Failure rates

A new Chief Executive at Proctor and Gamble recently decided to take the issue of corporate busines strategy to the next level. To him the biggest threat to P&G was the strategic inertia that kept it from adapting and taking the innovative lead in the market. He re-structured the company, and created subsidiaries aimed at innovation and only innovation. But instead of setting a success rate for these subsidiaries, our fellow CEO decided to set a common rate of...failure.

When you think about it, it is ingenius. His argument was that if the new subsidiaries weren't failing enough, they weren't taking enough risks with their innovations. By setting a rate of failure, he ensures that his thinkers were thinking far enough outside the box to make mistakes or, when they get lucky, come up with something brilliant.

I wondered, learning all this, if we as individual should set a standard rate of failure for ourselves - just so we can make sure that we're taking enough risks in our lives, and truly maximizing our benefit from it. I personally shudder at the very idea of a standard rate of failure. Failure to me has never been an option, and when it has happened on very random and few occasions, I struggled with it immensely. Not on a self-esteem level necessarily, but simply mourned through the de facto situation.

I realized that perhaps the reason I fail so infrequently is because I take very little risks with my life. Maybe I am not really living, just going through calculated motions which are in the grand scheme of things at best circular, anchored down to a center, like the limb of a protractor. Not that I've never taken risks - falling in love was a risk, moving away from home at 17 was a risk. Still now more than ever I feel inertia, and perhaps taking a risk (albeit an intelligent one) is the answer?

Sex and Emasculation

e·mas·cu·late

1.	to castrate.

2.	to deprive of strength or vigor; weaken.

–adjective

3.	deprived of or lacking strength or vigor; effeminate.

With the gradual revival of my sex life, and with the ebbing of the tide of monogamy, I've gained a perspective on sex and particularly my sexuality that had been lost on me in the past. It is in those moments of ascending suspense, of nearing sexual climax, and the resulting 30 or so seconds of pure ecstasy by which (if you're of the freudian persuasion) the human psyche is eternally mesmerized; yes it is in those few but parallel moments that inhibitions are truly lost, as if with every physical thrust our conscious inertia loses ground and our deepest fantasies and secrets merge for the glorious tour de force.

The feeling I get during sex, uncomparable to any else, now is matched with intrigue at my own thought trajectory. As I near my own climax, thoughts rush through my head at an alarming rate. Suddenly, and though i see a beautiful male form before me, I stare him in the eye and my brain begins to emasculate him. Little by little, he turns into my beautiful, hungry...no... sex-starved...girl. I go even faster. My thoughts spiral into four letter words demeaning him, reducing him, objectifying him, all to get what I want out of him - a solid orgasm.

I lay in bed next him thinking about what just happened. Am I actually straight and in the closet about it? No. I'm fairly positive the reason I emasculate my random sexual partners to get a good kick is because, on a very fundamental level, if they retained their masculinity during sex I wouldn't feel as confident or as dominant. Society has taught me that, at least in bed, women are on the receiving end, seeking the domination of their male partners. That scenario either is natural or convenient for me. I seek to dominate because not only is it sexually pleasurable, but it also takes away any nervousness I might be going through in light of how gorgeous or 'masculine' this guy is.

The good news is, once the sex is over, any trace of such sexist animalism is gone. The human being that he is resurfaces and my sexual rants are drowned out...

The Names of God

Just a few thoughts that ran through my head today-

The Quran, the 'Word of God' (I'll explain the quotation marks later on), refers to Him using 99 different names, usually in what we call in arabic 'exaggerative tenses'. An example of this is "Ghafoor" (most forgiving) and "Raheem" (most merciful). Arabic has always been the essence of Book and the platform from which the Quran could realistically thrive and be subject to esoteric interpretation. Arabic has also always been the essence of pre-Islamic culture (yes, the Peninsula did indeed have culture at some point in history), a culture that placed great value and emphasis on articulation and mastery of the written and spoken word. As we all know the Book wasn't actually written till the Second Khalipha, it had remained in the memory of the inhabitants of the Peninsula for the interim period after Prophet Muhammad's 'wa7y' (from 'i7a2' - inspiration). The connection P. Muhammad formed with Angel Gabriel (a powerful 'package' or energy or Light) revealed the Quran at different stages and in several chunks. The connection was manifested in the spoken Arabic word.

There is therefore an unmistakable emphasis in Islamic practice on recitation- be it prayers, words, or the actual Quran. If you follow my train of though on this, uttering the 99 Names is therefore there to inspire you into a connection with God, the Light (An-Nur).


On the other hand, a fundamental tenant of Kabbalah is the revelation of the 72 Names of God. These aren't actually names, they are non-sensical sequences of Hebrew letters (3 letters to each sequence), methodologically derived from the passage in the Zohar describing Moses fleeing Egypt and parting the Red Sea. It is believed that this passage provides a mystic code to miracles, and that the 72 Names are the ultimate decryption.

Emphasis here as it has been in kabbalah is not on the spoken word, but rather on the power of Hebrew letters. The eyes are considered the true mirrors of the soul, and therefore scanning the letters imprints not only images but a certain type of energy.


As a native Arabic speaker, and as Muslim, I find this approach slightly difficult. The culture I come from is overly articulate and the language tends to be ornate and almost rhythmic. To discard all this and try to focus on meditation through sight has been a challenge. Still, I do feel the force of the Hebrew language when I actually attend Shabbat. Or maybe I'm just picking up on the energy that surrounds me there, or the actual singing (in Hebrew).

il fait si froid dehors, ici c'est comfortable

The two or three weeks of relative pain I spent following my break up eventually turned into something altogether different. After relentlessly trying to fill the space Jim occupied in my daily life with school work, socializing, and travelling, I realized I’d perhaps distracted myself too much, to the point where I feel a bit of motion-sickness.

