What do you do?

You know how the first exchange when two people meet is ‘How do you do?’ That may sound formal, but it is still used when people are introduced to each other, although ‘Hi’ and variations of it may be more common in less formal situations. Do you know what the next question usually is?

It’s ‘what do you do?’ We are so grounded in life by the work we do that we want to quickly assess the other person and place him or her in the giant ladder of progress by trying to know which rung on that ladder he occupies. When the reply clearly states the rank and organization, it brings much satisfaction all around. So when you hear ‘I’m the Senior Asst. Warehouse Manager in charge of the 1st. floor at the National Nuts and Bolts Company Ltd. in Azerbaijan,’ you know exactly where to place him in the great big order of things.

When you try to describe what you really do, it is seen as obfuscation. So, when I say in response to that question, ‘I teach’, it is quickly countered with, but what do you teach, where, and so on. What if we instead say what we do most of the time in a day or in our life? Like when somebody wants to know what you do, and you say, ‘I watch TV,’ I doubt if the next questions will be ‘what program’ or ‘what channel.’ After a few humming and hawing, the question will be back to, ‘No, what I meant was where do you work?’

I think the best way to break this cycle is with the first question. Instead of ‘How do you do’ we should be able to shake a person’s hand and say, ’Don’t you think Bush was an ass.’ That way, we can directly get into the important things in life, and by the end of the conversation, if we had found the other person interesting and worth knowing, we can always say, ‘Oh, by the way, my name is xx and I am the Senior Asst. Warehouse Manager in charge of the 1st floor but in a few years time, there are strong chances I will get to the 2nd. floor. Give me a call when you are next in Azerbaijan.’

Time Management

Just this week, after a lot of controversy, Vijay Mallya secured several Gandhi memorabilia for $1.8 million in a New York auction. He intends to donate them to the country. Of course, we need to ponder over the irony of a liquor baron acquiring the items of an avowed prohibitionist for the sake of the country. But that will have to wait for another day. Let's get back to those items. One of them was a watch. Gandhi was obsessive about time and the one concession he made to modernism was to dangle a watch from his loin cloth to make sure he does things on time.
Sure, some things require being done on time. You want the anesthesiologist to know how much time it takes for the neurosurgeon to operate so as to prevent you from sitting up on the operation table when the surgeon is still sawing your skull. But there are lots of things that are now time bound that must be freed from the clutches of time. Let me take two of them.

One is exercising. I used to care about whether I walked for 15 minutes on the treadmill, trying to get up to 20 minutes, and so on. Now I don't care. I don't turn the timer on. I walk as long as I feel like walking. By being free from that clock, I find I am not staring at it trying to find excuses to stop when I have been on for just 8 minutes. I suspect I walk longer, and I am certainly feeling better. Isn't that what it is all about?

The other is meditation. I used to struggle to meditate for about 10 minutes. After a few years, I got it up to about 20 and there were thrilling days when I hit 30 minutes. Then, enlightenment dawned on me. I have stopped looking to see how long I sit and just focus on meditating and not on how long I can sit. Wow! It has freed me from trying to compete like I am in a race. I enjoy my meditation sessions more, and who cares how long I have done it for.

This weekend, we are supposed to turn our clocks ahead by one hour for some daylight savings reason. Should I bother? I wonder.