Are You Happy?

Having recently started to write again, I have been trying to pound away at the keyboard to get some thoughts down on this one. The following article is one of the toughest that I have written so far, and for a couple of reasons. One is that the concept itself has been quite difficult to articulate adequately, and two because I am not absolutely clear about where I stand myself. This of course does not mean that everyone is not clear on this issue. Maybe the vast majority of people are very certain of where they stand, though I am not.

A couple of weeks ago my son and I were walking down to the supermarket, when he asked me what seemed like a very innocuous question. He turned to me and said - Dad, are you happy? Of course the urge to respond was immediate. However something made me hesitate before I answered - probably my natural compulsion to hedge on giving definitive responses. And that one moment made me delve deep inside myself to seek the truth of how I felt. That one moment was all it took to have the question burn itself into my mind - a question which I still find difficult to answer unequivocally.

I have debated, in between the complete spectrum of yes and no, and finding no definitive answer have also resorted to questioning the question itself. This is not a fair question - is it? I mean, don’t we always express happiness in terms of a specific thing? Maybe it is because my son asked this question, and he did not know any better than to ask it. How many times have you asked this question to others or have it asked to you? To be honest, in my experience, never! The proper question would be - are you happy with whatever, and that whatever could be anything from your last meal, to your day, your new car, your colleagues etc. In that perspective it is easy to answer in the definitive and there is no stigma or deeper meaning attached to the answer.

However the same question asked in general, takes on a whole new meaning. Now it starts to encompass every sphere of one’s life, and who would have the arrogance to answer in the definitive yes, and who the guts to give an unequivocal no? Forget responding to someone else - how many of us can even answer truthfully to ourselves? When I ask myself that question, I really have no answer. I am happy about quite a few specific aspects in my life, and like most others would like to change a few others. But that does not result in overall happiness or unhappiness. Let me try and clarify what each response would indicate to someone on the receiving end.

Let us start with a wholehearted yes. This simple affirmative means that one is happy in all aspects of one’s life - be it health, career, family, relationships, friendships, finances, etc. This person believes that they are in the absolutely right place and given the option would change not one teeny tiny element in their life. They have no regrets about the past, and importantly enough, it goes without saying that there is not a cloud on their horizon, as they look into their future. No major stresses that keep them awake, no worries to blot their serendipity. They fully expect that life will not blindside them, and even if it does, divine intervention or their own innate ability will handle any curved balls that will be thrown their way.

On the other hand would anyone be willing to confess to being unhappy in general? If so why continue, why persevere with living unless there is hope to turn the situation around? The pall of gloom is expected to lift and the clouds clear away. There are always aspects of our lives, even when we are down in the dumps which keep us floating, give us sustenance, like a jewel tucked away from the clutches of thieves who have taken everything else.

The emotion of happiness or its opposite unhappiness, is reactionary by nature. We are happy when things are going as per plan, unhappy when something changes them. The emotion is also relative by nature, i.e. if we are caught in a traffic jam we are happy if we can outpace the car ahead of us, and unhappy if someone behind overtakes us. The fact that we are all caught in a traffic snarl is lost on us.

I would think that all of us have experienced moments on both sides of the spectra, in our lives. There would have been times of absolute ecstasy when just about everything seemed right with the world. We might also have gone through times of despair, when all seemed lost (these times are normally dulled by memory). Both of these are two sides of the same coin. One cannot experience one without having lived through the other. Without getting acquainted with sorrow, one would not recognize joy even if it came and slapped one in the face.

Maybe extremes of this emotion are felt more in our earlier years and as we grow older, mature, and acquire wisdom (hopefully), our emotional spectrum diminishes. It does not fluctuate as much, which keeps our lives on a more even keel, and prevents us from making irrational decisions late in, or probably all through our lives. Maybe as our skepticism and cynicism increases, our passions diminish in tandem. Experience makes us wiser and as we go through the various stages of our lives, we are maybe subconsciously diminishing the arc within which the pendulum sways so that, though we might never experience absolute and unadulterated joy, we also avoid the trauma of clinical depression. It could be that the more appropriate question to ask, would be the reverse i.e. are you unhappy? Then maybe most of us would say no. Maybe happiness is a more aspirational emotion, something that we work towards, but never achieve. Or maybe the right term would be ephemeral - just when you thought you grasped it, it evaporates like a dream in the cold light of day. Maybe happiness for each of us is just a step away from where we currently stand. If only we had “this” or could get “that”, if only "this" could change or "that" could go away, then we would be happier. I do know that there are lots of hypochondriacs, alarmists, perfectionists who could never be able to answer in the positive. Same goes with highly driven individuals, who will always feel they are one step away from their goal, whether professionally or personally, which keeps them from true contentment. Maybe we are more comfortable expressing our state of happiness at a point in time, rather than over a period of time.

