Cock And Bull

• Tonic For Aggravated Minds

  Posted: October 25, 2011, 1:27 pm by Administrator

  Last evening, I was meeting with a group of friends and relatives to plan for a funeral of one of our own that had passed away a few days ago. And as we were deliberating on some burial issues, one of the older women in the group got a phone call. From the frightened shaking of her voice as she talked on the phone, it was obvious that she was distraught. Once she hang up, she informed the rest of us that there had been a grenade attack in a busy part of the city. This was the second such terror act in Nairobi in the last 24 hours.

  Within seconds, the meeting was thrown into disarray. People began lamenting loudly about insecurity while others made frantic calls to find out more information. Someone suggested that we wind up and go home immediately. And just as it seemed as if our meeting was about to fall apart, someone – in a very firm, calm and clear voice – addressed the most panicked woman in the group by saying, “If you were meant to be dead, it would be your funeral we are arranging right now.” That seemed to make a lot of sense to everyone. The wisdom in that single observation worked like a tonic for the aggravated minds and within a short time, we got back to the meeting and continued deliberating.

• Angel At Work

  Posted: October 22, 2011, 1:31 pm by Administrator

  On the way to town this morning, a friend went on and on and on about all the things that she does not want in her life. And I said to her, “Your guardian angel must be doing serious acrobatics trying to keep away all these things from coming into your reality!” In my mind, I could imagine that each time she talked about something she does not want in her life, the angel would stretch out an arm to keep it at bay…and then another arm…and a leg…and then another leg…and a wing…and then another wing…it was the image of an angel doing his best to ensure that only the best happens to my friend and getting overwhelmed by the furious torrent of negativity. And when I described what I was imagining, we both laughed out loudly at the ridiculous image.

  But then on second thought, I wondered, what if this is what was really happening? And so I asked her, “Supposing you tell your angel what you want?” I figured if the angel was working so hard to keep bad things away, wouldn’t the same angel work as hard to bring the things that we want to us? And with an angel as active as my friend’s, just how much fortune can she bring into her life just by stating what she wants?

  A person with an optimistic outlook and a lazy angel would seem far more fortunate in life than a pessimistic person with an active angel. So, shouldn’t we revise our catalogue of expression and put the things that we want, rather than the things that we do not want?

• Child Of The One

  Posted: October 13, 2011, 12:23 pm by Administrator

  I recently attended a gathering of friends and relatives that also doubled as a party. It was attended by many adults who were accompanied by their children. And as each set of guests arrived, they would fondly say hello to the people they had not seen in a while before settling down to eat, drink and socialize. And as the adults made merry in many small groups, the children were busy playing with each other in one of the various fun activities organized for the kids.

  As the day wore on, the people continued to loosen up and as it usually happens; the volume of voices went a notch higher, laughter was freer, and the children shrieks more frequent. Everyone was well fed, conversation was flowing, music was playing, and there was a general feeling of well being in the whole group.

  And then the music was abruptly switched off, and a strong voice of a man came through the speakers calling everyone to attention. The noise quickly died down and everyone turned to look at the man holding a microphone in one hand. His other hand was lightly resting on the shoulders of a small boy with tears streaming down his face. Obviously, the boy had had too much fun; the front of his white shirt was stained with orange soda and brown stains of chocolate. His face had a liberal sprinkling of cookie crumbs that were conveniently glued to the cheeks by the sticky things he had eaten. The other parts of his clothes had patches of brown and green from soil and grass. His shoes were missing and one sock was dangerously close to completely coming off his foot. There was a visible bruise on his left knee.

  Now assured that he had everyone’s attention, the man pointed the microphone to the boy and asked, “Whose child is this?” And immediately, a young woman anxiously stood up from the crowd, went forward and said, “This one belongs to me”, much to the amusement of other parents. She then took the child by the hand and walked with him to where she was initially seated. With that, the music came back on, and the party went on as if nothing had happened. From where I was, I could see that the mother was attempting to clean up the small boy as she admonished him gently, and all the while the boy was loudly telling her about what had happened to make him cry. The boy was now fine, for he was back to where he belonged.

  By the end of the day, several visibly filthy small boys and girls had been brought forward with the question, “Whose child is this?” and each time, their parents has stepped forward boldly to claim them.

  That reminded me of the times when we forget ourselves as we have fun in the world, and then something happens to make us cry. At that point, the fun comes to an end and we feel so lost, we do not even know how to go back home. And as we stand there looking all filthy and ashamed of the mess that we have gotten ourselves into, and if someone was to ask “Whose child is this?” all we would ask for is for the One to come forward and say, “This one belongs to me”.

• Revised Trading

  Posted: October 10, 2011, 1:42 pm by Administrator

  I think I know my friends. When you ask me about them I will tell you about the kind of people that I assume that they are. Mostly, I will pay them glowing tributes and tell you great things about them. I might touch a bit on their weaknesses, but not too much. For they are generally wonderful people.

  And then one of those friends does something to upset me. And when that happens, I will no longer tell you about their wonderful nature. Rather, I will tell you about the thing that they did to hurt me. And if someone else wants to listen, I will repeat the same story. And when you ask me next week, I will probably retell the story all over again.

  I might know a friend’s caring and gentle nature for years, but it will only take one moment of hurt to overturn my story. And what I used to know for years is suddenly replaced by what I learnt in one day. So what has that friend been up to since I last heard from them? Are they still kind and considerate and hard working and funny as I used to know them? Or is they as hurtful as I make them out to be each time I think about them in my mind?

