a friend's pain

how do you alleviate a friend's pain? the problem itself is simple enough - we must all have had friends that have gone through various losses - jobs, relationships, deaths. we think about what worked for us, and we try to dispense some sort of advice, but we have no idea if it makes things better or worse.

is there one effective way? many effective ways? or they're all ineffective and time is the only true medicine? perhaps - then the way is to how to get to that distant point in time without totally going insane.

meditation works, self-discovery works, writing works, reading works. sometimes, drinking works, clubbing works, doing regrettable things work. but i still remember when in the depths of despair, having the motivation to do anything, anything at all is impossible. so perhaps the way to do it is to haul your friend to doing something, anything. then, later, the self-reflection can come. maybe.

who do i help?

there are literally a million causes to choose from.

the big ones - orbis? oxfam? msf?

the small ones that get featured in magazines that are more intimate, and that the same donation amount might mean more?

my schools, who have been crucial to my becoming who i am?

charities my friends are running?

start a charity for a cause i believe in?

how do i get the highest "return", so to speak? how does one measure the cost of life? saving one life in richer countries could be saving several thousands in poorer countries. with the same funds, do you fix someone's eyes, or do you give someone a chance to walk again? if you could either build a hospital or several schools, what do we go for?

thing is, we don't want to end up helping people who didn't need our help in the first place. we don't want our donations going to corrupt officials. we don't want to coddle the needy so they never stand up on their own feet.

and in any case, our donations are only a drop in the ocean of pain. it just really might not matter at all. those people in need will actually go away if we don't think about them too much.

there might never be a conclusion. but perhaps, the least we could do is think about it. maybe, the second least is to chat with our friends so more people are thinking a tad more about it. and possibly, the third least, is to help someone, rather than no one.

marginal utility of success

the hard lessons in life, even though we know they would be terrible mistakes, we still make them, until we bear the actual consequences and learn our lessons.

but the good lessons? we work hard, we'll get rewarded? we'll be so happy when we're successful? it only makes sense, otherwise we'd never even strive to be better and whatever it is we're doing.

it seems only when we get there - when we actually somehow get to a place we set out to go to - when we realize more success is not going to make us feel particularly much better, then we start to ponder what life might mean beyond achievement.

then, we might start to have an inkling as to why non-attachment might work. why giving up everything may paradoxically give us more.

the taste of success gives some of us the hunger for more; for others, it is something of a letdown - and perhaps a chance to think a bit beyond.

sometimes you see your friends...

sometimes you see your friends going through a tough period in life. you've been there, so you'd like to tell them that this might end up being the most valuable lesson in their lives.

sometimes you see your friends acting like an ass. you've also been an ass, so you'd like to tell them it's not worth it.

sometimes you see your friends living it up. you wish them well, and hope when they inevitably fall it won't hurt them too bad.

we'd like to help, but sometimes, they can't be helped, or they don't have time to listen.

just like ourselves.

what is the most important thing, ever?

my health?

my happiness?

my significant other?

my children?

my family?

my dignity and core principles?

world peace?

freedom for all?

happiness for all?

moderation and balance in all things?

life itself?

how does this change if we are forced to choose one over another?

one would think this is a pretty simple question. it would be simple if we could have all of it. but shouldn't this be something we should be thinking about all the time?

or, we are honestly too busy in keeping ourselves alive, and we simply don't have the "disposable time" to ponder these things?

too many things to do, all the time

isn't that strange? that at any point in time, we have a long list of to do things.

work. bills. random get-togethers. applications. follow-ups. exercise. read. learn. family time. time with our significant other. that thing we have to plan for. that thing we had already planned for. new year resolutions. new year resolutions from years ago.

if we miss that deadline, the world is actually going to end. this thing, it can wait another day. another year. another decade.

i wish i had just bitten the bullet and done it, it's too late now. oh, it doesn't matter any more at this point, glad i didn't waste time doing that.

