Embracing our imperfections and vulnerabilities

Humans are the dominant species on this planet. Our dominance is evident in the way we control things and dictate terms on our planet. Our complex brain and ability to imagine and innovate are a few of the main reasons for our dominance. Despite all this, we have our own imperfections and vulnerabilities. One might ask how our dominance fits with our imperfections and vulnerabilities? How did we survive despite being imperfect and vulnerable? The fact is, our imperfections and vulnerabilities make us human and are the very reason for our success and dominance. However, many of us spend our entire lives worrying about our imperfections and vulnerabilities, feeling bad about them, trying to hide them from others, and assuming that expressing them might make us look weak and timid. Many leaders in various fields also try to project a rough and tough image of a leader, whereas a true leader is also imperfect and vulnerable like all of us they just know how to use them as their strength rather than considering them as a weakness.

Our society has always used difficult feelings like shame and guilt in a negative light. This is why most people hesitate or even worry when they feel these things, they hesitate to ask for any kind of help, and they prefer to keep these things to themselves which makes things worse.  We are taught to disown these feelings rather than embracing them or embracing anyone who displays these feelings. American writer and professor Brene Brown has done splendid research on this subject, her TED talk, The Power of Vulnerability is one of the most viewed TED talks. My own struggles with my vulnerabilities and imperfections have taught me many lessons that I use in my day-to-day life, this is why I don't hesitate to share stories of my own struggles. We are taught imperfect and vulnerable people cannot be good leaders, but these are just incorrect perceptions, and myths without any data to support them. On the contrary, embracing our vulnerabilities is a courageous act, and only a person with good leadership qualities can do this. Also, our struggle with these emotions is a continuous and ongoing process, we discover new vulnerabilities and imperfections as we progress in our lives, our vulnerabilities at the age of five are not the same at the age of forty. This is why embracing our vulnerabilities and imperfections is not a one-time act, but is a process that we learn and relearn every day. 

One of the reasons why people hesitate to display the courage to embrace their vulnerabilities is they lack an empathetic support system; they don't find anyone trustworthy enough to share these feelings. Even in the era of social networks where we are more connected than at any other time in human history, we struggle to find trusted people to whom we can express our difficult emotions and struggles without having a feeling of not being judged or exposed. This is a challenge for all of us, help seekers as well as help offerers, we need to step up to embrace our own vulnerabilities so that we can create an environment where others are encouraged to embrace their own. This is a challenging task, that's why it requires courage and leadership, and this is important for our mental hygiene. Once we learn to deal with fear, shame, or guilt about our imperfections and vulnerabilities many other challenges also become manageable. These feelings come to us regularly as long as we are conscious that is why it's important to learn how to deal with them and the sooner we start the better it is. Let's help each other as much as we can to spread this courage.  

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How to deal with a busy and chaotic mind?

Our brain is one of the most complex organs developed by nature. We are still trying to explore various ways through which our brain functions, with the help of incredible work from many scientists and other experts we could solve some mysteries about the way our mind works and we are still working to solve many others. One unique feature of our brains is that at any given moment countless thoughts compete to flood our brains. It's like an ocean of thoughts with countless waves rising and falling every second. Some of them become big storms and overwhelm us, the more we try to resist, the more they persist. Many times, it's not easy to deal with our busy mind, especially when it starts dishing out difficult emotions like fear, shame, guilt, inferiority, and anger, just to name a few. Some of us turn to medications and some to various techniques like meditation with the hope that it may help us to control our minds. Sometimes we are successful but many times we don't get any respite. How to deal with a busy and chaotic mind? Is it possible to control our thoughts? Can meditation help and is that the only or best option? If yes, how much? There are many questions like these that come to our mind whenever we get overwhelmed due to its overactivity.

