Mind Blogging. Mind Boggling.

When you read a concept, it shows up everywhere. One of the 5 life journeys that have been detailed in ‘Forged in Crisis’ is that of Frederick Douglass, who was an escaped slave who made significant contributions to the anti-slavery movement. I was separately reading the useful seeming NY Times list of best books of the 21^st century that come out recently, and lo and behold: in it features “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of freedom”. Apparently, this biography also won the 2019 Pulitzer prize in history.

Be warned that ‘Forged in Crisis’ is not an easy and smooth read, definitely not a page turner. Maybe you get into a ‘crisis’ midway through the book, when you are not able to progress. Then you eventually muster up the will power to move ahead, and thus are you ‘forged’. The book requires annotation, and a second reading. The book is a mini biography of 5 leaders- Abraham Lincoln, Ernest Shackleton the south pole explorer, Rachel Carson the scientist environmentalist who got DDT banned, Frederick Douglass who's described earlier, and Baunhoffer a German priest who resisted Nazi-ism through his interpretations of Christianity.

All five lives in this book dealt with serious crises in their lives. Matters of life and death. Crises large and small. Their sense of adventure and breaking out from the norm is remarkable. Escaping slavery, providing for a large family as a young sole breadwinning woman in the 1950s, finishing a tour de force of writing and journalism while fighting cancer, marshalling men to safety with limited resources near south pole, outspokenly fighting the nazis, dealing with losses of sweetheart and son while having broken away from birth family- these are experiences that can completely break someone who is not incredibly strong internally. The fact that these famous five endured is testament to the human will- it can endure so much hardship, yet emerge unbroken with solutions.

This concept of ‘dealing with struggles and failure’ showed up in multiple places for me, on the lines of how Frederick Douglass did. In a conversation, M, a frequent acolyte, talked about how Indian myths such as Mahabharata and Ramayana are all about the hero dealing with serious adversity although in the popular tellings of the tales we don’t appreciate or empathize with the hero. Rama having his wife stolen and then dealing with life as a nomad as he tried to find her. Krishna, who forever wanted peace, failed miserably in his quest for peace for after all he presided over a massive war. A powerful tale of ‘giving’ and ‘failure’ from Abe Lincoln’s life is dramatically told in the excellent book Give and Take (gotto read more of Adam Grant!). I listened to a great podcast episode on parenting, on the reliably excellent Huberman Labs podcast, this one starring parenting expert Doc Becky Kennedy. Doc Becky stressed upon the importance of children learning the skill of dealing with frustration and struggle, at a time when the world provides many conveniences with minimal effort, such as movies on Netflix, food on Swiggy and essentials on Zepto. Just yesterday, I was giving up hope when Lakshya Sen was down 5 points vs TC Chou, with Chou seemingly outplaying him in the QFs of the Olympic Singles badminton. That was some crisis. The way Lakshya came back was inspiring, making him the first Indian male shuttler to the Olympic semis. ‘Comebacks’ being bigger than the‘Setbacks’ is a mantra going on at work, given the tough time our industry is facing.   

The other interesting aspect which came through for me was how the final position or perspective of the life in question was built over time. Some of the 5 initially in their lives had no special interest or willingness to build that grand perspective for which they have become famous. Therefore, the word ‘forged’ in the title becomes apt.

The famous 5 also got swept up in something that is bigger than themselves, and that gave them the strength to overcome hardship. At the end of the second paragraph, I expressed awe about how they endured – and that’s how it happened- they were bolstered by something much bigger than their own puny selves. This concept I came across today as I heard a youtube video recommended by Tim Ferris, a an interview of Joseph Campbell, the author of the book ‘Hero with a thousand faces’ which is said to have inspired countless artists and leaders. Campbell talked about the importance of the ‘struggle’ in the story of the hero, and also about getting involved in a cause that was outside and beyond their own limited ego. This makes the hero realize that their own ego is small in the bigger picture. He is an instrument of a far bigger force, and they draw power from that ‘force’. Especially in the context that the video was describing Star Wars movies. All 5 people in this book ‘used the force’, the force being contextual and customized to their circumstances.

