The Element of Moving On and Its Hope for Discovering New Selves

When I was a young adult, I liked to argue.

I argued about everything.

I was an atheist and I argued there was no god.

I was a feminist and I argued women should have the freedom to do everything men do, including drink and smoke.

I prided myself on being rational, and argued against astrology, psychics and esp.

I was a capitalist and argued Dhirubhai Ambani was making a greater contribution to society than Mother Teresa.

I argued about everything under the sun.

Someone would innocently share an opinion with me, then find themselves on the wrong side of an argument, which, like a Mobius strip, would have no end.

Once someone suggested to me that he thought the Beatles were over-rated, and Duran Duran was a superior band to them. I chewed off his ear. Every time Hungry Like the Wolf wafted from a Nakamichi tape deck, I would chew his ear off again.

I needed little provocation, because I would argue, even if I had limited knowledge on any subject. 

For instance, when I started writing songs (instead of going to college, and being able to get into Google), I became an instant expert on song-writing.

“First they compose the music, then they write the lyrics” I declared.

“I know for a fact, it’s the other way round,” Shreekant shot back at me, “I know that when Elton John’s songs are written, Bernie Taupin first writes the lyrics, then Elton sets the lyrics to music.  This is a fact. Rocket Man, Crocodile Rock, Candle in the Wind, Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me, I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues – you name it – the lyrics were written first.”

Shreekant knew a lot more about music than me.  Still I pooh-poohed this. “No, cannot be,” I said, “I’m sure the music comes first”.

This was how I was.  If I believed the sun revolved around the earth, then the sun must revolve the earth.

William Blake said “Without contraries, there is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.”

Contrariness is a rite of passage.

We come to a certain age and then we argue.

Even if we cause people to get headaches.

Even if we cause people to lose it.

Once, at a gathering, I was arguing with someone, and the person dashed across the room and grabbed hold of my hair in frustration. That's the kind of effect my arguing had on people.

Neal Stephenson says, “Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.”

Stephenson nails it.

16 is the age when we are self-righteous, think we know everything, have oodles of time on our hands, and find our voice.

That voice we had to suppress all through school.

Only this 16 year old continued to be opinionated and self-righteous well into her 20’s.

John Milton said, “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”

Indeed, freedom to argue is an important freedom.

We need to be able to think for ourselves and question everything.

And so this is what I did.

However, John Keats also said “Nothing ever becomes real til it is experienced”.

Eventually, we will discover the truth, or falsehood, of everything we believe in.

Here’s what I found out about song-writing - thanks to Wikipedia and song facts.com: Shreekant and I were both right. Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics first for all Elton’s songs.  Al Stewart composed the music first for all his songs. (All those amazing songs in the Year of the Cat album were scored, orchestrated and recorded before the lyrics were written).

In some things, I learned, while it’s easy to spout words, such as “I think all women should be able to smoke and drink” it’s not so easy to put words into practice.

I discovered that, as Lemony Snicket says: “A new experience can be extremely pleasurable, or extremely irritating, or somewhere in between, and you never know until you try it out.”

Smoking was in the “extremely irritating” category for me.  When I tried to smoke, I coughed and choked so much on the first cigarette, it was a one and done thing for me. 

The pleasure factor was much better with alcohol. I found if you dunked enough orange juice in vodka or beer, or enough coke in rum, and threw in some ice cubes, it tasted quite refreshing.  Plus alcohol would have a salutary effect on my emotions and spirits. Often, I would feel expansive and magnanimous after a glass of alcohol.

But unfortunately, other than my taste buds, the rest of my biology was not for alcohol. My liver, my enzymes, whatever was needed to help me metabolize alcohol and not make a fool of myself and cripple me for days after, none of that was on board.

I so badly wanted to “drink any guy under the table” as part of my feminist attitude. But I would often pass out from my valiant efforts and need to be carried home. The day after, I would have the most terrible hangover - I would become a Humpty Dumpty that all the King’s Horses and all the Alka Seltzer Men couldn’t put together again.

So eventually I had to accept that alcohol was not for me.

There was a plus side to being stone cold sober at social gatherings. I was always in 100% form for any argument…. and you would find me on the winning side of late night Pictionary games.

Experience changed my views about Mother Teresa and Dhirubhai Ambani. I learned it’s harder to live a life of sacrifice, as Mother Teresa did. It is easier to live the life of a Dhirubhai Ambani. In fact, aren’t we all miniature Dhirubhai Ambanis – trying to accumulate as much power, recognition, success and money as we can, and as fast as we can? We may find room for “a little philanthropy in our lives”, but “a little philanthropy in our lives” is very different from dedicating your life to sacrifice, as Mother Teresa did.

