Steve Jobs's @ Stanford commencement speech

Steve Jobs's @ Stanford commencement speech

"When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

"I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Need a lot more than a mere law

A law will help but will be a strong deterrent and  prevent happening what must not?

The ongoing current protests on the Delhi gang rape and media attention is important to bring the issues on forefront, make people aware and I also believe it will help correct value system of kids who are being taught incorrectly. All of this has its usefulness, no denial, however a bigger question which we need to answer is how do we build a stronger system that such incidents are prevented?

My answer to this is cleaning up of the entire police and judicial system we have - onerous task but see no lasting change unless these improve. The police is inefficient, they regularly goof up the investigations they do, there are so many instances of criminals getting away as the evidence was not strong. If you have money and connections, there are high chances you will manage the system well.

The Judicial system is slow that the justice is never done. Years go by and you keep getting a date after date, this is not an exaggeration or a movie dialogue, I have seen both of these machineries closely with a live case, and hence the cynicism and strong worry that another law may not make any difference.

Mumbai shootouts, Kasab and judicial system, high profile cases like Jessica Lal, Priyadarshni Mattoo, Aarushi murder even after getting all media attention and involving the best of lawyers the inefficiencies of system were glaring. The plight of a common man, the harassment of slow and expensive judicial system or inept police machinery is just unthinkable. 

The mere existence of law will only remain in books...

A much bigger and a different question in my mind is  - why we are breeding more and more of such criminals? It is another question which we need to answer. Gruesome crimes only seem to be rising across the world...

Brene Brown: How Vulnerability Holds the Key to Emotional Intimacy

A very interesting piece and some thought provoking statements, watch the TED Talk as well… what got me is the answer to the opening question- fear of being ordinary.. very true as in the last few weeks I have been trying to get active on social network sites and she hit me with her remark… do read if you can.. bringing up few insights which I found very thought provoking… though I am debating it J.

In your new book Daring Greatly, you introduce the idea of a shame-based emotion that seems unique to our contemporary society. One aspect you name is the “fear of being ordinary.”

Brené Brown: The overwhelming message in our culture today is that an ordinary life is a meaningless life unless you are grabbing a lot of attention and you have lots of Twitter followers and Facebook fans who know everything you know. I use the shame-based fear of being ordinary as my definition for narcissism. I definitely see it in younger generations, where people fear they are not big enough. No matter how happy and fulfilling their small, quiet life is, they feel it must not mean very much, because it’s not the way people are measuring success. Which is just terrifying. 

How does vulnerability relate to our capacity for joy?

As someone who spent more than a decade studying fear, vulnerability, and shame, I never thought in a million years that I would say that joy is probably the most difficult emotion to feel. It’s hard to feel joy because we are so keenly aware that it’s fleeting. When we lose our tolerance for vulnerability, we lose the courage to be joyful. Joy is a daring emotion! We are going to let ourselves stop in a moment that won’t last forever, that can be taken away. We feel almost that “you are a schmuck if you let yourself feel too deeply because the bad stuff is going to happen.” 

A lot of your work examines how humans experience the emotion of shame. Can you explain how shame relates to vulnerability?

If vulnerability is the willingness to show up and let ourselves be seen, shame gets in the way. How can we be authentically known when we are paralyzed with fear about what people might see? Setting boundaries is a great example; it’s something that people don’t think about as vulnerability, but saying “no” and protecting our time—whether it’s family time, our creative time, whatever our self-care time is—that’s a huge act of vulnerability in a culture where productivity is so highly valued. 

Watch the full interview at following link: Original Story, Dec 20, 2012

She may not be a household name just yet, but when you refer to “the woman who talks about vulnerability,” the seven million viewers of her TEDTalks videos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=X4Qm9cGRub0)know you mean Brené Brown. A research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, Brown has been studying shame, fear, and vulnerability for 12 years.

Siri - Where will it take us?

The most entertaining and a marvel the technology is, Siri or a little different app Google Now, just amazing how machines can predict and help us in our daily endeavours. 

But the conservative me worry will it a Siri make people mollycoddle themselves through the machine, develop a safe relationship - no threat of conflict, heartbreak and always getting an answer which is positive, encouraging or fun. Will it keep adults as child, the child is in a constant state of parents protecting them from the life and Siri will protect them from any negative influence. The parent  replaced by the technology applications. 

Will people start obsessing the Siri's and fall in love with them? The next step which this will take is one can custom and have the voice of Siri to match your lover's voice (I don't know if it is already there but I am sure it will come), imagine then what kind of relationships it will breed?

What if Siri starts understanding moods, emotions will it replace the girlfriend or the boyfriend? Many questions and will be interesting to watch how life unfolds with technology.....

What kind of people are we breeding?

What kind of people we seem to be growing?  The recent gun shoot @ Connecticut make me wonder. Some believe it can all be curbed by a stricter control on guns, by passing a law, I wish it was so simple a law making it all set right. 

It will have some positive impact but the malady which seems to affect our society is much deeper. All the gun law will do is an Adam Lanza (the shooter) will have to use knife instead of a gun, maybe the no of people killed will drop, but will it stop producing more Lanzas?

Some reports mention Adam Lanza's mother was a strict control freak, and that could have been one of the reasons besides the divorce which impacted Adam, I wonder if her Mother was to be assessed for being a good parent, do we have a good parenting law? I know it is funny, but I don't think there are any solution in controls we can put as laws, the real reason for what is happening around us is much deeper and complicated. 

And it is not about the Connecticut, it is also about the Jacintha who killed herself, what made her so weak to commit suicide, why could her close and dear ones not give her a patient ear and helped her in life much earlier to be stronger,  it is also about the radio jockey of Australia, what has made them to be so rude and insensitive that poor Jacintha was at the receiving end?  

We may lament about the developed world and their lack of religion or values but India is not behind, what bred the acid attackers of Sonali Mukherjee? or the Ponty Chadha shootout between brothers?

The other question the whole episode brings is how come this happens a lot in US, the best place for education, the most well read, scientist people making great strides reside there, the newest technologies are there for your help, the best government administrative set up, cutting research on psychology, happiness, most self help gurus, best selling wisdom authors. You name whatever the best of society is there, it has a big place in US. Then why does it keep happening there? 

The ways of today's life are they on false foundations? Or am I raising just a false alarm, after all genocide in yesteryears in the name of race or killings in the name of religion were equally big and evil.