The Element of Understanding We All Make Different Choices and Its Hope for Becoming More Accepting of Each Other

We are all unique beings.

2 people can be born to the same parents, be raised in the same household, yet be completely different from each other.

One will be religious, one won’t, one will follow traditions, one won’t; one will be a go-getter, another shy and reserved, one will be impulsive, one will be more cautious.

Even though we think we know our siblings well, they often will surprise us by their decisions.

At an early age, I started surprising my siblings by my decisions.

At 12, I stopped going to church on Sundays and declared myself an atheist.

One of my older sisters who respected religious traditions challenged me. She said I needed to continue to go to Sunday mass with her.  Another sister who respected individual choice, rallied to my cause and defended my decision. She argued the other sister down...

“If Minoo has decided religion is not for her, we should respect that”, she said.

Thinking back, I am grateful I was allowed to make that choice. 

Every human being should be able to make their own choices, and discover the truth or falsity of their choices, the wisdom or idiocy of their choices.

This is how we learn, this is how we grow.

We have to make our own choices. Alternatively, we have to internalize the choices we have made based on other people’s desires, or choices we have made because of circumstances.

Ultimately, we have to make all our choices our own – this is essential to being an integrated human being.

Non-integrated human beings will do things and have no idea why they did it.

After we make our own choices, we have to live with the consequences.

One of the consequences of my turning atheist, was everything was up to me.

There was no higher power looking out for me.  I had to fend for myself.

Also, I had to be sure of my convictions and be prepared to defend my position.

Once, a priest from our parish church came to bless our house. He sat down a while with us, and one of the things he said was, “I do not see you in church often – why is that?  You should attend Sunday mass every week.  It is good for your soul.”

 “Oh,” I said nonchalantly, “it’s because I don’t believe in God.”

He was not expecting that.

He asked why, and I said, “If there was a God, he wouldn’t let all these bad things happen to people.”

The priest tried to reason with me, but eventually he gave up.

But not before he asked me one last question: “Aren’t you afraid you may go to Hell when you die?”

“Surely, if there is a God, he wouldn’t punish me just for not believing in him” was my pat reply.

Our family was on the outside looking in.

We had our problems.

We were not a “model family”, a Leave It To Beaver kind of family.

Our family was the family about which, people might have said, “There but for the grace of God, go us.”

I am grateful for this family.  It was a family in which each of us was allowed to make our own choices.

In our family, there was unconditional love, and acceptance of everyone’s uniqueness.

We have nothing to fear but fear itself, is something I learned early.

By the time I was a teenager, as a result of my thinking being unconstrained by both religious beliefs and social taboos, I made several unconventional decisions.

I decided I would not marry (this would change later on).

I decided I still wanted to experience romance.

I decided I was not interested in college.

I made decisions in accordance with my thoughts.

I met someone and we lived together.

I dropped out of college.

But while I took some risks, I didn’t take others.

I knew I would have to get on my feet.

So I started giving ESL tuitions to foreign students, and I started writing articles for the newspaper.

Both of these brought me money.

When I got my first copywriting job, I was careful with the money I earned.

But Ayn Rand was playing in full stereo in my mind in those days.

And I could not bear disappointment.

After completing a year at my first job, I did not get a raise, one of the reasons being I was already earning two-thirds more than the other junior copywriter.

My Howard Roark reaction was to walk out of the job.

I literally did just that.

I came out of the GM’s office after hearing her say she wouldn’t be able to give me a raise because of blah blah and blah blah, and I stood next to her admin Geeta, staring thoughtfully out of the window.  A few minutes later, I turned to Geeta and said, “Please type my resignation letter.”

When I made this decision, I did not know how many ad agencies there were in my city and if there were any openings.

All I had was a strong sense of self.  I left that agency, confident I would get another job.

It took 3 whole months, but I did get myself another job.

Meanwhile, while applying to jobs (to every ad agency in the city, big and small), I decided to study the dictionary. 

I set myself a goal of learning 20 new words a day – the bigger, the better.

There’s nothing more insufferable than a person who has fallen in love with big words.

Suddenly people were hearing or reading sentences from me, such as, “My sobriquet is Minoo, instead of “My pet name is Minoo”.

If you want to know what happened next, read my post The Element of Simplicity.

Deciding to study the dictionary was another quirky choice!

Anyway, I got myself another copywriting job, then another, then another.

I was unafraid of change, and ready to move at the drop of a hat.

I was quite different from my siblings in this respect.

I moved around a lot. 

I even went back to ad agencies where I had worked before, to do a second term.

I did two terms at MAA (the agency you learned about from Ajay Sachdev’s wonderful read, A Short Stint in Advertising), and two terms at Hindustan Thompson.

