evolve – Shilpa's

The Recess is Over – The Blog Lives

Those who know me, know that I like to reflect and reflect a lot. I strongly believe that we are a product of our own experiences and life gives us plenty of experiences. Life as perfect as it is, is very imperfect too. The imperfections are critical for change. When the imperfections go away, life will become stagnant, until then it is imperative that we enjoy life’s fallibility and learn from it. You don’t need an extra ordinary moment to learn. Our daily interaction with fellow humans, nature and ourselves is a learning experience every moment of the day.

45 years is a long time to be on this planet. I have always enjoyed adding a year to my age for it is a privilege denied to many. Today I am thankful that I woke up to see the love and blessings surrounding me. The past years have been rather interesting. They have tested my patience, my thinking and more importantly my belief in myself. I was one of those who lead a simple daily blessed life. No curve balls, no nothing.. life chugs along just fine, until one final year, life looks at you and says, “Ok, you have had too much good, it is time to throw in some bumps.” Try as hard as I did, I was beginning to lose until one final day, when the human core in me wakes up and says ‘Enough! Bring it on” and just like that, you turn on the will power switch and life backs off and I realized I am me and I am ok.

45 years old and sane on planet Earth. That is an achievement in itself 🙂

My top 5 lessons of 45 years on this planet:

1. Be Unfuckwithable: This is very important. You just have to be one, there is no other option.

2. Belive in Pronoia: It is true. There is power in belief. Believe and the universe will work with you.

3. Travel: In this daily mundane life, we (including me) almost always forget we the humans were designed to be wanderers. And here we are living a stagnant life behind a computer screen. Some of you might have read about my trip to Alaska what most of you don’t know is that this trip was a necessity to start breathing again. When life beats you down, the only way to get up is do something that you have never done before and Alaska was just that. A frontier unlike any other and staying true to it’s promise Alaska allowed me to breathe again. Travel because you want to see the wonderful natural creations, travel so you can be the pirate of your favorite childhood story book, travel so life does not escape you.

4. Relationships need more than love to survive: Love hurts, it’s true. Relationships need constant nurturing. Mother-child, husband-wife, brother-sister and any other relationship needs continuous nurturing. Relationships, ebb and flow through the ocean of life, creating their troughs and crests. The crest may be tall and high and yet we look at the trough and forget the crest. We need to train our brain to focus on the crests and ignore the troughs. The flow of life will minimize the trough.

5. YOU can make a difference: As alone as we are, we have the power to make a difference. I never thought I did, until recently. Our simple acts of kindness can become big acts of fortitude for another.

This blog has been my sanity for many occasions. To stay sane, I had promised myself that I will bring the blog back on my birthday, so here it is. The blog lives.

Life I believe is full of Imperfections. It is these little daily imperfections that culminate at the end of a day to make a perfectly beautiful life. That’s how my world is. It’s filled with shades of bright vibrant reds to melancholy yet calming blues.

How is your world?

Love Your Girl Friends.

Born as yourself, you became a daughter, a sister, a girlfriend, a wife and a mother. You are no longer yourself. You are now a woman. Woman, you are always evolving. You think you are lost, because the evolution keeps changing you. True, you are. There are days, when you miss yourself. Days when you don’t know what your favorite food or color is, because you as pure as the first winter snow have absorbed and taken it all in. They say, evolution is the way of life. Nothing can stop it and yet you want it to stop so you can discover yourself again. But why? Why do you want to discover yourself again? Why not discover this new evolved being? Evolution is not bad, for it gives you a chance to improve again and yet again. You are not stagnant. You are alive for you change every day. You bend, twist and conform to the mold and yet you are supple enough to spring out of the mold when you no longer deemed it fit.

Woman, you love unconditionally. You tore to come into this world. The world applauds you for you are the cradle of civilization. Without you there would be no world and yet, the same world ridicules your decision to feed and not climb the ladder of ambition. You continue to love, ask no questions and love more. You love the parents who held your hand and taught you to stand tall, you love your sister for she is your confidante, you love your brother for he protects you always and you love your friends for they share your tears and smiles alike. You then found a man and you felt complete. You are faithful. Temptation is not your weakness. You are honest and loyal. You fight for your world and make him the king of your little kingdom. You continue to walk hand in hand and you tore yet again to bring life into this world. The world kept evolving and so did you.

Today, as you watch the world go by: Woman, you yearn. You yearn for your friends. You miss the mud puddles, the lunch boxes, the pillion rides, the secret diaries, the hushed whispers, the coy smiles, the side glances and yourself.

