Last year, I was in the middle of applying for an executive MBA program. I was busy preparing for Toefl and writing essays for the college application. One of the prompts was about globalization and the way forward. As part of the prep, I was going through some interviews of Thomas Friedman on YouTube. He pulls out his business card and says I’m in the business of humiliation. I cover how one country humiliates another country and the people never forget and everything that happens in the world today is one country reacting to the other to settle that humiliation. I was blown away. It connected so deeply to human nature. I recollect my memory of every person in my life, I usually either like people who were very kind to me and made me ‘feel’ good or people who were mean to me and made me feel bad. I forgot everybody in between, the neutral guys. My motivations are driven by these feel-good and not-good experiences of life. I remember the guy who used to take me to the Udipi restaurant after college and treat me to delicious idlis. I remember my aunt who used to nudge me to take the extra egg during a large family dinner. I equally remember another aunt who dumped a bowl of Idlis into my plate because I had asked for a second helping. I remember how much my mother felt humiliated and asked me to leave the dining table. Thomas Friedman, the CHO (chief humiliation officer) unlocked a deep insight that day. You remember people and nations by not what they say or do, but by how they make you feel. In testing times, they reveal themselves. During Covid, Singapore did not allow me to go and visit my mum and come back but my colleague went twice to Germany and saw his mother. I felt crushed. Something inside me snapped that day and all the feelings of admiration I had for the efficiency of this country dried up. Instead, the feeling of being trapped started choking me. People and nations never forget humiliation. Violence always seemed mindless to me, I never am able to internalize terrorism and mass murder. I still feel powerless. It’s just that if we lift the bloody veil off, we will likely see two lurking monsters, one, naked power and the second, somebody retaliates against that humiliation. It’s hard to reconcile this negative energy but the ray of hope is that for every person who humiliates you, there is also a person who was kind and compassionate to you. A nation, similarly was compassionate to another. I recently read that Indonesia honored the death of an Indian statesman because decades ago, he piloted a plane and fought for the people of Indonesia. I was amazed that his kindness had such an impact that it took a foreign country to tell his story that I did not study in my own history books. The more meanness that I see today, reminds me of my choice to be more kind to the people I meet. It is hard. There are so many positive experiences that Singapore and its people have given me over the years, but I still am choosing to feel bad due to one incident. I promise, for the next several days, I will try and remember every act of kindness shown by Singapore. I will choose to remember my years here by the good versus the helplessness that I felt recently. I need to do it, for someday, it might make a person or nation to return in kind. What was the one act of kindness you received in your life? What act of kindness did you show?