My wife, being asked to vet this article before I published it commented, that this article could lead to the perception that I am not happy. In light of what has happened in the last few days in terms of the global economic meltdown, I wonder whether there are too many people out there who can profess to be ecstatic today ha ha.

Having given it more thought though, I feel that maybe it is a fair question to ask. I am content with my life, love my wife, my kids and my family. Have great friends with whom I really enjoy hanging out with. I really do not have any major regrets from the past and have a very optimistic view of the future. It still remains an extremely difficult question to answer, at least for me. Maybe I am reading too much into the question and maybe most of you would have no problems in answering it. For you then, you would never understand the brouhaha.

So then, are you happy?

Chalk and Cheese

It has been sometime since I have last written a blog, and to be honest the urge to write has been dampened by the events of the last 2 weeks or so. But having gone this distance I would very much like to continue to write and post, and hopefully have a small fraternity of regular readers. It would be a shame if some of my loyal readers stop reading my blog, just because they get tired of logging in to find nothing new to read. Also, I have written this article entirely in first person, (probably the only one so far) as opposed to my preference for writing in the third person. This means that it has a liberal peppering of the word "I".

To say that my life has been turned around, would be an understatement. I am well known as a person who has not been entirely friendly to change over the years. A few stellar examples to support that statement, would be the fact that it took me over 13 years to change my car, and almost 14 years to change jobs. I have been living in the same building for over 15 years, and when we did decide to move to a bigger apartment a few years ago, it was just down the corridor from where we lived before. Now I do not know whether any of you are seeing a trend here, but having changed two out of the above three elements, the third element i.e. my residence, might soon succumb to this new drive to embrace change, that I have recently acquired. Unfortunately however these changes have also had an impact on other facets of my life. My exercise routine, my family time, my diet etc. are ones that I would have preferred to shield from any perturbation, but I have been unsuccessful so far. The advantage of having a very routine and orderly life is the focus that one can keep on the elements of one's life that one needs to maintain. But then as a wise man once said - one cannot have everything!!

Now I do know from the numerous phone calls, emails and sms messages over the last fortnight, that a lot of my family, friends, and ex-colleagues are concerned about my transition into my new job, and are keen to know how I have been coping. And this article to a large extent is to address those concerns and curiosity. If there is a question about any residual bitterness around my decision to leave my previous employers, I would like to state now that nothing could be further from the truth. My previous employers have been more than fair with me, and the manner of my leaving and the way I have been treated could not have been better. I am in constant touch with all my friends and colleagues, managers and bosses, so many of whom are concerned about me and my decision. So I have anything BUT bitter memories.

However do I regret leaving? Absolutely not. I like where I am and I like what I am doing - even though by most standards, in organisational terms I have taken a step down, from a mansion to a hut. But I have realised that a hut is what makes me happy, a palace is not really for me. I did not feel as if I belonged in a palace. All through my career with my previous employer, I felt like the worlds best cricketer on a football field - basically in the wrong game. The only regret is that I should have taken this decision earlier - but I console myself by thinking that maybe I took it when I was ready. The truth of the matter is to know what we want and pursue that. I do not feel tied down by my decision, and if I stop liking where I am today or change my mind, I will leave and try again somewhere else. I however will not keep enduring. Life is too short to live in misery and in regrets. I have been fortunate in that I have (just recently) achieved a bit of clarity in what I want. I want to live in Dubai as long as I can, be close to Bombay, enjoy what I do, earn a decent wage, and not make my work my end game. I do not crave for a big house, or a fancy car, or lavish holidays and fine dining and eating out. I have no problems with my middle class life, and knowing this about myself, I can take better decisions about what I need to do. My big problem for a very long time was, that even when I knew what I should have been doing - I just never did it. I have changed that aspect, and I hope I can keep it that way.

