Of Flowers and Finances

These days I buy flowers for myself, and also love to receive flowers. I know it is not a big deal, lots of people buy and receive flowers everyday, every grocery store and mall has a flower store. But it is a very big deal for me. For much of my life I did not buy flowers, nor did I like it when people gave me flowers. For me flowers represented a state of impermanence, and I was on a quest to make things last forever - my home, my marriage, my relationships, my career, my everything. I wanted very intensely that no matter what I started on should be perfect, and once I have created it, it should also sustain itself over time. This was a deep seated quest within me, honed with decades of insecurities while being blessed with an innate drive. I was able to build grand castles with flimsy cards and keep them standing, while anxiously protecting them from each gust of wind or shake of the table. At what cost, even I did not know very well at that time. 40 years of incessant quest, non stop. As I said, I was blessed with a drive energy, but not with adequate life wisdom to focus the drive in the right channels and to understand the true nature of how the world works. I had no clue! I had this us-and-them relationship with the world/ nature. I needed to fight to create and maintain and protect my castles of cards. I had internalized the misguided aphorism "no pain, no gain". My quest was therefore also that of pain. Instead of working "with" the natural order of things, I believed I needed to work "in spite" of it.

Flowers in my Living Room, March 2019

My energy and drive served me well. I have survived a very painful abused childhood, I now live in a very developed country, own my home and all the luxuries that this lifestyle has to offer, I have invested 20+ years in a career and advanced rapidly. I fondly recollect the joy of being 33 and managing $300M program of projects with five teams in four continents with the efficiency of a well practiced orchestra master. I thrived on that. Today I have a engineering and management consulting practice in San Diego, that I have carefully nurtured and grown; we are are in our ninth year. In the last decade, I survived seven years of major crisis one year after the other, each as profound as the other, and so closely situated that I faced a new crisis before I could heal from the previous one. There were major car accidents, death, cancer scares, surgeries, disenchantment with family, divorce, major financial stress, and more. Well, I am still standing! Some days this realization itself fills me with an intense sense of gratitude. And during this last decade, I also found Vipassana, and that finally started bringing a bit of wisdom in my life. It is as if a door within me has opened, and I am slowly and cautiously making my way into myself, learning what lies within, and by doing just that I am learning how the world really works outside, I am learning to live with it and not against it anymore. I'm learning to let the water hold me as I try to swim, and not fight it. It is a new skill, I am not expert at it yet, but getting better everyday.

So what about the flowers?
Yes, flowers are impermanent. And they are a representation of nature, as it is. Beautiful flowers are born, they live their cycle, and then pass away, when they do they actually stink of melted leaves and faded blooms. I am getting used to that experiential truth, in my meditation practice on the cushion, and as it overflows into my day to day life. I am not seeking permanence anymore. I am learning to accept that flow of life as it arrives every moment, allowing it rather than blocking it or trying to channel it by force. I have more or less discarded will-power, and started to follow the lead of wisdom-power.

All this is good and nice, may even sound koo-koo to some. I sometimes feel the same! But then when I really watch the change that has come in my life and subtle benefits of peace, clarity, and fearlessness, I am amazed. These benefits are to be experienced deep within. One cannot see another and measure from outside. It is all internal. And I am so very grateful that I have a practice, I go to that mental gym and workout everyday, my mind gradually purifying, getting stronger, and the tendrils of true courage sprouting.

So what about the finances?
In the "traditional world" as I call it, where we live our life with a script, either handed to us by society or by our own fears, we live by goals. Boy, did I do those yearly goal setting exercises every year of my adulthood. In fact, in my drive to excel, I'd measure progress every month, sometimes every week. There was a time in 2003 - 2007 when I had read every self-help or career/ life book available. You  name it, and I have read it. Not only read it, I have applied it in my life. See, I used to think that was true life wisdom, and it was outside of me in words, and I needed to read, intellectualize, and then put habits in place to actualize. They worked, to a large extent, but was not complete. Because it was someone else's wisdom, not arising from within.

Now, with my practice, I have learned to see my fears and anxieties, raw and palpating, as they arise. I have learned to sit with them, raw and palpating, without taking any other "out", be it an intoxicant, or a pill, or a flight of fancy in hope-land, or an emotional crutch in another being. It is HARD, I tell you. But since 2014, this has been the sole focus of my existence, to learn how to surf these internal waves. By no means I am an expert surfer, but these days I can stand on the waves longer than being drawn under it gasping for air, or being battered unconscious by my own surfboard. During these last five years, I have realized that financial independence is one of the key foundation stones I need to secure for a balanced life moving forward.

