Resist The Temptation To Tell Your Kids This The thing about working hard is that sometimes, it gives you the results you expect. Sometimes, it does not. Two people of the same age, same background, same IQ could follow the playbook word-for-word and yet experience two completely different outcomes. Either way, this teaches us a couple of important lessons. For one, life isn’t fair. It’s a hard knock. In fact, it might be a little more unfair than not, which is why conventional wisdom...
3 months ago • 6 min read
Two weeks ago, we went to Okinawa. We got in early, picked up our car and headed north. Just three months ago we were here. Now we’re back to tie up the ends of our creative culture camp happening later this year. Smack in the confluence of the East China Sea and Philippine Sea, Okinawa is an oddly-shaped, elongated strip of land divorced from the mainland, equidistant from China, Taiwan, Korea and the Philippines. Put on your political lens and it might seem like a strategic launchpad for...
3 months ago • 6 min read
Life was hard for Bill Russell. He was, after all, a black man growing up in 1940s Monroe, Louisiana. It was a segregated city. Racism, vice, and all sorts of debauchery were prevalent. His dad, being unemployed, decided to move the family of four to Oakland, California, in hopes of a better life. Still, opportunities were scarce. They had to suffer through bouts of poverty, jumping between public housing projects, doing everything and anything to make ends meet. Eventually, his father found...
4 months ago • 3 min read
There’s a big difference between having a kid, Barack Obama once said, and being a parent. Giving birth to a child does not automatically make you a father or mother. Neither does it make you a person with the ability to make a child. It is, at its core, the courage to raise a child that makes you a parent. But of course, being a parent means you can't escape the unpleasant responsibilities, the things-you-rather-not-do if you were given a choice. You cleanse and nourish and attire and cradle...
5 months ago • 5 min read
Unlike the many facets of life, the past is crystal clear. It’s over. All has been finalised. Nothing can be undone. If I had focused more on this, things would have turned out so much better. Yet, thinking this proves to be a meaningless task. Shouganai, the Japanese would say—It is what it is, and it will forever be. So why are we brooding over what has happened, what came to as a result, what we have zero control of? Psychiatrist and concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl speaks...
6 months ago • 8 min read
Bringing Out The Best in Your Kids Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges wrote a short story The Garden of Forking Paths where he compares life to wandering in a garden with ever-changing paths. We can see many possible futures, but with each step, the paths shift, creating new routes and closing off others. The garden is no longer a garden in itself, but a place of endless permutations and, thus, endless outcomes. It’s exciting and very nerve-wrecking. An inch forward could lead you into the...
7 months ago • 7 min read
21 Parenting Ideas I Find Useful (& You Probably Would Too) As I stood by the hospital window holding my newborn in my arms, it felt like I was bestowed with something very, very special. I thought, this is it now. No more games. No more horseplay. No more fooling around. This isn't about me anymore. What has been entrusted to me, I honour with a total commitment of my life: To lead, to empower, to love. This sentiment is hardly unique to me. All parents share the same feeling. Yet, at some...
7 months ago • 12 min read
You can never be certain about most things. But there's one thing you can be certain of: Death. Legend has it that, after a major military victory, Roman generals would parade through the streets with a slave trailing behind. The sole responsibility of the slave was to continuously whisper into the general’s ear: Respice post te. Hominem te esse memento. Memento mori! Look behind, the slave would say, remember you are mortal. Remember you will die. It’s challenging to keep death at the...
8 months ago • 7 min read
A safe space where parents & educators learn for themselves, then pass it on to their children. Because to empower your children, you must first empower yourself. “The arts aren't just important because they improve math scores. They're important because they speak to parts of children's being which are otherwise untouched.” Sir Ken Robinson We don’t know anything about the world we live in. It’s huge. It’s beautiful. We've watched videos of the best of the best places. We've read stories of...
9 months ago • 8 min read