Memorable conversations

I met with many friends and colleagues during my stay in DC. Some conversations are shallow, to catch up, to vent. In between them, few made me pause and absorb.

1. She’s ready to let her mom go. She’s my closest friend in the US. She’s taking care of two aging/sick parent. Her mom had two strokes and is not herself anymore. My friend told me that she’s ready to let her mom any day now. If anything seems odd, she’d just make her mom feel comfortable, not rushing to ER as she used to be. It felt heavy when I heard about it, mix of emotions came furiously, yet I know my friend and I know where she comes from. We are at the stage of life that losing aging parents will be part of the norm.
2. Equal duties as parent. I spent an afternoon with my grad school friend and his family. I know the wife since the beginning. They have two kids, 3 and 5. We went to a club for lunch that had a beautiful golf course. I asked him why he doesn’t play golf as another common friend of us (E, who has 3 kids). My friend A said: We have a different arrangement than E. E’s wife doesn’t work, she looks after the kids so E can play golf with his friends. I don’t feel comfortable to ask G (his wife) to take care of the kids alone. Food for thoughts. I was not entirely surprised by his comments, but surprised nonetheless. I know him from his 20s, single, partying every weekend. So I didn’t know this aspect of him, as parent.
3. Biggest takeaway of meditation. I ran with a colleague, the only runner that is as serious into running as me in our unit. He is in Kuala Lumpur so I don’t get to run with him often. Whenever we are in the same city, we do. During our 10 miles run, we chatted about our routines, life, work thoughts, etc. I got to know he meditates 1-2 hrs a day, one in the morning one before bed. It’s a luxury to do that obviously but I fully understand. We both agreed that the biggest benefits of meditation is to be able to realize our own thoughts, be comfortable with the uncomfortable.
4. We were so naive. The running colleague shared his story when he left US (our HQ) to go to Malaysia. He said he left his belonging in his DC office thinking he’d come back after 3-4 years. The assistant told him: you think you’ll come back? You are so cute (naive)! hahahaha.. I laughed out so much. I also thought we’d come back after our 4 years assignment in the Philippines. Well… I don’t think I’ll ever want to go back to HQ, at least that’s our thinking now. Maybe we will change our mind later, again.
5. Promotions are 99% luck. My mentor told me about it but I was skeptical. Yet, I’ve heard 3 stories last week of people getting promotion and luck was 99.9% the reason. I’m in a comfortable place, a promotion would be good, but I’ll not kill myself to up my chance for 1%.
6. How to joggle multiple balls? My runner colleague who recently married asked me how do I juggle work, family, hobbies, friendships? I said: I drop the balls. Once I define what are my non-negotiable (my family, quality time with the girls, be there for them on big milestones, take care of them when they are sick), my self care (sleep, exercise), it’s easy to drop the other balls (being the best employee, have an active social life, date nights with husband in a regular basis, going out). I guess my trick is to not be ambitious, not wanting to have it all.

by the way.. jet lag is on strong. I took 2 hrs nap on Sunday afternoon as I was totally not functional after lunch, and asked Sofia to wake me up after 2 hrs. Then I went back to sleep as my usual time (8pm) to wake up 1am. Sigh…

But I am riding it so much better this round, as I am with my people, full of love and laugh. 🙂