OF BIASES AND A SENSE OF BELONGING

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ASIDE OF ONE’S DNA, UPBRINGING, EDUCATION and peer pressure relentlessly determine one’s bias towards anything.  More importantly it also drives, without our realizing so much, where we ultimately belong –  our  “camp” so to speak, if I may paraphrase Susan Sontag.  Our biases are so subliminally entrenched within us that we are sometimes unaware that our own biases have largely determined our current station in life and for that matter where we are heading towards.   

LEST IT BE MISUNDERSTOOD,  HAVING  a bias towards a person, an idea or a proposal is not a bad thing per se.  Indeed, history is replete with examples where a bias towards action and urgency have transformed lives for the better.  Having said this, we need to be also wary of situations where our own biases have nurtured prejudices, stifled talent, promoted hatred as well as created completely avoidable misunderstandings.

SOMEONE RECENTLY TOLD ME that the entire male population of the Western world could be neatly divided on the basis of male preferences (read bias) for blondes and brunettes.  While this is a pretty simplistic proposition, it is, in no way materially different, nearer home in India where prospective bridegrooms look for “fair complexioned women, well versed in household affairs”.  On a more serious note, the whole of India appears to be currently blinded by a kind of mindless bias for “development”.  The shrill debate has virtually silenced even a modicum of concern for critical ecological issues that India can ill-afford to forget.  It was a solitary article in The Hindu newspaper of May 30, 2014 titled Against Developmental Fundamentalism by R. Ramaswamy Iyer, former Joint Secretary, Water Resources, Govt of India that provided the much needed perspective. 

AS OUR BIASES GET STRONGER with more adherents to what we believe in, facts may become the first casualty.  In virtually all reports published in the financial press in India and overseas, Vodafone has been portrayed as an entity which has been wholly wronged and made to suffer at the hands of capricious tax authorities in India.  The underlying rationale for the tax levy, even if retrospective, has got buried in reams of disinformation on the subject.  How many have read the critique on Chief Justice Kapadia’s ruling or for that matter the explanations offered by the man behind this levy – I.T. Commissioner Bhide ?  Compare all this with the tax collection drive that the IRS in the U.S. is currently pursuing and of the successful efforts in piercing the veil of Swiss banking secrecy.  A distinguished British editor’s words of caution to his staff : FACTS ARE SACRED, COMMENT IS FREE are very apposite here.


IT IS IMPOSSIBLE, so the financial press assiduously propogates these days, to sack anyone in a loss making industrial undertaking in India. Entrepreneurs doing business in India will of course have the last laugh over this piece of disinformation.  On the other hand it  should be of interest to note that it is entirely possible, for instance, for a branch established in Europe to deny employee information to its Head Office in India on grounds of data protection.  Any takers for that ?

I MUST HOWEVER END THIS PIECE with a positive note. I was pleasantly surprised to read last weekend in the Financial Times an interesting review by Philip Stevens (a senior writer of the Financial Times) of the book The Fourth Revolution-The Global Race to Reinvent the State jointly authored by John Micklethwait (current editor of The Economist) and Adrian Wooldridge.  Note that both The Economist and the Financial Times are owned by the Pearson Group.  Philip Stevens’ review virtually amounted to a critique of The Economist’s editorial policy.  He alluded to the core strategy of the magazine : start with “unshakable conviction”  and “marshall evidence accordingly”.  In essence, to paraphrase Stevens again: it was nothing but “policy based evidence making” !!

AS LONG AS WE ARE AWARE of our biases, hope still exists and we must relentlessly try to understand the real thing, particularly economic truths, which, without wishing to be facetious, may be somewhere in between what The Economist and The Economic & Political Weekly is saying.  If you still wish to know how biases work, I would recommend that you get hold of Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast & Slow, a Penguin paperback worthy of being read aloud.

"BEST SELLING" WHAT IS "GOOD"

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MY APOLOGIES IF THE TITLE TO THIS BLOG appears tautological.  My son who is a student of cinema wanted me to have a look at the work of Wes Anderson, who, in his opinion, is in the forefront of stylized filmmaking.  And so, on a week day, I go and watch The Grand Budapest Hotel. I found the film hugely entertaining besides being one of a kind.  My happiness is however somewhat diminished when I think of the fact that there were only 4 persons who watched the film with me in a cinema hall that had a seating capacity of a little over 100.   Even allowing for the fact that it was a weekday, the near empty cinema  for something that was truly spectacular was worrisome.  But isn’t the loss really ours if a good work of art – be it a film, book, or a painting – receives inadequate attention ?

