The Answer

Many of us are always asking the same few questions over and over again: "what is my purpose in life?", "what am I worth?", "what can I achieve?" etc etc.

As much as we would like to believe that all man are free, man is a predominantly subservient specie. We all need guidance, answers, a sign from the universe to tell us what to do with our lives. Amongst us there are some who are naturally confident and seem to have life all figured out somehow, some who turn to religion or some sort of believes for answers, and some who are like lost ships floating in the ocean.

I too, was looking for a sign in the universe to tell me what to do with me life - a sign that can undeniably answer all my questions and skepticism. Then I realized: you don't find the answer, you make something the answer. The answer can be your family, your career, or some random things that you love doing. Making that something your answer and believing in it is what that gives purpose and worthiness in your life. For that answer, you will work extended hours to make ends meet, or achieve something tedious to make someone smile - and you will never feel that it is a waste of your efforts.

However, being a skeptic always complicate things. I realized that the reason why I could not find the answer for myself is because I doubt. I question everything which could have been the answer, in the end I denied everything the chance to be the answer. Figuring out the problem is a good beginning, there is only one solution to this problem, which is acceptance. But there are two paths which I can choose to accept: one is to accept and faithfully follow/believe that something is the answer, the other is to accept that nothing can ever satisfy me as the answer and keep drifting in the ocean.

I should not ask for more

Life has been quite crazy since I've started my job. Many questions about my ability has come up once again. There has always been many doubts on my achievements, concentration, determination - which are mostly mediocre at best. Doubts as such lead to questioning of my self worth.

A sweet gesture from my darling tonight manifests as the answer.

I wanted to skip a drinking session with my colleagues and go home for dinner tonight, but I ended up going to drink again. While I was out drinking, my girl helped collect and deliver the jeans I bought the other day.

She travelled so far to my house just to drop the jeans off. If I had decided to go home for dinner, I would have caught her just nice. But I didn't.What more, when I got home, I saw that she bought some titbits for me too. Even as a person lack of emotions, I felt something in my heart.

Then I realized, I've been asking and comparing so much...

She may not be the prettiest, the coolest, nor the smartest; but at the very least, she loves me so deeply, holding me so high in her eyes.

She may not know how to express it, she may be bad at saying it. But now though these sweet gestures I can feel her love. Every time I go drinking, I know she would be worried.

Sometimes, the answers to your questions may not be derived from yourself. While I indulge in self pity, licking my own wounds/ego, there are always people who are proud of what I am made of. For those who believe in me, I should press on and fight - living by the hypocritical philosophies which I have never fulfilled.

The Big Picture

I have been an advocate of viewing things in the so called “big picture” for a long time. I pride myself in my ability to view or create the structure in any situation while others fill in the minute details. I even dismiss those who are hung up on details. But more often than desirable, I fail to practice what I preach. As a perfectionist, I get irritated and persistent over small and less significant things, subconsciously assigning higher priority than these things deserves just because it irritates me.

Today, with thanks to a nightmare, I have finally gained some light on what it means to take a step back and put everything into perspective. We play life in the first person view, we can try to put all the things together from the angle where we are viewing, but looking at ourselves in a bird’s eye view is practically difficult. “Taking the step backwards” is tougher than people believe. More often than we’d like, the things around us pulls us as if we are bounded to them by strings, this renders it virtually impossible to take a step back since everything is pulling us so tightly.

I have not quite fully understand how to achieve it, but once in a while, like the nightmare that I had, certain events happen and throw your soul high up from yourself and in that instant, you can see things clearly than before, and realize how foolish you have been hanging on to minute things. Now that some light finally managed to get through, I wonder how long will this last before I get tied up by those binds again, how to take that step back again when I get bounded, and how to let go of those binds.

Searching?

I realize that all along, I was searching for something, someone, a light in the sky, which will tell me what to do... But when I look up, all I see is nothing but endless darkness.

Joe Ten turns three

Three years since I started blogging. It's amazing that I've kept this up for three years. Then a freshman, now graduating. So much has zoomed passed in this three years.

Recent job hunt had me thinking about the privacy and security issues of having a blog. I've been thinking about killing off Joe Ten for quite some time now. I realized that most of those who landed on Joe Ten are either looking to dismantle their Microsoft mouse, or to download Digimon songs. Few are actually interested in what I write, even fewer understands it.

