Discussing Love on a Lake

We discussed love while rowing on a freshly painted boat on Phewa Lake in Nepal.

He rowed. And I pretended I knew how to.

In the far distance, we could make out the faint outlines of the Annapura, the more accessible mountain range of the mythical Himalayas, which stood proud and silent on that hazy spring day.

Alex steered our boat around the small island that held the non-descript Hindu temple, dressed up like a blushing schoolgirl for the tourists, while we gazed upwards towards the pearly white Buddhist stupa planted up on a neighboring hill.

Sandwiched between the two symbols, we talked of love in the abstract. In the practical. In the religious.

I asked Alex what he knew about Buddhism. He shared with me the few tenets that he knew, most notably that of non-attachment.

I leaned back and frowned at a memory of a dear friend who recently embraced Buddhism. A year ago, she was bitterly and vocally unhappy with her marriage because of a void of understanding, touch, love, and common ideals.  She had dreamed of something different and contemplated divorce. Now, with the smile of the recently converted playing on her lips, she preached non-attachment to me in a crowded, cheap Italian restaurant. While her rambunctious 7 year old son screamed and kicked for his mom's iPhone, she patted him absentmindedly and explained to me why she was happy now. The key was letting go. All couples, regardless of the quality of their relationship, would end up apart at the end of mortal life. So why obsess about the journey? If she stopped hoping for love, then she would not despair over the deafening silence between them. Or the late nights she waited up for him to come home. Or the lack of gentleness.

If she stopped being attached to her husband, then she would be happy.

I swirled around my cream of mushroom soup with the tin spoon, hiding the torrent of anger behind my masked attempt to understand her sentiments. I wanted to scream that she was giving up. That she was settling for a shell of a happy life. We ended our lunch early because her son whined about going to the arcades and snatched my spoon to drum out his demands. I also grew weary of my curious burst of anger.

Alex listened quietly to my story and disillusionment with the concept of letting go.

I passionately argued that at least for myself, I either cared all the way or didn't care at all. Despite my parents cautioning temperance and 'it's just a job' whenever I cried on the phone because I wasn't sure how much more I could physically/ emotionally give to my work, I would still dip into my bank of inner reserve and drum out more energy to find solutions to never-ending problems. Or how I kept reaching out to a family member with a hopeful tentativeness even though she's hung up on me multiple times.

Isn't that what love is? I asked urgently. Not letting go?

In between a few more gentle paddles to maneuver us to a quiet alcove, Alex mused that love, in its ultimate form, is one of letting go of expectations of outcomes. It is the unconditional love that Christ spoke of, because He still loves us eternally regardless of our actions. He brought up the example of a proverbial modern mom who became angry because despite repeated reminders, the daughter was not practicing her instrument. The motive was love and hope that the daughter would develop her talents. But the anger arose because the daughter was not conforming to a set image the mom had crafted. Love, within the context of our conversation, would be for the mom to let go of the story she had weaved in her mind about her reality and instead persevere in love through the difficult, messy, and wonderfully unplotted life she ended up sharing with her daughter.

On our way paddling back to the muddy shores, I scanned the lake for the attachments in my life and saw them splayed out across the rippled surface of the the deepening water. Tangled in my thoughts, I decided to throw my stories, chained to their imagined endings, overboard and just let them sink to the bottom of Phewa. I decided to try to love in the best way I knew how and let things happen as they may. I would let go but not give up.

Across the lake, a proper Nepali storm was rolling in, a harbinger of the monsoon season.

Don't Play the Victim

I once loved a boy.

People thought we were really cute together. We thought so too. We would both get so pumped about the same things, volleying our excitement back and forth with wild gestures, and yet get so incredibly mad at completely different things, scattering confusion and hurt in our wake.

Sometimes he would make an offhand comment that would sting in the tender and secret places. I loved him so I didn't make a big deal out of it. I knew he didn't mean it that way so what was the point of brining it up? Since I cared, I would brush it off.

