Pay It Forward

Kindness

A homeless man walks into a Baskin Robbins Ice-cream store and buys an ice-cream. When the cashier rings him up, he empties the coins he has collected from his pocket on the counter to count them out and pay for his ice-cream.

He counts the first dollar in coins and hands this to the cashier.

A lady customer walks in to Baskin Robbins.

She sees the man counting out his coins at the register and gives him $2 to help him pay for his ice-cream. 

The man thanks the lady gratefully and hands the $2 to the cashier.

Nobility

The cashier takes the money from the man and enters the payment in the register.

The cashier gives the man back his change.

You are not going to believe what happens next...

The homeless man takes all the change from the 2 dollar bill plus all the coins he had from before the lady walked in and puts it in the cashier’s Tip Jar.

This true story happened just yesterday.  My daughter was the cashier and she and another server were the beneficiaries of the man's noble and generous tip.

Did this story touch your heart?

Who can you show kindness to today? 

Pay it Forward.

5 Things To Do To Be A Rebel

• Swim against the tide. Do the opposite of what peer pressure tells you to do...if everyone is doing it.....tattoos, piercings, holes in their jeans, question the reason to follow the crowd or go your own way.  If you find a reason to follow, follow; if you find a reason not to follow, don’t. If you don’t get it, you don’t get it. It’s okay. Give yourself permission to be yourself.

• Find the truth in your heart and soul and follow it.  If this means pursuing a profession which is not hot, that’s okay.  If you want to collect your life rewards in soul satisfaction or a sense of achievement or fulfillment, rather than money, that’s okay.  Remember you are not just an economic being, an economic unit of society.  You are an intellectual being, a physical being, a spiritual being. You and I are “spirit” above all. Even when our bodies are gone, our spirits will live on.  As my mother's spirit lives on in the poems she has left behind. So, if you are told the jobs are only in the medical field or computer field; or the money is only in the investment banking field or the law field...don’t be led like a sheep, search for that truth in your heart and in your soul and follow it.

• Don’t give in to the flavor of the day “fears”.....example, you need a job because you need medical insurance, you won’t get a job without a college degree, you need two incomes to survive.....etc and etc.....all that you will do by allowing anything at all to play on your fears.....is that you will need therapy and need prescription anxiety medication to calm down (which apparently is the most used medication in America after painkillers like Oxycontin).

• Don’t give in to flavor of the day greeds.  The big house.  The house in the 900+ API school district. The expensive vacations. The fancy car.  It will get you into a helluva lot of debt, and lead to one wrong decision after another, such as commuting a long way to work, or leading a lonely life (a frequent penalty of living in isolated splendor), just because you want to look successful.

• Set your own mile markers.  We all know the mile markers du jour - college degree, job, car, house, second house, kids in expensive private school.  That’s just the dominant culture.  Think outside the box.....if you need inspiration, read my post about Diogenes, or read the book Socrates by Paul Johnson.  Or read the book Instructions to the Cook. Get inspired.

        

These are just some ideas to get you kick-started.  I am sure if you look into your  heart and soul, you will find many more. Because you are unique - there's no one like you. As Max Lucado says in Outlive Your Life, you will not encounter another person like yourself anywhere!

P.S. 1:  Thanks for reading my unsolicited advice.  This post was inspired by an e-mail exchange between Ajay Sachdev and myself.  Ajay was always one to go his own way.  When the rest of us would do this or that just to“be cool”, Ajay was his own person. Everyone who knows him back from the day when we were in MAA will back me up on that.  Thanks Ajay for providing the inspiration for this post.

P.S.  2: If you do read Socrates by Paul Johnson (and I hope you will), tell me what Paul Johnson says Socrates might have thought about multiple choice question tests and on which page of his marvelous book about Socrates you read that.

P.S. 3: In connection with choosing a vocation or calling, thank goodness for people who follow their hearts to be academics, otherwise we wouldn’t have school teachers and college professors to teach us; and thank goodness for people who follow their hearts to be firemen and policemen and paramedics or people in the armed forces, otherwise we couldn't feel protected and safe.

P.S. 4:  Fears are typically exaggerations.  In my early years in the SFO Bay Area, I lived alone with my baby daughter in a different apartment complex from my current one. I lived there for 2 and a half years, taking my daughter for walks in her stroller, teaching her to ride a bike and doing all the normal things you would do living anywhere. I did not experience any negative incidents. Imagine my surprise to learn (years later when I had moved out) that the area I had lived in was associated with drugs, gangs and danger.  I was really amused when, once in conversation, a Mangalorean gentleman said he knew of an excellent Oriental store to buy fish from, but I would have to dash in and out of it because it was in a very dangerous area..  Little did he know that the store was in a strip mall right next to the apartment complex where I had lived, and that not only did I do my grocery shopping at that Oriental store all the time, but I patronized all of the stores in that strip mall frequently.

