Friday Reflections

Songs of the Mockingbird- Golden Years Part 3

Point to Ponder: There are four distinct phases in life of a human being. Childhood, Youth (learning about various aspects of life), Adult-Prime Time ( Family, Career, take care of Aging Parents) and Adult-Golden Years (Service to living beings, Detachment from things). I believe when a Mockingbird sings, it sings songs representing every phase of life.

 

Story Line: Songs of the Mockingbird

The transition to enjoying the flow of life has offered its own unique challenges. Coming from the world of taking charge and being on top of things; to the world of observing things as they are, immersing deeply into them, and flowing with them has required strong commitment and efforts on my part. The process is still ongoing but the experiences so far have been fun and educational.

A few weeks ago, we were blessed with the responsibility of taking care of three grandchildren and three large Labradors (Doja Beladona, Cal and Miko), all while caring for our own dog named Zena Doolittle (who is very territorial by the way). 

Initially, the thought of having a full house triggered my old instinct to to plan the logistics of everyone's care. Instead, I contained the urge and decided to go with the flow of life. The test of all my years of leadership training came into play when my two older grandchildren and four dogs started playing in the house at full force; running, tackling, and Zena Doolittle eventually starting to display her territorial instincts. In that near crisis I had to resort to the closest thing available to bring law and order; the broom which was very helpful in directing everyone in their place. My wife, who was holding the little one and watching this entire show, pointed out that I looked like a ringmaster in the lion’s cage at the circus. At least I had a more humane tool and no flogging or electric shock stick.

That brings me to the other experience of watching this hummingbird, a daily visitor to our garden, create a nest in the small housing for decorative garden lights without understanding the risks involved. We watched the entire process from laying eggs, hatching, having two beautiful babies and how they prepared for take-off into the real world. Even hummingbirds have a very sound program for training the new arrivals for integration into the real world.

Birth to Empty Nest (Phase 1 and Phase 2 of life)

And as the spring arrived so came the different kinds of birds with their own songs. Especially the Mockingbird, who is much like what we used to term an ideal employee in the old days: the first in to arrive at work and last one to leave. He sings his heart out with songs in many different tunes from early morning to late evening on the top of a big PG&E pole in our backyard, occasionally moving to the nearby tree to entertain our other neighbors. Even many of my (still working) friends who have come by the house feel energized by the bird's songs.

I can share many such experiences with observing the different colors of dragonflies, invading herons (Koi Killers), squirrels and pigeons looking to raid this year's fruit crops but I would like to end with one amazing experience about the flow of life that happened yesterday.

Prime Time (Phase 3 of life)

One of the first Kois in our pond left us after 10 wonderful years. Our son decided to give her a proper burial and also involve his son in the process with his partner, me and my mother participating. It is hard to lose a friend, especially so for the animal kingdom variety, and we said farewell with heavy hearts. I believe this was the first exposure to this part of the flow of life for my grandson but I am not still sure he grasped the totality of it. But watching him go through it brought back memories of the book Totto Chan as well as my childhood school principal Vajubhai who taught us many things with the real life episodes.

 

 Eventuality of The Flow of Life (end of Phase 4)

Reflection: For me the process of immersing in the flow of life has a long way to go. Still at times the urge to go back to my old methods (FMEA, Get in Control) kicks in, but with awareness and discipline the balance is shifting in a new direction. The thing I wonder is if such enjoyment can be done in the previous phase of life, if only we are aware of it at all; we are concerned in the busiest (and often earliest) phase where we have just started the first career job/business, our families, and are still learning about finances. For me, phase 3 was the most intense phase of life and I realize that if I had somehow learned to relax, let go and immerse in the flow of life, it might have helped in all other aspects of my life. I wonder if that is true of others and if it is true of your life as well? 

Golden Years 2 The Young and The Restless

Bodega Bay, California Photo by Anand Shah

Point to Ponder: Most of the things in life are simple and only the wise can see them them.- Paulo Coelho

Story Line: Coincidence or not but our grandsons were born in 2012, 2014 and 2016, the winning seasons of the San Francisco Giants. Little did I know how important a role they will play for me in immersing and enjoying the new phase of my life.

Our children were born in the beginning and prime stages of my career, respectively. For me, those years were spent on long hours at work and a lot of travel. So now, in my later years, when I listen to our children and my wife talk about all of the wonderful things they used to do, I feel that I missed out on some great times.

I believe my grandsons came into my life, now that I’m retired, as a second chance to make up for that lost time. The oldest introduced me to “Finding Nemo”. The first time I watched it with him I could not help but point out how important it is to listen to your parents so as not to get in trouble like Nemo did. The youngster did not seem to acknowledge my preaching and he kept insisting that we go on with the rest of the show and enjoy the thrill of it. Since that day I have watched the film 17 times with him. I have enjoyed it immensely.

A few months ago the middle one insisted that I change his diaper. So for the first time (yes for the first time- some may say “shame on you” for this, I know) I changed a baby’s diaper, with my wife guided me through each step of the way of course. I learned that Precision and Accuracy are of utmost importance in this process. Improper installation can result in high P/T, precision to tolerance (of my wife) ratio. I am proud to say that the kid was very happy with the outcome and the next time around even insisted that I change it alone without any help. After some convincing, we found a middle ground and my wife supervised my work from a distance. I think I must have done a good enough job because now he insists that I have no supervision at all and asks everyone to leave the room so I can perform the diaper change on my own. I have to say that it has boosted my confidence and for a moment I felt very happy about being a preferred supplier for the job, but then I got a bit worried that the kid does not yet understand the sole supplier risks I may inevitably pose. Anyway, my son’s words came to mind, “Dad, home is not work. Enjoy the flow of life”. So I moved on.