As regards the new organisation, it is really too early to tell, but I am a great believer in gut instinct, and that instinct has largely been solidified. My experiences over the last few days have been enough to get a feel of where I stand and whether or not I will be able to cope. Let me start with a huge salvo - I have learned more in the last 10 days or so, than I learned in the last 5 years. Before you jump in to state that learning is incumbent on the individual, and that there were no obstacles to my learning over those years, let me say that I agree. Learning is definitely our own responsibility, but I do believe that learning is most effective when it is relevant. Relevance comes from varying imperatives, be it job requirements, updating your technical skills, professional requirements, personal interests, insecurity etc. But there is for each of us, a particular motive or driver, internal or external, to learn and keep learning. And from a purely professional perspective, I had lost the desire to learn. Everything I learned and all skills I acquired over the last few years had been driven by my personal needs. On the other hand my learning over the last few weeks has been driven by professional necessity. The knowledge acquired in the last 10 days or so, and to be acquired over the next few months, will be to keep my nose above the water. I will need that initially to survive and then to deliver value.

Since I am now in an entirely new industry, and that too real estate, it has driven me to learn as much as I can. This is also driven by my personal motives, considering the investment that I have made in the Dubai property market. To know how this business operates, how the entire value chain unfolds from beginning to end, has been a key motivation in my choice of jobs. It has been fascinating so far, and I hope that the learning and the ability to translate the same for both professional and personal gain, will continue for some time into the future.

The next big change has been the operating environment, which is as different from my previous employer as chalk is to cheese. In this rough and tumble world if I can survive and then flourish, I do feel that I can manage almost anywhere. The people, the culture, the approach and the decision making are very very different, and it needs an entirely new mind-set to settle into it. There are lots of rough edges, things are not as orderly and "nice" as they were, respect for people is definitely on the lower side and HSSE is just about becoming awareness. Personnel policies and procedures are either non-existent or in a stage of infancy. Diversity and inclusiveness are not even in the corporate lexicon.

80 to 85% of the staff is new, both to the organisation and to Dubai, and there is a strange sense of all sailing in the same boat. Every person that I have met and spoken to has different objectives, imperatives and desires out of the job that they do, and that sheer variety is by itself so different from the drivers that kept people going, in my previous organisation. Career aspirations have hardly been voiced so far, and most people have much shorter time frames and horizons than I had experienced earlier. Every day is a new experience and I hardly know what I will be expected to be doing and where I will be. Quite literally the amount of time we have played corporate musical chairs, I really do not know where I will be asked to sit tomorrow morning.

Decisions are taken at light speed, and still feel as if they were not fast enough. This is not a company for the faint hearted - that is for sure. You are now in a boxing ring with no referees, and the only way to survive is to come out of your corner swinging. If you get knocked down you get up and start again, since there is no one to pick you up and take you to your corner. There are no processes to support you as an individual, and it is left very much to you as to how you approach your job, and initiative is definitely at a premium.

When I think back to just about a month ago, my life was so orderly and defined. Going to work was so comfortable. I knew most of the answers, and even if I did not, people were too gracious to point it out. I decided the tempo at which I worked and there was immense patience for all. This world (for me) has evaporated. I have to pinch myself now as to whether it ever existed ha ha. But my transition has been made easy by just one, and only one thing, my mind-set. My mental preparation over the last few months, before I started this assignment was critical to my ability to adapt to the new environment. It might seem easy, and quite natural, but it was not. The emotional peaks and troughs, the doubts, the fears mixed up with the certainty and then the exhilaration to face a new future, were all symptoms of the internal processes at work, getting me ready for the day when it dawned.

So for all my ex-colleagues who might be thinking of moving from a comfortable environment to a more difficult one, the only thing I can tell you, is that it can be done. If I can do it, anyone can. But it does need mental preparation, and of course support from your family, friends, and colleagues, which I was blessed with in ample quantities.