WHO INDEED ARE THE FINAL ARBITERS of what is good in the arts ? Critics, publishers, art galleries, collectors, curators ?  Are the best selling lists rigged or manipulated ?  Regardless of whether my judgment regarding a given work of art is acceptable to others or not, if I like something, I have, what my wife terms, a disagreeably incorrigible habit of recommending it to friends and colleagues. Right now, for example, I am tempted to draw the attention of my  friends to the delightfully original phrase that William Darylymple recently coined for dynastic politics in India –  “sexually transmitted democracy” !  And I have already sent a few  messages urging people to watch The Grand Budapest Hotel.  Even though I am conscious of the fact, as the adage goes, that one man’s meat is another’s poison, I have a great deal of joy when I share my experience vis a vis a work of art with persons who matter to me.  I consider this as real best-selling.  On the flip side, I convey with equal vigor my disappointment to others if I have disliked something. Lest this be construed as a one way traffic, I am equally open to savor the recommendations made by others.

WHEN ONE IS NOT TRAINED IN THE ARTS, one relies heavily on the judgment of the more well-informed – say, critics or connoisseurs.  They owe it to the world at large a moral responsibility to direct the attention of the general public to what is essential viewing/reading and alert to anything that is plain nonsense or a waste of time.  At times of course, we need to trust our own judgment.  Even if these pieces have sold for millions of dollars, no one can persuade me to appreciate that  Francis Bacon’s triptych (sold recently for GBP 148 mn) or Damien Hirst’s stuffed animals suspended from the ceiling is great art.  And  I think that Anish Kapoor’s  creation for the London Olympics is quite simply hideous. So was M.F. Hussain’s installation Shwetambara. Could one say the same thing about Subodh Gupta ?  The arbiters of art need to call a spade a spade and not be overawed by a name.  As with the LIBOR scandal that plagued financial services, it is high time someone gets behind the facade of spurious opinion making in art by vested interests that is making a mockery of civilization itself.

ALTHOUGH WE DO NOT HAVE A Chidananda Dasgupta  or an Iqbal Masud in our midst today who fearlessly expressed what they felt on works of art, we are fortunate that we also have persons like  Alex Ross, James Wood, Nilanjana Roy and Charulata Mani who have given their very best to their readership. Otherwise, I would not have, for example,  laid my hands on the works of say Kiran Nagarkar or W.G. Seabald.  But we need more of them as an effective shield against hypocrisy and doublespeak in art.

I MUST RETURN NOW TO THE BASIC QUESTION. Why doesn’t a film like Paan Singh Tomar enjoy the same degree of success such as Bhaag Milkha Bhaag ? If “Kolaveri” and “Gangnam Style” receive several million hits on You Tube, why isn’t Bela Shende receiving the same recognition for Marathi Breathless ?  I am not convinced that language is an issue.  How many have understood the lyrics of Gangnam Style for example ?  Is it poor  marketing ?

THE ANSWER TO REAL BEST SELLING is to share with others the experience of what we have enjoyed vis a vis a film, book,  or a painting. A conspiracy of silence in this regard is not merely an indication of acute selfishness but also a disservice towards creative artists worldwide regardless of the discipline they are in.  Not many are fortunate like say the late G Aravindan or Shyam Benegal who had  Ravi and the Bijlani-Variava teams, respectively, backing them so that they could pursue their creative efforts unmindful of financial worry.

YESTERDAY, THE METROPLUS section of The Hindu recommended Look Up by Gary Turk,a 4 minute video on You Tube. I was delighted beyond measure to see that it had already logged over 38 million hits ! This however did not prevent me from passing on the link to my friends just in case they may not have seen it. I thought I did a service (in addition to the newspaper) in drawing attention to something that was truly thoughtful.  Isn’t this real best selling or is it an unwelcome imposition on others ?

