Do teachers teach you? Or do you learn from them?

There's a difference.

Experience is a mentor.

Luck is a mentor

Knowledge is a mentor.

Anything or anyone who changes your world view is a mentor.

Once you realise that, you'll find a whole lineup.

And the question to ask is not who can be my mentor

But what I want to learn.

A meme can be a mentor.

A quote on a website can change your point of view

We all know that before-after moment.

It happens without any warning.

You have a realisation and then, you can't go back to your old state of mind.

We tend to think of mentors as people.

But there's simply no reason to wait for the right person to come along.

Maybe your teacher is a kid in school

Who opens your mind by asking a question

Or a shopkeeper in a small town.

Who explains inventory in a way the text books never could.

What's profound or ordinary depends on the way you see things

Mentors are not trying to change your life. 

That you have to manage entirely on your own.

The great human convergence

I avoid crowds by choice.

But I'm surprised at the number of crowd experiences that people willingly gather for.

The biggest one of course is in India.

60-80 million people converged at Prayag Raj for the Kumbh Mela in 2019

They take a holy dip to break the cycle of life and death at the most auspicious time.

A cycle repeated once every 12 years

A city is born and disperses within weeks.

The scale at which it is mounted got researchers at Harvard to come over and study for themselves the phenomenon in action

Beliefs are still the foundations of being human.

What we're drawn to. And what holds us all together.

Perfect strangers, who may actually speak to only to a handful of people during the entire trip.

All of whom have their own stories and reality.

There is obviously something deeper at work here.

Like the migrations of massive numbers of birds from one region to another driven by instinct.

Maybe its all in the DNA

Some of us prefer the smaller convergence of music festivals and literary gatherings.

With deeper conversation but fewer numbers.

Or the silent spiritual unification with a higher plane.

It's all in the mind

We're not rational people

We're good at rationalising. At explaining our decisions

With balanced and analytical reasoning

Not bowing to our emotions

And yet, small obsessions betray us

We chase bragging rights for everything from yoga teachers to exotic holidays

It shouldn't matter if our neighbors buy a swanky new car

We don't need to be in lockstep with fashion trends

There are games being played in real life all the time

Who we know, where our children study, what marks they got

Accents should not disqualify people

And merit should not be a pedigree

None of this would matter if we were rational.

We'd look at ourselves in the mirror and make assessments.

What our good and bad features are.

Baldness would be a condition, not a permanent background whimper

We hurt when people laugh politely at our jokes.

Or worse,  when we trip up on punchlines

We suck our breath in every time we pose for pictures

Being irrational explains everything

Our dreams. Our phobias. Our obsessions.

Our need to be loved and wanted over everything else

The insecurities that never disappear

That's why we never give up

Even when we know what we chase is impossible.

And yet, we never take our foot off the accelerator

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