Moments
NOTE: Tola’s note is a journal about some activities I engaged in during the week. Let's dive in!
Books.
I started reading Spare, the autobiography of Prince Harry because it was ghostwritten by J. R. Moehringer. I also discovered J. R. Moehringer wrote two of my all time favourite autobiographies: Shoedog and Open-on behalf of Phil Knight (the founder of Nike) and Andre Agassi and they are some of the best Non-fictions you can spend your time on.
With this expectation, I jumped on Spare but I did not vibe much with the story because it’s not the typical troupe of grass to grace,underdog to hero, or sacrifice to success stories that someone around my age would relate with. The story is more about a man who was born in privilege but had to face his mental battles mostly shaped by the death of his mother and the big media. This should be an interesting story to listen to, but I think the fact that he was going through pain while in immense luxury dampened the effect of the story on me.
I should also mention that I am also a victim of the kind of people the prince was trying to describe in a way that we don’t see royals or wealthy people as humans, like they are immune to hurtful views of others and should feel no emotion. But that’s exactly how I see them. I believe the reason for this is simple. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. When you’re from a broke background, most of your suffering was/is caused by a lack of money. When you leave that broke-phase, there are new levels of things that can cause you pain that people in other levels can’t relate with. Maybe when I can afford to be sad while driving my lamborghini, or jet off to Maldives to release some steam from work, I may come back to the story to draw some lessons, but for now, I'd stop reading.
MOMENTS.
I have been thinking a lot about the significance of “moments”. The one time where one decision or indecision could alter your life’s trajectory. Moments do not only have to be instantaneous in nature, they could range from a few seconds to millions of years, but whatever decisions you took or lack of it thereof would leave a mark in one’s life.
In evolution, a moment was a time when a part of the ancestors of man left the jungle due to changing environmental conditions and headed for the savannah. Their bodies adjusted to this change by losing body hairs, gained the ability to stand upright because of the constant attempt to see above the grasses,acquired better eyesight to scan the environment for predators, invented fire so that they spent less energy digesting raw food and had more energy for brain development and so much more. Whether one believes in this story is up for debate but if we draw on the lessons of ”Moments”, one will realise that if a group of primates didn’t decide to move towards the savannah, we may not be around today.
To bring the thought a bit home, a significant “Moment” for me was leaving medical school about a year and half ago. There are many instances where I have been very useful to my friends and family, that if I stayed back, wouldn’t have been possible. That is a positive example of the moment. The flip side of my “moment” of leaving medical school would be when I run into someone that needs an urgent medical intervention, but because of my moment of leaving medical school, I would not be able to help them.
A moment can also be when you attended an event or meeting, and you met the person that made you smile and your butterflies flutter at the thought of them. One minute off, and you would not have met them. It may not even be love, it could be people that have really impacted your life. For example, my very close friend today wouldn’t have been, if I didn’t go to UI. It gets even more interesting because the day we were supposed to meet, he was running late to the venue and I left the location because I considered him unserious for wasting people’s time. He came to my hostel when he didn’t meet me at the spot, and for four years now, we have not been physically apart for more than 24 hours. Now consider if he didn’t take the extra step of making sure we met, we would not have the stories we have today.
In startups, a moment could be a confluence of events that happens where a founder or employee must take charge of the opportunity or let it slip. I used slip here because Moments can also be a time of inaction too. It’s called Wu Wei. Wu Wei is an action in inactivity. AN example to describe this would be, if you had a brilliant idea but you must wait for a few years before you execute on it because if you executed on it right away, you would execute on it poorly and bouncing out of that failure would be difficult to come out from.
Since MOMENTS are periods of big decisions or indecisions, I believe having a framework to guide our decision making process will be very useful. What are the key moments in your life where things change for you, would you like to share?