The book details out the subject of emotional mastery, which was mentioned in the book Awe whose review is my previous post in this blog, and in the movie Inside Out which I rewatched recently. The author of Awe was a consultant to the directing team of Inside out. He talks about how the ‘Inside’ in ‘Inside out’ means that our emotional experience of an event is driven by which emotion is at the helm of the mental console inside us, and hints that we should have the skill to enable the emotion we want to be at the helm when we want. Doc Becky says that children deal with the entire maelstrom of emotions as an adult, but don’t have the skill to deal with it.

The book produces some gems from time to time – ‘In moments of great turbulence when the stakes are high, the fate of a particular enterprise comes down- briefly and critically- to the energy and actions of the individual leader’. This is mentioned about Shackleton, who is the Captain of the endurance which is grounded in the South Pole. Sidenote: In one of my favorite movies, Interstellar, the spaceship is named ‘Endurance’  putatively after Shackleton’s vessel. One more gem, from the life of FD: ‘I lived more in that one day than I lived in a year’. On a similar theme, about how certain moments get etched in memory, by Rachel Carson when on her deathbed wrote a farewell letter to a friend: ‘For me it was one of the loveliest of the summer’s hours, and all details will remain in my memory; the blue September sky, the sounds of wind in the spruces and the surf on the rock, the gulls busy with their foraging, alighting with deliberate grace, the distant views of Griffith’s Head and Todd point, today so clearly etched though once half seen in swirling fog.’

Multiple traits of leadership are touched upon through the 5 lives- cheerfulness and positive attitude during difficult times, creating ‘distance’ from a team, nimbleness in terms of goals to react to the environment. The leader has to ‘define the crisis’ – first for themselves, and then for the people involved. There’s a point around avoiding the ‘seduction of the single definitive answer’. Except for Shackleton, four others are excellent communicators, either oratorically or through the written word, or both. ‘Right action requires taking a long pause and considering how one can do the most good. This always entails putting one’s gifts and experience to their best use’. The ability to create and sustain an effective community. Effectiveness as a human: Everyday kindness, humour, humility and accessibility. The need to move beyond data and facts to translate information into knowledge, knowledge to understanding, and understanding to wisdom.

Those who live an adventurous life do various crazy things out of the norm. When Lincoln reached ‘Springfield’, a colleague from state legislature offered the newcome free meals at is Springfield home, and for five years Lincoln ate there free of charge. Earlier in his life, at ‘New Salem’, he took on wrestlers from a neighboring village in front of a large crowd. The author Nancy uses a nice word to describe him- an ‘autodictat’ – one who learns by himself. Lincoln shook hands with 6,000 patients at a hospital, after the war. And after that as a show of strength, he chopped wood with an axe. A feat which soldiers could not repeat. Bonhofffer, a priest in Nazi Germany and one of the five, suddenly wonders , ‘his mind turned to Mahatma Gandhi, and he wondered if the time had come for him to take a sabbatical in India’.

Although not its main thrust, the book satisfyingly dwells upon other big themes such as history, religion and ecological conservation. Apparently, Lincoln’s assassination stopped a clean healing process post the Civil war, and the book speculates that even the current racial issues in US might have not existed had Lincolns assassination not happened. Gurucharan Das expressed a view about Gandhi’s untimely death, saying that Gandhi was the only ‘Liberal’ in India who was not English speaking elite, and with his death the concepts of ‘liberalism’ did not reach the masses in India.  When it comes to religion, Bonhoffer redefines Christianity as ‘not focused on man’s salvation after death but rather on man’s life on earth’, ‘deal with life and goodness rather than death and guilt’. He came up with a ‘non religious’ interpretation of Christianity, which ‘presented man with the challenge to serve those who are powerless, oppressed and reviled- in short, those who suffer’ . In Rachel Carson’s life, we see how scientific temperament of the masses is shaped by journalist-scientists such as Rachel Carson, and publications such as Scientific American. I asked C, a relative and a prof at IIT, if such publications and writers exist in India. He mentioned a publication from IISc, which we scanned through and decided to be more technical than a layman would like. Carson’s ‘The sea around us’ , which was a book on the wonders of marine life, reached #1 on the New York bestseller list.  

So, I recommend this book, but it won’t be smooth sailing. Apt, for that’s the situation Mr Shackleton encountered.

Labels: Books

# posted by Ashwin Ravikumar @ 6:31 PM