Flying Lessons by Cindy Pinkston

I turned thirteen in the summer of 1970.  I had set several goals for myself over that summer; they included letting my hair grow out, losing weight, getting more attractive glasses, and acquiring a new wardrobe.  I lived on bullion, ice chips and very little food, and over the warm summer months, my clothing did indeed get looser.

The eye exam was scheduled and new glasses were purchased. My grandmother took me shopping for clothes even though she really couldn't afford them. I had no concept then of what sacrifices she was making just to bolster my self-esteem.

That same summer, my Grandpa Charlie took me on my first flying lesson.  He had established (after many years of dashed hopes and much toil) his own flight school at a nearby private airport. He had worked as a flight instructor and was not a man of means. So over the years, he had come close to realizing his dream more than once, only to have one or more of the financial backers pull out at the last moment, leaving him to pick up the pieces and start all over again.

But on this warm summer day in August of 1970, both he and I had realized our respective dreams.

He took me step by step through the pre-flight check process, treating me with respect as if I were one of his adult students. Inside the aircraft, he explained each instrument to me, as we prepared for take-off. (I had flown with him before, but always in the back seat, never up front – I felt so grown up).

Once we were off the ground, he talked me through each motion, each subtle adjustment of the equipment.

The day was bright and clear, and the view was wonderful, but most of all it was about just being with him, sharing in his passion.

He had wanted to fly and be a pilot, since before he was 20 years old. His own mother had ridiculed him for “having such a notion”, but my Grandma Ellen had supported him in this - even when they were dirt poor.

I was happy for him that his dream had become a reality.

There was heightened excitement when it came time to touch down. I was nervous and afraid I couldn’t do it myself. “Papa” reassured me I could, that together, we would. So we circled the landing field and I landed the plane!

I was so proud!

That was my first flying lesson.  It was also my last.

Papa got cancer.  By mid-November, he was gone.  Three months.  Ninety days.  I was so angry. 

I stopped wearing my new wardrobe and stuck to a couple of pairs of jeans and two old sweatshirts. 

I came home from school every afternoon and slept through until the next morning.

There was a popular song at the time by James Taylor “Fire and Rain”. The words would run over and over in my mind...

“I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain.

I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end.

I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend.

But I always thought that I’d see you one more time again.”

P.S. 1: Hope you enjoyed this poignant piece by Cindy Pinkston.  If you want to read more of Cindy’s writing, you can check out other posts written by her on my Pinterest board Cindy’s Corner.

P.S. 2: This piece is dedicated to my uncle Trevor Keelor and other brave souls such as him. Besides winning a Vir Chakra, the highest award for bravery on the battlefield in India, Trevor Keelor is remembered for having accomplished a Sully Sullenberger type feat in 1964, when he successfully force landed a Gnat plane which had engine trouble. You can read about it here. Trevor's brother Denzil is also a Vir Chakra pilot and you can read about him here.

P.S. 3: I hope some of the young gals reading this will be inspired to become future “Pancho Barnes”. Yes, the flying world has many women adventurers too.

P.S. 4: Not all my heroes pilot planes. If you want to read about my other personal heroes, you can read about Uday and Nithya here, and George and James Dennehy and Vinita Piyaratna here.

P.S.5: As always thanks for reading and hope 2012 is the year in which you pursue your biggest dreams and conquer your biggest fears.

Sleepless in a Tree

Sparrow (with urgency):  Knock. Knock. Owl...

Sparrow (with urgency again):  Knock. Knock. Owl...

Sparrow (and again): Knock. Knock. Owl...

Owl (irritable at being woken up): ....what now?

Sparrow: This business about humans tweeting...

Owl (frustrated): Didn’t we just put this to bed the other day? You said you had a change of heart - Twitter and tweeting were good for us birds, after all. What now?

Sparrow: I’ve had an epiphany, Owl.

Sparrow is greeted by silence from Owl.

Sparrow: Don’t you want to hear it...

Owl (still inside his tree hollow):  I can’t wait!

Owl is greeted by silence from Sparrow in turn.

Owl: Are you still out there? Are you going to tell me, or what?

Sparrow: Not if you don’t come out of your tree hollow.

Owl: Sheesh, I’m coming. It better be earth-shaking, this epiphany of yours.

Sparrow: It is...I promise you!

Owl:(now out of the tree and on the same branch as Sparrow):Well...?

Sparrow (continuing):  I just realized in terms of upstaging us, tweeting is not the worst thing humans have done.

Owl: Yes...?