But the comments would continue - not because he knew they hurt, but because he didn't know they hurt. He was just being funny.

Meanwhile, I swallowed one and another and another till I was ready to burst with resentment. Even though I knew that he didn't have bad intentions, I started to question why he wasn't sensitive enough to figure it out. I wondered if that's what he really thought of me. I instinctively flinched every time the topic came up because I was mentally expecting to be hurt. I started to doubt whether we were good together. And so we weren't so good together anymore.

A few years and some growing up later, I realized that I had purposefully played the victim, even though I didn't realize it.

Ironically, in the name of love, I jeopardized our relationship. I wasn't fair to him because I judged him more and more and he had absolutely no idea. When you play the victim, you are turning your loved ones into attackers. That is not fair to them or to you because they didn't even know they were in the arena in the first place.

Sometimes, being faithful to somebody you care about means not giving yourself an opportunity to be a victim. If you really want a meaningful relationship, whether with friends, family, boyfriends or colleagues, you have to be ready to teach others how to love you.

Take the time to carefully explain why a certain comment bothers you and how you prefer they rephrase it. Bring it up (lovingly) right when it happens so it's a low risk conversation. Here are some phrases I try to use:

'Hey, by the way, can you explain to me why you said that? Right now, it makes me feel X" 

"I don't think you mean it this way, but it makes me feel a little judged. Do you really feel that way about me?"

"That kind of hurts. I think it's because I'm having a hard time with ____ right now."

"Honestly, I need some time to process it alone and then I will love to discuss it with you. So can you not ask me about it in the mean time? I feel pressure when people ask me about it."

Hint: it helps when you're saying these things while smiling or touching them reassuringly (except when it's a colleague)

Most of the time, the other person will be genuinely surprised that her comment has that effect and if she cares, she will do her best to change her future approach.

And yes, it will be easier to brush it off this time. But how about the next time? You need to take a stand for your relationships and fight for them. Taking the initiative to have those tough and awkward conversations. Show how you want to be loved. Don't play the victim. You and your loved one deserve more than that.

72 Hours of a Startup

Day One

We sat around in bean bag circles, sort of like a benign underground brotherhood of nerds, and volleyed questions back and forth on the next steps of gamifying our apps. We argued passionately for elements that should be in there, weighed it carefully against our actual IT development capacity, and sketched out/ erased/ redrew UI designs on our glass walls. Man, assumptions. We had too many assumptions about the blue collar workers and the HR. So we jotted down the ones that we needed to test and braced ourselves for the humbling and fascinating discovery of their actual behaviors. 

We're trying to go more lean in our product development. Fail fast. Succeed faster. We're very good at the failing, so so on the fast, and blah on the succeed. But we're good at learning and applying. A gamification professor from Columbia University hung out with us while we went through this process so we could pummel him with questions as he chowed down on cold pizza.

I spent the afternoon interviewing candidates, so we could fill our empty chairs and dramatically increase our capacity. We're projected to double by the end of the year, expand to 95 next year, and grow to 200 ish by 2015. That meant a lot of interviews. And a lot of tears (from the interviewees). We're super picky about our candidates because we wanted to not only hire talent, but also potential and cultural fit. So we did interview panels, where regardless of whether you were a receptionist, a finance manager, a product developer, or a salesperson, you had a chance to get to know the applicants and pitch in about whether you would want to sit next to this person on a plane for 14 hours.

Then there was the email that sucked out the positive energy of the whole day.

We had hit an unexpected snag in our fundraising, especially when we were so close to tasting the term sheet. Just a delay, with the sincerest regrets. But still. I swallowed acid in my mouth just thinking about doing more client tours with potential investors for due diligence. I stayed slumped on the bean bags until somebody turned the lights off, thinking he was the last one in the office.

Day Two

I woke up uncharacteristically earlier than my alarm, but remained hiding underneath my sheets, holding onto the momentary safety of procrastination. I felt the full vulnerability of building a startup today more than ever and wasn't ready to face it square on.