A NOTE IN HONOR OF OUR NURSES, BESIDES FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

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IN WOODY ALLEN’S RECENT FILM, Blue Jasmine, Cate Blanchett (playing Jasmine) is trying to rebuild her life after the collapse of her husband’s business (and death).  When her sister’s boyfriend (who is a male nurse) suggests nursing as a career for her to consider, she dismisses it derisively with a wave of her hand, typical of the socialite she was not so long ago.  This one minute frame captured for me the general lack of respect accorded, quite unfairly I must say,  to the nursing profession.  It is a remarkable coincidence that the day I viewed Blue Jasmine (yesterday) was also International Nursing Day which coincides with the birthday of the most celebrated nurse of all time, Florence Nightingale (May 12, 1820 – August 13, 1910).

IT IS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN THAT while serving at the Barrack Hospital in Scutari, Turkey, treating wounded soldiers in the Battle of Inkerman during the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale’s first requisition was for 200 scrubbing brushes besides insisting that the filthy clothes of patients be washed outside the hospital. She also ensured that the hospital wards remained off bounds for women  after 8.00 pm taking it upon herself to make the rounds of the hospital wards inquiring about the welfare of the wounded army men.  This incidentally earned her the nickname “Lady with the Lamp”.  In 1907, she was conferred the Order of Merit – the first woman ever to receive it.  The Nightingale School of Nurses attached to St. Thomas Hospital in London is the first of its kind in the world and established Florence Nightingale as the founder of trained nursing as a profession for women. In 1860, GBP 45,000 was handed over by her for establishing the above School of Nurses from out of the Nightingale Fund subscribed to by the public to commemorate her work in the Crimean War.  

NURSING AS A PROFESSION HAS REGRETTABLY not received the respect and attention it deserves considering how critical nursing functions are in any clinic or hospital.  Millions of lives depend on the quality of  attention and services rendered by nurses.  Yet, like Jasmine in the above named Woody Allen film, the profession is considered as a menial one and it is also not free from exploitation by the medical establishment.  This is also compounded by the fact that in most countries like India and Philippines (which also incidentally provide the largest contingent of nurses worldwide), nursing is resorted to as a profession that facilitates an escape from poverty. Ironically, it is also true the nurses who earn very decent salaries overseas still have issues in finding suitable life partners back home, given the prejudice towards the profession.

AMONG THE HOME NURSES WHO HAVE served my 93-year old mother back home in Kerala, one has come across individuals who are in the profession to pay for their children’s higher education, clear housing loans, escape ill-treatment from their husbands or quite simply to remain independent and lead their own lives. As in the case of any profession, the quality of service has ranged from excellent to indifferent. But our lives depend on them !

NURSES OUGHT TO BE TREATED WITH greater degree of respect and empathy.  For the work they do, particularly in hospitals and private nursing homes they appear to be inadequately paid.  On the occasion of the International Nursing Day that has just gone by, one fervently hopes that they have better tomorrows, less exploitation and honor for the noble profession they are in.

ON THINGS MATERNAL AND MOTHERLY….

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TODAY’S WORD FEED FROM OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS is “motherese” – the speech normally used by mothers to infants when they are learning to speak. As I read it I was also naturally alerted to the fact that it is Mother’s Day today and I soon got lost in a train of thought thinking about maternal instincts and many things that are motherly….

MOST OF MY LADY FRIENDS ARE MOTHERS  – one in fact reminds me as often as she can that she is not just a mother but a supermom juggling as she does between a fairly busy 9 to 5 job and the care of her two sons.  Personally I have watched motherhood at close quarters – I stayed with my mother for nearly 40 years before work took me overseas and virtually every day I witness motherhood in action : my wife vis a vis our two sons.  At the workplace, my lady colleagues were mothers and it was always educative to watch how they deftly handled family responsibilities and official work without conflict.  They reminded me always that there is life after 5 before they rushed home at the appointed hour.

CHILDBIRTH HAS ENDOWED ALL MOTHERS the privilege of experiencing agony and ecstasy at the same time and one would like to think that everything maternal springs from this singular experience.  Fathers are probably just bystanders.  The interesting thing to also note is that even if one has crossed, say 50, and if one’s mother is around, one cannot escape being treated as a child. You will be reminded time and again if you have had your bath/breakfast, whether you have taken your medication, et al. “Take care, take care,” would be a constant refrain that is quite simply inescapable.  

MOTHERS ARE ALSO SMARTER THAN SHERLOCK HOLMES in  discerning  the faintest changes in behavior patterns of children – a child upset at school, an adult son or daughter in love, an unusual reticence or an unforeseen expression of happiness – all of this would be picked up by the maternal antenna (read maternal instinct) faster than Fathers can and the dogged insistence on full disclosure is inescapable although one hears these days of mothers discovering things about their children only on Facebook !