we'll never finish what we set off to do, and we'll complete things we never intended to.

maybe, simply cheer up with the things we actually get to do, otherwise we just might go insane.

compassion

books, thousands, maybe millions, have written about compassion so a simple blog entry isn't really going to say anything that others haven't thought of already. which leads me to the inevitable conclusion that pretty much every thought i have and will have, someone else has already thought of. does originality really matter? that's for another day.

so compassion, this root of morality - the awareness and sympathy for another's suffering, and the resulting urge to do something about it - is conceptually simply fascinating. where you could advance your own interests, why would you sacrifice this to help your fellow beings? isn't survival of the fittest the immutable law of nature?

perhaps there are certain benefits of acting altruistically - when people think you were a better person, they place more trust in you, and you could actually further your self interests that way. a machiavellian way of advancing, but a workable method nonetheless.

or perhaps, more recently, scientists are starting to understand group selection, where we have evolved to act altruistically to our own "kind", as this gives us the greatest chance to survive as a group, against other hostile groups.

the question i have still, is why is there compassion? why do we consider compassion one of the cornerstones of goodness? i have heard how morality gives rise to structure and society. is there a similar functionality to compassion? why is compassion considered weak at times, and other times considered the show of ultimate strength?

do PhDs in philosophy know all the answers? or the gurus? the monks? the bishops?

non-competition

mcdull mentioned that life was a series of wins, losses, wins, losses, losses, losses, losses, and more losses.

we lose a lot more than we win. why is that, or at least why does it feel like that anyway?

there are those who lose, and lose their drive for life.

there are those who lose, who keep getting up. most of them never see the winning day, but with billions of people in the world, some exceptions eventually emerge against all odds.

then there are those who realize there's nothing to lose and nothing to win. or, that, they're exactly the same thing, just another incident in our lives.

non-judgement?

compassion, non-competition and non-judgement are frequently linked together as three legs of the path to spirituality and contentment.

we're told not to judge people. that is, not to judge whether that person is a good person or a bad person. not to assign relative values to human beings. we should accept them as who they are. we should accept ourselves as who we are. no more, no less.

on the other hand, we're also seeking goodness and truth - which is impossible without judgement.

yet we have expectations of people. is that judging? based on past actions, we have clear expectations of how others would behave around us, respond to things that we do and say. if he's known to lie, we don't trust him so much. if she is a great listener, we seek her advice when we have problems. without these learned expectations, it would be pretty difficult to function among our social groups.

but people also change. good people succumb and do bad things, and bad people redeem themselves by doing good. our judgements and expectations shift accordingly.

judgement taken too far becomes intolerance. non-judgement taken too far becomes ignorance.

how do we find the balance?

opposite personalities

from the old personality tests that i had done - i am an ENTP, at least during my college years. the innovator, the explorer, the visionary.

out of curiosity, i looked up the opposite personality type, the ISFJ. the protector guardian. mother teresa was the typical ISFJ, wikipedia told me. she sought a more peaceful world by meeting the needs of others, embodying the selflessness of the ISFJ.

i was stunned, that i seemed to have been equipped with the in-born traits of someone directly opposite of mother teresa. yes, she is certainly considered to be the epitome even among altruistic individuals (there are certainly many more that are nameless and will remain forever nameless). yes, it never says anywhere ENTPs are selfish by nature. some would say nothing says being selfish is a bad thing either. and yes, the 16 different myers-briggs categorizations are never meant to stuff people in different pigeon holes, and are only just a guide to how people perceive the world and make decisions. in other words, the opposite was not necessarily really a true opposite.

but still, did i really have to have the 4 exact opposite letters as her personality type?

it does look like a bit of an uphill battle.

too much information

we all know we live in a world with too much information.

for any given viewpoint, you could probably find a group of similar-minded people on the internet. you could find some kind of supporting data.

we all have more music and movies then we would ever have time to watch.

