This post is published on Max Life's igenius blog #promisepapa
“Dad, what is your
purpose in life? What do you want to be remembered for?”
It took me 40 years to ask this question to my father. Why
so long? Seems like a harmless question, anyways.
Looking back, my dad was the role model in our house and in
our neighborhood – everybody wanted to be like dad. He was handsome (was called
as rajkumar – “prince”, I was told) and he was well liked by everybody and as a
kid I would swell up with pride if anybody said “Ruma is like her dad”. That, for me, was the ultimate compliment
anybody could ever give me.
And I closely watched my dad and emulated his behavior as
best as I could. Quite early on, I made up my mind never to express my emotions,
particularly anger – after all I have never ever known my dad to be angry! It
was my dad who we would go to as kids, who we would hide behind if we knew we
had done something wrong, who we would call for when we were sick because we
knew he would patiently rock us to sleep, who would cheer us from the audience
during the annual parents day event at school. It was dad who introduced my
sister and me to rock music – our first music album gifted to us by dad was Michael
Jackson’s ‘Bad’ and it was from dad, I picked up the passion of following
sports - I diligently watched every cricket, football and tennis match on
television and everything else in between.
I completely adored my dad, so much so that I think there
was an unsaid competition between me and sister as to who could be more like
dad – his patience, his amiability was legendary.
When did the Shift
Happen?
And as all kids grow up, so did I and went off to college. I
remember saying goodbye to my dad on the foyer of my college hostel and while I
was looking forward to step into a devilishly exciting world of college and
living in a hostel with all my ‘Malory Towers’ literature behind me, I still
remember my father’s concerned eyes and his face that said it all that he did
not like leaving behind one of his dear daughters behind. (The journey back home for him must have been devastating and must have
played havoc on his emotions.) And this is where I realized I changed from
being a daughter under a father’s protection to being an independent woman with
my own identity.
Strangely, it was my mom whom I first told about how I had
fallen in love in college – perhaps I was embarrassed to tell my dad. And I can
never truly fathom the depth of my father’s inner conflict since then whenever
I went back to college or when I graduated and went further away for work.
Does it happen with every daughter that as she grows older,
she slowly drifts away farther from dad and closer to mom?
While I drifted farther and farther away from my dad, living
my own life, so to speak, I hardly thought about the inner conflicts that my
dear father had had to go through watching his little girl go independent. I
was so busy living my own life that I failed to notice the exact moment when
the shift happened and my dad, who was amiability personified, was actually taking
on conflicts head on – (perhaps that was
when all the kids left home!) I suppose in the course of living his own
life for his children, somewhere he stopped living for himself (or did he?).
And always, his inner voice of ‘reality’ always held him back from truly
breaking free and coming alive.
What do I mean by that?
It is all about
emotions
While I had practiced controlling my emotions since
childhood, as I went further up the leadership ladder, I realized that as a
leader and as a woman, particularly in sales, trust is the key ingredient and
trust is gained not by being a robot but by being a human. And it is only
robots who can be tuned to have only happy emotions! Where is the
vulnerability? So, what is it that I had been practicing? Had I been wrong in
following dad’s example? Of course not. And yet….
In the days of yore, leadership had a different connotation
and with Generation X, Generation Y and now the Millennial Generation,
leadership has an entirely opposite meaning. The impact of any leader is the
supposed to be the same but how one makes the journey is important. Being
authentic is the key!
So, how can one be
authentic, when we try to ‘control’?
It was only years later when I myself was going through a
mid-life moment that I asked myself “What
is the purpose of my life? What kind of impact do I want to make in life?”
And while I went on a journey of awareness and self-discovery, one day I went
home and popped the question to my dad “Dad,
what is your purpose of life? What do you want to be remembered for?”
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