“Love everyone , Trust a few and paddle your own canoe”

I never found the source of this quote, but it brings a lot of peace every time I repeat it in my mind.

The quote is a simple summary of a lot of realizations of life.

1. Life is an ocean which is too vast to comprehend. Everything that is there, everyone that you see is but a tiny part of the vast ocean. Each has its own story, the same way your existence has a story and each story is just as vast as yours. Love these other stories just the way you love yours. Understand why something exists, what is it doing and where is it headed.

2. Understand that you are not alone. There will always be people who will like you, who you will like, who will walk along with you, who will guide you, who will support you. Seek these people out and surround yourself with them.

3. No matter who you are with and what you are doing, understand that your story in this world is very very unique. So unique that only you fully know and understand it. Make sure that your story is an ongoing meaningful story, an interesting story, a happy story. Not to showcase to others. Not because others are watching and certainly not because that’s what others are doing. But for yourself. Because the story you are building is for your own consumption. Nobody Else will know the full extent nor understand the essence of it. Hence spend a lot of time paddling your own canoe.

There are no Ass***es

There are no Assholes!

These are just people who are faced with one or more of the following
1. wish to safeguard their own career.
2. are afraid of drastic changes.
3. have very limited knowledge on some topics.
4. have to make decisions with very limited knowledge.
5. are foremost worried about their well-being.
6. have conflicting goals.

These are normal human professional constraints which end up in behavior that impacts others.

I came to this realization when I got a call from a manager I used to report to. This was someone I used to hate working for.

During the call, the manager mentioned “Ram, I am sorry things didnt work out your way when you were working for me. I had no agenda to block your proposals. At that time, when you were proposing I had no idea of the technology that you were talking about and frankly I didnt have time to read about it. I had 2 choices – let your proposals go without understanding them and risk a screw-up later OR Find some faults in the proposals to buy time to understand it more. I chose the second. I never re-visited the proposals at all due to time constraints and hence they remained permanently blocked. I am sorry if that was a bad phase for you.”

Its the same with every other professionals that we have a fight with. Nobody is out there “to get you”. Nobody lives their life to make yours miserable. Nobody has the time for concentrating only on you.

Its up to you how you work around roadblocks – whether they are people or processes or systems. YOUR career, YOUR hands. There are no assholes.