Dr. Abraham George
speaker
275 appearances
5 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Jan 2025
Dr. Abraham George’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Thank you, John. I just want to say I am truly amazed at your knowledge, not only India, but the issues that you pointed out and you hit right on the things that I would like to talk about. You gave me the opportunity. I am very thankful to you.
Poverty has different dimensions. It's not hunger. It's suffering. And even indignity of being in a lower caste, that is also a part of poverty. So I find all these activities that I embarked on, they're closely interrelated, though you may not see it as such. Somebody may argue that it doesn't fit in with poverty is lead poisoning. That's an urban problem more than anything else.
But I would argue even there, who suffers most is the poor people in slums who have no way of protecting themselves, who are right next to a factory that is fabricating lead. They are the ones who are suffering. So it's also a poverty issue. So everything I've done has some connection, may not be directly visible, but some of them are directly connected.
Poverty has different dimensions. It's not hunger. It's suffering. And even indignity of being in a lower caste, that is also a part of poverty. So I find all these activities that I embarked on, they're closely interrelated, though you may not see it as such. Somebody may argue that I didn't fit in with poverty is lead poisoning. That's an urban problem more than anything else.
But I would argue even there, who suffers most is the poor people in slums who have no way of protecting themselves, who are right next to a factory that is fabricating lead. They are the ones who are suffering. So it's also a poverty issue. So everything I've done has some connection, may not be directly visible, but some of them are directly connected.
People typically have a lot more agency than they think they do, right? You can make decisions every day that make your life better. And I was in my talk with, if you take 1.0, 1.0, think of that as a step, and you raise that to the 365th power, that equals one. But if you take 1.01, so imagine that is 1% better, and you raise that to the 365th power, that's 37, right? This is night and day.
I always tell people, when in doubt, act. Make a decision today that will make your life better. And if that's going from zero push-ups to one, that's a step. If that's going from walking 2,000 steps to 3,000 steps, take it, right? Take the step every day to make your life a little bit better and own that choice. You have the power to do that. Don't make excuses. Take the damn step.
Thank you, John. Happy to be here.
It was funny. I asked my mother the other day, where did my ambition in school come from? Because I remember very clearly in junior high at 11, 12 years old, taking great pride in my little report card saying all A's. I mean, I remember that I can still see that little report card. And so I was like, where did that come from? And she said it was just always there.
And I've got three kids and one of them is like that. She just takes great pride in making all A's. And so I think just being ambitious about education was somehow just always a part of me. Like we don't really, we can't figure out where it came from. It just is.
That really resonates because two of my three kids are twins and they're 14 years old. And the girl twin is the one who wants all of her grades to be 99s or 100s. And the boy twin spikes on empathy. Like he just feels what other people are feeling and he cares and he's kind. And so they're quite different and they're twins and they've done every single thing together their whole lives.
So I'm sure it's biological somehow.
If you'll indulge me, I think there are two. When I was in high school in a very small town in Texas called El Campo, a tiny little town, like one McDonald's, one Dairy Queen kind of town, the German professor, whose name was Paul Sechting, I actually saw him last week. He encouraged me to study abroad. And so I went to Germany for the first time on a study abroad program when I was 16 years old.
And that started a lifelong love of travel. And I've been all over the place and lived all over the place. And so I do credit him with kicking it off. The other one is a little bit of a longer story. When I was at Texas A&M, there was a a gentleman there named J. Wayne Stark. And he was the director emeritus of the Memorial Student Center, which is a big establishment, the MSC.
And when I was there, he was already retired. And he was considered the wise man on the mountain. And he had his director emeritus office back in the corner, which nobody knew. But it turns out if you made a 4.0 for a couple of years, he would send someone out in the middle of the day to tap you on the shoulder.
And this sounds different now because of Marvel movies, but they would tap you on the shoulder and say, Mr. Stark wants to speak with you. And then the clouds parted and the angels sang and something special was about to happen. And he gave me the following advice. He said, you're doing a degree in accounting and that's useful.
And he's a big fan of doing a degree that's useful, science, engineering, business. He said, but look, you're at an educational institution where there are world-class faculty in a lot of different disciplines. And you would really be remiss to not study under them. because you don't want to miss this chance to become a well-rounded person.
And so he gives me this piece of paper and he says, I want you to take these classes. And it was Shakespeare, the philosophy of art, metaphysics, medieval history. I mean, all sorts of random stuff. And it was Mr. Stark. So I'm like, okay. And so I did that. And I just started taking all the classes that I had to.
And then I just started taking everything on that list and everything that I thought was fascinating. And I got to the end of my fifth year as non-graduate and realized I only needed two more classes and I could have a degree in political science. So I just stayed the summer. I already had my job offer for McKinsey. I was like, guys, can I start in September instead of July? They said, sure.
And so then I picked up my second degree in policy. And so I think that that advice was really impactful to me.
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