Watching the youngest one totally immersed in enjoying his milk while I am holding his bottle has been yet another experience. He takes his time, takes pauses in between, erases any thoughts of “RAPID” from my mind and has taught me to enjoy the experience. And finally, the process of burping him on my shoulder and the feeling in my heart of holding him is something hard to describe in words.

When the older one and the middle one have disputes about sharing toys, and I notice the lack of collaboration as the root cause, the memories of my work days return. The company had to hire special consultants and spend millions of dollars in of-site summits and week-long retreats in an appeal to senior executives to work together, cooperate, and get into the spirit of team-work (aka collaboration). But with these young souls I notice that they can be persuaded with patience and a few minutes work without incurring any major expenses. The more I interact with them the more I learn the value of explaining the “Why” of things, and though it may take some patience and time to explain on my part, I have found it works better than exercising authority and order them to do it (What, Where, Who, When things). I guess it is “Compliance” vs “Choice” scenario.

Reflection: There are so many things I am learning by interacting with and watching these young kids. Walking and listening to them telling me about flowers and lizards, waiting early on Thursdays mornings for the garbage trucks (which seems to make garbage truck guys very happy as there is someone excited and waiting at the curb to acknowledge and appreciate their work), there’s the stories about sea creatures and dinosaurs, and the lingering fragrance of the spilled milk on the shirts. It’s living in the moment, with no distractions of work or other things, and it is an amazing feeling. I now know what I had been missing all those years ago.  

 

Golden Years Life After Work

 

Fiji: Photo by Luisa Go Shah

This is part 1 of the three Friday Reflections. 

Point to Ponder: It is not the change but the transition that was challenging.

Story Line: Two Years ago I said my final goodbye to the “working world” and ventured into phase four of my life (aka Golden Years, Retirement, VanPrasthashrama in Sanskrit).

The vision of what would change (End Result) was clear to me before making the decision: long coffee breaks without worrying about being late for a meeting; the freedom to go places on impulse; mind fully focused on the conversations at hand without being distracted about work issues. In short, my wife and I were going to start living the life we had always imagined when we were young teenagers in love. 

We spent six months travelling to places, meeting people of different cultures and having magnificent experiences.

But after spending 40 years working in and with the fast paced, and high intensity, of the technological industry, the transition into my new life was extremely challenging whenever I was at home; Especially for my family. Even though I could digitally switch off the thoughts about daily work routine and challenges, it was hard to change the internal habits (I mean good habits) wired into me in the industry regarding sound systems, processes and controls. For example, anticipating and preventing issues was a significant part of my work and through the years we had developed an eye for spotting things that could create problems in attaining our goals. 

My trained eye would spot all kinds of potential problems in the home: scattered toys left by my grandchildren that I envisioned would trip unsuspecting people; a small piece of soap left in the bathtub that could lead to a slip; or a fork not positioned properly in the dish drainer that I feared would flip out and fall on one of my grandsons; and so on and on it went. For a short time my family members welcomed suggestions. But when my years of training kept observing many non-compliances then contrary to work where reporting more issues can get some goody drawer items or sometimes even a divisional recognition award, at home more reporting resulted in higher resistance with responses like, “it has not happened before” (can you imagine telling this to the prevention trained person?), or “I thought one of the values at your company was: Assume Responsibility? If you see a problem you own it. Just pick it up and put it in the right place.” 

I shared some safety related prevention issues here but having practiced orderly flows, staying on top of things, risk assessments and contingency planning and so many other similar things, it was hard to detach from ingrained habits. Even during our wonderful travels to many countries, I could not resist noticing safety violations and the urge to intervene which my wife aggressively prevented.

On one occasion when I was on roll about LEAN practices in home, my wife told me, "How do you think I ran this home for 40 years and raised our kids without any of these 'helpful instructions'?”

It was becoming overwhelming for the family. My son in law and daughter nicely pointed out on one occasion that I was a lot more relaxed (better) and fun when I was telling stories than instructing and cautioning as I do now. One day after I had raised the change control and notifications issue about storage of items to my son, he pulled me aside and said “Dad, home is not work. Your behavior is governed by Fear and Control.” He continued “Just relax and enjoy this phase of life. Go with the flow of life.”

“Going with the flow? Are you kidding me?” At work our success depended on staying on top of(Controlling) that flow. I could not understand “Fear and Control” thing either. “Only the Paranoid Survive" was built into our work culture and those, especially if they were in management, who do not appear to be in Control were given constructive feedback during the annual performance review process. 

Reflection: 

But those are only a part of the transition. Our travels to many destinations as well as time spent with family and close friends has been very fulfilling. Grandsons have been a great source of joy and from whom I learn a lot. 

However, after many pleas from my loved ones, and the very people for whom I had retired “to live the life we had imagined” in the first place, I realized as I had said in my final good bye The Final Curtain

The curtain has closed on my previous act and the role(s) I am to play in the next stage of my life will be new and unknown. Like any good actor it's no longer about playing a role but looking to what and who I am independent of the identity that my job had provided me. I didn't always know who that was without the profession and the titles I had been fortunate enough to inhabit in my 40 beautiful years in the industry.

I have started the process of relaxing and ‘Letting Go'. Look to the next two reflections to see how I'm doing! 

Next Week:  Getting certified for a diaper change and awarded preferred supplier by grandson. (The real customer)

And the week after: Flow Flow Flow, however gently through these years.