Then I thought of the reason why I created Joe Ten. I realized that it was not so much to keep track of my thoughts, but really just a space to put my ego on display. I wanted attention. One thing I've learned is that food blogs and bimbo self camwhore blogs are the only blogs that attracts attention. Random whining doesn't. So as 16 years of education is finally coming to an end, I think it's about time for Joe Ten to fade into oblivion as well. I am still struggling with this decision, but I think it is just a matter of time.

Some questions

On the bus home today, thinking about some things that have been on my mind recently.
A few questions popped up, just thought I'd note them down..

How fuck up am I?

Do I deserve better or worse?

What can I do to prove my worth?

How far do I need to go to show that I'm good?

Arrogance has a price to pay

So I happened to meet someone who I have not met for quite a while, and I could sense the disdain and discontentment towards me. I can be something I said, posted on facebook, or written on this blog. Basically I know it due to my arrogance. Coincidentally, in a recent presentation, I found that my partner is better loved by the audience than I am. In short, he’s an over-achiever who is very humble.

Seeing how good a people-person my partner is and how hurtful it was when the indifference of the acquaintance had towards me was, I started to think about the ever growing arrogance in me again, and came to a conclusion. Ultimately, humility boils down to two factors: whether you love yourself more, or you love the people around you more.

I’ve been taught a big lesson on arrogance before: some things are better left unsaid; saying it doesn't change anything or anyone, it just brings hatred towards me. But no, saying those things brought me a sense of superiority, it made me feel better than others, it fulfills my ego. That is the main cause of my arrogance. Unfortunately, I like the attention from people too. The problem with being arrogant is, it agitates people around you. It doesn’t matter if you’re right, people hates it when you’re right, and they’ll all be like “god damn it, I hate it when he’s right”. The problem is, I like to celebrate and make sure everyone knows that I’m right.

So the tradeoff is really between the love of people and being humble and nice to others, or the love of yourself and going around poking others.

I choose the latter.

I realize that I have always been a selfish person who loves me more than others, and I live by the principle that “you can’t please everybody, but you can please yourself.” However and fortunately, I find that guilty conscience still lives somewhere in me, every now and then, incidents as above happens and the morals and ethics kick in to check if I’m doing okay. So for now, I hang in the balance of my arrogance and my guilty conscience, I think I’d still be okay for quite a while.

P.S. And of course, there’s the political-hypocritical humility: you need the people around you. That’s the reason why arrogance is good for me. In order to put up the arrogant front, I have to make sure that I have as little dependency on others as possible. This pushes me to strive forwards to be ever better than others, so that incidents where I need to beg others for help can be as little as possible.

Why being good at academics does not necessarily means you’re smart

For a very long time, I've been saying how being good at academics doesn't mean you’re smart and how some smart people may actually be the ones who are doing just so-so in academics. While intuitively we know this can be true, it doesn't really seem very convincing that those first-class elites are actually stupid. Being so well achieved in academics, they must be quite smart, right?

Not necessarily so, a recent conversation with Anthony shed some light in this topic.

I came to the conclusion that education is a tool, a tool to develop and help people to fulfill their potential, a tool that those wise ones back in the ancient time used to impart knowledge to younger generations.

While effective in grooming talents to some extent, education has its limitations. The topic of this post is the loophole of education: practice makes perfect. A rule of nature is that when you keep doing the same thing over and over again, sooner or later, you will become good at it. This is exactly how mugging works. When you spend so many hours a day studying, you are bound to end up doing well in the exams. There are some who, unfortunately, cannot score well no matter how much they study, that is likely because they are at the limits of their potential – at least they tried their best. However, there are plenty who are mediocre-ly intelligent, but yet manage to score colors  This is how pure hard work can make up for their lack of potential; they use hard work to push their performance to the maximum that their potential can achieve. While this is extremely commendable – especially coming from the perspective of a lazy person – that’s the best that they most likely ever can do. They are not particularly smart, they just managed to perform exceedingly well using the loophole in education.

The smart one is not the one who studies religiously everyday and gets an A, it is the one who didn't study yet manages to get by. This is where the education system fails in recognizing talents, because it is impossibly difficult to fish out those real geniuses who scores badly in exams.

Intelligence is a curse

Everybody thinks they are unique, they are special. But do they really know what it means to be different? It means that nobody understands what you say, everybody thinks you’re fucked-up because you act and think differently.

It is tough when your perspective is so different from people, in a way that it’s not about whether the chicken or the egg comes first, it’s about why the chicken is even here, and it goes deeper. It’s not about right or wrong – there is no right or wrong – you see beyond of others’ visions and they are just too superficial to understand.

