Love in the Age of World Domination

Marry someone who fits your personality, not your checklist

When I was 20 my checklist for a potential mate closely resembled one of those 1950s husbands, like the father character from the Brady Bunch. Its really embarrasing to admit this now, but I kind of imagined myself baking cakes, dressed in pearls and high heels, no less, while awaiting the arrival home of the picture perfect all-knowing husband.

Even my parents - two extremely open-minded and progressive people - were confused. "We didn't spend gazillions on your education for you to be a stepford wife!" I don't know - I guess I'd read too many bad romance novels. Hey - I was young! Cut me some slack.

Anyway, I quickly established through experience that these criteria were all wrong. There I was growing exponentially, as one does in ones twenties, and soon had decided that I didn't need to be taken care of, what I needed was someone ambitious, clever, wildly successful like my brother. And I decided to scrap the whole Lankan Catholic thing (I had been really big on that) as there was no proof that this contingent was better than anyone else.

So off I went to B-school at 28, armed with a new and improved checklist:
1) tall, dark, handsome
2) stellar resume (to match mine of course!)
3) uber-ambitious, driven to accomplish

Again, my parents were a bit like "WTF??". Not that they say that. They said something like "Hira, you need someone who will give you a significant amount of attention and spend a big potion of his time with you, not some alpha-male who is chasing his own tail."

I didn't listen of course. And I fell for, semi-enjoyed, and ultimately suffered through a couple more relationships with the tall, dark, handsome, ultra-male archtype.

Then one fine day in 2004 I met someone who was the exact polar opposite of everything on any of my lists. Someone who is in actual fact a lot like me - the real me - laid back, irreverent about most things in life, and about as alpha-male as a blueberry smoothie. Someone, who like me, has a deep need for reassurance and understanding, freedom and solitude. We get each other perfectly, right down to the full spectrum of OCD afflictions we share between us. Soul mates. Or rather like one soul with two heads.

Of course, as everyone on both sides of the Atlantic knows, this relationship has its own issues, and we are not together. But the point is that when two people's fundamental personality strengths and flaws fit seamlessly, its a pretty powerful thing. Its easy, effective, and you never have to explain yourself to the other person.

On the other hand, lists that reduce a person to a bunch of pluses and minuses is artificial and largely unhelpful. At worst, you get it wrong, and it ends up being a painful mistake - you spend the rest of your life with someone you choose according to your 20 year old limited view of the world. At best you get it right, and the list is accurate insofar as it correctly identifies the list of things the person you are married to should have but then.. I imagine that being married to a list can be soul-crushing.

Not Knowing Sucks

How do you cooperate, with grace, when life rears its very confusing head? When everything feels like its upside down, and it takes all your energy just to keep running in the same spot?

I can deal with breaking anything down to 24 hour periods (you know the whole one-day-at-a-time thing) - anything can be done if its just for that one day - suit up, show up, eat 3 portions of veggies, drink water, get some sleep. But when I have time on my hands - and as we know, an idle mind is the devil's workshop - I start thinking about tomorrow, December, or next year. Then I feel impatient, irritable, and not-so-much-in-control.

Uncertainty is such a difficult thing to handle. Every time you think you know something, the ground moves and morphs under you. The world changes. Your beliefs of the world change. How in heaven's name do people deal with this? Is there a way to deal with it in a principled way? Some people suggest that the best approach to uncertainty is to be rational, make a decision tree, construct a model, use first order predicate logic, or something like that.

But for me logic is inadequate, for it is designed to work with information that is complete and consistent. Whereas, we are dealing with incomplete, inconsistent, and variable inferences. Other people say to base things not on logic, but on probability theory. But probability, if I remember from high school math class, makes all these assumptions about 'if this happens, then A, and if that happens, then B'. I guess its a start but its not really helpful.

What has helped me, if at all, are concepts such as faith and compassion. Compassion for self, compassion for others. To do the next right thing, even when the larger picture is not clear. Faith because I need to know that its all going to be ok in the end. And that if its not ok, its not the end. When we are in middle of a big thick enveloping fog that threatens to drown us, we can't see. But we just have to keep going through it in order to get to that clear and sunny space on the other side.