I tried to give some of my accounts a call in the morning, but couldn't bear to dial back when the line was busy. It was one of those courage zero days.

I dragged my frustrations around the office like rattling cans on a frayed string. The HRD and I finally spilled our concerns to our boss, once again on the bean bags. It felt like we were back to a year ago, when fundraising was at square one and cash flow was a constant, desperate topic. He chuckled and pointed out that we're at a very different place now. We had a working model. Enough cash. Clients who loved us and gave us referrals. Actual products and services to sell. A very supportive board. A team that loved each other.

Oh. And a ping pong table.

I went home and watched a dumb movie, recharging before another conference call at 11 pm. Through a connection of a close friend, I had a call arranged with the CEO of an English learning company to discuss potential collaboration. Ended up with a notepad full of ideas for pushing affordable English programs to blue collar workers. Remembered why I was doing this. All of this. 

Day Three

Still groggy from the late night skype call but woke up at 8 am to talk to a brand name HQ. 

Hallelujah.

A major brand name wanted to work with us and asked us to fly to America to talk to them (honestly, at this point in my brain, I wasn't even thinking about the business opportunity, I was thinking friends + siblings + nieces + burgers). The brand name kept asking what our bandwidth was, how fast we could launch, and how many factories we could handle at the same time.

To those in sales like me, those were the most beautiful questions a client could ask.

This collaboration pushed us closer to our tipping point - the defining moment that could launch us.

The rest of the day was set on fast forward with sales reports, investor briefings, and a panel interview of a designer who teared up when he couldn't give an example of his innovation track record but somehow all the women, but me, voted for him.

Marketing called all hands on deck to help unpack/repack product kits for an upcoming client launch because of an error in printing. Man. We really needed to standardize our processes so we could catch avoidable mistakes like this. Some time while unpacking the 3000 kits, a team member told me it was obvious that I was burning out and that I was stressing out at every one. He told me that people loved me and appreciated my hard work but I had not been acting myself. While my eyes turned watery and my nose red, he said that he wouldn't say this to anybody else, but only to me because he knew that I could do better, since I was Sisi.

I was so tired of being Sisi.

But he was right. I had not been managing my perfectionism and laser focusing it to help the team optimize its performance, instead, I had been letting it manage me and my emotions all summer long.

That night, we grabbed Korean BBQ as a team and as we did our signature group cinnamon twist and yells of "Vegas!" (that's a different story), I realized that I really did belong here. Here where I constantly stretched and shrunk and then stretched some more. Here with people who loved me, forgave my excesses and laughed at my whims. Here dreaming, creating, building something that we're all proud of because we're still young and idealistic enough to brave the roller coaster of a startup 72 hours at a time.

Little Questions for Little Girls

Yesterday as I was performing my sisterly duties of straightening Jody's hair, I asked her about the dress she was getting tailored for the big school dance. We gossiped about the tailor's poor quality and lack of responsiveness while brainstorming hair styles that would go well with her outfit.

Then I looked into the mirror at my favorite 13 year old who grinned back at me, curving her dancing brown eyes into crescent moons shaped like mine. She was growing into a beautiful young woman, alternating between exaggerated confidence/ aggression in basketball and poetry composition and the fidgety awkwardness of figuring out how to smooth out her naturally bouncy locks, checking off yet another intangible prerequisite of popularity.

All of a sudden, I remembered a Huffington Post article that Mike sent me a few days earlier about how we should engage little girls in conversation about what they're thinking rather than what they're wearing.

So, carefully avoiding burning my fingers on her straightening iron, I asked her what she was reading.

Oddly, I was hesitant.

What if she wasn't reading anything at the moment? Did that question make me sound "mom-ish"? Was it too serious for a girly getting-ready-together chatter? Who (apart from book club ladies) would ask that?

She fiddled with her hair tie. I picked another piece of hair to straighten.