Experience also replaced my stubborn atheism and rationalism to make room for what I would like to call “a more expansive spirit.” Some of my heroes such as Diogenes or St. Augustine had spiritual wake-up calls, which I would have considered corny when I was younger.  Today, I am a point when I have had several spiritual wake-up calls myself, starting with my mother’s death.  I go to Bible Study, I read religious texts of different religions, and I believe I have started having telepathic experiences. “Minoo has gone cuckoo,” some will say.

I never knew I would move on, and experience new ways of thinking and living and being.

I never knew I would discover new selves.

I never knew my life would be recast on so many different fronts.

I now know we are not yoked to a fixed identity for life.

We are not trapped by our current personality, our current habits, our current values, our current wants, our current needs, our current identity, our current reason for living.

We can wake up and be a different person at any time.

When our lives change, we may be surprised to find we like our new selves better, even though others would not be able to understand.

In 2011, when my income dipped below the poverty line, no one could have understood that it was the best year of my life: A year in which I learned to meditate, I started writing again, and I made bold new professional and personal choices.

My choices, then and now, might make no sense to any one but me, no sense even to my former self.

How could my former self (that brash 16 year old) understand I don’t need to drink and smoke to feel liberated, or to be one with the crowd; I can go on a girls night out, and nurse an iced tea while everyone else is doing tequila shots, and still feel as if I am the most liberated woman in the group.

My former self might be baffled by what I do with my leisure time these days - going to Bible Study, and spending an average of 8 hours a week writing this blog.

My former self would never be able to understand how the former thriving business owner of a creative shop, could want so little, and live so simply.

“The fire’s gone, Minoo, how can you stand to be just a shadow of what you used to be?”, I would hear it say, if I listened.

My response would be a hearty laugh. 

I am not into arguing anymore - even with the reproachful voices in my head.

The truth is I have never been happier, and I am living exactly the way I want to live, and I have everything I need.

While I am grateful for all the experiences I’ve had, including starting Purple Patch, I am happy to move on.

In moving on, I’ve discovered a new self. Or rather, several new selves. And guess what – they are pretty cool to live with.

I will end with this quote by Dorothy Parker, “And if my heart be scarred and burned, The safer, I, for all I learned.”

Thanks for reading and have a great day and week.  Thanks to Abbas and Ajay for their comments on Facebook, and thanks to the rest of you for your votes…..M…..a Pearl Seeker like you.

The Element of Apprenticeship and its Hope for Changing Lives

Recently I watched Cinema Paradiso.

In the movie, a little boy becomes an apprentice to a movie projectionist and eventually takes over from the projectionist, when the projectionist loses his sight in a fire in the projection room.

The movie made me think about the value of apprenticeships.

An apprenticeship is not an internship.

An internship is a paid or unpaid stint in a company, usually lasting a few months, typically offered to a college student during a college break.

It is a vague term, and it is usually not a commitment the internee will learn anything specific by the end of the internship.  Neither is a future job always assured.

Thus an internee may finish her or his internship, without learning anything much of value, and be at square one in terms of securing the future.

If she or he has learned a few things during the internship, it is by accident, and not by design.

In some cases, internees may even have been left to twiddle their thumbs for most of the internship.

Apprenticeships are different.

When someone takes us on as an apprentice, it means they need an extra hand, and they are committed to teaching us the tools and tricks of the trade. 

Our work will be used; we are not there just to learn. We are there to be productive, to become a contributing member.

Apprenticeships are always about learning the how.

They are always about becoming a contributor.

They are always hands-on.

And they are usually, if not always, one on one.

Eventually, we will, or should, be able to take on some, even all of the work, of the person or teacher who is grooming us.

The person grooming us is an experienced expert whose job it is to create and deliver the work we are being groomed to do.

Because of this one-on-one nature of an apprenticeship, working alongside an expert, being able to watch them at work, and to benefit from their guided instruction, we become competent, even with no prior experience or exposure.  It all boils down to the teaching skills of our mentor or trainer, and our own receptiveness.

Both My Careers Started With Apprenticeship

I learned both copywriting and commissions administration by being taken on as an apprentice.

Benjamin Franklin - whose first career in printing was learned as an apprentice in his older brother's print shop – said “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”

Involvement and immersion are essential to graduating from an apprentice to a skilled practitioner.

When I was taken on as a commissions administrator, I knew nothing of commissions administration, and I knew nothing of Excel. 

But as I said in the Element of Believing In Someone, Laura H, the Commissions Manager of Palm Inc, took me on, and was prepared to spend the time necessary to immerse me.

Thanks to her excellent training and confidence in me, I acquired the necessary competence.

When Laura went on maternity leave, I was able to handle Palm's commissions on my own.

