Didn't the Great Maria die of it?

In september 1977 in Paris...she stopped singing... for ever, taken away by a broken heart!
Was she simply exhausted of waiting for Aristotle (not the philosopher but the shipowner) to make a choice between Jakie Kennedy, Renata Tebaldi... and all the others that his immense wealth was bringing in his court?
Onassis never chose, never positioned himself clearly, and the Callas probably died of hopes, expectations and the sadness of loosing it all, her amazing gift, her voice and the man of her life...

My friend John from London shared with me lately that he had never been through such pains: "maybe I have always been too coward to make such choices".
Indeed if you want to live true love, you need to be ready to pay its price, make choices, even let everything behind at times, to build a life away from your base... your friends, your job.

Hence the suffering of grief is at times unbearable, the pain of letting go of such expectations, dreams, hopes, attachement that come to balance those sacrifices... the struggles to fit, when it does not work.

"Struggle is the meaning of life
Defeat and victory is in the hand of God
But struggle itself is man's duty
And should be his joy." 

But nobody can break your heart...really
...as long as you truly love yourself and enjoy the path, find joy even in those hard times. Could that be it?
The process of grieving is indeed utterly painful, long, with each important steps of it: hate, denial, resentment, ... and finally love, compassion:

"Oublie ce passé qui n'est plus
Tu trouveras un présent qui t'attend"

What to do?
My sweet friend Jen told me to breathe, deeply to fill the heart with energy, inner love...so simple...
it worked!

But maybe simply learn from it, know that in the end there is peace, there is compassion, real love for oneSelf...
take the lessons and... grow... and go!

And... there is nothing greater than the power of love and compassion...

Here we go… 3rd time in India in 3 years…

...

Back to this beautiful University of Amrita in Ettimidai, near Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu.
Close to 6000 students, mostly on holidays now.

Going around with my bicycle this time, my proud Hercules!

Funny… I was quite anxious to come back… back to Amrita, for a week, then quickly heading heading north, at the border of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, for 5 weeks of hell...PhD studies: 2^nd phase!

At the same time I knew that Ettimadai campus in its green heaven would be the best place to heal, to meditate, to study really hard, face sadness, deepest sorrows, forgive, myself, her... and mover on.

A place to go around as well, like to the next city Coimbatore, center of most of the Indian confection, especially Tirupur. Coimabtore, with 1,06Mio people is one of the fastest growing tier-II cities in India and a major textile, industrial, commercial, educational, information technology, healthcare and manufacturing hub of Tamil Nadu.Whole streets (like the one on the right) dedicated... to High-Fi, to mechanical equipement, to flowers...
And the Elizabethan hotel to offer its terrace for a very nice dinner with faculties and fellow scholars.

 Back to bowels of flowers, flamboyant trees everywhere…

Back to PhD classes, hard core: this time 4 topics: New Institutional Economics, Advanced Quantitative Methods (mostly stats, regressions!), HR, and Qualitative Research Methods, and 4 term papers to write in the coming 3-4 months.

 Here the kids buses are yellow too!

The wonderful Olympic swimming pool where my friend Girish accommodates my swimming hours even when it is "ladies only", between 2 classes!

5 weeks felt like a bit much to face, long, really long, very lonely… but after having passed quite surprisingly the first 3 topics of last semester, especially Stats…I had some hopes too.

Hopes to face the hard lessons of last months disaster, sad, devastating ending, complete break down on my part, suffocating and not able to free myself, to stick to my values…. to decide to really work on those topics that have been so impeding so far… to choose new ways, new kind of people by my side, maybe capable to make compromises, new ways to interact, less expectations and co-dependence, more nurturing and caring, taking both our share and responsibilities in building a caring equilibrium based on that!
This time no way out, no more kidding myself with high ambitions and the pressure that comes with it, there is no more going back to that feeling of void, emptiness, ending on the cliff of life, at the window of death!

Hopes to really change, to be able one day to build more balanced relationships, where both want to participate to elaborating a common space of serenity, caring communication, where both understand trust, nurturing love and know that it takes time and efforts to make build and maintain it!

But lets go back to India, back to this sweet funny accent where all charts start with a "Djiro"… which is easier to follow written in mathematical terms: 0. Back to the horns of those long blue trains passing along the campus... to the wild elephants to be heard sometimes on the nearby mountains...

Back to the wonderful Eden garden, the cries of peacocks, not really gracious, almost painful (maybe their pain to be trapped in a perpetual seduction mode!)

The flights of cockroaches just as well in the grocery store where I buy fruits and dry nuts…
The power cuts every hour or so, that burn your EHD...
The wonderful smiles of colorful indian women with their beautiful saries and jasmine in their hair!

And studying the great ones, the rishis in India:

“In awareness we grow. The more you know yourself, the less you are afraid “ Nisargadatta Maharaj

"Happiness is in understanding and therefore transformation" Jiddu Krishnamurti

Gosh ... did I need to go so far?

Not sad it is over, just blessed it happened...

The only way... to have it ..my way: build my own SE, my own rhythm, my own projects!

Having embarked on a specific research project for the coming 4 to 6 years, inducing a trip to India of 1 to 2 months every 6 months, I have to adjust, build my own rhythm around it, my own activities.
Consulting comes as a natural time and punctual activity.
As well as my own social enterprise.