MOTHERS HAVE MY THREE CHEERS for their multitasking abilities and for their ability to conjure up a different menu unfailingly every day even if one is sometimes upset when they are overprotective of their children or blind to their faults or when they insist on what is good for their children even after they have disappeared into adulthood. 

USELESS KNOWLEDGE ?

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THE TAG LINE OF A LEADING INDIAN IT COMPANY – Wipro – has interested me always. It says: “Applying Thought“.  It has also led me to ponder on the usefulness of knowledge. This has interesting dimensions particularly when viewed in the context of exactly when knowledge could be considered useful and whether knowing anything for its own sake  is of any advantage. It was Peter Drucker who coined the term “knowledge worker” and the underlying assumption must have been that we apply knowledge that we have to the work that we do.

THERE IS ACTUALLY NO END TO WHAT CAN BE known but in terms of practicality we set limits for ourselves on what is essential for us to know.  While this attitude has a lot of horse sense and may also help us in spending time productively, it unwittingly cultivates a certain degree of indifference if not contempt to any stream of knowledge that simply does not interest us resulting in an unintended devaluation of knowledge and its uses.  To avoid this educationists all over the world spend a lot of time devising holistic curriculums so that we have a more rounded view of the world.  

PART OF THE CONTEMPT WE HAVE FOR KNOWLEDGE that we have no use for personally has its origins in the way certain subjects are taught in school and the way our own knowledge of these subjects are assessed.  This is the reason why a student may shy away from say, maths or history. One has to also encounter several “no tresspassing signs” on the way when we are still grappling with various branches of knowledge that we need to embrace as we transit from primary to professional education.  For example, it is unthinkable for a commerce graduate to contemplate doing literature or a student of physics to think about a career in music as several questions would be asked to discourage his new found interest in the groves of the academy.

LEARNING HAS TO BE FUN AND IN AN AGE of increased distractions, the challenge of school teachers is to sustain interest in students for the subjects they teach.  Equally, there has to be an early inculcation of an attitude that it is not a crime to know things that may not necessarily bring money.  As the world shrinks in size on account of increased information access we come into much closer contact with various cultures and disciplines that may be totally alien to us.  This provides a huge opportunity to have a peek into things that may not enhance our incomes but which can positively destroy the cultural barriers that surround us.  

WE CANNOT REALLY AFFORD TO BE REARED IN our own little ghettos and miss the chance of knowing what the world offers to us.  We may be slow converts to a lot of things, but we must at least try.  Otherwise, we may end up smugly saying : WHAT I DO NOT KNOW IS NOT KNOWLEDGE.  The converse is actually true and this is beautifully summed up in an age old Yiddish saying : THE LUCK OF AN IGNORAMUS IS THIS –  HE DOESN’T KNOW THAT HE DOESN’T KNOW !  

WHERE DOES THE TRUTH LIE ?

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WHEN WE SUBSCRIBE TO A NEWSPAPER OR A MAGAZINE, we are, in a manner of speaking, buying knowledge.  We also presume, probably rightly,that the price of the publication that we buy would have been much higher had it not been for the ad revenues the papers earn.  The survival of a newspaper or a magazine therefore appears to depend on the businesses which bring in the said revenues.  While we take it for granted that Governments and politicians will always try to exert pressure on the media,  we are not always conscious of the fact that  at the cost of jeopardizing the economic life line of a newspaper, it would indeed be a brave editor who will decide to go ahead and publish, say, uncomfortable truths about a business which provides a regular stream of ad revenue.  A substantial part of business news that appear in the press today are nothing but a rehash of  PR handouts and press releases.  The links between business and the press is indeed quite strong and I was privy recently to an instance where the PR Head of a company was chided by its Chairman simply because there was not enough buzz in the newspapers about him !

WE HAVE ENOUGH SPIN DOCTORS IN OUR MIDST who try to determine what the world should know.  The recent instance of America going to war in Iraq on the basis that the country “possessed weapons of mass destruction” is a case in point.  Even if one were to skip papers and access the internet ourselves independently for information we cannot escape the fact that what our searches yield are again severely limited by the parameters set for the search engines and there may be several perspectives on the same facts that may be hidden from us.  We need to careful that we do not reach a conclusion that “if it is in print” or “if it is from the net”, it must  be true.  We do need to pause and reflect on whatever we read so that we form the right conclusions and take appropriate decisions.