Sparrow: What about flying, Owl? What about flying? Did our forebears ever think the day would come when humans would fly like us?

Owl: Don’t you think it’s a bit late in the day to be getting your feathers in a twist about this, Sparrow?  Humans have been flying since the turn of the last century. You would need a time machine to launch Occupy 7 Hawthorn Street at Wilbur and Orville Wright’s Dayton, Ohio home.

Owl (yawning and adding): I know, maybe you can borrow Sir Bertie Bangalore Wooster Duck’s time machine.

Sparrow:  There you go again...being a relentless tease like that human Rosie.

Owl: Sorry...I couldn’t help myself. What brought this on anyway?

Sparrow: I was just thinking about the letters I wrote to Dick Costolo in connection with tweeting, when wham - the whole flying business suddenly occurred to me.  I feel compelled to write to Minoo and let her know about my flying epiphany.

Owl: You’re not doing it just to get some press, are you?

Sparrow: Why would you even think that!!!!!

Owl: Because you’re a publicity hound, Sparrow – one of these days I won’t be surprised if I see you on TMZ.

Sparrow: Sheesh, Owl, TMZ! I am an activist - a real newsmaker. TMZ is a gossip rag about Hollywood celebrities.

Owl: Speaking of flying, Sparrow, did you know that there are 2 real newsmakers in Minoo’s family – 2 Param Vir Chakra fighter pilots.

Sparrow:  Really? Who?

Owl: The famous Keelor brothers. Their names are Trevor Keelor and Denzil Keelor.

Sparrow: How do you know this?

Owl: A little birdie told me. Now if I was you, I would write a letter to Minoo, mention your epiphany, say you learned from your learned friend Owl about the Keelor brothers and ask her to do a piece on flying.  Flight is indeed one of the greatest of human inventions.

Sparrow: You have given me some food for thought. I believe you can go back to your hollow and sleep now.

Owl: I can...can I? Thank you. I was having a dream about flying to France to pick up a gift from a thirteen year old girl called Hermione, of all things, when you woke me up.

Sparrow begins to write a letter...Dear Minoo...

P.S.:  And so dear reader... the next post on my blog will be a piece on flying. My friend Cindy’s experience of helping pilot a plane as a teenager. You can look forward to that this weekend.

P.S.2:  Indeed, I am related to the famous Keelor brothers, Trevor Keelor and Denzil Keelor.  Growing up, I was very proud to say that they were my uncles. You can read about them here and here.

P.S. 3: The Param Vir Chakra is the highest award for bravery in the Indian battlefield.

P.S. 4:  Owls remind me of Padmini, an Art Director from my HTA, Madras days...she used to collect ornamental owls....had over 200 of them.

P.S. 5: As always thanks for reading and please check back for Cindy's piece this weekend. If you want to read about the protests Sparrow launched against Twitter, you can do so here, here, here, here, and here.

It’s Called Motherhood (ICM©) -2

Somewhere along the way, in the interest of peace vs friction, truth vs lies, respect vs control, sleep vs insomnia – some of us morphed from Tiger Mom to Helicopter Mom to Hippie Mom and learned to embrace some realities, even celebrate them as a passage of life:

Here are those realities (memorialized for future times - no doubt they will provide much food for thought centuries from now):

The Jeans-With-Holes-Reality

Why would anyone want to look like they’ve had a horrible tumble off of a bike? Even pay big bucks to look like something ghastly had happened. Beats me! But hippie moms like moi have learned to live with it.

Here’s a hypothesis about the trend: Mommy taxis replaced bicycles, so kids had to find a faux way to earn their “falling off bikes” stripes. What do you think?

The Multiple-Ear-Piercings Reality

It's a good time to be in the ear piercing business. Make that body piercing business. No one stops with one piercing per ear anymore...Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! And ouch again!  Sigh!

What's behind this multiple piercings trend? A yearning to be a part of a tribe, maybe? To return to the days when the world consisted of large connected families - rather than the 1+1 or 2+2 nuclear families that we are today - each in our own little box with our patch of front yard and picket fence? What do you think?

The Different-Hair-Color-Every-6 Months Reality

Sure has messed up our bathrooms, towels and shower stalls many a time, yes mums? What’s the story here?

Here’s my hypothesis: The way our hair looks has a unique capacity to influence how we feel.  So new hair colors (and hairstyles) are our non-prescription no-insurance-needed happy pills.  If we don’t like it, we can always color it back to the way it was before, yes? What do you think? P.S. By the way, the latest trend in hair color is ombre.....you can read about it here.

The Music-with-Colorful-Lyrics Reality (Ranging from vividly colorful when our backs are turned– Get Back by Ludacris, to less colorful, but still very colorful, nevertheless, when our backs aren’t)

Here’s my hypothesis:  Truthfully, I don’t want to provide a hypothesis or an excuse for this, because bad language and language which degrades women gets my goat. Bugs me no end.  In fact, I try to tune out the words and listen to just the music (which I kind of like most times). But I will provide a hypothesis.  Music has always been the generational differentiator; the way we separate ourselves from our parents and individualize ourselves.  Which is why ‘THEY’ listen to KYLD 94.9 and “WE” listen to KFOG 97.7. What do you think?

Once in a way, you and your kids may meet at cross points such as Gottye’s Now You’re Just Somebody That I Used To Know; cherish those rare times when you feel you share the same musical planet as them.

Last but not least, the Connubial-Bliss-and-Babies-TV Shows Reality (aka Secret Life of the American Teenager and Teen Mom - both with an equally terrifying parent-insomnia-producing quotient of 110 on 100).

Hypothesis about this trend: I don’t know what to say about this, other than in every period in history, some one or the other has produced media (in pre-tv and pre-internet times, it would have been books) with content that made a large swath of society uncomfortable. (Think Lady Chatterly’s Lover!)

We do know the offspring will eventually grow out of all of this and join the Establishment – just like we did – maybe even with a cake from Margaret's French Bakery and a Wedgewood wedding and all!  

All I know is that for some reason, we start off in early adulthood wanting more than anything else to be different from everyone else and we then progress to wanting more than anything else to fit in with the crowd!!!!

P.S.  Thanks for reading and commiserating! If you don’t have kids, make that sympathizing!

P.S. 2:  ICM is also the acronym for what puts the food on our table.  It stands for Incentive Compensation Management, my field of work as a Commissions Analyst and Xactly Incent Configuration and Testing Consultant.

P.S. 3:  Thanks to Tanita for taking the picture of the jeans used in this post.  She clicked it with her Android phone and sent it to me via Instagram (with a stop at either Facebook or Twitter along the way).

P.S.3:  The most expensive pair of ripped and distressed jeans according to the Guiness Book of World Records : Gucci Genius Jeans - $3,134 a pop.  That was in 1998.  I am afraid to look now.

When I was younger...

I knew how to argue, but I didn’t know how to converse.

I had opinions to contribute about everything, few ideas to solve anything.

I knew how to start a fire, but I didn’t know how to create warmth.

I knew how to create a stir, I didn’t know how to create peace.

I knew how to reject, I didn’t know how to accept.

I knew how to be generous, I didn’t know how to be kind.

I knew how to compete, I didn’t know how to collaborate.

I knew how to be clever, I didn’t know how to be wise.

I am older now.  I’m glad I am.

It's called Motherhood - ICM©

Parent Trap:Watched 240 times

Life Size: Watched 50 times

Charlie & the Chocolate Factory: Watched 70 times

Dumbo: Watched 40 Times

Barney & Friends: Watched - you don't want to know how many times!!

P.S.: If you're having a girl, don't say I didn't warn you!!!! :):)
P.S.2: I realize there are many variations on this theme.  Would love to hear your variation, wherever you are on this planet; if you had only boys, it would be charming to know what I have missed. 
P.S.3: ICM is also the acronym for what puts the food on our table.  It stands for Incentive Compensation Management, my field of work as an Xactly Incent Configuration Consultant.
P.S.4: Thanks for reading and Happy Easter to all of you.

5 Things To Do If You Are Bored

1.    Generate Your Name in Eskimo as I did in this post.  My Eskimo name is Desna. What’s yours?

2.    Do you like to pickle? People from Portland, Oregon love to pickle as well.  So much so, on we can pickle that  (a site related to the popular TV series Portlandia), you can pickle anything, even my blog.  I am not kidding.  Enter my blog’s URL – here it is  - http://minoojha-actionableideas.blogspot.com on the site to see my blog pickled.

3.    A Readers Digest article listed the 10 most irritating phrases in English.  My post Secrets of the Models In Our Family contains several of them.  See if you can spot them.  Check out how many you got right by going to this link after.

4.    Unscramble these words and find out what the sentence reads...

5.     Word Scramble

by Desna

6.Top of Form

fiel
essgittrea
fro
stoeh
ihwt
noe
ndah
bendhi
heirt
cbka

7.Bottom of Form

5. What’s that word?

a.    ____________The scientific name for the American Tree Sparrow – used by me in several posts about Twitter. The answer is here, here, here, here and here.

b.    ____________What I would call you if you were an expert at working virtually. The answer is here.

c.    ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­____________The name of the fictitious school I recommended people should go to if they want to develop a talent for commenting. The answer is here.

As always thanks for reading and wishing you an exciting day.