Oh, I am reading the Hobbit, but really I'm loving Greek mythology right now.

She told me about the differences in Greek and Egyptian mythological structural patterns. I learned about her favorite Greek Gods and heard some stories with seemingly dubious morals.

Then, she turned around and asked What are you reading?

I shared with her a little about The Innovator's DNA and how I had always wondered if successful entrepreneurs were simply born and not made and whether I could teach myself to become more innovative. As I build our startup, I always felt insecure about being a more delivery-driven nerd and not necessarily the wild hippie innovators that were featured on Time magazine.

In between my little brother walking in to show us his toned abs and asking for an opinion on his tie, we discussed how we could be creative not only with art, but also with processes, people, product, sales, and team building.

As I added the final touches to her hair, Jody turned around and hugged me. Tight.

With Jody at a Palestinian market.

That conversation could have been a forgettable no brainer had I not asked that simple question what are you reading? 

In fact, now I wonder how many such missed opportunities I've had with my sisters and my friends.

Cute dress. Love your hair. OMG I hate you - you're so skinny now! Where did you get that?

Us girls tend to resort to these types of compliments and conversation starters when we see each other. Even though I try to consciously compliment behavior rather than looks (and achievement), I often catch myself falling back into the familiar pattern with the group of teenage girls whom I teach at church.

How we compliment each other matters, regardless of the gender of the recipient, because that's how we communicate what we care about. We send the right message to our girls by first asking the right questions. We can't tell them to ignore what the world tells them about their waistlines or their hair when that's what we point out first with our admiring eyes.

I won't lie - I can never suppress a smile whenever a boyfriend whispers into my ear that I am very attractive to him at that moment. Or when my parents look up and tell me that I look beautiful in that church dress when I walk down the stairs.

So, I'm not saying that we should refrain from noticing and complimenting each other on physical attributes. But we definitely should be more aware of the balance of compliments and conversations we generally have, particularly with our little girls. Because little girls like to please and they please based on what we tell them is pleasing. So please tell them that it's wonderful they are trying so hard to work through those complicated Math questions, or inviting the new kid at school to eat lunch at their table, or signing up for the competitive debate team. Tell them things that matter even if you only have five minutes. Because those five minutes add to 35 minutes every week and 1820 minutes every year - all precious minutes of helping them become the strong, kind, and intelligent women this world needs.

That was my excuse

Jody, recently joined Model United Nations (MUN) at school, a club where kids apply their knowledge of current issues in simulated UN settings. MUN was my big college obsession, so I cannot help but hover a little bit. To help her get started, I send her links for foreign policy articles and set up weekly calls to discuss them.

Yesterday, after a spirited discussion on China and Russia's vetoes of the draft resolutions regarding the Syrian crisis -

Jody: Thanks, Sisi. I really like these calls.

Me: So, is there a particular topic that you want to cover next time? Balance of power in Asia? The differences of peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peacebuilding? A little Security Council background?

Jody: Or you can just tell me how work is going.

Me: . . .

Jody: Sis, you do know that you don't need an excuse to call me right?

Me: What do you mean?

Jody: It's simple. We're sisters.

---

Wow. She's eleven and she takes charge of her relationships. I need a little more of that.

Similar height. But not for long. 

A Breakfast Proposition

She accused him of loving himself, his novels, his casual female friends more than her. He slapped her because she was going to elope with another man. She broke down when he walked out and begged him to stay --

I rubbed my eyes and put To Have and Have Not face down. Staying a night in a sketchy motel across from the train station was probably not one of my best ideas. I think I woke up every fifteen minutes because of the rumbling in the pipes. And now I was hurrying back to Suzhou right before work. Hemingway was giving me the worst headaches.

"You don't like Hemingway?"

I looked at the guy sitting next to me. Standard height, baseball hat, probably a two-day scruff. An American. East coast?

"He's ok. It's just too early in the morning for infidelity."

"Well, how do your afternoons look like?"