i still spend an incredible amount of time searching for new knowledge, information, trying to figure out the world. trying to understand what is going on. the available information and knowledge out there, even just counting that i'm interested in, far exceeds what i could ever possibly consume.

so assuming i somehow mastered and understood all of this. then what?

do i hope to digest and synthesize all of this to come up with a new grand theory of everything?

lets say i actually figured it out. how would i share this? would i write a book about this? would i reduce what i had learned into punchy little riddles so people could ponder over them, and thus also figure things out through this thought process? would i only share this with people who sought such answers?

forced to be relaxed

of course, the very action of forcing ourselves to relax will make us more stressed.

then, just don't care. if we stop to care, the logic goes, then we no longer get stressed.

but that doesn't work, since, we can't actually just suddenly turn it off.

perhaps, the way, is to think, really ponder, why we care so much about the thing that is worrying us.

perhaps, we need to be selective about what we care about, and only stress about the more important issues, and not the smaller things in life. and where there isn't the big stress in life, we don't automatically start stressing the smaller things, just so we have something to stress about.

maybe it might work.

someone other than yourself

is it really possible to live a life for the benefit of someone other than yourself?

isn't all economic theory based on the theory that we are self-interested individuals?

isn't that the basis of capitalism, or even democracy?

is it simply intrinsically nonsensical?

if everyone did this, wouldn't the world go to hell?

how is it then possibly the great secret to true happiness? or is it simply the greatest way to delude ourselves?

why are we still procrastinating?

big things, little things. that overdue memo i'm supposed to write. maybe they've forgotten. that run i'm supposed to crank out. my physical condition is not going to change because of that one run. that person i'm supposed to thank. he probably forgot about me already.

but maybe not. so why?

because it takes too much effort not to?

because that thing we're supposed to do doesn't really mean that much to us?

because we can't make a decision and maybe it will all turn out ok in the end?

because some other priorities came up? and after that, still other new priorities came up?

because we're tired, lazy, exhausted, unmotivated, pre-occupied, and generally just don't feel like it?

at the end of the day though, we all know that no one, including ourselves, really care about the reasons, legitimate or otherwise.

where is that mental strength when we really need it?

the first miss

there - the first time yours truly missed the one post a day mark. it just slipped, for no particular reason. at first i didn't feel like it, and then i simply forgot, and by the time i remembered it was the next day. then, it's already 11:34pm now and it seems really easy just to say what i set out to do, was possibly not that realistic in the first place.

that seems to be a usual occurrence with goals. we're good at rationalizing why it didn't happen. it makes us feel better, and it justifies whatever current excuse or different course we are taking. and sometimes, there really is no other choice.

but many other times, it is the easy way out. we know it, but we'd rather not acknowledge it.

this year, i will have 365 chances to give up (well, now 347). how will it go?

the benefits of being a good guy

what are the tangible benefits of being a good guy?

- social acceptance, we generally need friends and contacts to function

- you can assume you have some value (or at least not a burden) to society as people don't actively wish that you rather not exist

- it is easier to make a living - people prefer to work with non-bad guys. the definition of "good" is too wide to be meaningful, but any time of good is considered vastly better than bad.

- when you are in trouble, your friends might actually come and support you

- you're less apt to fall into self-loathing patterns if you keep getting positive reinforcement

- you're supposed to feel better if you're a good guy

so all-in-all, it's easier to function in society, and you might face rarer questions about the nature of your existence as people around you don't generally question why you are here.

is it worth the trouble?

you're a good guy

here are some possibilities that as to what people say when "you're a good guy" in a general context (or the female equivalent).

