The importance of humility

I grew up in a family where we didn't feel comfortable going to our parents for help. My hope is that I wasn't that kind of father but I'm sure I was, at least to some extent.

I can count on one hand the times I reached out to my baba (dad) for help. Perhaps there were more and I just remember the more memorable ones? But overall, I think my dad didn't excel at commiseration. I generally felt like I was being talked down to.

One of my vivid memories is going to the living room where my dad used to sit in his standard spot on the couch and asking him to help me with the equation of a line. He certainly helped clear a lot of my doubts and explained what y = mx + b really means. 

Not to bore you to death, but briefly, y is the vertical position of any spot on a line and x is the horizontal position of that spot (aka point for math junkies). If you assume m=0 and b=0, you get y = x, which means you get a 45 degree line sloping about half way up like a javelin.

From there you vary m and b to get very different sorts of javelins pointing in the most unexpected directions.

Anyway, I think I learned something about algebra, but I also learned not to humiliate myself too often. That's because the first thing he said before finally turning into the helpful dad I was seeking was "What? You don't know that?"

I'm sure that I am a product of that upbringing and my kids will say, hey that's exactly how we felt when we came to you for help!

Therefore, we can't change things overnight. But hopefully we can change them gradually.

Another time I asked my dad to help me understand a chapter on African history that I was really not interested in reading (even more so than any other history) and the exam was tomorrow!

I was young (maybe grade 10 or so) and you could entice me with American history (a place I aspired to go to or looked up to) but not so much African history. Wanting to learn African history requires a bit more maturity and I commend our high school curriculum developers for including it in the syllabus.

In order to help me face my exam the next day, my dad wrote a beautiful 1-pager summary on African history that blew me away!

I was able to breathe again and restore hope in the idea that I won't fail tomorrow's history exam.

This can become a very long story but let me try to keep it to the size of a blog post.

In many ways, my younger brother Harmeet was the shining star in our family. My achievements were sporadic. But he was a consistent all-rounder. He was on the school's district champion soccer team, the top academic performer in the publicly held grade 10 exams (boards, as they call it in India), a model son and citizen who (unlike me) never got into any sort of trouble.

He was on track to become headboy at Delhi's prestigious Modern School Vasant Vihar, which we both attended from grades 1 to 12. That was a big deal. If you're not familiar with the concept of prefects and headboys (because it's primarily a British concept inherited by India), trust me -- it's a very big deal.

But my parents moved him to a highly competitive school (Delhi Public School Rama Krishna Puram) just so that he could be part of their Ability Section, famed for getting its students into the top colleges like IIT (Indian Institute of Technology).

In my humble opinion, the move to DPS was unnecessary and shook Harmeet's rhythm, He was put into an environment where he was no longer the star, far from it. The focus was too intently on academics and not balanced like it was at MSVV. That sort of sudden change is hard to deal with. Malcolm Gladwell has a theory in one of his books that suggests that you're better off being a star in a B school than being a dud in an A school.

I felt the same way when I went to IIT Roorkee. Everyone was smart. But I think my biggest problem was the absence of hot showers. More on that in another blog post.

The Roorkee decision was my own, to the extent kids in India make their own decisions without feeling pressure from their parents. But the DPS decision was likely very strongly pushed by my dad in order to ensure Harmeet's success the JEE exams for entry into the IITs.

Eventually, Harmeet did get in to IIT Roorkee but chose to attend the prestigious Delhi School of Planning and Architecture. I feel that was also under pressure from my dad. But no big deal. He finished that and then switched to computer science for his masters because that was probably more inline with his calling and also a more marketable college degree.

Ultimately, the goal of this long ass blog post is to say don't push your kids to success just to bolster your own image. Be kind (not condescending) in how you offer help. Humility always pays off and arrogance generally leads to embarrassment, disappointment, and failure.

So, encourage and guide your kids (and yourself) to be the best with humility and a deep desire to keep learning and growing.