Random Ramblings on Relativity and Changing the World

So it’s hot-chocolate season finally and I’m sipping mine. Of course, when someone who’s grown up in the UAE tells you it’s cold, then they’re probably talking about a temperature of 27 or 30. Celsius not Kelvin. But it shows you that these things are all a matter of relativity. Just like beauty, taste and people tolerability. You can’t really take these things on an absolute scale because every individual’s background and experience defines or redefines their scales. Yeah, and they can be a function of time as well.

I was pretty much uninspired today. A lot of random ideas were there floating at the top of my mind, but there was nothing that I wanted to explore. So naturally, I ended watching a TED talk. This one was by Drew Dudley and it was titled “Everyday Leadership.” He talks about the ‘lollipop moments’ which he defines as small moments where you do something small or say something tiny that positively affects somebody else’s life. Here’s a quote from the talk, “It is so scary to think of ourselves as that powerful. It can be frightening to think that we can matter that much to other people, because as long as we make leadership something bigger than us, as long as we keep leadership something beyond us, as long as we make it about changing the world, we give ourselves an excuse not to expect it every day from ourselves and from each other. And my call to action today is that we need to get over that. We need to get over our fear of how extraordinarily powerful we can be in each other’s lives.”

One thing that I’ve successfully done this weekend, is keep my phone away when I’m with people. On Friday we were visiting my mother’s friend and I actually kept my phone in the car so as not to be disturbed. Of course, there were awkward moments of silence where I wished I had the phone, since we ended up in a sitting room with strangers waiting for the common friend we had come to visit to show up. But then with everything happening in Kenya, the news (or rather, people’s opinions on the news) ended up breaking the ice. Then yesterday I went for breakfast with my best friend and I kept my phone away successfully for one and a half hours. But then again, we were talking about books and different styles of writing….keeping the phone away was easier there.

So I guess this isn’t bad for an uninspired person;

1) A lot of things are measured against a relative scale not an absolute one

2) We need to stop making leadership about changing the world but thinking about positively affecting each other

3) Being disconnected isn’t entirely bad. I should try it more often.

That’s it for today and don’t forget to add a comment on Four years and 413 posts later by tomorrow noon to get a chance to win a prize!