity to take part in a musical production that was scored for full orchestra and choir. At rehearsal, I watched as the violins played, then the violas and the cellos, the double bass, and all the stringed instruments. Then the wind instruments came in, the horns, the bassoons, and so on. But right at the back, there were two people, one was playing the tympani and the other had two cymbals in his hand. It was interesting to watch them. They were so into the music. In fact, the guy playing the tympani was rocking back and forth on his heels, in complete sync with the beats and the rhythm of the music. When he played, there was always a rising crescendo of music. It was all so wonderful. The other guy with the cymbals had only a few measures to play in that entire movement, and he had to wait for those measures and play them exactly on cue and in step with the music. All that preparation was just for those few measures.

Take That Risk

Music is one of my passions. I love music—enjoy listening to it, conducting it and shaping it.  Sometime back I had the opportunity to take part in a musical production that was scored for full orchestra and choir.  At rehearsal, I watched as the violins played, then the violas and the cellos, the double bass and all the stringed instruments. Then the wind instruments came in, the horns, the bassoons, and so on. But right at the back, there were two people; one was playing the tympani and the other had 2 cymbals in his hand. It was interesting to watch them. They were so into the music. In fact, the guy playing the tympani was rocking back and forth on his heels as he didn't have too much to play but had to be in complete sync with the beats and the rhythm of the music, so that when he had to play, he would come in exactly on time. And when he did, there was always a rising crescendo of music. It was all so wonderful. But the other guy with the cymbals had only a few measures to play in that entire movement and he had to wait for those measures and play them exactly on cue and in step with the music. All that preparation for just those few measures, which if he missed, might dilute the music marginally but make his presence on stage quite redundant.

As I reflected on that day and the importance of all those instruments, it made me think that life is sometimes like that. Life offers us opportunities that don't come every day. My mother loved to use this phrase to my brother and me, "Opportunity never knocks twice." When opportunity comes, take it because it doesn't come again. There are always moments in life when we ought to act decisively.  And to miss them is to see a dilution of our life and the lessening impact we can have on the unfolding tapestry of the world around us.

For Such A Time As This

These words sometimes haunt me: "Who knows that you haven't attained royalty for such a time as this?" These were words spoken many years ago to one who had power to do something but was reluctant to use it; spoken by one who knew that this person had power and was not using it. However, these words prompted this person to do something about it.

                                                                                                                                       

This morning, I wondered about that line.  Who knows that you and I haven't attained royalty—or the positions of power and influence that we have—for such a time as this.  Are we doing what we ought to be doing or are we just using up air on this planet? Do we justify our space on this planet and can we even justify the hopes that others who invested in us have had have had in times past? All of these are good questions for us to ask. They are not easy questions because they may make us a little uncomfortable as we begin to look more critically at ourselves and say, "Can I justify my reason for existence? Am I fulfilling my raison d'être?"

Shri Siva Subramania Iyer may be a name that you have never heard. He was a teacher of math and physics and one day he was teaching fifth graders how birds fly. He drew a diagram of a bird on the blackboard, showing its wings, tail and body structure. Then he explained how the birds lift and fly. This went on for nearly 25 minutes. At the end of the lecture, he asked the class whether they had understood, and a ten-year old boy put up his hand and said that he hadn't. The teacher was not intimidated. He asked the rest of the students whether they had understood and quite a few students said they too hadn't.

PURPOSEFULLY CLEAR

by Dr. Cecil Clements (11th December 2012)

I remember a time when I was sitting in a car with a good friend of mine, reminiscing about different things. One of the questions veered towards ‘Are we fulfilling our potential? Are there things that need to get done that have got derailed along the way?’ My friend said to me, “I remember a brilliant classmate of mine. Everything that he did was extraordinary. He topped all exams, was the first one out when there were campus recruitments, got the best jobs. I followed his career graph and it was meteoric. Then suddenly there seemed to be stagnation. He began to meander. Soon everybody else overtook him. I’ve always looked back at this person and thought – What a waste of potential! I really don’t understand what happened to him.”