There is a strong FIRE movement afoot. It is still counterculture to some extent, and it intrigues me. I have been talking about retirement to my friends for a few years, but I really mean financial independence. It is what one prominent blogger calls having F-you Money, I like that. I am gradually reading through the huge body of information that is available, and the more I read it feels totally in line with what I have in mind for myself into the future. So I am starting to write a different "fuzzy" goal, form a "fuzzy" plan, and start step-by-step action as coordinated as I can get.
When will you retire? I don't know, there are many factors that go into it. I need to plan that effectively. Financial Independence is the first step. Then I will decide.
What will you do when you retire? Oh! I have a hobby-rich temperament, I will have no dearth of things to do. I know that for sure.
Will you travel? Maybe. (Most probably I will meditate a whole lot more than what I can afford today. And increase my hospice-related effort.)
Will you still be working in your field? Probably, because I love my clients very much, and helping them makes me happy.

I look at FIRE as more of a way to have full freedom and access to my time. Having been through couple life-threatening accidents, some very serious health issues and surgeries, and having watched the death process first hand few times, I now know experientialy that there is limited time. I need to focus on Making Time, that is, freeing up my time from most useless distractions. And in that process, making space for whatever wholesome qualities wants to bloom in my heart. Financial independence for me is like the water in the vase, it is life sustaining for the flowers for the period of their beautiful existence and I need to keep it fresh and enough. Flowers don't last forever, and I will not as well. And when this flower fades out of existence, I wish that the dead leaves, blooms and water go into some good compost, so that it can give life to new flowers and help them bloom their own cycle. That is the purpose of this life of mine, my manifesto!

"When are you going back to your country?"

An elderly waitress pours steaming diner coffee into my white ceramic mug. She is smiling.
      "When are you going back to your country?"
I am a bit taken aback, I pause for a bit, then reply.
      "This is my country."
She squints her eyes, is visibly surprised.
      "You were not born here, were you?"
      "No, but I am a citizen."
She moves away.

I sit there and as I go through my brunch, I reflect. What was this exchange about?
It was strange I was not feeling offended. Should I?
What is this belonging? What is this identification? Is it important? Who am I? What's in a label?

American Diner that serves Fortune Cookies

I spent 22 years in India, and 20 years in the US. So, what should be my label?
When in India, my family and friends treat me differently, I speak with an accent they say, that my eating schedule has changed. They point out that I am soft and cannot handle hard stuff like heat, sweat, and squat toilets. They say I have become very independent, and I should keep my American ideas to myself. In almost every conversation it comes up - "you do not know the reality here in India" - even when I say absolutely nothing and just sit and watch the life flow by. Some say I am unpatriotic, having left India in my youth and not served her for all she did for me, that I did not repay my debt to my motherland. I have had people ridicule my life in the US and say I have it so easy compared to the struggle in India, they make fun of the material stuff I have - house, car, dishwasher, laundry, etc. Over the two decades, a chasm has formed and it has grown deeper and deeper. The connection, if there was one, is indeed lost, the sense of belonging has been frayed.

Here is the US, from the very first day there has been a sense of distance too, sometimes very blatantly like this conversation at the diner, and sometimes very subtly. Every workplace I have been at, there has been the undercurrent. At one job, we had an African American admin assistant who was totally incompetent, every task given to her had to go through minimum five revisions to get right, even if it was a one-page letter. It was amazing how she held on to a job for five years, all she did was paint her nails and talk about shopping. And when it came to work, I only focused on efficiency, I did not see color or age or anything but getting the task done. One day I insisted that she do her job. She complained. I got called into my supervisor's office. I was appalled by what he patronizingly said to me - "Look, you are from India, and maybe in India because of the caste system, you are taught from the very childhood to discriminate against people of color. It is not like that here in the US. Here, we treat everyone equally." I was too stunned to say a word. And there have been so many instances, I could write a long book on just these kinds of stories. The perception of American people is also quite unique, there is an expectation for everyone to melt into one common stereotype robots, and there is a fear of everything that is different or "off spec". The sense of belonging here in the US is also quite frayed, rather it was never really well-formed.

So where do I belong now? I often wonder where these identities come from. Why do we need so desperately have a label, why do we need so much to cling, to belong? I do not say it is good or bad, it is just something I often question. In the answer to the question - Who am I? - why does the skin color, the accent, the country, the affiliation to a race or ethnicity, or even the past, the history, have to figure out so prominently? Does it need to be like that? Granted we live in this conventional world, and these things are real labels, but do we need to cling to the labels? The question is about the clinging, not about the labels. Why is this desperate need to cling to the labels?

And at this diner, when I saw my heart not even flutter with that interaction, I was smiling internally. Maybe I am getting closer to really finding out that I am a nobody. And it is a really liberating feeling.