What’s the point of knowing and understanding things when no one else does? When no matter how you explain, they just don’t see your point? In the end you still have to accommodate to their stupidity because it is arrogant to point out that they are stupid.

Ultimately, the agony falls on you as you try to fit into them. You ponder on others’ feedback, so much that you start to think the problem is with you. Eventually you realize it’s not that you’re living in your own world, it’s that your world is different from theirs.

You see a world that is deeper, you understand a logic which is far more profound. But what’s the point? No one else does. To others, you are just a skeptic, an extremist, a pessimist, an arrogant egoistic snob.

To friends who understand what I’m saying – I thank you – it lets me know that we are not alone. I enjoy our time chatting together, you know who you are. But our numbers are few, the majority others do not understand.

Sometimes, I wish I can be normal . . .

Age and Wisdom

There’s a difference between listening to how much it hurts to fall into a pit and to fall into the pit yourself. That’s the difference between learning from textbook and learning from experience. People can warn you as much as they can, but the enlightenment is different from going thru the same shit yourself. Mistakes are costly, but mistakes are sometimes inevitable. Making those mistakes can teach you how much it hurt, how to recover from it and much more. Thru all the pitfalls, your exposure increases, and your wisdom accumulates.

However, a common misconception is that wisdom comes age. It is said in a Chinese idiom: 敬老尊贤, which means respect the elderly, honor the wise. I agree only to the “honor the wise” half of it. The assumption in that idiom is that an elder must be wise, but that is not necessarily true. It is not the age which determines one’s wisdom, but the events which one have gone thru in his life that do. If one is to do the same repetitive stuff for his whole life, in the end he is just old but not wise. However, if one has been actively trying new things and experiencing life from different perspectives, he may have already accumulated more at midlife than what the former will have in old age.

There are, of course, several variables in the discussion of age versus experience. My point is, time is necessary to accumulate that exposure and wisdom, but simply living long (or being old) doesn’t necessarily mean you are wise. In simplified terms, assuming a one-one relationship, to have an X amount of wisdom, you need to live X amount of time; but living X amount of time doesn’t mean you have X amount of wisdom.

With that said, experience can also be a double edge sword, but I’m going to sleep now, maybe I’d write more when I feel like it.

Random Notes – The Beginning

It's been quite some time since I last posted anything on my blog, the reason is simple, I am lazy. There are many things going through my head, sometimes more than what I would like, but I am too lazy to write about it. Each thought I have often deserve its own essay to fully explain the entirety, but I am bad at writing long stuff, so I end up abandoning halfway thru writing, thus nothing to post.

I still would like to share these random thoughts going through my head, as well as keep track of what I think about, so I'm starting the series of "Random Notes". Each time I have something to share, I would just throw a new post, it may be just a few sentence or so, but I think it'd be a pretty good idea. If you have any comments (agree/disagree/hate me), please do leave a comment on the posts, it'd be good for me to know, though I may not actually reply.

I have been compiling some of these random thoughts for a while (and lazy to write about them), so for the beginning of "Random Notes", here's all the stuff that I've thought of recently:

– Stay away from games. You tried so hard to get a life, again and again.

– Learn to let go. Don’t say/do just because you can or to show you are better. You don’t need to constantly prove that you are better. Doing/saying things to show you’re better may feel good, but it is pointless to go agitate others for no reason, and have their hatred directed at you.

– Keep quiet, talk only when necessary. Even though you may know everything, you do not need to say everything to impress; say the right thing at the right time: say only the crucial things.

– You do not need to constantly showcase your talents, in doing so, it often does the opposite, the need to keep churning new things just to impress people degrades the quality of what you show, and you may end up putting stupidity/ignorance/incompetency on display instead.

– Don’t be afraid to make mistakes; don’t be so fast to defend yourself when your flaws are pointed out, take time to analyze where the fault truly lies. You may be smart, but not perfect. Mistakes which are discovered can be rectified. Mistakes which are avoided/hidden ticks like a timed bomb, going off when it’s least expected, dealing drastic damage.

– Don’t take things personal. Things aren't always directed at you so don’t take it as a personal attack. Always stay objective.

– The strong and wise do not need approval or assurance from others. He is able to judge for himself the rights and wrongs – and appraise his own capability – yet not be arrogant or self blaming. That is why psychological homeostasis is important.

– I avoid making promises because of the fear of disappointment. By not saying it, there will be no expectations – hence no disappointments when it doesn't get done. But by not saying, practically nothing gets done.

– You who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action.