Soulmateship

What is the best way to say thank you when someone very close to you has been helpful to you? Should I buy them a gift? Should I perhaps send flowers? Maybe. I am sure that a gesture like that will touch them. And yet I feel that expressing gratitude to someone who's very close to my heart, who has always been there for me and who I am certain will continue to be there for me is not just about gestures - above all it is about deeds. It's about all I have done for that person and more importantly all that I will do. It's about all the advice that I have given them and more importantly all the advice that I will give them. It's about striving to become a better person and helping them to achieve the same. And it's about continuing to complement them as they complement me. This is what 'soulmateship' is all about, pure and simple.

My Personal Social Responsiblity Strategy – A Letter to Myself

Dear Mario,

I hope you are swell. Since I know that when you open this letter you will be ten years older and the year will be 2020, I will dispense my advice succinctly because I know that your bedtime is 10 PM and the attention span of men in their late 30’s tends to be much shorter than when you were pulling all-nighters in college.

I can see that you’ve made it. You have a wonderful family to which you are totally devoted. Your mom gets along with your wife and it is quite fortunate that the two of them don’t share a common language. Your father is still buzzing with pride because you named your firstborn son, Georgi, after him as it should be according to Bulgarian tradition. Nice house you got there as well, and that in Mayfair – the one neighbourhood in London where everyone speaks with the poshest of British accents. I know you miss New York, Berlin and Buenos Aires but think about how lucky you’ve been to be able to live in all those places. And let’s not forget the best one of them – Chapel Hill.

Indeed it is great to see that you’ve accomplished so many of the goals that you set for yourself when you decided to go $100 000 in debt when you came to business school, a number that I am sure still haunts you when you look at your monthly bank statements. However, let me take a step further and analyze the kind of personal qualities that enabled you to get there. No, you were never a finance genius as all members of your study group can recall, you were never a case study superstar and when you thought you had drawn your best picture in art class as a kid you had to settle for a stellar C-. But if people needed someone to bring different disciplines together and to connect the dots between economics, politics, history and business then you’d be the one to talk to. In addition to that your ability to thrive in diverse team environments has allowed you to navigate the treacherous currents of many professional environments. And then, of course, there is your adaptability. No matter where you go and no matter what you do you adapt. You had to learn it the hard way ever since that one August morning in 2001 when you entered your college dorm room with nothing but your two suitcases and realized that you’d be spending an entire year in the same room with a complete stranger from the Garden State of New Jersey.

However, it is fair to say that during the heady days of your youth you were not always able to link those qualities to the things you did that impacted the world around you. Let me refresh your memory – International Business Association at UNC, The Net Impact Greening Committee, Habitat, volunteering through the Bulgarian Business Club in London, the Davidson College Student Government, teaching basic German to K12 kids in Davidson and the list goes on and on. I hope you’ve been true to your promise to change that.

You have always been a firm believer in ‘equality of opportunity’ especially when it comes to helping people who never had the kind of fortunate start in life that you enjoyed and I am convinced that you’ve been able to use your personal qualities to make a difference. For example, I imagine you doing that by advising the Bulgarian government on ways to provide better and more practical education for children from the Roma minority using your background in economics and business but also appreciating the historical sensitivities related to that group of people. Or I could see you successfully implementing World Bank projects in Asia and Africa. I also want to remind you of the promise to spend a week each year teaching basic business skills in developing countries. Most importantly, don’t forget your commitment to pass on the belief that equal opportunities for all make our society a better one to your kids as this is the one tangible long-term outcome of all your efforts that you’ve always thought you could at least strive for. And, of course, I hope you’ve been sending checks to Davidson College and UNC on a regular basis!



Sincerely,

Your younger, less cynical self

The Pursuit of HappYness

In the movie 'The Pursuit of HappYness' Will Smith's character often refers to the famous lines from the Declaration of Independence and talks about how it is the pursuit that matters more rather than happiness itself, however we all we define it. To me the question is not whether this is true or not but why it is so. Is it because we spend our lives pursuing things rather than enjoying the fruits of our labor? Or perhaps because all too often the long-desired happiness doesn't turn out to be happiness after all? In many ways both of these statements are true. But for me the heart of the matter lies elsewhere. The pursuit matters more because the way we set out to achieve happiness individually ends up defining us as personalities and, viewed collectively, shapes our society. Indeed a lot can be said about a man's character by the way he accomplishes his dreams and I know for a fact that I've learned a lot about myself that way. Nonetheless, I also know that I need to be asking myself a lot more frequently the question how my pursuit shapes the society I live in and how it can affect it positively. We all need to ask ourselves that question, even Will Smith's character who goes through hell to achieve his own version of happYness.

I just crossed paths on the street with David Axelrod, the architect of Obama's campaign. As I was walking past him my mind switched into 'Memento' gear and started reconstructing (or making wild guesses about) his day so far. He had no spring in his step and that made me think that perhaps he had started his Sunday with a jog that had taken its tall on him. Perhaps after the jog he had seen the latest polling data, which had been so disastrous for the Democrats that that he had decided to drop his plans for a quiet Sunday at home and go to work instead. On his way to work it is possible that he had what he thought was a 'game-changing' strategy trick and that had gotten him so excited so as to take this straight to the President and Rahm E. The strategy would turn out to be an easy sell. And maybe as we crossed paths he was all too aware that the new strategy would need a lot of work and that he would have no quiet Sundays for God knows how long.

Or perhaps I am just being completely presumptuous and he is simply a slow walker.