“Oh, so that’s why she has no problem being a Commissions Consultant today, going from assignment to assignment.”

Yes, that’s why I have no problem being a Commissions Consultant, going from assignment to assignment.

Moving jobs is in my DNA.

To my credit, I took each of my jobs very seriously.

I applied myself.  I was responsible and dependable.

I was passionately interested in delivering a good product.

In advertising, you get industry awards for a good product.

Like any self-respecting copywriter, I hankered after those awards.

Then came a time when I wanted to be my own boss. I heeded that yearning.

Once again, there were people who supported my choice, and people who didn’t.

The dissuaders said, “You are too new in this city, you do not have the contacts”, “you will not be able to collect payments, you are too soft” and so on and so forth.

The encouragers, of which my husband was one, just gave me the help I needed to set myself up.

And so I set up Purple Patch, my own creative hot shop, and soon proved the dissuaders wrong.

Purple Patch survived and thrived.

When we make our own choices, if our choice is not a safe choice, or it is off the beaten path, we have to be prepared for dissuaders.

We have to stay strong, have faith in ourselves.

Being my own boss at Purple Patch gave me the freedom to make my own choices like never before.

I made the choice to take on one or two retainers, and do freelance work on the side.

I made the choice to teach the copywriting component of the Mass Communication program at Loyola College, a Jesuit college in Chennai.

And I made the choice to hire one of my Loyola students to assist me part-time at Purple Patch.

Except that I ended up hiring 4.

Here’s what happened….

I invited 4 of my best Loyola students to interview for a part-time position at Purple Patch. 

What I didn’t expect is for all of them to show up at my place for the interview together.

This being the case, I seated them in my living room, and took them one by one into my office (a converted bedroom in my apartment) to interview them.

When I had finished with the interviews, I had them return to their seats in the living room until I was ready to come out and give them my decision.

Meanwhile, I was having a tough time deciding.

I liked each of these 4 students for different reasons, and I couldn’t decide which one of them would be the best fit.

Then, I had a crazy idea. 

What if I hired all 4 of them?

I had originally planned to hire one of them and pay X.

Now I thought I could maybe hire all 4 of them, and pay them each, one-fourth of X.

It would give me more flexibility, and it would take the pressure off.

I would be able to test all of them in the work environment and see who performed best.

I did not know how this would go down, but I said to them, “I have decided to take you all on, and pay each of you X.”

They jumped and shouted yippy and high-fived. I hadn’t expected the amount of money I was paying them to produce such delight. I was happy and relieved.

Hiring those 4 students was one of the best decisions I could make.

I had fun giving my four copy cubs real world on the job copywriting experience.

I enjoyed being “employer” and “Mother Goose”.

I enjoyed spoiling them.

One of the benefits I gave them was to make sure they had plenty of food.

Mid afternoon, I would send one of them down with money to Gandhi Brothers, the convenience store in our apartments, to pick up snacks for everyone.

If they came in on a Saturday, I paid for their lunch. There was a vegetarian restaurant near my house called Guru Hotel, so they could make a quick lunch stop there and be back.

And I kept the work atmosphere relaxed.

Purple Patch made money for me, for my 4 Loyola students, for a typist, for a driver, and for a moving caravan of copywriters, art directors, and other advertising talents, who did piece work for me.

Some of our personal and professional choices will be organic, some not.

I was an old hand at copywriting and understood the ad business well.

So starting Purple Patch was a natural and organic development.

But not all our choices in life will be organic.

In fact, some of our best decisions will be non-organic, often brought about by miraculous promptings and strange coincidences.

I remember when a miraculous prompting brought about a desire in my heart to become a vegetarian.

If you read my review of Anita Saran’s book On Becoming a Vegetarian – One Woman’s Experience, you will learn what that miraculous prompting was.

If after reading the book review, it seems strange to you that those words could create such a powerful desire in me, think about how strange and miraculous the prompting that made St. Augustine turn his life around, and how  strange and miraculous the prompting that led Diogenes of Sinopes to change his life.

I was a vegetarian for 3 years in all after my miraculous prompting. 

Though I couldn’t keep at it, it remains one of the proudest accomplishments in my life. The yearning to be a vegetarian has never gone away. If we are reborn, as is believed in some traditions, such as the Buddhist tradition and the Hindu tradition, I would like to be reborn as a vegetarian. 

(By the way, if you are a vegetarian and you are in the SFO Bay Area, do try out Merit Vegan Cuisine, which is a great vegetarian and vegan restaurant.  Don't forget to order Golden Era if you make a visit.)

Yes words we hear, words we read, and experiences we have, can all impact our lives, and lead to new choices and decisions.

Our lives may be going one way.  In an instant, we may be inspired to take our lives in a completely different direction.

Sometimes we will make choices because we get caught up in a wave.

