Reflections on Thirty.

Raw ideas I penned in the week I turned 30, written in Brooklyn, NYC and San Francisco.

I am sitting on the couch at my friends’ home in Brooklyn, NYC in the week that I turn 30 years old. A tweet has been making its way towards me on X that goes like “If your life is 24 hours long, being 30 is just 7am!” and while that makes me feel comforted, it doesn’t take away the challenges of knowing and not knowing what the time post 7am is going to look like.

However, there are some things that I do know. I do know a fair bit about what I like and not like. For instance, I do know that focussing on my health and wellness is likely the most important theme for me, now, and going forward. Similarly, I do know that I enjoy working and creating meaningful impact with meaningful people. I also do know that family is a big part of my life and I care for and love my family to no end. And so are friends who become like family. I also do know that I care lesser about money, power, fame. But adventure, human connection, and exercising my talent is prima facie, the numero uno deciding criteria for me to take up something new. And it is also not like I do not care for money, power, fame, it is more so that my relationship with those is less tied to my personality and my guiding principles but obviously I need to continue to develop my relationship there too.

Over the last 30 years, I’ve spent exactly 60% as a non-adult, 40% as an adult; Somewhere less than 16% of time with my pre-frontal cortex fully developed, about 26% of time officially being a part of the workforce, and 90% of time where I was not shitting my pants (literally!).

There is something that these numbers do. There is something that numbers generally do to humans. And that is to do something with expectations, pressure, benchmarking, comparing, challenging, motivating, thoughts and feelings that emerge based on the context in which one perceives the numbers. Given ample noise, the numbers are masked by the thoughts and feelings and all that remains is a fuzzy feeling in the stomach or a giddy feeling of joy. It is self-inflicted, much like everything else in human life. It is surprising how big a role numbers play in our life. Your age, salary, how long you’ve been married or dating, bank balance, net worth, the price of the car or house you own, your number for how much is enough, height, weight, time, how many friends you have, people in your family, performance review you got last quarter, the quarter itself, the date, the year, are all numbers. And they are all constantly changing. It is fascinating how humans are so good at tracking those changes, and building a temporal understanding of the progression or lack of in these numbers.

Numbers run the world. But do they really? Likely not as much as one gives it the benefit, prima facie. But once you peel the onion even just a bit, one realizes they don’t really. If I say I liked meeting a girl at a bar, am I thinking of any numbers that make her more likeable to me. Or a potential co-worker, am I thinking of their last compensation as the deciding factor for how I feel about them. Nope. I am thinking about how they make me feel. How they can help me get towards the things I want, and the experiences I like to be a part of in my life, how their energy syncs and matches with mine. And yes, sometimes, in business transactions, it do be like that the numbers decide or play an important role in how you feel. The numbers are just a way to represent the feeling fairly, they follow the intention of the parties, not the reverse. Funny thing is that most transactions are not truly transactions. So it is all about the feeling, less about the numbers. It is all about the experience of the energy, less about the quantification of such energy.

So, I will be 30 at the end of this week. Does the number matter? Probably not. Does the date on which I was born matter? Probably for the astro girlie who is interested in my scorpion rising. But for me? Not so much. It does matter however how I feel. And the truth is that I have rambled all this while to really avoid (I can avoid without being “avoidant”!) answering how I am feeling about turning 30. Well, for one, I feel more energetic, youthful, and optimistic about the future than ever before. I also do however feel a wave (or maybe a Tsunami) of upcoming change in my energies, especially in the last one year. I have intentionally subjected myself to go through a period of immense reflection, and some unintentional life events that I could have never pre-empted. It has been quite a ride and I am feeling content and satisfied with this Tsunami bringing a breeze of change along with it, but also upheaveling the deepest desires and emotions at the bottom of my heart. The last 12 months have challenged me in my romantic relationships, personal relationship, work - what I like to or do not like to do, where I want to live, and I’ve challenged myself in more ways than I could have imagined. It has all led me to feeling satiated in ways that I couldn’t have imagined before. I’ve become less judgemental, more tasteful, and less worried about my future, powered through a ton of uncertainty.

I like to be in control. I always have been in control and have managed to take hold of uncertainties by the hook and walking a taut line. Liking to be in control does not mean I don’t like uncertainties. It means that I like the uncertainty only till an extent that I can make it certain. The last year threw me curveballs that were uncertainties where I could find little certainty in, I tried my best but the outcomes weren’t in my control and while I emerged on the other side being victorious, I still feel like it took something away from me. It left me with scars stronger than I expected. I am better now but I feel like I am still recovering.

Recovery is an interesting word. Probably the most important of all words, more important than training. You could train all you want but if you don’t know how to recover well and recover enough, the training isn’t gonna be productive. I have been physically injured too, I am in recovery for a muscle tear on my right quads post my last marathon. I continue to train irrespective. In fact, I might have trained the hardest I have in all my life in the past year. I have lifted heavier, I am stronger than ever and I am learning to recover better. I wish I would have learnt how to sleep better by now. It is embarrassing to say this at 30 that I still don’t think I sleep as well as I should be sleeping. I want to get better at sleeping.

While I still don’t know how to sleep, I think I have identified certain skills that I am good at. The past few years with AI becoming so good, the understanding of my own skills that will be key for me in the years to come has been critical. I have come to realize that I don’t have any or many skills apart from a few. I’ve come to realize that my skills span three key areas. Number one, is the skill to identify the correct problem worth spending time on, breaking down the problem, translating it into meaningful impact areas for a group of people to work towards. Number two, is the skill to work with capital. To identify areas where capital is required to be deployed, identify sources of capital, allocate capital, and double-down on the capital deployment or pull the strings at the right time. Number three, is the skill to work with people. This is likely the most critical skill I have and need to continue developing. Identifying the best people for the best job, bringing them together for a shared purpose, making them feel seen, being critical, taking decisions to drop people when they are not productive towards the goals of a project. As I think forward the combination of these three skills together depending upon the context could lead to interesting outcomes. In business specifically, deal making is one such outcome. You solve a problem, follow the money, find the money, work on the problem with the best people, and make a deal happen.

Don’t get me wrong, these are the skills I have but at the same time I don’t mean to say that I am good at these skills. In fact, it is quite the opposite, I am taking the mandate to be better at these skills for the rest of my life. I am signing up to be a life-long learner of the game where I get to hone these skills in the realm of technology.

Talking of deal-making, I have to talk about creativity. One of my favorite anecdotes on the topic comes from Adam Neumann, founder of WeWork in an interview when asked about Masayoshi Son, Adam said, Masa is one of the most creative people he has ever met or worked with. One wouldn’t think that a job in finance, albeit one of the most important jobs in Finance as the CEO of Softbank would be a creative endeavour. After all, Masa is not in LA, or Paris, or Bushwick where his refined taste of the arts, music, culture is making him creative. Creativity spans every workstream. The most dry job on the outside, plumbing, cooking, law, finance, and any pursuit worth pursuing can be a creative pursuit. In fact, one would say that the ultimate worship for the love of the game would be to enjoy the game so much that the creative juices find their way and make the dryness of it look like an alien concept. Over the last many years, I have tried to understand my creative expression and thankfully I’ve found one too many forms of creative expression. Every morning I start my day by making my bed and I feel engrossed in it so much so that I feel like in an alternate life I could have been a housekeeping staff in a hotel. I go out for a run, feel like an athlete, and encourage the bones and flesh in my body to perform to the need of the hour. As I make my breakfast, the mix of eggs, avocado, feta, and some spinach brings together a medley in the pan that eliminates the mundane-ness of each of those ingredients by themselves and binds them to give me a joyful experience. It doesn’t stop there. I appreciate music, I appreciate fashion, art, cultural idiosyncrasies and explore the multitudes within me with a creative endeavour. It is funny that growing up, I was encouraged to focus. To focus on the job at hand, the most important task, the subjects that I need to study. Yet, somewhere all along I knew that while education is the path to break out of mediocrity that my parents always emphasized, the path to excellence requires me to go beyond and enjoy the multitudes in life, and within me. It doesn’t come easy and naturally to someone who grew up in India, and doesn’t come naturally to someone who grew up lower-middle class, migrated to America.

Growing up, focus was talked about a fair bit. Anything that could be a distraction to the goal was seen as a steering away of focus from my horse-blinders. Over time I have found comfort in the fact that focus looks and feels different for everyone. It comes to everyone in a different way. The guy next to me at this coffee shop in Park Slope, Brooklyn has been at his laptop for the past couple of hours and I am guessing is scrolling a fair bit. You can tell by how much someone is using their keyboard vs. trackpad around how focussed they are at creating an output. This guy seems to be focussing on his screen hard but he is also humming each song softly as he works. He is also occasionally distracted by the passerby on the sidewalk or the people in the cafe. But he is mostly focussed. I like to think that focus is a by-product of your belief, how hard you are willing to make sacrifices, your raw abilities to put in the effort, and also how deeply you care about the problem at hand. I have been very focussed at several times in my life and at the same time, I have felt far away from being focussed too. I have come to realize that I love staying focussed, I love to ignore the noise, and I enjoy being in my element. Anything that makes me feel like that, I think I would appreciate it more and more, deeply to an extent where it might start looking like love or obsession, which are definitely two different kinds of things compared to focus. Its funny that I just said that focus makes me look like I am in love or obsessed. It is perhaps the most human of all experiences to romanticize your desires, likings, and lived moments you enjoy. If you are reading thus far, you might even think I am a romantic. Also, dear reader, you are catching me in an interesting time in my life where I am indeed a romantic more than I have ever been. My ability to feel love, give love, and endear the love towards myself has never been more.

Love is an interesting concept. Over the last year, I have felt that everyone deserves the kind of love that a new born gets from their family. Everyone, despite any differences deserves that love. However, not all get it. Its appalling. And most importantly of all, we ourselves are not capable of loving thyself the way we would love a newborn. I definitely am not. I am learning to. Love is an interesting concept. It is a funny concept. It is invisible yet the most present of all emotions and feelings. I have felt love, I have been loved and I have loved deeply. And all I care for my life is to deserve the kind of love that makes me feel whole and weird in the ways I want to be, in the ways my loved ones want to be and our collective love brings joy to the rest of the world. I am turning thirty and as with a lot of different kinds of love, romantic love and relationships is how a ton of love is expressed and understood. I have had the pleasure of feeling love, and loving but I continue to seek love in the way I experience joy loving a person and forming a partnership for life.

A lot of these themes is what I was able to explore deeply during my time at Vipassana last year where I spent 10 days in a silent meditation practice. I found myself remembering memories in my life that I didn’t know existed. A ton of these memories spanned the first and second decades of my life. And naturally a lot of these memories involved my family, parents, my sister. I am fortunate to have grown in a family that loves me relentlessly and deeply with a passion that sparks my will to live every day. Growing up with inspiring human beings under the same roof with whom you share a blood connection is likely the oldest concept in human civilization and is the theme that makes us a lot of who we are or want to be. I have nothing but gratitude and a will to do better for my family everyday, and eventually be inspired to start my own one day.

Inspiration. I want to be inspired. There is a joy that comes from seeing the best perform their best in any field of work. Music. Sports. Arts. All have a certain character to inspire the fruit of the labours within others. Its the training data for the mind to not just ingest the product but also the temperament, the passion, the solitude, the togetherness of producing something meaningful that is inspiring. Something worth pursuing. To be in the element while performing. As I turn 30, I have been inspired and continue to want to be inspired. It creates a sense of the art of the possible in my mind when I see someone do something that they love, enjoy, train, recover, obsess over. The art of the possible makes me go to bed feeling content that a human not too different from one I am in my existence is able to get to the passions in their life that inspire others.

One of the beautiful concepts in life is compounding. I have felt the compounding in myself over the years. Compounding requires raw belief that is so deep that any wave that could make it quiver ends up believing in you instead, you turn the tides of your raw belief into compounding. There are micro-decisions that I have taken through my life, that on a macro timeline have turned out to be such a deep compounding spirit that all of what I am writing right now is a product of that. Compounding in finance carries this innate disclaimer that past performance is not an indicator of future outcomes. It is so true and the true, quiver-less belief carries the underlying caveat that anything that has happened in the past, good or bad, should not shake up your belief to see the impact of compounding. Compounding is a by-product of micro-growth, growth on a daily basis. Growth carries the inherent quality of a human having to experience two steps forward, one step backward, but never stopping. Never stopping. It sounds weird to say it because sometimes recovery, that I talked about earlier, requires you to stop. Or rather, pause. Never stop! For you to compound, you never stop. And at the same time, for habits, patterns, and detractors in life, you gotta stop to have it from compounding. Or at least, pause, recover, and then decide if you want to pause forever i.e. stop. I have found several habits in my 30 years of existence that have gone through loops and loops of this process. And that is okay. It is okay to be human. You and I (unless you are an agent and I am a .md file to you) are expected to go through loops of iteration. These iterations and attempts at being a better version of ourselves is the most human of all traits that do not require hyper-examination by the world, other than your world that you care about.

Anything that is put under the lens of a micro-hyper-examination by the world that you do not value or care about will subject me to pressure. Some pressure is good. My relationship with pressure has evolved a ton. Pressure over an extended period of time causes stress. And stress is fun, possibly essential. Sometimes stress is not fun and it causes you to lose your hair, about which I know a thing or two in my three decades of existence that I could have lived without knowing. Over time the relationship between stress, compounding, pressure, growth, love, recovery and all such things comes down to understanding thyself and being in your element, being so much in touch with your soul that you innately, deeply, confidently, with a lot of faith know what you want, need, desire. It is so hard to crack this down to formulae, and humans for generations have written countless books to nail this understanding. I have come to the realization that the key to get the formula right is to know that there isn’t a formula and instead, focus on listening to your body. Your body knows the answers and it is our responsibility to listen to it deeply and intently. I have felt this way several times in my life that I am locked in to an extent where I know it in my bones what I want and need. And I act on it. The counter to that is a funny one, it is to not get that calling in your bones and hence, I don’t act on it. It leads to inaction. It leads to eventual breaking down of the feedback loop that initially made you who you were anyway. To grow older is to recognize that pattern and come out of it with the least amount of time spent between these hops.

As I write the last few words of this monologue that is shared loudly on the internet (hopefully), I am realizing how Tartine on 18th St & Guerrero in San Francisco on this bright and sunny SF morning is playing all the bangers that I enjoy. I started my day with a beautiful cappuccino with light vanilla and a pain-au-chocolate crafted to perfection. It is so lovely to enjoy a crispy croissant under a crispy sun at 8.30am on a Sunday morning and feel blissed out. Blissed out to the maximum. It is a lovely human experience to know that the meaning for so many humans had to come together to get this bite of croissant crafted to perfection. The server, cashier, the person who built the oven that it was toasted in, the baker, the chef who crafted the recipe, the business owner of the bakery Tartine, the beautiful humans who grew the raw ingredients that went into the croissant, and finally me. Me, the end consumer as capitalism calls it. I consume it. I consume the sheer love poured into it by the “supply-chain” - such a non-romantic word for such a lovely process that helps me enjoy the existence of a beautiful life on this beautiful planet. As much as I love capitalism to no end, capitalism has this innate quality of sucking the soul out of the most beautiful, raw human experiences. It does it all the time. And if I had a purpose in life, it is to be a capitalist, the best capitalist in the world who can pour love back into our world and give the respect that each human in the supply chain deserves. I don’t know if I should call it conscious capitalism. I think it is tasteful capitalism. Or maybe I need an even better word for that. Capitalism can achieve a lot more if it follows the path to be more tasteful and can build even a better (even market cap) society than we can fathom.

I earlier talked about how important it is to love thyself. I think there are few more important things than that in life. It is to get on the journey to experience yourself deeply. To fight & argue with oneself, gracefully. To hold two completely opposing opinions in your mind and steel-man one another. To negotiate. And the goal here is to not win. The goal here is to build the intelligence to experience the world in a way that my cup can hold its water in the best possible form. And once I learn this fighting style, I experience a by-product on the other side that is love for myself. Only if I can do it gracefully, with an awareness that the goal of this exercise that I am seeking is for me to experience myself fully and deeply and to develop a frame of mind that shall lead me to joy. The “fighting style” for the lack of a better word I develop also describes my fighting style with others around me. And it is only when I can have a good relationship with myself in this department can I expect a good, fair relationship with the rest of the word. It is likely the most intelligent of all traits to hold two opposing ideas together, give them the same starting ranks in an argument where you clearly favor one of the sides and especially one which you don’t agree with to be regarded as an equal competitor for your mindshare. It takes a lot of curiosity. It takes a lot of courage to be proven wrong. And the journey to that starts with asking for what you want on the other side. Asking for what you want from yourself. Asking for what you want from the world.

Curiosity leads to security. It leads to a holding space that despite the outcomes of my curiosity, I will end up in a safe space for myself, my ideas, my belongings, my people, my everything. The world is a lot about the I and my. But security comes from the belief that despite the I & my, I will continue to succeed in the realm of my ideas of success. As the clock comes rolling to 10.30am, the line for the delicious bakes at Tartine continues to grow and the competition to have a seat at the tiny outpost is much more than ever. So many people walking in solo, getting dropped off by an Uber. A good number of people are looking at this guy, sitting facing Guerrero St. typing away to glory on his laptop on a Sunday morning. A bunch of them are curious so as to what this wall of text is that he is writing. A bunch of them are irritated that a guy with a laptop whose coffee and pastry was over a long time ago is still occupying a spot that could have been theirs. A bunch of them are probably thinking that this Indian guy, who likely works in tech is out here in San Francisco, spoiling the vibe in a generational pastry shop with his seemingly ugly machine, probably tinkering some code, some AI, or writing some mundane emails. All of them are correct, all of their truths are correct, at least to some extent. But my truth? My truth is the one that it is my birthday today. I have turned 30. I love doing what I do and how I live my life. I am excited to start my day right, go for a long bike ride to Marin, across the bridge after and take in all the views the world can give me. The gods are showering their love. I am not religious but it is lovely to once in a while mention “God” in a piece of writing. All unexplainable things that you want to believe can be transferred responsibility to God. And today I am God’s favorite child. Well, I am not a child anymore, I know. Far from it. But let a man dream.

Anyway, I ramble and digress, well because I am human and I am allowed to make mistakes. Especially when it is my birthday. More so because it is my birthday. I am blessed. I feel secure in knowing my version of the truth. I also feel secure knowing the truths about themselves and me that other people around me carry. And I feel like home in this beautiful city, likely the most beautiful city on this whole earth.

I feel home. Life is beautiful. Here’s to living. Here’s to love. Here’s to thirty.

Divyansh Saini