Ramanan Raghavendran shared a lovely post on his blog titled – “Remember who brung ya to the dance.” Below are a few excerpts.
In life — work, home, relationships of all kinds — there are people who “brung ya to the dance.” Sometimes we forget them, and this is a mistake. It is essential to remember them, both because gratitude is a noble emotion and so you are mindful about paying it forward.
All kinds of people have brung me to various dances along the way. Many of them are, to my great good fortune, still in my life.
There is the admissions officer who admitted me to Penn 35 years ago. There is the classmate who single-handedly got me through a hairy course junior year. There is the colleague who made the crucial introduction nearly 30 years ago that got me into the VC business. There is the recruiter who found me a position that landed me on my feet after a disastrous turn in my career.
When we achieve some modest measure of success, it can be very easy to forget how much luck is involved, at crucial moments. And behind that luck, always, is a human being who made a decision or an intervention in your favor.
It isn’t necessarily some earth-shattering decision. It is often not something viewed as a favor by the person making the intervention. For example, that recruiter I mentioned — he was just doing his job.
But “doing his job” resulted in a complete transformation of my life’s trajectory. Without him, things would be very, very different.
Remember all these people, and if you can, hold them close.
They brung you to the dance, and without them, it’d be a very different dance.
It resonated.