FOR USEFUL INSIGHTS ON THE MANIPULATIONS that occur in the print media globally and on the internet, I would request that you add the three musts to your reading list :
1.Flat Earth News by Nick Davies (Vintage Books)
2.The Shallows – How the Internet is Changing the Way We Read, Think & Remember 
   by Nicholas Carr (Atlantic Books)  and
3.The Filter Bubble – What the Internet is Hiding from You by Eli Pariser        (Penguin/Viking)

One would doubtless be seized by a strong sense of  skepticism after one has gone through the books but this is essential as we are already facing the consequences of taking for granted things that are dished out to us relentlessly by the media and the internet without bothering to find out where the truth lies.

SAYING IT RIGHT

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“THE ARGUMENT DOES NOT UNFOLD COGENTLY. Cut the cackle and get to the point.” These words were scribbled on one of my long drafts of a note by a former boss of mine who was a stickler for saying things right.  His dictum not only applied to officialese but also to everything that was written or said within an office and this left an indelible impression.  The CEO of a company I worked for used to insist that the executive summary of a memo that elicited a decision should not be more than a page as, in his view, anything lengthier was not worth reading !  It was a challenge that I perennially wrestled with and using a smaller font was a trick that I sometimes tried to resort to when the verbiage spilled over to the next page. It didn’t work. “Are you sending me to the ophthalmologist ?” the boss snapped at me when he saw through the game!

WHEN WE THINK CLEARLY, THE FOCUS WILL SHOW in whatever we say or write. Alan Warner writes about the story* of a sign change that occurred in a London bus that made all the difference: “EXPECTORATION IS FORBIDDEN” was simply replaced by “PLEASE DO NOT SPIT” and the story goes on to say that the buses were cleaner than before!  Indeed, what is the point of communication if the message does not get through ? “All the fun is in how you say a thing,” said the poet Robert Frost but the mastery over style and communication is quite simply the skill of getting  to place “proper words in proper places”.  You only have to speak to any copywriter in an ad agency who will let you know the hours of toil that goes behind the drafting of a tag line which we so often derisively dismiss when it does not communicate what it intends.

FORGET ADS FOR THE TIME BEING. ALL OF US need to write letters, emails, memos, complaints, notes, presentations et al.  All of these require varying degrees of effort but we need clarity on two key issues:  WHAT DO WE WISH TO ACHIEVE AND HOW DO WE SAY IT.   We need to have clear answers for these two questions  before we put pen to paper or tap words on to the screen in front of us and indeed before we click the “send” button!  Else, everything would be a wasted effort.  

ANYTHING CRISPLY WRITTEN MAKES OUR DAY.  We also owe it to ourselves and to others that we say what we mean and mean what we say.  By doing so, we remove the mists that surround us and actually help others to help us !  How else can we get the decisions that we need, particularly when they are taken by some one else ?


*For more insights read his work A Short Guide to English Style which remains a classic to this day.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC

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CURIOUSLY  ENOUGH, IT WAS THE DEATH of Maria von Trapp, at the age of 99 recently that set me thinking for several hours  about music and the role it plays in our lives every day. The Sound of Music, a Broadway musical first, was made into a full length feature film in 1965 and was based, amongst other things, on Maria von Trapp’s life.  It is still an evergreen film and its songs are a perennial favorite of millions the world over.  Quite literally, the sound of music is integral to our lives as breathing is !

LIFE IS INCOMPLETE WITHOUT MUSIC and we should be happy that it is so all pervasive. From alarm clocks to ring tones on our cellphones, it impossible to imagine a day without some form of musical intervention.  Music invokes nostalgia, it induces euphoria and lifts us out of depression.  As Nietzsche said, music has been something for the sake of which it is worthwhile to live on earth.

THE REDEMPTIVE POWER OF MUSIC has been captured beautifully by Oliver Sacks in his extraordinary book Musicophilia – Tales of Music and the Brain* which details several case histories involving persons  having ailments such as Alzheimer’s, Tourette’s  and William syndromes who  respond positively to music.  The book is an engaging read and makes one feel thankful that we have music in our midst at all times.  