I glanced quickly, using my BYU ring check skills. Yep. Married.

". . . I work."

Gosh. Men.

Ultimate Desperation

I got a text from 80168601XX this morning.

XX: Hey

Me: Who is this?

XX: Porter who is this?? Haha lol good times

Me: My name is Sisi. I think you've got the wrong number.

XX: Um.... ok then so.... r u single?

{I never responded}

Adam and Eve

In temple prep class, our teacher, an elderly lady who likes to wear ribbons in her hair, asks us a serious question:

"What happened after Adam and Eve were ousted from the Garden of Eden that allowed them to fulfill the other commandment that Heavenly Father had given them?"

Silence. 

Hwanhi: Menstruation.

--

Luckily for her, nobody else apart from me heard her answer.

Unluckily for me, I burst out laughing and our teacher probably thinks that I'm just thinking of something else that is entirely inappropriate.

Graphic Conversations

 
Right now in the TA office, a girl is talking about the day of her baby's conception. 

She also compared her fetus to rice cooking in a rice cooker. 

On a more PG note, one of the Spanish TAs is recounting the story of his first kiss with his wife.

I'm surprised that she married him at all.

Thank goodness for eternal progression.

Dear Provo

Dear Provo,

I think I've figured it out. You're schizophrenic.

In Katy Perry's words, "you're hot and you're cold; you're yes and you're no . . . "

It's ok. We're all confused about our identity at different points in our lives (exhibit A: me).

Can I recommend you a counselor? My cousin, Tiffany, is a fantastic social worker.

Maybe I can even pretend to get you a discount code.

love,

Sisi

A Voicemail

I just left a voice mail for a random boy in my class telling him to come over for dinner tonight.

And to go to a concert with me.

All in the glorious name of "more bonding time".

Even finished it up with a "love ya!"

I thought I was talking to my brother.

America Numba 1?

Boy in my US foreign policy class:

"I grew up wondering why Canada didn't want to be a part of America. I thought that America is number one, and will stay that way, because the Book of Mormon said so. And the Gospel is truth, right? Then I read The World is Flat and it scared the crap out of me because apparently India will take over, with its call centers and everything. These are scary times."

I probably have too much to say about this. Any thoughts from you?

Elf vs. Dwarf

Boy: I like your black leather boots. You look like an elf girl.

I make a face.

Boy: No, it's a serious compliment.

Me: Thank you, dwarf boy?

Boy: That's not nice.

Me: . . .

Boy: Haven't you watched the Lord of the Rings?

Boy: All the elves are hot babes.

Duh. And this whole time, I was thinking Santa's workshop and elf servitude.

Mother knows best

I talked to my mom for a long time tonight about some of my frustrations. I felt that a lot of people are advising or expecting me to do some things that I wasn't sure were right for me. After listening to me go on, she cut me off suddenly.

Mom: Sisi, do you think I have outstanding children?

Me: . . .

Mom: Well the answer is yes. And how do you think they became that way? It's because they didn't do what everybody else did. They are unique because they did what was best for them, even if it went against expectations. Why would you want to be anything less than outstanding?

------------------

I love mothers. They make everything make sense.

Overhearing

There is a very thin line between overhearing and eavesdropping - especially while I'm walking around on campus. Here are a couple of things that I overheard (and then heard some more as I perked my ears up) while minding my own business:

"What on earth do they have in common? One's a food science major and the other is an economist major . . . I'm telling you, he should have asked me out instead."
- by a somewhat animated girl in a purple dress

"My patriarchal blessing doesn't even mention a wife. Or a family. But it does mention my mom though."
- from a guy to another; they looked at me weirdly when I actually laughed aloud

"My wife is having a baby!"
- good for him!

"Mom, you need to stop trying to set me up on dates, the last one wasn't even pretty."
- an unappreciative son

"She cheated on me. First she dated my room mate and then my home teacher...."
- he went on and on for a while. I was walking home and he was in front of me the whole time.