Founder Zen

I’ve been thinking about beliefs lately.  The key ones, fundamentals that often we don’t even realize we have.  For example, growth is extremely important to me.  If I’m not growing, I’m drifting, depressed.  I need to grow, to learn and expand, so am always looking for ways to do so.  In thinking about growth, I realized a core belief I have: real growth comes through intense, difficult, and challenging situations.

Can you see how that would define the path of my life?

Once you realize a core belief, it’s relatively easy to figure out where it comes from.  Simple self-inquiry, following the patterns of the past.  My belief came from the first time I felt like I grew in such a way that I was no longer the same, I was far far better: US Army Infantry bootcamp.  Was it intense, yes.  Was it difficult, yes.  Was it challenging, every day.  While I’m at it, was I happy through it, not particularly.  But it’s something I’ve always looked back at as a defining experience, one I’m grateful to have had.  You go in as a wet-behind-the-ears eighteen year old, you come out knowing you can handle anything thrown at you.   That’s growth.

The moment I discovered this core belief and how it started, it was like my life was a deck of cards, each with a picture of situations where I grew, all falling down at me, flip flip flip, and the only thought was, “holy shit, it all makes sense.”

What we believe, that’s what we seek, it’s the filter we view our lives through.  I’ve actively thrown myself at intense and difficult situations, kept at them whether they were work or personal.  All situations where I grew, but at what price?  My happiness, my peace of mind.  All where, when I look back, I’m better for them, but is that the path I want for the future?

This belief, it served me at some point in my life.  All our beliefs do, otherwise we wouldn’t have them.  The question to ask is, does it serve me now?  If not, then it’s time for a new one.  The end result or need can be the same – in my case, growth – but the path can change.  I can choose to experience growth through different types of experiences.  It’s all a choice anyway.  I’ve already started and like the results.  Knowledge is powerful, application of it, sublime.

I finish at the gym, walk outside, and sit on a wall by the driveway.  Indian summer evening in San Francisco.  Breezy, cool, fog above downtown.  Delicious.

I love my life, I find myself thinking, I love my life, I love my life, I love my life.  The thought flows as naturally as the wind.  I watch the skyline – people ask why I let my long hair fall in front of my eyes…it’s for moments like these, when I watch the world through wisps of silver – I love my life, I love my life.

Clouds move above, the thought shifts: I love myself, I love myself, I love myself, I love myself.  I’m smiling, then grinning.  All I am, my hopes, dreams, desires, faults, strengths, everything – I.  Love.  Myself.

If you can reach this point, even if it’s for a brief moment, it will transform you – I promise you that.

The key, at least for me, has been to let go.  Let go of the ego, let go of attachments, let go of who I think I should be, who others think I should be.  And as I do that, the real me emerges, far far better than the Kamal I projected to the world.  There is a strength in this vulnerability that cannot be described, only experienced.

Am I this way each moment, nope, but I sure as heck am working on it.

Thousands of years ago, a Roman poet wrote, “I am a human being, therefore nothing human is foreign to me.” I believe it to be true. So if  this is possible for one human, it is possible for anyone.  The path might be different, but the destination same.

Key is being open to loving ourselves.  Once we do that, life casually takes care of the next steps.

Remain open to that one possibility and you’ll experience the beauty of watching the world around you dance its dance while inside, you fully accept this marvelous amazing human being you are.  The feeling is, for lack of a better word, magic.

I am a comet

She, an oasis planet.

I have no choice

but to blaze brilliantly

as I enter her atmosphere.

I love watching the way you look away to think, how beautiful you are, then you look back, the thought finished, and then you smile.

“I’ve been thinking about you,” I say.

“Me,” you say, the corners of your lips widening.  A slow delicious smile.  ”What about me?”

“Your eyes.”

I inch closer.  You let me.  Your chest rises against mine, falls to my breath.

“Your eyes,” I say again, “the freckles and sparkles, sometimes I think that if I stare too long, I’ll lose myself.”