MUSIC UNITES CULTURES TOO.  Even in a place like Ramallah, in Israeli occupied Palestine, music concerts are known to have reduced the scale of hostilities somewhat and made the perennially warring factions think about peace, even if for brief intervals. On both sides of the border between India and Pakistan, millions enjoy Hindi film music! Whether it is Rachmaninoff on one end  of the spectrum to Mika Singh on the other extreme, we should consider ourselves lucky that we have an extraordinary range of music to choose from in order to enliven our humdrum existence.  As Jonah Lehrer wrote in his article The Listener (incidentally based on Oliver Sacks), “music is often the final means of human connection, our closing form of comfort. It is what we have when we have nothing else.”


*I am tempted to also recommend Anthony Storr’s work Music and the Mind but then one enjoys music by actually listening to music !  Reading about music  heightens its understanding.

THE BEST GIFT OF ALL

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THE STORY OF  WHAT HAPPENS WHEN TWO PEOPLE in love decide to gift something precious to each other unaware of what is in store for them individually is indeed a moving one and it was titled The Gift of the Magi by the American short story writer O. Henry (whose other equally famous story The Last Leaf was the basis of a well-received Hindi film Lootera).  On the face of it, the gifts exchanged have no use for the characters in the story but it  captured beautifully the true nature of love.  

THE COMMERCIALIZATION OF THE SIMPLE ACT of giving presents on Valentine’s Day has however assumed feverish proportions be it in Pollachi or Pittsburgh. The heartwarming act of giving and receiving presents is now subliminally escalated to a level where the intensity of love is probably measured by the monetary value of the gift or service purchased on this blessed day.  The fact that it is entirely possible and in fact necessary to gift intangibles to the persons who matter to us is rarely discussed.  It is not even assumed.

IT IS INDEED RELATIVELY EASY FOR ANYONE TO walk into a store and pay cash or use one’s credit card and buy something that one knows would be liked by a dear one.  While one wouldn’t belittle the effort as a relatively easy one, it is actually considerateness that is the greatest gift that persons truly in love with each other can mutually exchange.  And considerateness is demonstrated by the sheer presence for the other in case of need, a shoulder to cry on, the faith that one will not let the other down, the sharing of both joys and sorrow, and the total acceptance of the other – warts and all (not because it is inevitable as one has got oneself locked into the relationship) – which is absolute and unconditional.  

CONSIDERATENESS (BESIDES TRUST) IS THE FOUNDATION of all relationships – be it conjugal or amorous.   When it exists always, there is no need for a frenzied celebration on February 14 every year as the persons in love truly look forward to each other’s companionship every day until death removes one from the other.   

THE REAL PERKS OF A JOB

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”ONE OF THE GREAT THINGS ABOUT MY JOB,” said Hillary Swank who acted in such films as Million Dollar Baby, Freedom Writers, Amelia, and Boys Don’t Cry, “is that I get to do a lot of these things that I may not experience, had I not been an actor.”  Indeed, living through a whole cast of characters is the biggest perk an actor can possibly have.
ASIDE OF THE FIXED OR VARIABLE INCOME THAT A JOB GENERATES together with medical, pension and social security benefits, what is generally overlooked are the other unique advantages that every job carries with it.  When incomes stagnate and things do not appear right, it would do us a lot of good to introspect on the lasting intangibles underlying each job, however mundane it may be.

A JUDGE FOR INSTANCE, DESPITE HIS EXPERT KNOWLEDGE of the law, is enlightened virtually every day by several arguments and facets of each case that he presides over. Aspects of the law which never occurred to him would be highlighted by counsels on both sides which eventually assist him in formulating a final view on the matter on hand.  There have been several instances where judges have publicly acknowledged the contributions of counsels in the judgments they have delivered.  For surgeons  who operate on patients every day, each Ceaserian  or a coronary brings its own lessons. Equity analysts by virtue of their position delve deep into select industries and gain insights that would be the envy of planners and economists.  A postmaster in a remote village in India could well be the friend, philosopher and guide to the village folk served by the post office. Salesmen probably know more about human  psychology than Sigmund Freud or Martin Seligman besides gaining unique knowledge of sales territories.  A taxi driver in Mumbai once told me that he learnt a lot about life just listening to the conversations of passengers seated behind him while taking them to various destinations. One could multiply examples.

THE JOBS WE DO SOON BECOME EXTENSIONS OF OUR own personalities.  Every job offers challenges, opportunities, learning.  These are the real perks. If we take advantage of these, we become not only better persons but also give ourselves the opportunity to improve our own stations in life.