Not all waves are good waves, but it happens.

In the early to mid 2000s, everyone was caught up in the wave of buying additional houses.

My friend Becky was told by more than one friend, “Aren’t you going to take out a second mortgage and buy another home?”  That’s what all her friends were doing - taking out loans against their existing homes to buy new homes. 

When the housing market collapsed, some of Becky’s friends lost both their old homes and their new homes.

We are human.

Being human, we are not predictable.

We are not like water, or like cookie dough.

If you dig a canal near a water source, the water will flow into the canal.

If you pour cookie dough into a star shaped mold, your cookie, when baked, will be star shaped.

Humans are not like water or cookie dough.

We have desires and thoughts and wills and volitional power.

If water had desires and a will and volitional power, it might jump out of the canal.  It might think, “I don’t want to flow in a canal.  I want to be a waterfall off a cliff.”

If cookie dough had desires and a will and volitional power, it might say, “I don’t want to be a star, I want to be a flower,” and jump out of the star-shaped mold in search of a flower-shaped mold.

As humans we can decide we want something and take steps to make it happen.

Several years ago, I decided I didn’t want to be a high-maintenance person.

So I worked on becoming a low maintenance person.

We each can decide to work on ourselves in different ways.

We can decide to work on our health, or on our skills, or on our habits, or on our attitude.

Our ideas and our thinking are behind the choices we make.

This is why we should improve our thinking processes, if we want to make better choices.

Some of our past choices might have gotten us into trouble.

But we can start making new choices.

My post The Element of Finding Our Feet tells of Weldon Long, who after spending his early adult life in the prison system, started making new choices and completely changed his life.

If we want to start making better choices, we should think about the victories of our past (read this post to help you get going), then think about our talents and gifts, then think about what we truly desire.

This will help us focus.

This will help us make the right choices.

This will help us stick to our plan.

This will help us ignore any waves that may sway us from our chosen path.

This will help us ignore criticism, or discouragement from others.

What I have wanted most of all in my life is peace.

This is what motivated me to start meditating.

I knew that what stood between me and peace were my anger issues, anxiety issues and ego issues.

Since becoming a meditator, I have been so much more at peace.

I have lived in the same apartment for over 15 years.

My reasons for renting are as follows:

I don’t like moving.

I like stability.

I am realistic about income instability in the US.

It is so easy to get caught with your pants down.

I also don’t like the idea of a large amount of debt.

In other words, I rent because renting brings me peace.

Being a Commissions Consultant also brings me peace.

I like the freedom of being “just a consultant”.

I like the fact I have to prove myself on every assignment.

I like the fact I am hired only when there’s a very real need.

It makes me feel valuable.

Feeling valuable packs a huge psychic reward.

If you are valuable to even one person, you will feel fulfilled.

Commissions Administration encompasses different functions and tasks in different companies.

I have to humble myself to take on the work I am tasked with in some companies.

There also might be inconveniences, and lack of privileges, related to my contractor status.

 I can hear you going, “Are you a masochist, Minoo?  How does this bring you peace?”

Work is therapeutic, work gives us a purpose to live for.

When we humble ourselves by our own choice, we are victors, not victims.

Better to be humble than not to eat.

Better to be humble than not to work.

Besides humility is one of my goals.

It’s a very big and tough goal, but it’s a worthwhile goal.

I’ve shared some of my choices with you, and my decision-making process.

We will make different choices at different stages of our life. 

The trick is not to get burned by our scars. 

Burned by my losses in the Harshad Mehta scam, I avoided the stock market for the next 10 years.

We have to accept that where people are, and the choices they currently make, does not mean they are going to hell in a hand basket. 

You can imagine how worried everyone in my family was by the decisions I made as a teenager and young adult.

Not going to college, going off to live with a boyfriend, walking out of a job I had been lucky to get.

Unconditional love requires us to accept the choices other people make, and to trust that they will figure things out and make things work, stumbling along the way, but getting up.

We are all different, and it’s important for us to be more accepting of each other.

Besides, people can have a change of heart.  Like St. Augustine. Like Diogenes of Sinopes. We should cut everyone a little more slack.

If you’ve been keeping up with my posts, you will know about all my changes of heart, and some of the choices I have jettisoned.

Don’t be afraid to make your own choices, and then grow into them, or grow out of them, don't be afraid to make them, just because someone or the other will not like your choices, or accept your choices.

Sooner or later, those around you will accept your choices - as we all march towards unconditional love for each other.

As always thanks for reading, and have a great day and week…..M….A Pearl-Seeker like you. Thanks to Aarathi, Ajay and David for their comments and compliments, and thanks to the rest of you for your likes, pins and votes.  Much appreciated!

P.S. Hope everyone had a wonderful Diwali.