Your breath deepens.  I feel it on my chin, hot.  Eyelashes close softly.  Eyelashes open.  I look at you, your pupils dilated big and open, and suddenly I’m swirling in colors so soft and tender – hazel, brown, green - and then I’m in your iris, it flashing bright and sounding a thump thump and I’m swimming, my hands parting the optic fluids, warm and silky, and into the long tunnel of your optic nerve.  It spirals like the barrel of a rifle, thunderclouds flashing and booming across neurons, kapow! kabam! – what do you see?  What message rushes to your brain? – and curiosity gets the better of me as I swim to the axon of the neuron closest to me, a mass of swirling electricity flashing across the body and tendrils in a sea of dark green.  The cell wall parts as I touch it, smooth against my skin as I enter, and closes behind me.

I float past enzymes doing their coupling dance.  A loose Oxygen atom zings past me.  I wave at it, giggle, and continue towards the center.  The nuclear membrane folds around me, tumbling me round and round and when it lets go, I’m inside staring at gigantic chromosomes criss-crossing each other like skyscrapers in a mad mad world.  I kick with my heels, gain momentum, shoot inside one, growing smaller and smaller until I see the beautiful double-helix and I stop in awe.

Everything you could be, all that you are, your potential, all encoded in spiraling staircases of molecules.  I want to kiss each and every one.  Which one expresses itself into your hair?  Which one into your laugh?

I float, growing smaller and smaller, feeling myself slowly drawn into your dna, the hydrogen bonds tickling my skin, making the hair on my arms rise, and then woosh, I’m moving fast, speeding past carbon atoms, still growing smaller and smaller, passing oxygen atoms, Van der Waals forces zinging me around like a pinball, and I’m tumbling tumbling falling falling, passing through thick fogs of electrons, feeling the charged hum as they buzz by me, and through black empty space until I see neutrons and protons, glowing purple and violet as they spiral around each other in lazy concentric circles and I slow, growing smaller.  Photons whiz by me, large blue balls, and I wait until one is near me and jump on.

“Whee,” I shout out as the photon lazily curves through space, a bright light far away growing larger and larger.  Neutrinos jump in and out of dimensions around us, little sparkles, some speeding past the photons, going backwards in time.  The light grows close, a spiraling galaxy, and I hear a voice, making me almost fall off the photon.  I grasp onto it tightly and turn to see God riding a photon to my left.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he asks again.

God really does have a long flowing beard, robes, the works.  He catches me staring at his sandles.

“Got ‘em at Nordstorms,” he says.

I nod idiotically.  He grins, starts to speed towards the light, leaving me behind.

“Wait,” I shout.  ”Wait.”

He slows until I’m alongside.  We both ride in silence.

“Go ahead,” he says gently.  ”Ask.”

I look at him, the galaxy unfurling in front of us.  Stars everywhere.

“What’s the point,” I say.  ”Of everything.  What’s the point?”

He smiles.  Neutrinos pop around us, fizzle.

“You are,” he says finally.  ”You are the point.”

Then he kicks the side of his photon like a bull and speeds off.  I watch him turn into a shooting star until it arcs into the galaxy in an explosion of light and then I’m tumbling backwards, off my photon, falling and falling, neutrons and protons growing larger and larger, then the humming fog of electrons flipping me around, and then your dna, your chromosomes, through the nuclear membrane, the cytoplasm, the cell wall, thunderstorms of sodium and potassium ions, and I’m out of the cell, spinning through your optic nerve, your iris, your pupil, and back to you, your breath warm on my face.

“I like how you do that,” you say.

“Do what?”

“The way you look at me.”  You bite your lip.  ”I feel like you can really see me.”

I smile, hold you tight.  We close our eyes.

A friend waits the arrival of his baby, his first child.  I can imagine the thoughts, the nervousness – holy shit! holy shit! – the wringing excitement.  Next week, life, as he knows it, will be transformed.  Thirteen years from now, he will attend his child’s Bat Mitzvah, then how many years to high school, then college graduation, then wedding, life’s milestones, one after another.

