Santhosh's ramblings

This October 10th was different.   October 10th has always been a special day because it’s my wife’s birthday. However, this year was unique. From the morning onward, reminders started pouring in from friends, colleagues, and others about World Mental Health Day 2024, which also falls on October 10th—specifically focused on mental health in the workplace. I began to wonder, “Is there a problem with my leadership style? Am I making life difficult for the people around me?” (I do have my own mental health challenge, which I’ve learned to live with, but I never thought I was making others miserable!)   Last night, I had a conversation with a young man working on a school project. His project was about developing a tool to address study-related stress among adolescents—a handheld device that provides visual reminders and is soft enough to use for stress relief. Meanwhile, my phone keeps reminding me, “Time for mindfulness.”  We also have someone in our workplace who rece...

This blog is for those who have seen Inside Out 2. If you haven’t watched it yet, you should—then come back and read this! I’m not an official agent of Pixar promoting their movies, but some films are worth talking about.  😊   After 10 years, four (plus one) new emotions suddenly emerge. I wonder, where were they all these years? Were they suppressed by the overwhelming Joy, Fear, and Sadness? Who knows? It took Pixar 10 years to let them out.  😊  These emotions are Anxiety, Envy, Ennui, and Embarrassment. The one emotion that keeps trying to surface but gets pushed back by these new kids on the block is the one I identify with most these days—Nostalgia. I’ve been reflecting on this a lot lately. As you grow older, there’s a tendency to live in the past—the good old days!  Recently, two statements challenged me: "Burn your bridges every season of life" and a quote from Thomas Merton: "We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we ...

This is the “report” of a recent faith-based health worker gathering—not the typical blog! I was compelled by what I witnessed over the last two days to write down three key observations and learnings.   The gathering brought together doctors, nurses, administrators, allied health professionals, data managers, priests, sisters, and laypeople, all engaged in listening to one another. While the structure of the system had its usual strong hierarchy, much like any healthcare system, what stood out to me was the absence of an "us vs. them" mentality. They were all there to learn from each other—nurses working alone in remote and challenging areas, administrators struggling with the sustainability of large institutions, and doctors stretched to their limits. It was a community of learning and growth!   When will I learn to live without an "us vs. them" mentality? In my mind, I often divide people into 'us' and 'them'—categories that seem justified by my o...

For the last 10 days, I was ‘Rat–tracted’—completely distracted by a rat in the kitchen. I tried everything to catch, kill, or chase it out! Nothing worked. Finally, thinking it had left, I sealed all the potential entry points, only to find it was still there, destroying exhaust fans and gnawing through every plastic utensil.   I lost money dealing with it, lost sleep over it, and even lost my inner peace. I started waking up in the middle of the night, hearing imagined rat-running noises! Like any good Christian, I began praying about it since nothing else had worked. Then, one morning, my better half suggested, "Just calm down, keep the doors open, and see if it goes out." To my surprise, it worked! I should have listened and done that earlier.    But this rat distraction taught me some valuable lessons about distractions in life. For those of us who generally have our lives under control, peace-draining distractions aren’t usually major issues—they’re small things, li...

As we age, various challenges inevitably arise. Two things that stand out for me these days are clothes and hair.   Clothes are interesting—when you go shopping, you often find slim fit, narrow fit, tight fit, and other styles that our generation didn’t grow up with. But this also becomes an excuse to "renew your youth." You buy these clothes, telling people you have no other choice, but in your heart, you’re happy because you’re following the current trend! Carl Trueman wrote, “If no eighteen-year-old male believes himself to be immortal, no middle-aged male wants to appear any older than he was twenty years ago… it would seem that the market for youth clothing (albeit with slightly expanded waistline sizes) is alive and well long into the territory previously reserved for the superannuated and beyond.” Hair issues are different. Greying and thinning hair is part of aging. But every time I go for a haircut, the barber suggests coloring, a comb-over, and other new methods to ...

I hear the word “meltdown” quite a bit these days, at least in some of the circles I move in. For some of you, this might be a new term. When I was growing up, I knew of only three types of meltdowns.   The first was the wax of a candle melting down—something that happened daily in our house due to the frequent load shedding in those days. The second was the danger of a nuclear meltdown, a concern that arose as we grew up amidst the construction of many nuclear reactors and the arm flexing of nuclear powers. And lastly, we heard about snow melting down, which led to flash floods in the northern regions of the country.   Each of these has its own distinct character. The wax melting down is intentional; it was created to melt down and, in the process, to keep giving light. Eventually, when all the wax is gone, the light burns out, leaving behind only the burnt remnants of the wick. But this burnout happens only at the end of the candle's life—until then, it keeps burning on!...

A few events happened over the last two days, which give reason for these reflections.   Yesterday, in an online training forum, I was there early, and a friend from a remote nation was also present. As we waited for others to join, I asked the customary question left to us by the British, “How are you?” Before I could finish my question, he had returned the same question. I gave my regular answer: "Good." So, I asked again, "How are you?" His response was not what I expected. He said, "The week has been tough; some catastrophic events happened at work, and I am still recovering." He did not want to explain further, so I said sorry and left it.   This morning, I received a message from an old acquaintance from whom we had asked for some help on a work-related issue. The message started like this: "Things have piled up unexpectedly, and I am at my wit's end." An unusual message from such a senior person.   It is not often that either I or othe...