Meditation can be one of the ways to deal with a busy and chaotic mind. One common perception people have about meditation is that it's all about controlling our minds and thoughts. While meditating people try really hard to resist their thoughts. We think mental peace means a thoughtless and clear mind. However, as per my experience meditation is not about controlling your flow of thoughts but about learning the skill of observing them objectively. Most of our problems are not because of the nature of thoughts that come to our mind but because of the way we react to them. We need to learn to control our reactions, thoughts are bound to come to our mind, many times, randomly, and we may or may not have any control over them. Remember, the more we resist, the more it persists. However, we can control our reactions to our thoughts, this is how I approach meditation and it helps. I suggest whoever is struggling to see any positive results from their meditation practice try this approach. I hope meditation trainers and practitioners also take into consideration the idea that one does not have to control their mind while meditating. Controlling our flow of thoughts is like trying to capture air or water in our fists, we might be able to do it for a while but it's going to slip away eventually. Our brain never stops thinking, as long as we are alive. 

The benefit of this approach is that slowly we train our minds to be objective about our own thoughts and learn to pause before taking any action based on the uncontrollable flow of thoughts. This training of the mind is the key because we cannot be in a continuous state of meditation, therefore, if we do not train our mind how to react (or not to react) then we may face the same issues once we finish our meditation session. Meditation is supposed to provide benefits beyond our meditation sessions not just during those sessions. The aim is not just to have mental peace and calmness during the meditation session but to extend that calmness to the rest of our day, therefore, during the meditation our mind needs to be engaged and not disengaged. The engagement should be passive because the aim is not to react but to observe the thought process. A peaceful mind is not a thoughtless mind, but it is a mind that is at peace in spite of many thoughts in it as it has learned how to observe them and allow these thoughts to flow without getting affected by it. It is not easy, but that's why not everyone succeeds in getting benefits from meditation, the reasons for success or failure may lie in the approach they take. Also, there are many ways and methods of meditation, we should try as many as we can and choose whichever suits our lifestyle and needs.    

Remember, meditation is not medication, it's not a pill that will show an instant effect and offer immediate relief. Meditation is like a game, you win some and lose some, but to win the game you need to play it first, if you don't play you don't win. It is also important to give our 100% and enjoy the play, then only our chances of winning increase. If we play any game for the sake of winning without enjoying the game, it won't benefit us whether we win or lose, the same is true for meditation, jump into it only when you are ready to enjoy the process, and the results will follow eventually. Also, keep in mind that medication and meditation are not mutually exclusive, they are not either-or options, one can select both and benefit from both options. Many people commit this mistake and reject the other path thinking they cannot go together. Medication is an important option, it should be on the top of our list and must be given the respect it deserves, it can do wonders and change lives, but we can ignore it only at our own peril. 

There are many ways available to deal with a busy and chaotic mind, consider all options, and choose whichever suits you best, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for our mental health. Find your path and follow it sincerely. Good mental health is not a destination but a lifelong journey, enjoy the journey without worrying about the destination because there is no destination, all the very best. 

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My marriage - A love story

Reena and I got married almost 23 years back. It was a classic arranged marriage and a non-classic love story. I call it a nonclassic love story because there was no love at first sight, there was no dating, we did not go to the same school or college, we did not even live in the same state of India. Our marriage was fixed before we even knew each other as a person. The story began when a marriage proposal was brought by an acquaintance, when my parents found that the proposal made sense to them, the information was shared with me, and when I approved, things were finalized. There was just one deviation from the standard protocol of arranged marriage, I put one condition that I wanted to meet the girl before we finalized the date. I wanted to make sure that she was OK with all this as I knew that if she was not then she wouldn't say so under the pressure of hurting her parents, whereas I had the male privilege to say no and I was willing to use that privilege if there was anything which she didn't like in this proposed relationship, and meeting her was the only way to find this. I also wanted to give her an idea about what is she signing up for. I was not a typical groom which she would have expected with a stable job and set career path. I was still doing my Ph.D. and there was no way to predict which way my career might go, I wanted her to know all these things. Our meeting went very well, mostly I talked, but I was convinced that there was no pressure on her to marry me. It might be shocking to some readers to know that in India people divide marriage between love and arranged marriage, this means that they really believe that there can be a marriage without any love between the two individuals who are getting married. Love is not a precondition for an arranged marriage in India, it's hard to believe, but that's how it is.

