Tragedies Tragically Bring People Together… and Teach

Okay, maybe tragedies is an extreme example, but an observation is that people throw away their differences, almost always, during hardships and when facing a common “enemy”. Examples include 9/11, the Japan tsunami, terrorist attacks, a death of a loved one, a really brutal exam (study group anyone?), and other examples that fall anywhere on an imaginary scale of how many people the event affects.

It’s tragic that sometimes, it takes a tragedy for people to come to the realization that “Hey, we’re all human beings, we share the same hardships, why not help each other out?”. I want to make it clear that by “help”, I mean helping others unconditionally.

Over time I’ve learned to be wary of actions with a condition/conditions. It’s just like my experience with most salespeople: they accentuate the good but skim the bad, if at all (personal experience: “Very good watch! Will last long! Half price for you!” (Beijing shop owner) => stops working when you get back home). We learn through our mistakes, which can be heartbreaking, painful, casual (“oh the watch stopped working… okay”), but the main thing is that a mistake is a mistake only if the lesson isn’t taken to heart. A mistake that is learned from isn’t a mistake; it’s a teaching.

In other words, to be able to move forward as a human, we need our legs (physical) and we also need the capacity for self-growth (mental). It’s very easy for many of us to literally move forward with our feet; it’s hard (very hard) sometimes to move forward in our minds, but it’s something that we have to do otherwise the mind will just be a body of still water dwelling on the same set of ideas instead of being a vessel with a constant flow of ideas, thoughts, and motivation.

“Don’t get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” - Bruce Lee

The world is full of horrible people. It’s a truth that I sometimes like to ignorantly deny (which I subsequently pay for), but it’s true. People do things with the intention/motive of some sort of reward, be it recognition, praise, money, affection, a gift, revenge, spite; a whole mix of benign and malignant outcomes. For this reason, I really respect people who volunteer in charities and for different causes (people who do things without the intention of getting much/anything back). What they’re ultimately giving is their time, which is the most precious commodity anyone can give as you can never get it back and it’s priceless.

There’s dark because there’s light, there’s good because there’s evil, there’s warmth because there’s coldness. Without one of the ends, we wouldn’t have anything to compare the other end to. In life, you sometimes have to be a salesperson to yourself: accentuate the good and de-emphasize on the bad, don’t amplify and dwell on your flaws/mistakes. Try to see the good in yourself and in others. If all you have is a grim outlook on life and in others, then there isn’t much anyone else can do to help you except yourself. “Don’t get set into one form”.

Maturity

I haven’t blogged in a while as I’ve been busy with life. I just wanted to make a quick post about life in general and maturity.

Maturity is purely how you respond to positive or negative events. If you throw a sissy fit when something doesn’t go your way, that’s being immature. Being mature means being able to try to understand the motives behind actions, being proactive and knowing what the most correct/suitable/reasonable (not right; there is no perfect response in real life) response is. You have to know you can’t “win” at everything, but you can at least instill respect in yourself being making yourself to be perceived by others as being “mature”, “understanding”, “courteous”, “patient”, or “down-to-earth”.

But you have to also have integrity and merit when you say things. One of my pet peeves is people who start off sentences with “you have to understand…” when I know that they don’t know much about what they’re trying to educate me on, especially when I know that I know more about the topic they’re trying to “help me understand” than them.

If something bad/unfair happens in life, I tell myself: “Everything happens for a reason, so forgive and move on, since bearing any ill thoughts will only weigh you down. Continue moving forward.” This reminds me of a quote from Buddha: “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” If someone does something to upset me, I often comfort myself by thinking that karma will eventually catch up to them. Depending on the severity, I might even give karma a little nudge forward.

On the flipside, if something good happens, question it for a split second: “Is this too good to be true? Are there any catches?” as my trip to Asia has taught me that there is very little that is free in this world that has no catch. Don’t let emotions drown out reason. After all the smoke and mirrors, if there is a catch, the end-result would still be the same: you giving a possession to another person that is valued to be more than what they are giving you. Keep in mind that time is the greatest gift you can give anyone.

Everything in life has to be done in moderation: eating, sleeping, studying, partying, you name it. If you’re the leader of a team, you can’t be a micro-manager, but on the opposite end of the spectrum, you can’t be detached from everything to the point where you’re just a literal position. Power and reputation can get to a person very easily and inflate their ego to the point where all they see is themselves. Stay humble, stay classy. Think about how others may perceive what you say before you say things. Teach others on how to get to where you are. “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” – Plato

It’s also important not to do irrational things based only on emotion without trying to talk things out and reaching an understanding, such as being aggressive towards others or lying. “A lie is like a snowball; the longer it is rolled, the larger it is“ - Martin Luther. A lie has the potential to blow a “small” thing way out of proportion since it then becomes an issue of trust when the lie is exposed.