Solutions for the US Economic woes

Everyone seems to be talking about the fiscal cliff. It is in the air we breathe these days. So I thought I will also put my two cents into the mix, for whatever it is worth....

Here are my solutions to US' economic woes ---

Tax Consumption not Income. I think making money/ having an income is a good thing. Why would you want to tax that? As a small business, I need to pay payroll taxes when I hire an employee and then that employee also pays taxes on the money he/she makes. What is my incentive to hire if I have to pay a tax to hire? When when you tax something, you tend to reduce the 'sale' of that commodity. We should not tax payroll/ income. Instead, we should tax consumption. Americans are the most wasteful consumers in the world. Here, it is all about buy, consume, and dispose. ("Amrika mein kehte hein - thoda khao, thoda pheko.") That habit needs to be changed if we want to have a sustainable planet. Let's tax the consumption and rein the uncontrolled spending on consumer items. They do this in Canada and Australia, and people still survive there! I will gladly pay 15% extra on a gas guzzling car or a fancy Louis Vuitton suitcase. I vote for the luxury tax, if I want something fancy which is not a basic need, I should pay the premium for it.

Delete / Reduce Corporate Tax. US has the highest corporate tax rate. Every tax season we hear that all the big multinational corporations take their earnings outside of the country. But we, the small businesses, cannot do so. We are stuck in the US with the exorbitant corporate tax. I am not sure how the government thinks that if they tax us more we will help build the economy. If they are thinking that by taxing corporations they are taxing rich people, they are totally wrong. Please tax the rich people directly, not the corporations!

Eliminate the Mortgage Deduction. We own a nice little home in San Diego. And I will admit that it is a stretch for us to pay the mortgage every month. In spite of that, I am for eliminating the homeowners interest deduction on our taxes. I feel that this deduction messes up the calculations of home ownership and subsidizes the acquisition of grander and fancier homes, which in turn leads Americans to lead a life they cannot afford. This deduction supports the consumer culture too. I have grown up in India and also spent couple years in Australia. Both these countries do not have these deductions and the 'dream' of home ownership still stays strong. By the way, why should the 'American Dream' have to be linked with purchase of a home? Why can't it be just a good happy life? When I came to the US, I believed that 'pursuit of happiness' was the key to American success. It is very sad to see that the people and government here believes 'pursuit of home-ownership' is an American right and that you can be a happy American only if you have a home to your name.

Tax Carbon. I am very happy to see that there are not as many Hummers on the roads these days as they were a decade ago. May be it is the price at the pump or maybe it is something political? I do not know. But I believe that carbon tax is a kind of consumption tax and need to be levied on every item of consumption. As I said before, Americans are the most wasteful society on this planet and it is time we pay the price for it. If we use it, we should pay for it. Period. This tax will be an incentive for us not to pollute the environment due to our consumption addiction. Why should the whole world pay the price for wasteful consumption? Tax carbon and give the proceeds to the EPA!

Legalize Marijuana. I am so happy to see that Washington and Colorado has legalized marijuana. Shame on you, California! A lot of money is spent by the government prosecuting criminals of marijuana while it does not have any major effect on the planet's well being. This legalizing of marijuana can reduce spending by the government, and if it is taxed (like cigarettes and alcohol), it will bring in revenue too. That is the economic side of things. Legalizing marijuana will not make every person a drug addict - if that was the case Netherlands would have been wiped off the map by now. If only the Federal government could see some sense on this issue. Legalizing marijuana may deliver the death blow to the Mexican/South American drug trade and 'save the planet'! Oh! Wishful thinking on my part....

Decouple Employment from Health Insurance. Last but not the least, I feel that we should not have employers offer health insurance to employees and their families. Yes, I do depend on my husband's employer to cover my health insurance. But that is because I do not have any other choice! Employers should focus on developing the employee as the best person capable of delivering the work product that the company provides in the marketplace. Just as the employer does not provide housing or transportation to its employees, they need not provide health insurance. The way to do that is to eliminate the health-insurance tax write-offs. I heard on the radio that this deduction costs the government about $200 billion per year. It just does not make sense to me. Just as we shop for car insurance in the wide marketplace, why can't we shop for the best health insurance? The employer's 'entitled' health care plans, in my opinion, makes people get better coverage than they need and then use it more often, and as a result drive up the cost of health care for everyone. And yes, I agree that everyone, yes everyone, should have a healthcare insurance policy, no exceptions.

Well, I am no economist. Over the last year, through the presidential run and beyond, the air waves have been incessantly buzzing about the economy. I have listened and formed my own opinions. They are a bit controversial, but I believe that it will help the US (and the world) if followed. I also know that no one cares about what I think. Ha!