But Gosh is it hard and time consuming right now.
Trying to find a balance:

• geographically between where I need to live (Munich), where I have most of my professional contacts (Paris and London), where I am conducing my research, PhD project and studies, where I would love to live (Biarritz, islands...)
• financially: how to find projects to be paid for and yet to be free enough to travel, lead the research projects I have started in India... generate enough money to sustain myself and a starting family
• emotionally: between a place of heart, a choice of climate, a necessity of studies... a place of spiritual practices...

So here ya go, finding balance, as a core to perseverance, to systemic change? innovation??

Retour aux sources... quelques jours de ... campagne francaise!

Quelle joie de venir souffler un peu au ...pays!

en pleine campagne... pres de Vichy... magnifiques Allier... Auvergne!

where you can find...
Flying... cats! fake ones.. real ones... really lazy!
and of course...

My dear friends Lynn (SA) and Olivier... we go back 21 years now... started in Paris with a conference on South Africa in 1992, and a rugby tour with Nick Mallet in 1994

 And reconnect with great food, great wines, relaxing times...and ... spring! after 3 years of Kerala tropical weather...

what a pleasure to enjoy a fireplace, long dinner conversations...

Perfect place to start my 1st PhD article: read, compare, write, analyse, propose new concepts, design new models...:

Technology at the BoP, an Indian perspective.

I will publish it for the next Insead ISEC conference, in Madrid in April, and that is a lot of work to put those 10 to 15 pages together... but so much worth it!

When I close my eyes since a few days… here is what I see:

Bloody bells!

…

And multivariate regressions!

(Bells as a … nurturing belly????)

Gosh, has this PhD process been cathartic!!! In every way!

In close to 250 hours of classes in 3 weeks, we covered a program usually done in 4 months in the best universities in the world!

This lead to days of 10 to 12 hours of classes per day plus 4 to 6 hours of prep, reading, exercises, assignments additional, the last 3 days 20 to 22 hours of work to finalize papers, stats tests…!

I have probably read more theoretical articles, academic papers in those past 3 weeks than in the past 10 years.

What have I learned?

Freedom for example… is defined by df, not an absolute value, but a value that depends on the choices you make for the last value of a series of variables!

Basically…freedom is not being able to do everything I want, maximization of my individual pleasure but defined by my choices, and those choices which narrow down my overall freedom closely define my pleasure and values, called the treatment of your regression!

Df is determined by the choice of the value of your last variable. In a similar way you confidence interval is defined by your choice of α!

Freedom is a choice! And your choice reduces your freedom on one hand and strengthens it just as well… in a funny way!

The more variables you add to your priorities, your hypothesis, the thinner your Bell becomes, the narrower the population… the less your choices are solid in a way, the less you can analyze your claim… take decisions, engage!

Basically the more you spread yourself away from the mean, the less your analysis of randomness of a sample is accurate!

Engagement just the same way: this process of epistemology is so hard that being half engaged in the PhD methodology is simply impossible.

You can only do it fully… or not!

Any half commitment is simply a lie to … yourself first… and others, especially the person you are requesting time from to… guide you!

So yes clear values are crucial, central, pivotal for this exercise of research, knowledge compilation and hypothesis construction, theory building: strong engagement, persistence, ruthless self inquiry, honesty… faithfulness even!

But then of course engaging on such a path does not allow you to stay in an environment which contradicts those core values, endangers them, or even just brings insecurity.

And I gained so much clarity from it all, on what I really want, what I will not accept anymore in my life, what I study…now for myself, the strength, determination, perseverance I get from it.

Just what I needed to be sure… that that path is perfect for me… it all makes so much sense!

See D Diary, Moods for 1st PhD assignment! 

Looking at the Light... shining on little things...

every day...
just because I set my mind to...simply shed a positive light on things, especially little things...especially at the start of a new day.

Sometimes it starts simply practicing yoga and meditation as well as a positive enforcement: 'this IS a beautiful day starting for me!'

Or like this morning just smiling at the sun coming up, warming the air of a cold night in the West Ghats in Tamil Nadu, ... and softly lifting the veil of clouds on the surrounding sleepy Elephant mountain, spreading colors and warmth, softness...
Or like this week, receiving my PhD courses books and feeling like a kid, a pupil, caring for them, blessed to have this opportunity at this corner of my life to be a student again: what a luxury, how grateful I am!
Getting a kiss from Mane, the 2 year old boy of my PhD colleague, or the magnificent smile of that little indian girl that I meet in the corridor every morning, we dont speak, she just smiles all the time... giggles and I smile back!
Or opening my nostrils catching fragrances on my way to Uni... of frangipanes, jasmin... and letting for a moment my mind wander away from PhD theories...
Just happy to see mango season starting after having enjoyed guava!!!
Letting a song take my mind just as well...
Or an inspiring sharing with a friend...

I guess after passing the milestone of half of the 1st term PhD classes I am just thankful, humbled to be able to get back to learning, having an opportunity to open my mind further, to share, compare, debate... calculate, research, formulate hypothesis, counter... but just as well to learn simply every day, every morning, to just... BE
... and witnessing those little things, little pleasures!
that make life so.... full of Light