My COVID-19 Experience

Mortality. Morality.

As I watched the COVID-19 toll climb, I couldn’t help but think about various discussions I have had around mortality – the earliest one being a distant memory when I was 8 years old. We had just moved back to Agra, and in a nutshell, my dad being a doctor, left his job to take care of my grandfather, who was given months to live.

He was 80. He stayed with us for another 8 years. And in those 8 years, he left an indelible mark on my formative years, moulding my value system into what it is today.

Today a similar thought crosses my mind – as a global cosmopolitan millennial, where is the line that I draw between building a robust career, and being away from the people I love.

Amid the anxiety and stress, COVID-19 also gave me a moment to take a step back and take stock of my life so far. A continuous stream of water can carve a groove in a rock, but you can never really tell which day it appeared. I was trying to find that inflection point for myself, and I realized it is a collection of the experiences that made me what I am today, and a lot of it has to do with the guidance, mentorship or even just conversations with people who have shared their lived experiences with me.

I have heard the story of a passionate vision transforming into a distant dream. When I asked some of the people the reason behind that, they said – ‘Life Happened’.

Our elders (and I use that term not with respect to age, but with relation to wherever you are in life – someone with more lived experience), too had ideas. Perhaps ahead of their times. They might have lacked the opportunity, the time, or the means to execute – but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t dream.

More importantly they know exactly why, in hindsight, it didn’t work out. That is a powerful lesson, waiting to be learnt. They might not know AI, but they have life skills. A good student finds knowledge from their experiences and that of others. It’s like the movie, The Intern, where an ex-VP for sales (played by Robert De Niro) who sold phone books for his entire life, ended up working for a millennial entrepreneur (played by Anne Hathaway), and taught her some important life lessons.

They too, had dreams, perhaps not the means. 30 years ago, my parents had to book a trunk call, days in advance, wait in like for about an hour, to have a 120 second conversation with their parents. Today, I skype whenever I want, sometimes having dinner with my family. The means have changed.

Which is why, with the means and the possible cognitive overload of a continuous stream of information today, it’s imperative that we build a robust culture of care. Both to be cared, as the millennials face the prospect of burning out, and to care, of the generations that have survived through transformations, and have knowledge to impart. The ageism pendulum has swung, and whereas once the ideas of the younger generations used to be dismissed; today the opposite might ring true for a lot of the disruptors.

We need to leverage people’s lived experiences, to help find our own meaning and purpose. ‘Moving beyond the individual to embrace the community’ – and as they say, it starts at home. Which brings me to the morality of the innovations during this time. Regulation will take time to catch up, and the onus is on the individual and the community to do the right thing. I recently read a book called Design Justice, which talks about how people sometimes design solutions, without really considering the people who would be the most affected by it. We saw inklings of it with the hoarders of PPE aiming to profit from market demand, versus the frontline workers having to make-do with cloth masks.  

Everyone may have a different way of dealing with it as they find a path to make it through. It means you may try a lot of different modes depending on the day. One day is super productive and the next day is like trudging through mud. You can handle it five different ways in five different days. This is a true disaster. People’s mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, and friends are not surviving. All this talk of data, data, data - makes it easy to numb ourselves to the humanity of this. My only wish for each of you is to #1 be kind and patient with yourselves. Have compassion for yourself and others. Compassion is actually different than putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. That’s empathy. Empathy is great, don’t get me wrong. But this is a time for deep compassion. Compassion is about recognizing the differences in how others approach this disaster and not only accepting them wholly, but also staying fully connected to them. No one is in a different boat. Incredible levels of sustained stress only respond to huge amounts of self-compassion and compassion for others. What it doesn’t respond to is judgment. -Mitra Azizirad [ CVP, AI and Innovation Marketing – Microsoft ]  

To know that you are cared for, and to be able to care, brings a smile and in some cases becomes a reason for being. I hope that the pandemic motivates not just opportunities of optimization, but that of true innovation at a societal level. Video conferencing enabled people to be closer while being far away, what could we do to reduce the mental toll that COVID-19 might take on us? How could we work together to leverage lived experiences and innovative breakthroughs to not just build a profitable tomorrow, but a happier one? This is the time to care, if there was ever one, because neurologically we are breaking habits we took ages to build; and we need to create value, not just capture it – and it is an opportunity for us to really rethink frameworks in a whole new light. To Respond, recover, reimagine.

Siddhartha Chaturvedi, Global PMM Lead, Health Innovation and Responsible AI, Microsoft