  Did I just trade the sum total of a friend’s goodness for the value of a hurt that they made me feel only once? More importantly, how long will I keep trading the sum of all my good thoughts, words and actions for the price of every little mistake that comes up every once in a while? I must revise my trading!

• When Our Heroes Bleed

  Posted: October 10, 2011, 1:38 pm by Administrator

  Yesterday, I took a walk around my neighborhood and came across a huge trailer truck parked next to an apartment block. The 22 wheeler trailer truck really stood out in the residential neighborhood, and especially since reggae music was blaring from the driver’s cabin. When I got closer, I say that the driver’s door was open and when I looked up well above my head I saw a small boy holding on to the steering wheel and looking very ill at ease with where he was. He looked down at me from his unfamiliar perch and I smiled as I walked past. On my way back, I noticed that the reggae music had been toned down and the boy was now in the company of a grown man, who I figured must be the dad. And as I though about what I saw, I remembered about someone who asked why there is such a strained relationship between most grown men and their fathers. Can’t guys just forgive their dads for whatever wrongs – real or imaginary – and just move on?

  When growing up, boys look up to their fathers for guidance in most situations in their young lives. And the fact is that whatever the dad does for a living is not very important especially if the dad is available to take care of the boys needs. And if you have listened to boys brag about how strong their dads are, then you can easily understand that boys think of their fathers as heroes of sorts. In short they believe that their dads can do anything.

  But then something usually happens when the boys start becoming young men. They get to a place where they are supposed to be independent and yet cannot figure out what they are supposed to do. There are all these decisions about career, and life partners, and investments and so many other things, all of which make them feel overwhelmed. And as it always turns out, when the young man turns to the dad, either he seems to have no more good guidance left – since he feels that the young man has outsmarted him, or he dispenses it in ways that might have worked 10 years before – maybe by shouting or by using such emotional blackmail. And so the young man will feel lost and probably try to figure out his life from a bar stool, at which point he will just get more muddled up, and resentment towards the dad will start building up.

  Why is that? It would seem as if the guy who had all the answers doesn’t seem to know anything after all. It would seem like the superman who was made of steel now bleeds like an ordinary man. It doesn’t help when the old man starts getting sick, or his past mistakes start catching up with him. And he now starts becoming dependent on his son even for emotional support.

  Without a hero to look up to, the young boy who has grown up to become a man is truly alone. When your hero fades before your eyes and leaves you to do the battles that he used to fight for you, what do you do? Some men are able to go beyond their fears and take charge of their lives and even be able to take care of their fallen heroes. Others live with the resentment of being let down and avoid their fathers in an attempt to keep away from the pain. Of course they make up stories about what the dad did or didn’t do in order to justify their position – especially in the eyes of others.

  But as a popular song goes, even heroes have a right to bleed. And in the words of one man that advised another when he was running away from the prospects of meeting his fallen hero on his death bed, “I will take the man over the memory any day of the week.”

• What We Think About

  Posted: October 10, 2011, 1:35 pm by Administrator

  This morning, I asked my friend, “What do people think about?” and she answered, “People predominantly think about two things; their life and their love”. She went ahead to say, “If you ask anyone to quote two sayings, the first one will be about their outlook towards life and the second one will be about their outlook towards love”. I didn’t know that! And so I took a moment to think about the first two saying from the top of my head. The first one was, “Life is a journey, not a guided tour.” And the second one was “Money can’t buy you love”.

  What surprised me was that the saying came so effortlessly. I was also surprised at the thought that they might actually represent my outlook towards life and love. And when I thought about this further, I figured that they might give me some real insight about the way I deal with situations and how my life has turned out. For example, if life is a journey, it would then seem that I have to keep moving, and probably just taking short moments to rest before I proceed. If it is not a guided tour, then it would mean that I would have to figure out everything for myself without the need for help from others.

  What is I find myself in a place where I am at rest for too long? It would mean that I would be neglecting my journey and so I would need to get up and start moving. And this would mean that the things or situations that tend to make people ‘settle’ would be unacceptable to me. Other than that, I would be resistant to any help that would help me chart my way through life since, it is ‘not a guided tour’.

  These revelations are startling since they generally point to the truth about the way my life has been. And it has made me think that if I desire to rest or to enlist the help of others, then I would need to change my top most saying. As for the second saying, “Money can’t buy you love”, I suppose I will look for another one that has more positivity and that talks about what I would want from love.

• The Woman Is Planting

  Posted: October 8, 2011, 2:02 pm by Administrator

  Wangari Maathai (1 April 1940 – 25 September 2011)

  The woman is planting a tree in the world.

  On her knees, like someone in prayer,

  Among the remains of the many trees

  That the storm has broken down.

  She must try again,

  perhaps one at last

  Will be left to grow in peace.

  She sees the hands outspread on the earth

  As if trying to impose her calm

  On its threatening tremors.

  Oh earth, be still,

  Be still, so my tree can grow.

  Poem By Halldis Moren Vesaas (1907-1995)

• Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

  Posted: October 6, 2011, 11:56 am by Administrator

  The following is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011), former CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

  Watch Video

  I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

  The first story is about connecting the dots.

  I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

  It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

  And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

  It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5 cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

  Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

  None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

  Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

  My second story is about love and loss.

  I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation – the Macintosh – a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

  I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

  I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

  During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

  I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

  My third story is about death.

  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.

  About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

  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 its 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.

  When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

  Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

  Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Blah blah blah

Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes