A rabbit hole of worry, a friend who points back to the present, and a WhatsApp forward that arrived right on time. On acceptance — not as a slogan, but as the floor everything else stands on.
Even now, after years of leading, I still catch myself in the rabbit hole.
Not the work in front of me. Something adjacent. Something I read last week. Something someone said three months ago. Something that might happen in six months. The mind wanders into the past, into the future, into the what about this, what about that — and a low background hum of worry sets in. Nothing in the present is actually broken. But the present has quietly been left behind.
It's a strange thing to admit out loud as a senior leader. The picture from the outside is composure. The picture from the inside is sometimes a person chasing tails that don't exist yet.
A trusted friend heard the whole spiral. The cribs, the loops, the everything-but-the-present. He didn't dismiss any of it. He listened — and then he said something simple that landed.
Sree, you're skilled — but your worries are baseless for the moment.
He didn't tell me the worries weren't real. He didn't ask me to "let it go" or "stay positive" or any of the smooth phrases that quietly make you feel worse for having the worry at all. He just pointed at where the worry was living. Not here. Somewhere else. The past. A hypothetical future. A scene that hadn't happened.
And what good is a worry that doesn't live in the moment you are actually in? It's not solving anything. It's not preparing you for anything. It's just borrowing from a tomorrow that may never come, and charging interest on a yesterday that already closed.
We all know this. Books say it. Teachers say it. We say it to other people. And then we lose sight of it the next morning, the next meeting, the next quiet evening when the mind has nothing to do and finds something to chew on. So when a person we trust says it again — gently, without performance — it's worth holding onto.
Almost like a P.S. to that conversation, he forwarded me a clip on WhatsApp. His wisdom, in another voice. Audio with a transcript — someone speaking, half in Hindi and half in English, about exactly this. About acceptance. About how he learned to stop complaining. About a story of a Chinese couple named Hua. The recording itself came without a name attached.
If the original speaker ever reads this and surfaces — full credit and attribution belongs to them. I am not the author. I'm not taking any credit for the words below. I'm only the person who heard it at the right moment and wanted to keep it somewhere I could find again.
Have a listen, or have a read. Whichever lands. It's a fun, lopsided, very Indian way of saying something patient traditions have been saying for a long time.
that is people have full complaint. i used to also be like that. complaint complaint. yeh nahi hai, woh nahi hai.
then this thing happened. they were this newly married chinese couple mr and mrs hua. they went for a honeymoon and they were very clear they don't want a child so they went for full precautionary planning, iud, a full deal. god's plan you know? when they didn't want a single child they got twins so they named the twins जो हुआ सो हुआ but it changed my life. correct my life में भी जो हुआ सो हुआ.
flight is delayed जो हुआ सो हुआ. नाश्ता मिल क्यों नहीं है? अरे जो नहीं है वो नहीं है। वो क्यों नह वो है जो नहीं है वो नहीं है। ओमन में क्या है? ओमन अमेरिका में क्यों नहीं है? नहीं है। जो नहीं है वो नहीं है। जो है वो है।
the day i will be able to accept this from that day i realize acceptance is something that keeps your first peace then you can build up on happiness. पहले acceptance चाहिए। आपको accept नहीं करना चाहिए and it is not an imaginary thing i am asking to accept। तो ये सामने है we are together. यार वो होता तो अरे वो नहीं है ना।
let's enjoy this. accept the greatest quality i think i developed and everybody should develop this acceptance. quality acceptance. जो है वो है, जो नहीं है वो नहीं है। जो हुआ सो हुआ। बेमिसाल है।
The line that stays with me is the order he puts things in. Not happiness first. Not peace first. Acceptance first. Acceptance is the floor. Peace can sit on top of it. Happiness has somewhere to land.
Without that floor, peace is just a wish. Happiness is just a mood that happens to you when conditions briefly align. Anything can knock it over — a delayed flight, an unmade breakfast, a thing that's not there.
For a leader, this is not a soft point. We carry teams, decisions, futures. If our internal weather depends on every condition going our way, we are not actually steady. We are just lucky, until we aren't. The acceptance the speaker is describing — जो है वो है, जो नहीं है वो नहीं है — is the unglamorous ground on which steadiness becomes possible.
So this is a note to myself, mostly. The next time I find myself spiralling about something that isn't here, in a moment that is — I want to remember Mr and Mrs Hua, and the twins they named after the only sentence that ever really helps.