Made It!

Made it through a childhood

That was full of bumps

Made it through chicken pox,

Measles and the mumps.

Made it through high school

Not through college, though

Made it into the workforce

Where I made friends, money, and more.

Made it into the advertising books

By writing the Fiesta condoms campaign

The agency folks and the client loved it

Though it drove the advertising and media pundits insane.

Made it into many different advertising agencies

Job hopping all the way

Made it through Maa, Sistas, HTA, Contract, Rediff, Everest, and more

Until setting up Purple Patch made me call it a day.

Made it through Purple Patch

It was my own creative shop, after all

Thanks to a great bunch of employees, contractors, and clients

Purple Patch was profitable, and we all had a ball.

Made it in America

Made it in a completely different line

Had to start from zero again

But made it through fine.

Made it as a commissions analyst

Working with numbers rather than words

When I think I made it in this line

It seems quite surprising and absurd

Sort of cool, sort of weird.

What is my biggest achievement?

Hmm it's hard to say.

Slap on the head, Minoo, isn't it making it through parenting?

My biggest achievement to date.

Dear Reader,

There is no bigger responsibility than parenting.

Parenting requires us to become more responsible.

We have to become more responsible for ourselves, more responsible in our jobs, more responsible with how we handle our money, more responsible in our choices, and more responsible in how we conduct ourselves.

It also requires us to take a good hard look at our desires, hobbies, habits, prejudices, and personality traits, since any of these can get in the way of being a positive example to our children, and also being an approachable, available, and supportive presence in their lives. 

And we have to keep looking at our desires, hobbies, habits, prejudices, and personality traits, throughout our life.

We may have to confront new challenges and new realities.

What worked before may not work for those new challenges and realities.

We may discover the 'old us ' may not be appropriate, or suffice.

As our life experience expands and broadens, we have to be prepared to expand our world view.

So there will be room for self-improvement throughout our life.

Parenting is a process.

To those of you who are navigating it well, or have navigated it well, congratulations.

To those of you who are in the process of navigating it, and are feeling lost, frustrated, or overwhelmed by some of the challenges involved, trust yourself, the answers will come.

“Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do,” Dr. Benjamin Spock says.

I do believe that if we sit down and think about any challenge, we will find alternate ways to deal with it, discovering that some ways are better than others; for instance, acceptance and going with the flow, beats lectures, warnings, and threats.

And, oh yes, whether you have children, or not, I hope you craft a "Made It" story, as beautiful as the most beautiful piece of art or music in the world.

Make it amazing all the way till the last breath, the last twirl, the last dab of paint, the last turn of the spoon in the pan, the last pirouette!