Yes, you miss yourself.

Woman, you are smart. “You know the loneliest woman is NOT the woman without a man, but the woman without a close woman friend.” You know you need your sister friends to laugh and cry. You know you need them to sustain. Why did you let them go? You realize that you made time for ambition while your friends waited. They could wait no loner and left you to enjoy the view from atop the ladder. You look down and you see no one. You have everything, and yet you feel you are missing. You take down the old chest and pull out the secret diary. You look at the pictures and the smiles, you pick up your phone and pray someone picks up the phone. The phone rings and you hear a voice. You smile. You are in love again; in love with yourself.

Today, you love your children more. Their questions don’t confuse you. Their needs don’t tire you. Today, you are filled with gratitude for a man who lets you be. He notices the smile and smiles back. Today, you realize you have your friends back in your life. Friends who listen to you for hours, friends who make time for you, friends who scream in joy for your success, friends who giggle at your silly anecdotes on life, friends who tell you it’s going to be okay. Today, the giggles, the smiles, whispers and the diary is back.

Today, you realize your girl friends make you better. They empower you. You promise yourself to never let your friends disappear again.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all my girls out there!

Divergent Education

Parenting is an interesting journey. As a new parent we swear not to make the mistakes our parents made and then with every passing day, we become our parents. We revisit the unfulfilled ambitions and hope our kids will fulfill them one day. We start teaching them to see the dreams we have for them, and there is absolutely nothing wrong in it, if your child agrees with you, for the most part, they don’t. This disagreement is what keeps the circle of life going. Imagine if every generation was like the generation before, we would probably still rubbing rocks to create fire.

This past weekend, November 6th, I saw the much talked about movie “Most Likely to Succeed.” This movie is a dauntless allegation proclaiming the failure of the education system. It is a wake up call to parents and schools for demanding change. Through interviews and perspectives of educators, innovators and the change guru’s it proves its point – the education system is failing and does not prepare our kids for the future that lies ahead of them.

Over the years as a parent, my observation has been that the education industry is the only industry in the world that makes sweeping changing in policies, its product and or process with absolutely no input from its final consumer base – the students. If the question to a student were, “would you like to present your knowledge or test it?” What do you think will the majority answer be? I will be very surprised and in some ways intrigued if the majority students come back saying, “test it.” The movie attempts to answer this question. Ted Dintersmith and Greg Whitely present historical data and follow the modern HighTech High School in San Diego, CA to understand this alternative approach to teaching where the traditional textbooks are chugged for project-based learning. The teachers of the school acknowledge that while the kids who go to High Tech High, may miss out on the breadth of topics learnt, they are definitely getting a better depth of knowledge and in addition they learn the soft skills of communicating, leadership and learning to fail while not giving up being one of the most important ones.

For me personally, the highlight of the movie was the split second shot of the student Brian smiling at the end of the movie. The movie showed us a very powerful image – Brian and his team were not able to complete the project assigned. They missed the deadline and yet the teachers acknowledge his vision, they give the student time to contemplate and understand that having a vision and implementation in a team setting requires grit and tenacity. The student had nothing to show and yet he was not penalized, he was given time to continue and succeed. This is a life skill that can only be learnt by experience.

The current education system lacks this very important concept – kids need room to fail and then they need tons of patience from their mentors to help them succeed. When everything from class participation to quizzes and tests are graded, there is no room to fail. One bad test grade and their grade for the quarter is ruined. How can that be right?

The opponents might argue that grades are what the colleges need. I agree, grades are needed and as long as there is demand from colleges for the GPA’s and grades, the system cannot change. This was a missing element in the movie. There was no feedback from the college admission personnel. Are they willing to chug the grades and base the selection process solely on interviews. Today, college application process is million-dollar industry. Parents are paying insane amounts to counselors so they can fine-tune the essays. The applications are engineered for success and thus killing the free spirit or creativity again.

Some movements can start at the grass roots while some start from the top; the change in education has to come from the universities. The universities have to step up and say, we don’t need GPA’s; we need students who can lead, who can communicate across personalities and nationalities. These are attributes that can only be seen and experienced.

124 years ago the Erudite designed the education system, hoping to create a world filled Candors, Amity and Abnegation. Together, the intelligent, honest, selfless and peace loving humans created a Divergent world. A world that is connected by invisible bridges. Bridges that connect many clouds of information. The student of today needs to know how to walk these bridges, gather information and bring it down to planet earth and create a better environment for all.

To serve the needs of this Divergent world, the education industry needs to break out of its allegiant model and evolve.