Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda

Wise words I heard today: When something doesn't go as expected, either you can over-analyze the situation, slice and dice it in many ways, go on and on in your head about what you coulda, woulda, shoulda done. Or, you can move the heck on.

Three Things in Life That Matter

Kids.

Music.

Nature.

Kids show you how not to be self-conscious, afraid or have the adult need to be correct all the time. And they are super brand ambassadors. Being a kid is always in.

Music has transformative capacity. A rock star's maniacal jumping on stage or a lovesick teenager's misty-eyed rendering of Halo behind closed doors - the rhythm just could get you. No matter what happens after that last note, in that moment, you are transformed.

Nature is humbling. It makes you feel at peace with yourself and the world around you. And if you're really lucky, glancing down the mountainside as you climb through icy peaks or feeling the rush of water as you swim through the twists and turns of a river, brings to you a moment of absolute lucidity about your life. Like breaking through thick foliage for the first glimpse of light.

Extraordinary Acts

A young man falls onto the subway track as a train is approaching. A bystander jumps onto the tracks and tries to rescue him, but to no avail. Then, for some unfathomable reason, as the train is seconds away, he lies on top of the fallen man & the train whizzes over their heads. Both men are safe. Incredulous? Yes. True? Unbelievably so.

This is the story of a 50-year-old father of two & one of the heroes that Jad Aburmad and Robert Krulwich, the hosts of RadioLabs, talk about in an intriguing podcast called, "The Good Show". There are two other stories they share - a woman jumping through an electric fence to save someone from a 950-pound bull attack & a man rescuing drunk teenagers from a car crash that led to a raging fire. In each case, it was a normal, untrained person, getting into a dangerous, almost fatal situation, to save another person's life. Why?

Here's where it gets interesting. When asked why they voluntarily endangered their own lives, here's what they had to say

"I just kept saying this is somebody's kids, know what I mean"..."I couldn't stand there and not do anything. I was compelled to act." Emotional.

"Here is the problem. Here is what I needed to do. And... something needed to happen." Logical.

"I felt like I was chosen for that." Karmic.

Each reacted from a different perspective, for different reasons. But all of them had one thing in common - the nerve to do it.

Link to the RadioLabs podcast http://www.radiolab.org/2010/dec/14/

Know Thy Self? Click.

If you asked me about the latest uprising in the Arab world or the last natural disaster that threatened to wipe out the population of a small country, I'd be able to tell you faster than you can say Click. In fact, most of us would. Facebook has become my news channel ("What would you do if you had 8.5 billion?", a friend's status reads. This is code language for "someone bought someone else for way too much"). And YouTube my entertainment hub ("Lady Gaga Hair - Audio" tops today's Most Popular list. What else does one need?). I could tell you what my baking-enthusiast friend Sally baked @ 23:45, in the same breath as I can tell you who won the Cricket World Cup just seconds earlier. A click has officially become the beginning and end of my day. And other people's business has officially become mine.

But ask me a simple question like "What's the best thing that happened to you all week ?", and I might be stumped. Cold. So this week I went on a mission. Get to know myself better.

Here's the 5 Things I Found Out (Or Already Sub-Consciously Knew) About Myself based on things I did this past week:
1) I'll read anything that is a numbered list of something. 100 most influential people. 5 Worst things you can say to your date. 20 best TV Moments this year. From the inspiring to the mundane - if its got a number, its got my attention.

2) Caramel Machiatto is my comfort drink & a trip to the cafe my comfort drive/walk. A great presentation? Trip to the cafe! A not-so-great meeting? Trip to the cafe.

3) I'll say something nice to someone who's low, if only to make them feel better. I feel everyone needs a shot in the arm of plain and simple "niceness", once in a while.

4) I get a secret thrill in gifting people things they'd mentioned a long time ago. A Green M&Ms mug, a CD collection of Cirque Du Soleil music & a green, glow-in-the-dark sword, fall in this category. My latest you-thought-I-didn't-hear-you-but-I-did gift - a spa massage for my mom on Mother's Day.

5) I hate broccoli. OK, this one's obvious and common. But who says I can't state the obvious. I've tried it in Thai food, on pizza and in charred form (the fantastic folks at Black Bottle seem to think that burning the heck out of it will make it more palatable). Somehow, my taste buds seems to reject it in any shape or form.

That's enough self-analysis for a week. Back to the real-world. Better let my 461 friends on Facebook know I'm still alive. Click.