CHAPTER 11

LEARNING TO EMBRACE THE CHAOS AT THE KITCHEN TABLE

You’re not going to get there
in a straight line.

Sometimes we are held back from pursuing a path out of fear of taking a chance, or by the perceived risk of deviating from the status quo. But is the status quo really that static?

I recently learned a lesson, not in India but at my dad’s kitchen table: the most fundamental principle governing our existence is that we are born by sheer luck, randomness, and chance. We didn’t get here in a straight line and we’re not going to move forward in a straight line.

We have been living in the fabric of chaos all our lives, without realizing it. Chaos determines our birth; our meeting of friends, partners, and colleagues; and some of life’s greatest experiences. Why are we fighting it? Why are we stressing out trying to control something that has brought us into this world and has introduced us to the people we love?

After making a handful of trips to India over a number of years, I was thinking about how to move forward in my career. I thought of taking a chance at something new I was considering. The pros-and-cons debate went on in my head for what seemed like forever, and with each passing week I was getting increasingly anxious. I was weighing each aspect, each trait; I dissected every possibility, any potential consequence of a step forward.

Then the phone rang. My dad was on the line, asking me to pick up the kids from his house a little earlier than usual because he had a doctor’s appointment. He wanted my help looking through myriad test results, MRI reports, drug benefit plans—the usual chaos of navigating health care for an aging parent for whom I was responsible. It had been a routine doctor’s appointment but he wanted my perspective.

When I arrived, we sat together at the kitchen table going through all the papers from the various doctors’ visits. I couldn’t make sense of it—and I also just didn’t want to. Bigger issues of my own were weighing heavily on my mind.

My dad noticed my lack of concentration and focus and asked, “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, Pop. All good.” I didn’t want him to worry. I was supposed to be looking after him, not the other way around.

“How were your trips lately? Where did you go in India? How’s the blog and writing coming along?”

“Oh, nowhere special. I’m writing about all our experiences in India over the years. That trip up the mountain to visit Vaishno Devi. I spent a day in the field with a sales rep in Mumbai and went to see some crazy hospitals. Then I went to a village. That was kind of fun, but scary. And, well, actually I visited a guru in this village a few hours from Mumbai.”

As I was telling him about my experiences, some of which he had experienced with me, he leaned back, smiled, and started to ask me questions as if he himself had been on a similar journey: “Is that place still there?” “Is that hole-in-the-wall restaurant still near the bus stop?” “Did the guru look at your hand or was he more of an adviser?”

“You’ve been to these places, Pop?” I asked innocently.

“Sure, some of them sound very familiar.”

“How did you go to Mumbai?” I asked. I somehow thought he had never left the village where I was born.

“Sure I went there, and lots of other places, even though we eventually landed in Rampur, where you were born. But I started . . .”

As he began to explain his own life journey, I realized that I had never really asked him about his experiences. I kind of knew in general but I had never heard the tale in such vivid detail as he was telling me now. Or maybe I had never paid close enough attention. I guess I wasn’t really ready to receive it in my younger years. Now, in my forties, I was a father myself and at a crossroads in my life.

My father’s journey was in chaos from the beginning. He bounced around among distant family members in different villages and small towns throughout a handful of areas in India, searching for a job. Through economic turmoil, political strife, famine, health disasters, poverty, violent eruptions, and drought, my father moved around, kept trying and searching, finally landing a job as an accounting clerk at a bank. Through a completely random series of events, he found himself in a small job in a small town in the middle of nowhere.

In that small town, he met his future wife—my mom—by sheer chance. In those days, a boy met a girl through their parents or family members and the two were not allowed to date or speak to each other. A decision was made about the other person based on knowledge of the person’s family.

I was intrigued to learn so much about my dad over the kitchen table, and I began to see him in a different light. Parts of his story were similar to a number of experiences on my own journey. This conversation was richer in detail because it was rich in resonance.

“What’s the real problem, son?” he asked after finishing his story.

“I don’t know, Pop. It’s a crazy world out there these days. Hearing your story makes me realize that you didn’t have it any easier back then. I mean, it seems like the ‘good old days’ weren’t as good as I thought.

“My problem is that I am trying to figure out how to go ahead with a life and career decision. It feels like I’m taking a big chance and I’m not sure if I should do it or not. I’m trying to cover all the angles and figure out how things will turn out.”

Without even asking me the topic of my great introspection, he smiled and said, “You know, every day I get up and give thanks for the chance I’ve been given in my life, where I came from and where we are now, having the Dairy Queen store where your mom and I love going to work every single day. We are really very lucky. What are you so afraid of? Look at how I happened to find myself, out of all places, in that town, where I met your mom and we got married.

“Don’t you get it? You were born by chance. And you have been living in a world full of chance. Why are you so afraid of something that brought you into this world in the first place?”