We got married after almost a year since we first met. During that year, we did talk with each other on the phone (those were days of long-distance STD calls from a phone booth) and exchanged a few or maybe just one letter. This didn't help much to move our relationship further in any meaningful way. There was no face-to-face interaction with each other until we saw each other on the day of our marriage. Our marriage was held in Varanasi, it was a routine affair, like any other arranged marriage with all the rituals and extravaganza. A couple of days after our marriage, Reena moved with me to Pune, my birthplace in the state of Maharashtra in India. When I met with Reena and during our phone conversations I realized that we were different from each other, we did not even speak the same language. I spoke Marathi at home and English/Marathi at my lab. I knew Hindi because of Bollywood and the basics of Bhojpuri which I picked up so that I can communicate with my grandmothers, and other relatives whenever I visited my ancestral village in Uttar Pradesh. Reena and I began our conversations in Hindi. When we started living with each other we really realized how different we were from each other. We almost had nothing in common, two lost individuals brought together by the randomness of life. 

Our journey together began in a joint family where we lived with my parents and two brothers. Reena needed to adjust to a much smaller house, a much-crowded place, and with a husband who was mostly away from home working in a lab for his Ph.D. It was not easy for both of us. For her to move hundreds of miles away from her hometown and live in a completely new place with strangers with a different culture and language. For me to deal with the pressures of Ph.D. work and the ups and downs of a graduate student's life along with dealing with this new person in my life. In the beginning, we both were confused, and not sure how this thing would work. Maybe living in a joint family helped a little bit. Slowly we started understanding each other, we recognized our differences, they were huge, but we found a way to deal with them. We decided that we were not going to try to change each other against the other's will, this helped a lot. Our differences, no matter how big, never came in between us and I think that's the biggest reason why our marriage worked. We never forced each other to follow each other's beliefs and convictions. When I moved away from religion Reena didn't make a big deal about it, she continued on with her journey following her religion and beliefs without me being an active participant with her. Her patience and determination to deal with some unpleasant situations, especially, to manage confrontations within my own family due to my confrontational behavior is very impressive. Most importantly, we both became the biggest cheerleaders for each other. It's not that we succeeded in whatever we tried, but we did not discourage each other from taking risks or following an unchartered path. The arrival of our kids added another dimension to our relationship. Reena and the kids joined me in the USA when my daughter, Sara was 4, and my son, Yash was 1. Parenting our kids in a new country and embarking on an unknown journey brought us closer than ever before. Our appreciation for each other's role, and ability to offer emotional and moral support, increased day by day since then. In the US I saw a completely new personality of Reena, more independent, more forthcoming, and much more vocal. In Pune her identity was Vinay's wife or so and so's daughter-in-law, however, in the US in most social circles I am known as Reena's husband and I am extremely proud of this identity. We genuinely have mutual admiration for each other's abilities and qualities. Also, we do not hesitate to point out where each of us needs to improve. The frankness of our relationship allows us to be open and comfortable while praising or criticizing each other. It's not that we didn't have any arguments or ups and downs in our journey, we had and still have our own share of challenges. However, none of it made us drift apart from each other, rather, every such occasion helped both of us to understand each other better and brought us closer.

Our love story is not a conventional love story where a boy meets a girl and they fall in love. We randomly met with each other via this crazy system of arranged marriage and gradually realized that even though we have very little in common we complement each other very well and love blossomed. Our ability to give each other space, our ability to understand the fact that we do not have to agree on each and every issue, and do not have to share the same political and religious beliefs to love each other has been a major reason why our love and relationship survived each and every challenge that we faced. We do make our own mistakes and learn from them, some mistakes we realized on our own, and some our kids made us realize, no matter when and how we realize our mistakes we always try to learn and correct our course. There is no blame game, we both get the credit as well as the blame. Our ability to adapt to new information and accommodate it in our lives helped us a lot. Whenever we learn something new we tell each other and talk about it. We discuss with each other a lot, sometimes we talk for hours on some subject, this helps us to understand what both of us are thinking. 

Our journey has been amazing so far, every day is exciting, our discussions are animated and rewarding, and we spend so much time together and still don't get bored of each other. We cherish each other's company and at the same time realize we need to give space to each other. Fortunately, we do not feel the need to hide anything from each other, we are not scared of each other. Neither do I have to make an excuse to go out and spend time with my friends, nor does she have to justify why she is going out alone, what else one can ask for in a marriage. My marriage is a love story that I love to tell. I hope this journey continues like this with the same excitement and foolishness.

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