Here are some well-known people whose professional careers started out as apprentices....

Chefs

Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver are both nationally recognized, award-winning television chefs and personalities. That’s not all they have in common. They both started out their careers as catering apprentices.

Fashion Designers

Alexander McQueen, the famous and well respected fashion designer, started out as an apprentice tailor.

Hair Care

John Frieda, the celebrity hairdresser and maker of hair care products, began his career with an apprenticeship in hairdressing.

Formal or Informal Apprentice Arrangements

Lawyers do clerkships after they get their law degree; nurses pick up valuable information from the doctors they work with.  Both formal apprenticeships such as clerkships, and informal apprenticeships such as working alongside doctors, are equally valuable.

An Apprentice Mindset

An apprentice mindset means you want to learn how to do something, not just be exposed to it.   

It is a key distinction.

An explorer is not an apprentice.

An explorer is just curious.

For instance, we might go to a real estate class - to explore how to buy and sell houses. Or we might go to a class on investing in stocks, because we might want to find out how to invest in stocks.

We may come away from this with a general idea, and leave it at that.

We are explorers.

It is only when we want to learn the ropes, and become competent at what someone else is doing, we can be considered apprentices.

The Tax Example

I can give you the example of taxes.

Several people sit down with me to learn how to do their taxes.

Some come to me with an apprentice mind.

Those with an apprentice mind are extremely attentive, ask a lot of questions, make sure they understand as much as possible. They start doing their own taxes right away. They call me with questions later.

Others come just to explore.  So they sit beside me and they listen. But they do not absorb, or internalize any of the information. This is not their purpose or focus.

When they go home, they go back to doing their taxes just the way they did before – with the help of a tax professional, or leaving it to their spouse. 

This is fine…..

Sometimes we are curious.  Sometimes we just want to explore. 

But you can see how a curiosity visit is completely different from an apprenticeship visit; a curiosity approach is completely different from an apprenticeship approach. 

So we need to know our mind.

Because if we want to start applying what we have learned, our approach and our attitude must be different.

It must be that of an apprentice.

If not for getting that break from Laura H at Palm, and being able to work one on one with her, I would not have made a successful career as a Commissions Analyst, and later as an SPM Consultant with experience in Excel, Centive, Xactly and Varicent.

If not for my apprenticeship with the SPI team, I would not have been able to lead several Xactly implementations.

And if not for working with the Spectrumbiztech experts, I would not have broadened my SPM expertise to become Varicent-trained, and to become a commissions documentation specialist.

It takes time to develop as an apprentice.

Every new assignment recasts me in the role of apprentice.

Because, there is always something to learn, something proprietary to that company.

I am indebted to different people in different companies for passing on their knowledge to me.

Maya Angelou says, “When you learn, teach. When you get, give”

The key thing to offering an apprenticeship to someone, and taking them under your wing, is to want to pass on your mastery and competence to them, even if you do not care about doing so initially.

In the movie Cinema Paradiso, Alfredo reluctantly starts teaching Toto the tricks of his trade; he only half cares that the boy is so interested in learning the ropes.

But Alfredo changes his attitude and starts passing on his skills to Toto. He wants the boy to succeed - and doesn't get jealous when Toto takes over from him. 

As in Cinema Paradiso, an apprentice may reach a higher degree of fame and success than his teacher.

Many former apprentices go on to become famous names,  while their teachers languish in obscurity.

We don't know who taught Gordon Ramsey, Jamie Oliver, Alexander McQueen or John Frieda.

For instance, does the name Domenico Ghirlandaio ring a bell?

How about the name Michael Angelo?

Michael Angelo started his career as an apprentice to Domenico Ghirlandaio.

So, if not for Domenico Ghirlandaio, there might not have been the Pieta, David, or the painting on the roof of the Sistine Chapel.

By taking people under our wing, as Domenico Ghirlandaio did Michael Angelo, or as Alfredo did Toto in Cinema Paradiso, we can change their lives, we can extend our influence, we can recreate ourselves through a new generation of winners.

The world needs more apprenticeships.

Confucius said: “Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace”

Indeed, teaching somehow how to do something enfranchises them, empowers them and gives them dignity – all of which are essential to being happy and living a well-adjusted life.

I will end with a Japanese proverb which runs: “Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher”

It sums up the value of an apprenticeship.

As always, thanks for reading and have a great day and week. If you have a skill you can teach, I hope you will take someone under your wing and change their life….M…..A Pearl Seeker like you.  Thanks to Ajay, Jacinta and Subhakar for their comments on Facebook, and thanks to the rest of you for your votes.  Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there - and to the dads and the siblings and everyone else who supports them. Bless you all.