Here we are.
The final secret.
The last spin on the merry-go-round.
So far we have talked about so many ways to build resilience, from adding a dot-dot-dot to shifting the spotlight to losing more to win more to finding small ponds to going untouchable. This whole journey has been a ride. And we’re all on a ride together. My mom got on the ride before me and we started with her story.
And my dad got on the ride before me, too.
So let’s finish by going full circle.
Let’s finish with a final secret that underpins every other message in this book.
My dad was born Surinder Kumar Pasricha in a village called Tarn Taran in India in 1944.
If you ask him his birthday he’ll tell you he doesn’t know it. They didn’t keep records back then. One day you weren’t there. The next day you were.
Nobody thought it was worth writing down.
I guess there were a lot of kids and not many notebooks.
It’s funny that I didn’t learn the basics of my dad’s life—name, place of birth, date of birth—until I was grown up.
I always thought my dad was born in New Delhi until one day in my late twenties when I was mindlessly flipping channels at my sister’s place and a scene from the movie Gandhi popped up showing the famous golden temple of Amritsar, India.
“That’s where I was born,” my dad said. “Actually, a small village near there called Tarn Taran.”
I was confused. “What? I thought you were from New Delhi?”
“No, no,” he said. “I grew up in New Delhi, I went to school in New Delhi.”
“But you always tell people you’re from New Delhi when they ask.”
“Neil,” he said with a sigh, “that’s just easier. Everybody has heard of New Delhi.”
That’s just easier.
Those were famous words from my dad.
But it wasn’t just his hometown he made easier. It was his name, too.
When he first started teaching physics and math at Dunbarton High School in Pickering, Ontario, none of the teachers could pronounce his name. Nobody could say “Surinder” properly.
They called him Surrender instead.
Surrender.
Soon after he arrived in Canada he said to himself, “I didn’t come all this way to surrender. I came here to grow, to learn, to get better.”
The next time a teacher in the staff room asked what his name was, he offered his middle name instead. “Kumar, but you can call me Ken.”
Ken. Can. That sounded better to him.
No Surinder. I Ken.
No surrender. I can.
And now he’s been Ken for almost fifty years.
My dad gave my sister and me our names, Nina and Neil, because they were easy to spell, easy to pronounce, easy to say, to write, to live with. Sure, he loved the names his siblings gave their kids, who also grew up near Toronto, beautiful Indian names like Ajai, Rajeev, Rajash, Nishant, Vinita, Manju.
But he wanted to fit in.
He wanted us to fit in.
So those names weren’t for him.
Why?
Because that’s just easier.
Researcher Brené Brown has called us the most “sorted” generation in history. Sorted. As in, we all sit in different value systems and ideals and affiliations, and if you’re not with us, you’re against us. So much sorting! So much animosity.
Adopting a view like my dad’s—doing things that might just be easier for other people—is a generous way to live. It doesn’t mean shredding your values or dishonoring your traditions or snapping open your moral compass and flicking the little arrow. No! It doesn’t mean giving up parts of yourself that you value. It just means when you can make things easier for other people at no cost to yourself… you do it.