Because, what are you going to do - fight against the universe? I may be a force to be reckoned with, but hey - I am no match for the universe and the mischievous plans it may have that I can possibly have no clue of!

A good friend once said to me that the universe (or God if you believe in one) has plans for us that are beyond anything we could ever imagine for ourselves. Like, so much better, or rather so awesomely different that we cannot comprehend it. And the only thing incumbent upon us is to get out of the way, so that those forces working in our lives can do their job. Sounds a little too new-agey to me, but there is something to be said for accepting that we are not in control of 99% of what happens in life, so we might as well stop trying to run the world.

Nice to Know my $100K was Well Spent

So apparently the best and the brightest don't bother with business school anymore. Because well, the highest paying finance jobs in hedge funds and private equity don't really require it.

Not that we didn't know that. Hedge funds and PE firms always went for the quant jocks, the PhDs in stats, over the more generalist MBA. Math and science was always preferred among this little coterie of uber-nerds.
What is new today, however, is that the $350-500K a year that these guys make is inflating the pre-MBA salaries of the competition at regular investment firms, to the point that the latter group don't see the value of going to B-school either.

And so the most talented young people at these places make so much money today that they don’t want to take two years off for business school, "even if it’s a prestigious institution like Wharton or Harvard."

Ouch. Really lovely to learn, and couldn't have come at a better time, because finally after 3 years, I just wrote a check for $108,000 paying off my b-school debt. By the way, there is something incredibly surreal about writing such a check. I kept thinking - really? like, seriously? Do I have to do this? Can't I just spent this money on a year long cruise to the tip of Africa?

I've got to say though, what I got out of my MBA wasn't really a lucrative job at a Bank (that was never the goal). It was more the experience of multi-tasking, learning teams, leadership activities, and essentially two years with highly ambitious and competitive people, some of whom I hope rubbed off on me and made me more, um, serious? :) And even though at the time I kicked and screamed, I am eternally grateful that I now have some basic finance skills. Its always useful in life, whether you are buying a house or making some other investment, to understand cash-flows.

The other thing one gets is instant credibility. Anytime I have used the Wharton name, questions of knowledge and experience are immediately dropped. To be honest it can be a tad distressing, for people suddenly expect you to know what you are talking about.. and, well, that makes me very uncomfortable.

BTW Wharton is SO much better than Harvard. At least people graduate knowing how to add two plus two and get four... yes even me.

Facebook Stalking

We all like to stalk our friends. And this was way before the internet. We always want to see other people's photos, check out how they look, who they are dating, and who their friends are. We are curious, competitive, and obsessed.

And especially with those "friends" who we would never be in touch with if not for Facebook and other social networking sites - old colleagues, high school friends, grad school friends, friends from cities we used to live in 10 years ago, third cousins, and other very random people.

Ironically, three of my closest friends are not on Facebook. I am inside their lives, living it with them, not looking in from outside. But for the 78 other friends (damn I have to work on increasing that number) I spend about half an hour every day catching up on the minute details of everyone's lives, leaving wall posts for birthdays, and sending gossipy little messages like "OMG - did you see what's on X's wall - do you think he might be gay?"

Do you feel like your Facebook stalking is getting out of hand? If so, you can consult the The Physician’s Desk Reference to Facebook Neuroses, the leading handbook used by psychiatrists to diagnose Facebook addictions. The book outlines several sub-types of FB diseases (courtesy of Killed It).