- you're doing something to make the world a better place

- you're selfless and have deep concern about others' welfare

- you have strong moral principles, and those morals agree with society's norms of morality

- you're wise

- you're knowledgeable

- you're considerate and respectful of others

- you're humble

- you're honest and can be trusted

- you're sincere

- you listen

- you're hard-working and responsible

- you're well-connected, and would be a good person to know for future business connections
- you generally have non-evil intentions

- you're popular

- you have money

- you can tell funny jokes over a beer

- you're adequately intelligent and can hold a decent conversation

- you're easy-going and friendly

- you mean no harm

- you're not known to harm another person

- you're actually harmless

you might need only one of those above to qualify as a good guy. maybe it's not so hard after all?

i thought i'm going to be me

forrest gump was pretty confused when jenny asked him who he dreamt he would be in future. the rest of us, however, do have aspirations. some sort of potential, a level of something to be attained in our life times.

we see others and think, wow, he got that gig really with a bit of luck huh. what did she do to deserve that opportunity? how does it seem that i always get the tough rolls of dice?

yes, in trite feel-good stories, we are always told to cherish what we have, and to appreciate things we take for granted.

were our aspirations always so grand? did we already get to where we wanted? when do we stop feeding the monster? the monster, i'm told, gets less hungry with age, particularly as reality, or realization of reality, sets in.

can you remember the time when you told yourself you'd be so happy, for a long, long time, if you could just get that job? that girl? that yoga pose? finish that 10k run? see your kid graduate? can you wind back the clock? is it a weakness to be content with tiny victories and not aspire to greater ones?

realizing your potential

how much is your potential? inspirational books and movies will tell you your potential is limitless. if you try hard enough, nothing is impossible.

most of us, by our 30s and 40s, become acutely aware of the fact that statistically, no matter how hard we try, the chances to be "anything we want" are actually not so large. it's possible, yes, but more likely than not it is not going to happen.

still, we all have some degree of likely potential. nonetheless, achieving this requires effort. a good friend, an astrologer (nevermind we have endless debates about the legitimacy of such), remarked there were far more people that never achieved what their full potential could have been, according to her readings. she doesn't know if our generation is just simply lazier, or this had always been the case. meanwhile, certainly there are people who simply bust through all odds and achieve things that are simply off the charts. this seems a pretty accurate representation of real life in any case.

it is an obvious fact but not putting in effort is easier than putting in effort. assuming effort is evolutionary beneficial, one would wonder why evolution had not removed our predisposition to doing nothing.

regardless, you would never find out how much potential you have, until you actually attempt to realize it, and perhaps fail in the process. how much effort are you willing to put in to find this out?

the greater good

if you are in a position of power, with people under your command (be it employees, soldiers, members of an organization) - and you need to sacrifice some of their welfare for what you perceive to be the greater good. and they are unwilling to undertake this sacrifice. without their support, you're stuck. and you think this cause will benefit them immensely and they are just not seeing the big picture.

e.g. the general needs his soldiers to go on a near-suicide mission; the boss needs the employees to work for several months with no pay to keep the company afloat; a spiritual organization requires its members to donate their non-essential possessions to build a place of worship.

are they too dense and too unworldly to understand higher causes? or are you selfishly trying to achieve your own goals at the expense of others? where do you draw the line? when are you truly acting for the greater good, and when are you being self-serving, especially when these outcomes are not mutually exclusive (i.e. you reap the benefits from this greater good)?

is the litmus test - if you are getting proportional benefits, fame or fortune out of it? who determines what is proportional? you? them?

but since the people under you cannot foresee the future - they end up relying on your past behavior. you might be right, you might be wrong. but whether you have a chance of seeing that, will depend on what you've done in the past for your people.

the necessity of success

all our lives, or at least my life, we have been conditioned to achieve. to attain success. to be the best there is, and generally speaking, that involves making as much money as humanly possible. money is the easiest measuring stick. if you are a billionaire, you can't possibly be unsuccessful.

we learn at a very young age - winners get rewarded, losers don't get anything. for the over-achiever, there is always that unmistakable rush in being superior to your peers in some way. the flip side of the coin is losing feels pretty terrible. it would make sense for this to be a natural part of being human from the forces of evolution.