Few months ago, I received an email for a memorial service for a dear dear friend.  Memorial Service?  I knew she’d been in the hospital, but memorial service?  Holy shit, Leslie, holy shit, I lost you and I didn’t even know you were leaving.  Holy shit.

I spent that night looking at her photos on Facebook, hundreds of them, posted by so many people, many fans who’d never met her in person – she was a writer – sometimes feeling tears, remembering her laugh, how full it was.  ”Oh Lord,” she’d say, laughing, removing her glasses to wipe her eyes, “from your mouth to God’s ears,” she’d say when we’d be driving in her car on a cold winter evening in Philadelphia and I’d tell her that her novels should be turned into movies.

One birth.  Another.  Laughter, joy, celebrations.  One death.  Another passing.  Tears, sadness.  A life that was.  A life that will be.

I miss you, Leslie.

For the little time we walked together on this spinning ball, Leslie, I am grateful.  For the meals we shared, for the laughter, for the hopes and dreams, for the manuscripts we edited, for all that you were in your beautiful powerful womanly self, I am grateful.

Your path on this plane ended.  I miss you, Leslie.  Where your light continued on to, I do not know.  But I know this – your path touched mine and now I carry  a piece of you with me.  And so when I look at your photos and get sad, I remember that you’re with me, with all of us who ever met you, and I smile.

“…in an infinite universe, anything that could be imagined might somewhere exist.” 

Each moment splits into its possibilities, minutely different life paths, and new Universes form.  There is one where I call but you let it ring and ring into voicemail and I never call back.   In another, I do.  A Universe where you pick up, and I make you laugh.  Another where you pick up and I make you cry.

One where you pick up and we both laugh and cry and I jump into my car and drive to your place and knock on your door until you open it in your bathrobe, your eyes confused, but the look on my face calms you and I hold you close, feel you sink into my arms, the weight of the world gone.

A Universe where Elvis marries us in a Vegas chapel while Marilyn Monroe giggles behind the organ.  A Universe where your father walks you down to me on the beach and I take you to be mine.  A Universe where we move to Fiji, live to the sound of the waves, the ocean breeze on our faces.  And when we lie out on the sand, and the moon comes through the clouds, full and blooming, we wrap close around each other and there is no need to say anything because we know.

A Universe where our little girl has your eyes and my wild hair and she and I chase you, her on my shoulders, laughing and laughing, until we catch you.  A Universe where it’s a boy.

A Universe where I die first and you take my ashes and spread them over the ocean, the spot where we were married.  A Universe where you go and when I return from the hospital, I lock myself into a room and bang on the walls and cry.

A Universe where you get 50%, I get 50%, and the lawyers get 90%.  A Universe where we never met.  A Universe where I talked to your friend instead of you.  A Universe where I gave you the wrong number by accident and never saw you again.

I tried counting them all, but kept having to learn new numbers.  Now, when I think of them, each moment splitting into its various possibilities, of what could have been or what should be, I know it’s all occurring, it’s all happened and will happen, each version then splitting into its own possibilities and that splitting and, oh, wow.

The beauty of creation spins its dance on and on and on.

It was 1998, I was at Victoria station, London, inside a phone booth, listening to my then-girlfriend back in the US tell me that she was seeing someone else.  The tightening in my throat, my abdomen.

I walked to the train, sat down in my seat facing London, gray.

The train jerked, slowly pulled away, gathered speed.  Felt a tear, two.  And to this day, I remember what I thought then as London grew smaller and smaller.  I feel sad yes, I feel shitty, yes, but the fact that I feel means I’m alive, and I can feel while watching London fade and I’m alive.  And that, in itself, has beauty.

Once I realized the problem was not with you, but within me, I had inner peace and was able to harness the flow of the Universe.

This is something I’ve been working on lately.  It’s easy to focus on the outside, the person, the situation, what’s wrong.  But that’s not where true change comes.  If someone bothers me today, I can remove that person, but another will bother me tomorrow.  It’s the nature of the mind to create stories, drama.