• Wall Post Deleter – patient demonstrates extreme standards for messages posted on his/her wall. Readily deletes your post if it reveals too much, is embarrassing, or contains 1 or more grammatical flubs.
• Mini-Feed Article Deleter - X’s out mini-feed entries to falsely represent self and destroy the “paper trail”, effectively controlling viewers’ attention pathways. Related condition: Chronic Zero Entry Mini-Feed, in which mini-feed artificially remains at zero at all times in order to convey false image of low Facebook usage.
• Rampant Untagger – Most often female, this patient is extremely physically insecure and will untag anywhere from 35-88% of pictures. Patient provides reasons for untag by posting comments such as “OMG my mole looks like a rhombus in this pic, gross” or “ugh my shoulders aren’t even parallel to each other in this pic GOD!”
• Only Makes Friends with Girls Guy - this male patient is always adding a wide range of friends, but immediately upon confirming a friend request with a new male friend, he immediately deletes the respective Mini-Feed entry and leaves only the female names, so his friends think he’s “pulling mad chicks.”
• News Feed Dominator - ignorant to Facebook’s Privacy Settings feature, he/she has the most liberal privacy options and ends up dominating friends’ News Feed with everything from routine wall posts to friend confirmations that nobody cares about.
• Wall-to-Wall Zealot – this person will make sure his wall-to-wall post count with friends is accurately correlated with the level of friendship in real life. If this person is your boyfriend/girlfriend, he/she will not stop until your wall-to-wall count is far ahead of any other friend’s. Even if you talk numerous times a day via phone, text message, and IM, he/she will rehash old inside jokes or post meaningless banter on your wall in order to increase post count. Has also been known to “wall bomb” you with multiple consecutive messages as a cheap way of increasing the count.

The Mercy Date - Just Say No

(I thought I'll write another bad date post because people seems to have a morbid fascination with my misadventures).

So Mercy date.

About a month ago, I was at the bookstore and I was looking high and low for this book, Procrastination: Identifying the Symptoms, Overcoming the Obstacles, because, as everyone in the western hemisphere knows, I have issues in that area.

Minutes later this (very) young looking boy - probably a student who works there - comes over to help me. 

"So - procrastination huh?"
"Yeah sometimes its tough.. "
"Oh me too! I can totally relate. I never start my assignments until the night before.."
"Um hmm.. thats nice" (he had found the book, I was trying to make my exit)

"So - you seem to come here often - I've seen you a bunch of times"
"Really? I uh.. like to read.. " (lame I know.. but how else can I explain the inordinate amounts of time I spend there?)
"Hey - I was wondering - you wanna get a coffee sometime?"
"What? I don't think so.. !"
"Why not??"
"Because you look like you are 15 years old... ?"
"No! I am 21. You're probably like 25? Come on!"
"Yeah, NO!"  (flattered but No).

Three days later, I go back to the bookstore to return the book because I couldn't get past the first 5 pages, and who do I run into behind the coffee bar - but that little stud Alex (that was his name).

"Listen I hope you were not mad at me the other day..  I just think you are really interesting bla bla blaaa and seriously, like, age should be no barrier bla blaaaaaa ... "
"Thank you. I am very flattered, but - "
"Come on, please?? Its just one coffee."

This continued for a while, until finally I thought what the hell, its not going to kill me to have a coffee. And  you've got to give the dude some credit for his persistence.

So we go on this coffee date. And of course it was excruciatingly EXCRUCIATING. He totally didn't get that I was being kind. He totally didn't get that this was not a real date. He totally thought I was interested in him. 

"So what you think? We should give this a try.. I really feel it as potential."
"What??!! Are you insane?"
"We are having a good time right? So we should see where this goes.. "
"What 'this'? There is no 'this'! I was only trying to - "
"I think you are very special. So different to all these girls I meet.. more mature you know."
"Yeah, um, thats because I am like a decade older??"
"Awesome! Thats, like, so cool."

Sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph - someone please shoot me. How do I get myself into these situations.

So next time you think of going on a date purely because you think some sweet thing is going to die if you don't, or because you don't want to be rude or unkind, or because someone is being persistent, think a little longer. It only gets harder and harder to say no. It encourages the other person, and worse, makes them believe things that are not going to happen. If you have trouble being assertive (or, like me, have NO boundaries to speak of) then it gets even trickier.

Whoever thought one small word can be this hard. Angels are supposed to have mercy, and as a certified angel, "no" is a hell of a challenge.