what if this gene was turned off? that we would no longer care about the fruits of success - could we still keep striving to be the best we could? would the lack of gratification, mean we would simply only do enough to survive, and hence mankind's progress would stop? would society progress enough at some point, that we view this "success-seeking gene" to be a remnant of our evolutionary roots?

hypothetically, if you already have enough, would you want to get this gene voluntarily turned off so you can seek gratification from means other than your own success (whichever way you define such)?

socially appropriate goodness

Some people are simply born to fit in the larger community. Others, tired of being an outcast, eventually learn to do so. Some others, never give a rat's ass about what others think. Still others, discover the rules of the larger community are not necessarily the ones they like and go off on their own.

Even wise teachers advise against judging people. But where is the line between non-judgement and making a clear point? We know it is a fairly large gray area. But it still should have some definitions.

We're all ok with being good, but within the accepted confines of society. Even philanthropy and altruism in itself. Donating money, running marathons for fundraising, all seem ok.

When you start getting really involved in particular charities, you step closer to the fringe. Your motives are questioned. She needs to get her kids in kindergarten and the school board is affiliated with that charity. He's going to be a politician so he needs to start building his community work credentials.

If you actually work for a non-profit, you become part of the saving-the-world-good-hearted but incompetent crowd. He couldn't cut it in the corporate world, he's past his prime, so it's his fallback. She's still recovering from her divorce so it's her way to heal herself.

Some people care about this. Some don't. For some, it is less the fear of failure. It's the fear of going to a different place. A different crowd, possibly losing all your friends from before. A different identity, where personal and financial success will no longer be sufficient benchmarks to judge yourself. Instead, at the end of the day, you have only yourself to rely on to see whether you are right or wrong, if you have done well or not.

school vs beach house

So, Mr. Boake Moore actually has built schools in China. It costs US$35,000 to build one, takes about half a year. Another US$15,000 a year in running costs, and it holds about 45 students.

I think a room in a beach house might actually cost more than that.

The disparate scale is sometimes so overwhelming it's just easier to close our eyes and not think about it. We open them from time to time, just enough to take a peek (and hopefully do a little something), and go back to doing our own thing.

Jacquline Novogratz encountered this issue when her friend bought champagne for dinner while she was working in Africa. How did one reconcile the part that sought pleasure and decadence, with the surrounding abject poverty?

She remarked that "the challenge was to not take our privileges for granted and to use it in a way that served the world and our highest purpose".

Still, how to understand and come to terms with such inconsistencies?

changing ideals

what are your ideals? when does one start to go from "it would be totally awesome if i had a billion dollars and could spend the rest of my life in a beach house" to "it would be totally awesome if the world was a better place"?

i used to want to be a cashier. i thought my life would be great if i could sit around and collect money all day long.

in high school, i thought i could be a dipomat, to make use of my somewhat dubious cross-cultural background. then, i had some aspirations to be a filmmaker, thinking it would be glamorous and cool.

in college, i wanted to start an internet business, to make millions of dollars and change the world.

after working a few years, i thought i'd be more realistic and had the goal of heading up a sizable business at some point.

after learning from a yogi, i realized that all of this might not matter much at all.

yes, it would be really rather nice to have both a beach house and world peace. the problem with world peace is that the problem is too large for us mere mortals to comprehend. what about a school? for the cost of a beach house, you could build and run a school in rural china for decades.

so, would you rather build a school or would you rather have a beach house?

speed of time

time has a speed, doesn't it? every second, in theory, is the same as every other second (let's say we are all on earth, ignoring the theory of relativity for a moment here)

even then, time does slow, and we know it. when we're waiting for the results of an operation of a loved one. when there's absolutely nothing left to do in the office but to count the minutes left. when there's still ten minutes left on the stairmaster display and we are just dying to stop.

even when we're doing nothing during vacation, time seems to fly. as well as that first date. and that great show. and any of those times it seemed like we were doing something that meant something.

