Munich, Christmas, New Year and life lessons
January 13, 2025
I spent Christmas and New Year 2025 holiday with relatives in Munich.
I really liked the calmness of the city.
One liner to describe it would be “A big city without big city problems.”
It was my first time to see a huge Ethiopian community abroad. In most places I have been, I was the only Ethiopian.
After a long time it felt like I was at home again. I ate injera, drank coffee prepared “the Ethiopian way”, and held long conversations in Amharic.
In this writing I want to share some of the learnings I had during this time that generalize to everyday life.
Lesson #1 - Gotta find your tribe
You have got to find and spend time with people that bring the best out of you. They are your tribe. The people that get you.
They are the type of people that light the fire in you, your energy level raises after meeting them.
It is easy to drain people, it is hard to charge.
I spent most of my time with my three cousins who are all in their early 20s. They have friends who like them are born and raised in Germany.
They have got Ethiopian Church as well.
The church brought them together every week and spent time together after service at friends place or somewhere. It was beautiful to see that they all grew up together, stayed friends and gather every week.
Generalizing from this, find you tribe and make sure you have somethings that brings you together frequently.
If there isn’t, take the initiative to bring everyone together. It is really important.
Lesson #2 - Have a purpose that outlives you
We all need something to live for. Not because life is nothing but suffering, but because it give meaning to whatever it is that we do.
In their case it was their belief that gave meaning to their life. You can have your own ideal life and life purpose to live for.
Make sure you have a north star you follow and a framework that distills all the mess in the world and make it sensible to you.
At the very least it should be something that expires just one day after you die 😊.
Looking at values that have outlived people previously is a good place to look for — as they will probably outlive you too.
Lesson #3 - Habit of gratitude goes so far
I witnessed an act of gratefulness before every meal goes too far.
It may seem like a habitual action but has profound effect in the whole dynamics of a person.
Find little actions that have high long term return and incorporate them in your daily life.
Lesson #4 - Operating System for Life
Computers are comprised of pieces of hardwares like CPU, RAM, HardDisk, Keyboard, Screen that work together.
Just like a company that has different teams like Human Resources, Marketing, maybe Engineering and high level leadership.
For the computers what keeps everything running and connected is the operating system.
The same way for a company it is how it is structured.
Think of yourself as computer in a network. As a person your brain is your CPU/GPU, your sense organs are inputs like keyboard or mouse.
The relationship you have with other people is the people you are connected with like computers in a network.
If we take the analogy of people as computers, like computers we need an organized system to manage resources, memory and network. A thing to operate and orchestrate our hardware like an operating system.
The only trick here is that everyone builds their own operating system.
Instead of the big vendors like Microsoft and Apple with Windows and MacOS, we probably make our own LifeOS.
It is unique to the individual. We can copy things we like from others though as we are usually navigating similar landscape.
We define our protocols of communication with others, how we invest our time and money, what to do and generate income like power supply, and all of that thing.
What I have learnt is whether we are conscious or not we are always building our life’s Operating System all the time.
What I want to say is as you build your LifeOS, it is quite helpful if you make it as intuitive and user-friendly as MacOS, resource efficient, flexible and transparent as Linux, and fun to enjoy the good moments and the nice games of life with loved ones just like Windows.
Now time for some photo and live music!
