Using an unofficial Digital Lomo Camera.

Photograph taken with the Hipstamatic iphone app

Pencil On Paper

I was compelled to compliment an acquaintance on his amazing works of art. Why was I? Cause I felt that I just couldn’t not let him not know how I felt about it and I believe all artists in their own right deserves open acknowledgment, appreciation and feedback.

I was looking for an appropriate word to express how i felt about his masterpieces, was looking for a word that described the emotion that I was feeling and the only word was L.O.V.E.

I find it perplexing why using this word is shunned upon and why is giving a compliment and using this word so difficult for so many.

I’ve been brainwashed. Made to suppress emotions, feelings…only to express myself in the ‘safe zone’. Not too much (till the point of getting noticed) and not too little (so that i don’t end up a wallflower). As cliche as it sounds like that Black Eyed Peas song, ‘Where is the love?’

I read the newspapers and there’s always news of random acts of violence. What about RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS? After all, my belief that the root of random acts of kindness is LOVE. Why isn’t that stressed upon?

What happened to compliments… which are given freely and the word love is used without shame or embarrassment?

Practice random acts of kindness……be it in a form of a compliment, picking up trash, recycling, or helping someone cross the street……practice the verb ‘to love’.

The love is here, there and everywhere and love comes in many different shapes and forms, and a ‘thing’, and a ‘doing’ and a ‘being’ as an emotion and state of mind.

So in the end, I told this acquaintance I love his work. As complex as it was in my mind, using the word love made it a lot easier to explain.

He was like a God to me. In my eyes, he could do no wrong and everything he said, I took it as a the greatest thing anyone has ever said. When I had problems, I would turn to him; when I needed advice, I turned to him. That was my biggest mistake, to put my mentor in this pedestal and worship him.

He became my teacher, my mentor, my coach – the one that would guide me. He was the one that facilitated my passion for teaching and trainings. For about 2 years, he was a huge part of my working life and I had the greatest respect for him. We had gone through a wonderful journey of discovery, growth and possibilities through personal development trainings which we both working for. We had the most fun times, laughing as a team, crying as a team and working as a team. A friendship and bond was created from working together.

I had started hearing rumors about him after a few years of knowing him.  Things about his personal and professional life that were quite damaging to his reputation as a coach. There I was, like a samurai warrior ready to chop someone’s head off for saying such blasphemous things to me about my mentor. I was like one of those martyrs willing to die for a cause. Like a spoilt little brat I would preach, “My mentor NEVER makes mistakes, you are wrong!’, and I would storm off in a huff.

Like everything in the universe, everything (including our mentor – mentee relationship) evolved, we as people evolved. Our priorities had changed and we were not going towards the same direction of ‘that bigger cause of saving the world’ through personal development trainings.

In the end, business of working together outside of the training room had killed our relationship.  I had assumed that because we had a great mentor-mentee bond we would have a great business relationship as well. How wrong was I?!  I allowed the dog-eat-dog ugly side of the business world of making money (and the lack of transparency dealing with it) and backstabbing get in the way of our mentor -mentee relationship.

Drama, conflict and back stabbing started to rumble and violently erupted.  We no longer added any value in each others lives and it was way beyond repair.  The relationship went from sour to totally rotten. He was no longer my coach.  And to top it all off, I slowly discovered with my own eyes, that the damaging rumors were true. I was disappointed and sad about the situation. I allowed myself to be a powerless victim of the bad business dealings, where someone done me wrong and cheated me.  I became bitter and angry about it all and eventually I had to let go and move on with my life.  At one point, I had let the drama consume me. Yes, there was learning from all this: my learnings…

Everyone is human and we all make mistakes. Even mentors… c’est la vie. So cliche but true in this case. The God-like image of him in my mind, maybe I trapped him into a corner to a point where he was not willing and afraid to share with me what he was going through in his personal crisis. Always allow that breathing room for people around me to ‘fall’ gracefully, make mistakes and pick themselves back up. I had to stop being hypercritical of people and stop putting such high expectations on them.

No value = no space in my life. When things, people, relationships no longer add value to my life (as semimetal and great it once was), it doesn’t have it a part of my life anymore. It will only be a burdensome heavy baggage. It’s an easy thing for me to say, but at times the most painful.

Be open to all teachers, not just one. My ‘mentor worshipping’ did not help in the process of learning, if anything it slowed my learning. Everything new I was taught outside the scope of my mentor, I was not open to or I never looked at it objectively. I thought I was open minded as can be, where as in actual fact I had ignored all the many opportunities to learn right in front of me from other teachers.

Learn, apply, evolve and move on. I know, it sounds so ‘wham, bam, thank you maam’. I truly believe that in my lifetime I will meet different souls that are meant to teach me something and bring value to my life. They will come in and out of my life. Some ‘teachers’ are only around for a short while some for decades. I have to learn to let go and take the learning and ‘live it’ in my life and move on.  Not all teachers or mentors will be there my whole life.  Eventually the student will out grow the teacher and hopefully one day become a mentor or teacher.

After all that, he had wished me a good life and prayed that my life turns out well. And that he no longer wanted anything to do with me in business or as a mentor. He wanted to move on with his life and let go of the mess we both were responsible for creating. All good things come to an end and the evolution cycle starts again. I’m not as naive, a little bit wiser and the silver lining to all this – even the ‘rotten’ ending of our relationship was a great learning experience in my life, a lesson to be learned.

Part of my work revolves meeting interesting individuals from different industries including businessmen, activists, entrepreneurs, students… everyone from all walks of life. For the Live and Inspire Series, the speaker was Datuk Vinod Sekhar – of The Petra Group. He shared his journey as a businessman.

“ I was a millionaire at 20, multimillionaire at 24, a Datuk at 26, and at 32 almost bankrupt.”

So this man ‘has the mooohhhlah’.  He’s worth RM 150 million – according to Forbes Malaysia’s 40 richest Malaysians (I wanted to write that out but not sure how many zeros – math wasn’t my forte in school).

There is this story which I would like to share.  He views money as a tool. Use it. Invest it in something. Spend it. Donate it. Why keep it in the bank? He then explained why he views it this way.

Datuk Vinod Sekhar’s mother was involved with the spastic center. During school holidays, he would go over there with his mother and play with the kids. He befriended this boy named Philip, who had down syndrome.

Datuk Vinod would put his wallet aside, then go play with the kids. Datuk Vinod started to notice money missing from his wallet. He was angry. He thought, “How could you help people and they steal from you?!”

All riled up, he went to the center to confront the thief. When he arrived at the center, his friend, Philip, told Datuk Vinod that he had a gift for him since Datuk Vinod’s holidays were almost over.

Phillip had made this collage for his new friend. And on this collage you could see money notes cut up into pieces.  Phillip told Datuk Vinod, “I made this for you, I ran out of colored paper so I took some of yours.”

This story that he shared made me laugh, smile and my heart melted at the same time.  A million thoughts were racing through my mind.

To Datuk Vinod, money is just colored paper. A tool.

I thoroughly enjoyed the session. He continued to share his enthusiasm about doing what he loves (work), his passion and his love for his family, wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt and a Mickey mouse watch. Life should not always be too serious. Color and laughter is essential as well.