Instead, if I look inside, to who I’m being in that situation, I can then make choices from a centered space – a powerful space – rather than reaction.  Life is always best lived from conscious action than reaction.  And to do that, one must always look within.

The basic truths are always simple, easy to fit in a quote, but applying them consistently, that is another matter.  A worthy pursuit regardless.

Tempus fugit, memento mori. - Some Roman dude 

At this time, 21 years ago, I was at Fort Benning, shaved-head, doing pushups.  13 years ago, I was walking across Spain with a backpack.  11 years ago, I was watching Dot.coms – including the one I was at – implode, boom, wheeee.  10 years ago, a Fortune 100 was flying me around business-class, putting me up at 5 stars, just so I could tell them what to do.  9 years ago, I was wandering around Paris, lonely, but it was oh so beautiful.

The last decade is a blur….heartaches, fun, surgeries, sunsets, sunrises, rainbows, women, oh the women, startups, a whole lot of growth.  Interesting how the far past is easier to remember.

What 40 looks like.....

I’m 40 today.  This milestone birthday, it does make one pause and think.  A few thoughts to share:

Fitness

It started with anger, being the skinny kid who was picked on, making a decision to never be the guy one would look at and think, yeah, I can push him around.  It changed to vanity, turns out girls like guys in good shape.  Morphed to a habit, as natural as eating.  Evolved to identity.  This is who I am.  Put me on a deserted island, I’ll find a way to stay fit.  There’s a great piece on Henry Rollins on why he works out, the one thing he can always return to that will push him, never feed his ego.  Well worth reading.

Taking things personally

Biggest source of pain, of wasted time and effort I can think of.  Whatever one does, it matches their version of reality – and in their reality, they’re the good one.  In my mind, I’m the primary actor, everyone else the cast.  The entire Universe is filtered through me.  But the same goes for everyone.  I’m a cast member in their play.  How can I take anything personally?  Costanza was right – “It’s not you, it’s me!”

Siblings

I’m fortunate enough to have the best sibling in the world.  He likes to point out that I have no other frame of reference, but I’m sticking to my version.  Your sibling is the one person (or more if you have multiple) who’ll know and understand you better than anyone throughout your life.  Probably combination of shared DNA, growing up together, similar formative experiences, etc.  One thing, don’t let issues get in the way of this relationship.  Suck up your ego, if you have to, but always keep this person close, always be there for them.

Daily practice

James Altucher says it far better than I could.  Whatever the practice is, have one, and do it daily.  The dividends compound and pay off.

Leadership

I’ve read the management books, the case studies, thrown them away.  Everything I know on leadership, I learned from one statue.  He does not give orders from behind.  He moves forward, saying, “follow me.”  If you’re in a leadership position, it’s a privilege.  Take care of your team.  Take care of them better than you take care of yourself.  And always lead by example.

I will screw up.  I’m human, it’s the nature of the beast.  Each time, apologize to the team, pick myself up, and move forward.  And give the team the same luxury when they screw up.

One very important point on the above: I made the mistake of thinking that taking care of your team meant that you always try to work things out.  No.  Teams in business or combat don’t have the luxury for drama, egos, incompetence, laziness.  Be clear about expectations, and those who consistently fail, cut them off.  Those who take advantage of others, cut them off.  Those who lose your trust, cut them off.  I don’t have to do it harshly, I can do it from a place of caring, but it must be done.

Work

Find something I want to do, throw myself into it completely.  It’ll throw challenges at me, keep on.  That’s how one becomes great at anything.  That’s how one develops inner confidence, by taking on challenges, solving them, growing each step along the way.  Done with this one?  Find another.  Then another.  Henry Rollins on his work ethic, brilliant.

 Who I say I am

Be who I say am.  Oh, I’ll fall short.  I know, that whole being human thing.  That’s ok.  Pick myself up, own what happened, move forward.  Each time I fall, try to learn from it, and always, move forward.

 The strangest conclusion

What you focus on, that’s the reality you experience.  Not woowoo, just the nature of things.  In that case, might as well focus on the positive.

There’s more thoughts, but I’ll save them for next year…….