Exams were in mid February, and I spent the entire first half of the month trying to focus on studying and occasionally seeing my father who was staying in a hotel not far from where I live. With the former I felt frustrated, or blocked. It’s not only that the material was unbearably dull and unrewarding, but it’s also that I felt very insecure about my abilities after spending so much time with such an over-achieving set of classmates. Pre-dominantly Oxbridge, arrogant, and just as fiercely competitive as I am, I felt like I was surrounded be people that were so much more engaged in their careers than I was. Law for me was a random choice stemming out of indecision, and with a little hard work and a lot of luck I ended up on the team of trainees for the world’s biggest law firm. For my classmates I feel like they’re on a deliberate and endlessly thought-out path. Three years ago I didn’t even know what a solicitor was. And now as this un-engaging work is being thrown at me, I feel like they’re much better equipped to handle donkey work than I am.

Emotionally things have been equally difficult, and it’s not just my break up I’m talking about. My schedule has filled up to the point where I have little time to relax at home and read a book, I feel like I’m constantly running and rushing (from school to lunch to shrink to coffee to dry cleaner) and perhaps I subconsciously made my life so just so I could not think about the fact that I’m worried about my career and performance at school, or the fact that there’s this huge gap were Jim used to be. I started dating people and trying get back into having a little fun, but after my date leaves or after going out with a few friends I feel more alone than I did before. I feel like I’m on a steep learning curve, with a promise of some sort of maturity and complacency at the end of the line; the line being curved, I just can’t see it yet.

On the plus side I feel an amazing rush of independence and my aggressive schedule has allowed me to meet interesting people in different settings. Building strong friendships in London is a difficult task, but one that I know I will succeed in. It once amazed me how I had 200+ contacts on my phone but not one I could call when I felt down or wanted to talk. Yes, there’s a lot of crap to sort through but good people are everywhere, and you need to be able to spot them and put the right amount of effort into building a relationship.

I’m typing this from a rainy and cold Vienna, and I just got off the phone with a dear and close person. As he prepares for his grandmother’s funeral, I feel that perhaps we are all more emotionally connected as a species than we think. It’s not a matter of synchronicity or coincidence, but perhaps a channel of energy, ‘Light’, what have you, that puts our souls in their primordial state – united.

Dance

This is truly amazing.
The music is from Buddha Bar (III i imagine) but the burlesque vintage dancers turn the track into something haunting...

Pan's Labyrinth

"Because the paths of the Lord are inscrutable, because the essence of his forgiveness lies in his world and his mystery, because although God sends us the message, it is our task to decipher it, . . . when we open our arms, the Earth takes in only a hollow and senseless shell. Far away now is the world in its eternal glory. Because it is in pain that we find the meaning of life and the state of grace that we lose when we are born. Because God, in his infinite wisdom, puts the solution in our hands. And because it is only in his physical absence that the place he occupies in our souls is reaffirmed."

H-I-Larious

Certainty

I sat up straight in bed, looking down at my Business Law and Practice text-book. I wasn’t very comfortable, and I needed a highlighter. I wanted things to be easier to skim through when it came time for the exams. I looked at room door, closed as it was, and my backpack, equidistant from the bed and the door. I didn’t want to get up. I had wrapped myself in the blanket already.

“Taher!” I called out to my flatmate. Maybe he’d help me. Silence, and the noise of some music chart countdown on TV fading in and out. “Taher!” My voice rang in the walls of my room. The grey morning light in London meekly flowed into the room. My lamp was on, I didn’t care.

“Taher!” This time the echo hit a chord in my chest. My vision blurred as tears began to form around the corners of my eyes. Why can’t he hear me? I called out again and again. A stream had developed, and the tears flowed. Why can’t he fucking here me? Am I not fucking loud enough? Every time my voice rang I felt like the walls were closing in. I prayed that he make it in time before I could no longer breathe. Cold air swirled around me and had me digging my arms deeper under the blanket.

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

It feels like peeling away layer after layer of my own skin. Like methodologically chopping away calculated pieces of my own heart. Like severing an arm, or a leg. It feels pulling in the window shutters on a sunny day in spring, leaving the room in dark nostalgia. Like digging a whole in my stomach, shovel in hand, not looking up or ever considering how I might be able to one day climb back out and forget that an abyss so consuming ever existed.

It feels so overwhelmingly regretful, yet I’m doing it. I’m pushing with all my might the beautiful movie-set out of the rolling camera’s frame. A blank canvass must do for now. In my mind there is no doubt. My intuition bites at me for hurting him, but cheers me on in pursuing what is right. My heart is pulling at the other end of the rope as it always has – it is equally as powerful, and when the day’s exhaustion sets in it gains considerable ground and I lay in bed, phone in hand, my fingers running over the keys that would spell out my heart’s desire.

I hope one day I will forgive myself for this, and truly find myself convinced that it was the right thing to do. For now it’s a risk. They say the greater the risk, the more extreme any potential reward will be. I hope they’re right, because right now, I feel like I’m running through the motions of life in a vacuum.

Certainty is the key. Certainty that Light is in my life at this very point in time, and that tomorrow will be more beautiful than I ever imagined.

James, if you ever read this, do know that I have loved you to unreasonable extremes. Reality hasn’t been kind, and nor have I. This is only one of the beginning chapters of my life, and I plan on learning from it. Thank you for every minute of every day we’ve spent together.