Viswanathan K's Thoughts

I have never liked the idea of making promises. Being a firm believer in free will (and hence an unpredictable future), my rational side is always saying, “A promise is about future actions; how can anyone know for sure what they might or might not do in the future?” And yet so many people make promises. And so many recipients feel good hearing those promises made.  Why, I wondered? As with so many other things, I learnt the answer from Hollywood! In the movie, The Amazing Spider Man , Spidey walks into the classroom late (as usual). When his teacher comments on that, he promises her that it’s the last time he will be late. Upon which she says, “Don't make promises that you can't keep.” To which our hero replies, “But those are the best ones.” And that was the answer to my question: a promise is all about what the listener wants to hear . Before you get all moralistic about it, it’s (usually) a white lie. It’s made to make the receiver feel good. Now th...

The transformation from a David to a Goliath brings with it a huge number of changes in how one is perceived. Corporations like Apple and Google find themselves now being looked like 800-pound gorillas (which they truly are), not the struggling startups that they once were. And that change in perception reduces the sympathy and simultaneously increases the criticism that they face. Israel is a country in a somewhat similar situation. Long gone is their underdog status: in fact, they are Top Dog in the Middle East today (actually, for several decades). The common underlying theme in both of the above cases is power. There are several superhero quotes that teach one a lot about power, how to deal with it and what it does to the one possessing it. Which is not at all surprising: after all, who has more power than a superhero? Spiderman’s uncle hit the nail on the head when he said, “With great power comes great responsibility”. Because once you have the power (like He-Man’s “I have t...

At a company training long back, a guest speaker said he didn’t believe that work-life balance was ever possible. He felt it was always a work-life choice. You could pick one or the other, not both. That was contrary to I had heard until then. And yet it felt true. We rarely feel that we gave both sides adequate time. Shouldn’t that be true of most others? Or did the others somehow do justice to both? And then I found the “evidence” to prove that speaker right: Spiderman. He misses on his dates with MJ because he is busy saving the world. All the other superheroes seem to be able to strike a perfect work-life balance! Not Spidy. He’s like most of us. He tries to do justice to both…but doesn’t succeed. If a superhero can’t pull it off, what chance do we mere mortals have?