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The Thirst for Freedom
Life is full of constraints. The boss, the budget, our family responsibilities, geography, education, all create boundaries and limitations. We dream of shaking ourselves free from our chains and living the life of our dreams. Free of responsibility, free of constraints. If we could only get free, then we’d be truly happy and fulfilled. The…
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Snippets
After thumbing through my Twitter feed for too long, every new thought becomes a tweet. Every observation, every overheard phrase can be twisted into 140 characters of clever. Which makes me wonder, how much is our output affected by our inputs? When we feed ourselves a steady diet of snippets, sound bites, snapshots and tweets,…
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Mess is Poetry
I listened to a speech recently, and it was an absolute disaster. A mother gave a carefully-prepared speech, but she kept getting interrupted. The culprit was none other than her six year-old son who was, in fact, the topic of her speech. While she explained the miracle of her son’s life – six short years…
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“Creative” Isn’t a Noun, It’s a Challenge
“Creative” is a funny word. We use it to describe people, as if “creative” is trait they possess, as in “she has brown hair, glasses, and she’s really creative“. We even use it to describe a thing, like a script or advertising graphics. “The campaign starts next week, so the creative needs to be ready…
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Be Prolific: What I’ve Learned From 10 Toastmaster Speeches
Last week I achieved Toastmaster’s “Competent Communicator” (CC) award (I know, I’m officially competent, hooray!). I’ve been working towards this since I started the Toastmasters program early this year, so it felt like a big accomplishment. To achieve a “CC”, Toastmasters need to complete 10 speeches, most being between 5-7 minutes long. Each of the…
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Don’t Aim at Success – My First Tapestry
I recently heard about Tapestry, which is an app with an interesting take on visual storytelling using words, photos and the simple “tap”. The combination of text, visuals and pacing caught my curiosity. It’s kind of like a slideshow (sans cheese) that you view on your phone. Below is my first test drive of the…
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Temporary Beauty
Sand mandalas are a Tibetan Buddhist tradition which involves creating a mandala out of coloured sand. After hours of meticulous work, the mandala is ceremoniously dismantled. Gone. The first time I heard of this artform, my immediate reaction was, “What a waste!” It seems a shame to create something so intricate and beautiful just to…
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The World Sends Us Garbage… We Send Back Music
Cateura, Paraguay is a slum built on a landfill. But in the midst of trash and poverty, the people of Cateura build instruments made entirely out of recycled materials. The kids, directed by their music teacher, have formed a “recycled orchestra”. This is a beautiful story, on so many levels. Listening to these kids talk…
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Life Lessons From the Creator of Calvin and Hobbes
In today’s fast-paced, spotlight-seeking, social-media-driven world, finding a public figure who avoids the spotlight is remarkable. But when you find a public figure who is completely embracing living a private life and rejects all fame, money and attention, it forces you to take pause. That’s what I recently found in the creator of ‘Calvin &…
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Leaning Into the Fear
The hardest part about learning to snowboard learning to lean forward. The natural thing when you’re strapped to a slippery board at the top of a 12,000ft mountain is to lean back. As if leaning back will help you ease gently down the hill. That’s the fear talking. But fear doesn’t know what’s safe. Leaning…