one of the things to slow down time seems to be pain. so on the contrary, happy times speeds up time.

which is a bit ironic, given that we'd rather have the painful times go quickly and the happy times go slowly.

running in place

on the rows of treadmills, everyone's doing their thing. some are jogging at a leisurely pace, watching tv. others are sprinting away, earphones firmly plugged in, eyes on the prize. still others, are just walking, just gazing out of the windows.

we all are on the treadmill of life. we walk, run, sprint, but in the large scheme of things, we're not really going anywhere, and at the end, we always just get off.

there never is a right way or wrong way. but it does end, no matter how easy or hard your run is. so how do you want to run your life?

vengeance

when you are wronged, sometimes, vengeance really is all consuming. it's hard to think of anything else other than how to get back at that person. to get even. to get your fair deal.

well, if you're reading this, you probably have got yourself a pretty good life deal already. you can read english, and you can access the internet.

a lot of other people have been dealt a really crap life deal.

so, should we accept whatever fate has in store of us? how hard should we "fight" to get our fair deal? can you achieve that without any personal vengeful intent at all?

is your energy better directed to trying to get a fairer deal for those with crap life deals?

armchair charity

with so many evils and injustices in the world, it's really just too much to handle. where do you start?

sure, building homes, helping field workers in disaster area, visiting orphans and the terminally ill, they are nice but that's for people who have a lot more time than me.

i need to taking care of my own business first before i can help others.

i'm better at making money, so i might as well make lots of money first and then donate some of it. (look at warren buffett and bill gates)

i will do it, just not today. as soon as i finish this... and that...

so, in the mean time, i'll just donate a little money. which is nice, of course. and all these are surely valid reasons too.

but is it too much to ask to get up from your armchair once a month? once a season? once a year? perhaps you can start by figuring out where you want to start?

one a day

the sixth entry here and already i'm encountering a bit of a block. and i wanted to try to do this every day, or at least average one entry every day for 2010.

but, showing up to the starting line is half the battle. perhaps a small portion, maybe 1 out of 10, of these entries will be remotely sensible. the rest might be junk.

by trying enough times, statistically, things may turn out ok once in a while. and the nice thing is that every time, the chance returns to move one step closer to whatever that goal is.

so here, right now, i am making this commitment. no more "wanting" "trying" "hoping". i will average one entry a day for the entire 2010.

what could you be doing once a day for 2010?

in the long run

in the long run, we're all dead. this is a pretty well known quote by economists (attributed to Keynes), what is probably lesser known is the quote that preceded it: that the long run is a misleading guide to current affairs.

therein lies one of the key issues of my little quest. how far down the road do we look? in the long run, yes, we no longer exist (ignoring heaven, afterlives and reincarnation for the time being). in the medium run, serving humanity is one of my goals. in the short run, i am worrying where my next paycheck is coming from and where, if anywhere at all, my career is going. the problem is the medium run journey involves a bit of risk and one would hope to have a little bit of financial security before embarking on it. perhaps ironically, the people that need help do not have this benefit - the longer one takes, the later they get help.

if our current existence as we know it are in fact only a small portion of our larger existence, which way does the balance tip?

perhaps it's time to actually do the "time left" thought experiment. how would you live your life, if you had a week left? three months? a year? three years? ten years? thirty?

non-linear progress

sometimes, great progress happens with our initial tries. then progress seems to stall. we continue to try, and try, and things seem to go nowhere.

till the one day, suddenly, we break through the plateau and move to the next level. we wonder what the big fuss was about. there, the hard work paid off.

then, we reach another plateau. only that this plateau is flatter, longer, and much harder to breakthrough than the previous one.

we forget the progress is non-linear and sometimes it takes a lot of practice and effort before we actually perceive incremental improvement. sometimes, we just have to trust that it will happen. that's when you know if it's important enough for you. and whether you have the faith to perservere even there might be no reward at the end of the day, and you are doing it for the sake of doing it.