Since BC

The quote 'Love begets love' comes from Virgil, a Roman poet (70-19 before Christ). That line is over 2,000 years old and has lost none of its power. Hugh expressed it with this cartoon that he drew in 2004 (just before FB). He added that it's funny how LOVE makes one feel hyper-connected, like a node on a circuit board, and how isolated one feels without it.

I don't know whether Hugh tried to depict a family tree or our social structure using the graph. What I found striking though is that, a simple graph, with heart-shaped nodes, could fully capture the idea behind the 2,000 year old line. Another interesting link to it is that all social networking websites internally use graphs as the data structure to represent relationships among people. Well, what begets what?

Marking time

Well, the strip for sure is a thought on marking time i.e. waiting in readiness for the right or opportune moment to start a new phase or set on an adventure. 

Sorry about the freakish inclusion of the death bit. I got a little carried away experimenting with the drag-n-drop comics at pixton.com! If you have wanted to create your own comic strips but are as artistically challenged as I am, do give it a shot! If you like it, do post links to your comics  in  the comments below. Would love to go check them out.

To Mr. Allen

With my intolerant (almost pro-Kira from 'Death Note') view on crime and punishment, some of Woody Allen's movies manage to get to me in a rather, umm, stimulating way. The question of whether we have a (sufficient) moral structure has been, well to say the least, open-ended. Mr. Allen takes it on quite directly in his 'Crimes and Misdemeanors' and the more recent 'Match Point'. More than his movies, I love his laconic quotes which have had a major influence on the way I do what I do; the strongest one being "Eighty percent of success is showing up". So, this post is to share an IMHO interesting thought,

"We're all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale; most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly. Human happiness does not seem to be included in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even try to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more".

- 'Crimes and Misdemeanors', Film

Written and Directed by Woody Allen

Counting change

So after you have become the change you want to see in the world, after you have gotten things moving and after you have begun your "impact", till when do you continue what you started? How do you know if doing something differently can create more "impact"? Where do you improvise and course-correct?

That can be tricky. Establishing a sound model for measuring change might not be the simplest task but delving straight into execution without one in place is only an effort well-wasted. The key to making an effort count for is to make its results countable. It holds true for almost anything that you might want to change. They now have scale-o-meters even for fairness creams and whitening toothpastes!

Here's my 2-step guide to making your own change-counting model,

• Make a metric system – Define numeric parameters that will indicate progress or not. For instance, a tutor uses the reading speed of the kids in her classroom as a parameter to measure her impact. A good metric system gives the advantage of setting quantifiable goals – when has ‘must reach X number in Y time’ not helped?

• Don’t forget a peer comparator – Always make room for measuring how peers are faring w.r.t. the parameters in the metric system. States of more, less and equal impact are all useful indicators. For instance, if a kid in a tutor’s classroom has the same improvement in reading speed as any other kid of the same age, then where’s the impact? 

'Busy'ness

I often wonder what is Seth Godin's typical day like or whether the concept of a typical day even exists for him. And yet amidst his daily entrepreneur+author+thinker superhuman day, he 'ships' blog posts so frequently as if they were tweets. Maybe his brilliant blog posts are really the usual stuff that's 'on his mind' but the point is as Seth very succinctly puts it - It's all about shipping! Quieting the lizard brain to get things moving and it pretty much applies to everything right from an amazing start-up idea to the long-lived intention of penning down your head onto your own blog.

Now that I have your attention, let me probe further into our sense of 'busy'ness. Let's just for sometime agree that doing a full-time job doesn't afford energy for non-work-related interests during weekdays. However, mostly everyone has 2 full days off every week and invariably everyone has a wishful list of want-to-dos. Typical items featuring on that close-to-heart list are start a hobby, read more, practice a sport or volunteer for a cause. Sigh! but who's got the time for it? Umm..the weekends are practically a third of our lifetime and yet the weekends are somehow not enough! Or is it that 'feeling' busy makes for a convenient way to explain inaction? Is "I don't have enough time" just a deluded version of "I have not been able to get myself to do it yet"? Is the real problem with not having enough free slots for the dear wish-list or is it with what actually makes it to those free slots? And I'll leave it at that.

Masterful Men

Relax, this post is not about how Federer will age. This post is about my respect for two masterful men whose faces just happen to be really similar. Federer - master tennis player and Tarantino - master filmmaker with one marked similarity - the fluid style! Despite my bias for Rafa, when Federer rises with both his feet in the air to hit that inside-out forehand, I behold that sight in awe. One of Tarantino's masterful acts is his swanky take on revenge in Kill Bill. Smooth yet genius renderings - be it Emilio's death, Bill's narration of Pai Mei's tutelage by the fire with a flute or the classic Relief and Regret after killing Bill with which Tarantino closes Kiddo's character. Check out glimpses of pure genius for yourself.