Politics brings out the worst in everyone. Everyone is right, therefore everyone is wrong.

Me me me me me me.

Policy issues aside, we live in a society. All of us. Together. What’s remarkable is how few of us are able to empathize with people that were brought up differently than us, with a different set of privileges — lesser or more — and different life experiences.

For example, growing up as a brown man in post-9/11 America, I was subject to a decent amount of racially motivated violence. However, a close family member was not. When I finally opened up to him about my experiences, he was shocked. This can’t be possible, he thought. This didn’t happen to me, so how could this possibly happen to anyone else? It took him a while to come to terms with it.

How can any of us expect someone else to empathize? To step into our shoes?

We can’t.

All we can control is how we empathize...

It was an unassumingly foggy Friday morning. More specifically, Friday June 14, 2013. My brother, his friends, and I were driving to the Lincoln Center IMAX to catch the morning show of Man of Steel on opening day.

I was in between jobs that week.

As we were turning left on 74th St to park, a speeding cab slammed into us. We were fortunate enough to not have any major injuries.

The next day, I was cooking for the family for Father’s Day. The food turned out great (or so they said while politely declining seconds). My uncle, also my physician at the time, pulled me aside with a grave face.

I thought someone had died.

Turns out, it would’ve been me.

He received my blood test results from a few days before.

“Deep,” he started. “you need to make some major changes in your life. Otherwise, at this rate, you won’t make it to 40.”

I was speechless.

“Your cholesterol alone is enough to...

Coldplay recently released the music video for their new hit single, Hymn for the Weekend. It was shot in several places, including Varanasi, Mumbai, Warli (locality in southern Mumbai), Kolkata, and Fort Bassein (in the village of Vasai).

Naturally, this video has sparked an enormous amount of conversation (and controversy) regarding the topic of cultural appropriation vs. cultural appreciation.

For me, it goes a little bit deeper than that simply by context.

Here are 6 things I thought about when it came to this music video.

1. Something to be said about British men coming to India to talk about appreciating its culture
2. Visually it’s absolutely gorgeous and a real milestone as a work of art
3. The song is super catchy, but the lyrics are… unfortunately shallow, to the say the least
4. You can tell that they genuinely tried to treat the culture with respect, and featured actual Indians...

Ideal

If I’m driving a car or taking an Uber, once I enter airport grounds, my watch gently starts taps my wrist at long intervals (if I have sound enabled, it’ll tell me as well). The frequency increases as I get closer to the exit for the terminal for my flight. (If I’m driving, I shouldn’t need to glance at my watch, as it can be dangerous. (If I’m just a passenger, I can simply glance at my watch to know which exit to take). If I need to park… well, parking is another problem to solve entirely. I’ll cover that some point in the future.

Alternatively, if I’m taking public transportation (AirTrain, for example) my watch will let the vehicle know some basic information about my flight: time of flight, airport, airline, and terminal. The vehicle will then compare it to the rest of the passengers’ itineraries and create the most efficient route to get everyone to their destinations in...