In Chapter 1 of 17 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, leadership philosopher Bijoy Goswami answers "How Are Your Family Relationships Changing As You Get Older?" Goswami discusses how his parent relationships are becoming less instructional and more collaborative and peer based. He discusses ways, including annual family gatherings, that allow the relationships to flourish and provide support across the family.
Bijoy Goswami is a writer, teacher, and community leader based in Austin, Texas. He develops learning models, including MRE, youPlusU, and Bootstrap, to help others live more meaningfully. Previously, he co-founded Aviri Software after working at Trilogy Software. Goswami graduated from Stanford University, where he studied Computer Science, Economics, and History.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: How are your family relationships changing as you get older?
Bijoy Goswami: You know, we moved from specific relationships like my mom and dad, you know, and they were in charge of our life and telling us what to do, to we’re all on the journey together and we’re helping each other with our journeys, you know. So, it’s less of a structure, it’s more of these fellow travelers that I've gotten to be with my journey for all my life.
My parents and my brothers, you know, almost all my life so, but we get to reflect and help each other through the journey and so it’s becomes peer to peer, you know process rather than a structured process and so it’s much less of you’re supposed to be doing this or how it’s going but it’s much more of reflection, helping someone express themselves more fully, more completely and having that long history. No one else has the history of knowing the deep thread that kind of ties it all together for, for, you know.
So, I think that’s been really fun and for us we get together as a family once a year at least in Hong Kong, get together for Christmas that’s our tradition. But that’s also our time to sort of sink up, calibrate. We’re always in touch of course during the year, too but that’s really a good time for us to sink up, calibrate, talk about stuff, get reflected, get reset and then take on the next year.