THE GOVERNANCE CIRCLE

  There's a version of gratitude I've come to find genuinely strange, and a little perverse. You tell someone you're struggling — broke, behind on everything, or you've just lost your home — and almost on reflex, the person says, " Well, at least you're not bedridden in the hospital " or " At least you're not in prison. " or " At least you still have your legs ."  Said kindly, usually. Meant as comfort. But sit with it for a second and it starts to feel off about this relative gratitude. Why does my gratitude need a person worse off than me? Why can't I just be grateful without reaching for someone else's (seemingly) harder life as the measuring stick? What this kind of gratitude actually is Strip away the kind intention behind it, and what's left is a quiet ranking system. Somewhere in the back of the mind, there's a ladder, and gratitude becomes the relief of not being on a lower rung. It's not really gratitude...

  I ran into an old schoolmate recently. Let’s call him Anthony. We hadn't seen each other in years.   He was several years ahead of me at university, and back then, medical school was not kind to him. He resat most of his exams. More than once, I imagine, he must have wondered whether he was pursuing the right career. He's a doctor now. Working at a private hospital, well paid, living in a house that comes with the job. By every visible measure, he made it. But it's what he told me about how he made it that stayed with me. He said it was my older brother — his fellow medical student— who kept him going. Not through some rousing speech about perseverance. My brother never once sat him down and told him not to give up; he simply kept getting back up after his own setbacks, semester after semester, and Anthony watched him do it. That was enough. Somewhere in watching my brother refuse to quit, Anthony found the will to keep going himself. My brother has no idea he di...

"...So cling to nothing too tightly, even yourself, / and when it’s time to let go, let go with grace, / for nothing is owned, only borrowed..." — James McCrae. James McCrae’s poem titled “ Instructions Before Visiting Earth ” seems to be having another viral moment these days. The man has unwittingly created a masterpiece on the art of living gracefully, one that is worth revisiting from to time.   The extract above inspired some thoughts which I would like to share in this piece to help anyone dealing with invasive dark thoughts. When we are in the depths of depression, our thoughts feel like heavy, permanent fixtures of our identity. We treat them as if they are solid truths—as if they are us . But what if we started treating them as guests? What if we acknowledged that our thoughts, our moods, and even our current mental states (even the happiest of them) are not possessions we own, but experiences we are simply borrowing for a time? Western education has us co...

  In 2001, Enron collapsed almost overnight. One of the most admired companies in America — six years running as Fortune 's "Most Innovative Company" — turned out to be a shell built on numbers that didn't exist. $74 billion in shareholder value gone. Thousands of employees lost their jobs and their retirement savings in one afternoon. The outline of the story is familiar: fraud, greed, a few executives who deserved prison. But the part that gets skipped is the part that actually matters to the rest of us — Enron didn't fail because a handful of villains lied to the public. It failed because an entire organization got extremely good at lying to itself . That's the uncomfortable, useful part. Because the mechanisms Enron used to deceive itself aren't exotic corporate-fraud techniques. They're the same mechanisms you and I use at a much smaller scale, when we don't want to look at something. Here are some of them — and what they look like whe...

There's a strange kind of respect I've come to have for depression — not for what it does to a person, but for what it reveals about the mind experiencing it. What if the very capacity to experience deep, all-consuming depression is proof of an immense, untapped power? Think about what depression actually requires of the mind: with terrifying singular focus it generates thoughts so convincing that they override hunger, ambition, curiosity, and self-preservation; it builds a narrative so airtight that a person who once had dreams, plans, and momentum can wake up and abandon them all. That's not a small feat.   That's not a "weak mind." That is an extraordinarily powerful cognitive engine. We don't usually talk about depression this way. We talk about it as an absence — a lack of motivation, a lack of energy, a lack of joy. But absence isn't the only thing that’s happening. Something is very much present and very much active: a relentless i...

  He leaned across the table, his knuckles turning white as he gripped his coffee mug. His eyes narrowed, and his voice trembled with a fierce, burning rage. "I will never forgive him," he hissed. "The way he looked at me, the exact words he used to steal that project from under me. It was absolute betrayal." If you listened to him speak, you would think the betrayal had happened yesterday. You would imagine he had just walked out of the boardroom minutes ago, still reeling from the shock. But it hadn't happened yesterday. It hadn't even happened this year. It happened fifteen years ago. The company he was talking about had gone bankrupt a decade ago. The man he despised had long since retired and moved across the world. Yet, here he was, still carrying the heavy, rotting corpse of that moment into every room he entered. He was treating a distant ghost like a living, breathing enemy. The Heavy Price of Mental Dead Weight Many of us operate just l...

"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." —  John Milton In a bustling city buzzing with the symphony of honking horns and the whir of engines, Alex moved in his most prized possession-a vintage sports car, he had named " Eleanor ," Eleanor was a magnificent machine with a gleaming crimson exterior and an engine that purred like a contented tiger. Under Alex's eagle-like focus, Eleanor glided through traffic with an almost sentient grace. Her turns were precise, and her acceleration smooth.   One day, however, Alex was preoccupied with a tempest of worries – a looming deadline at work, a forgotten anniversary gift, a flickering check engine light on the dashboard that he hadn't had time to address. As he started his commute, Eleanor's movements became jerky, her engine sputtered, and her tires squealed loudly around a corner she usually took with ease. A near-miss with a yellow cab jolted Alex back to real...

  I admired the late actress Dame Maggie Smith (DBE) from the first time I saw her.  She starred in a movie adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun as the glamorous resort owner, Daphne Castle.     Her popularity soared with younger fans when she played Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter movies, and of course the Dowager Countess in the Downton Abbey series. She had the unique ability to turn a simple line into something not only alive but also majestic. No one can forget her iconic “ What is a weekend?” line from Downton Abbey. I am no longer the movie buff I once was. Still, I'd watch any movie that featured Maggie Smith. On occasion, I have “watched” an entire movie by skipping to her scenes just to hear her speak.  N aturally, when I saw the movie Mrs. Silly  on my YouTube feed I had to watch it. Maggie’s face on the thumbnail, made it an easy choice. I didn't expect the movie to provoke any deep thoughts, but i...

  Building on Part One , we now conclude the Know Thyself series. ________________________________________________________________ In life, we take on different roles: father, mother, sister, brother, homemaker and much more.  This  movie reminded me of the importance of not getting lost and completely identified with any single role. Yes, we are to play our roles to the best of our ability. Still, it is vital that we step back sometimes and ask Who am I without all the titles , the busyness and the routines?  Consider what kind of person you want to be by the time you leave this worl d.   B ecause you see, like it or not, all roles have a beginning and an end, like in a stage play. Careers end. Marriages end. Children grow up and need their parents less. Sooner or later, everybody dies. Who am I truly when the spotlight dims on my one, or two, or seven roles? This isn't an easy question to answer. But  we must answer it if we are not to be left utt...