JANUARY 2023. The first month of an odd year feels forebodingly hopeful. A bit contradictory, isn’t it? But that’s the feeling I have after a rough couple of years but now facing a more promising and encouraging prospect in the year ahead. What caused this optimism could be a natural response from the relaxation of COVID rules for one or some peaceful reflection that things are calmer.
It reminds me of the ’80s show The “A-Team” when Col John “Hannibal” Smith, after a successful venture, declares: “I Love it when a plan comes together .” The last couple of years was nothing special that resembles a personal plan coming together! But as a political animal, I know in my heart that the current politics in Canada and the U.S. suits me better.
I cannot hide my disdain for the last U.S. president as he cheated, bigoted and miscegenated his way throughout his presidency. Not unlike 80% of Canadians, he just got under my skin. To my chagrin, his lunacy continues! ( the latest? Trump’s Digital Trading Cards. Has he lost it…completely? ) However, I still do not understand how some Pinoys can support a toxic white supremacist like him. My theory has not changed: Immigrant Filipinos see a white guy when he faces a mirror, a remnant of a colonial mindset, an “Uncle Tom,” if you will.
But I will not derail an optimistic opener by indulging in Trump’s political dissolution. I share Nancy Pelosi’s comment about not talking about him, especially if you are eating.
REID HOFFMAN, A.C. GREYLING, STEVE JOBS and ELON MUSK
Sometimes, I wish my friends would spend a bit of time listening ( on YouTube)to these iconic figures and get a sense of significant others’ worldviews apart from the everyday chatter. If I had said Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, some of you might accuse me of a religious bias. Instead, Reid Hoffman’s ( Paypal, Linkedin ) 2022 commencement speech at Vanderbilt ( from which this title’s genesis came) is a study on how friendship can lead to an unexpected turn in one’s life.
Throughout our lives, we need to give more credit to the kind of input we have gotten from them. So often, we see the superficial side of friendship; BBQs, trips, and coffee. What about advocacies, counsel or encouragement? Hoffman, in his speech, looks back and sees company in his university years as more far-reaching than the school itself. Steve Jobs most profoundly credits his friendship for the formative years of Apple and the succeeding years when he took over. He was also mindful of things that did not make sense initially but proved helpful retrospectively.
If it made sense to them, it certainly makes more sense today. Why? Knowledge is cheap and freely available. If the internet had been available during my university years, I could have obtained all they taught me through Google. I could have been more selective and picked up the relevant subjects. As it was, a quarter of what I had to take ( as per curriculum ) had no pertinence to my course, not then, not now. Like many Philippine universities, this one is a slave of an antiquated, primordial worldview.
As Reid Hoffman said, friendship and connections, the social aspects of schooling, provide a more profound and potentially more meaningful benefit to the future. These are the things that take work to come through the digital medium. It became evident during the Pandemic when schools cancelled in-person instruction and the subsequent rise in psychological challenges among the young.
It’s funny how sometimes academia, especially those resistant to change, is the impetus for personal renewal. It took a lifetime for me to realize that my entire schooling did not prepare me sufficiently for the challenges ahead. It needed flexibility and depth to serve what I could achieve. Had I remained in the same confining environment, I would have been much less than I am now. That realization took me to a mindset of “got to get out,” and within months of my graduation, I was gone!
It brings to mind contemporary icons who bucked societal pressure to conform. College dropouts like Bill Gates ( Harvard ), Elon Musk ( Stanford ), Steve Jobs ( Reed ) Jeff Zuckerberg ( Harvard ) refused to “carry someone else’s water .” And something else about these four, they are not about to be constricted by a puerile and primitive supernatural nonsense. Sadly, discussions could not go beyond their net worth in some circles. But, on the other hand, I am envious of their audacity, grit, and intellect, which served them and humanity well.
WHAT ABOUT MERE MORTALS LIKE US? IS THERE MEANING TO OUR EXISTENCE?
A.C. Greyling once said “meaning” is “what you make it .” It is not what anybody else tells you, especially what the padre tries to drill into your head on a Sunday morning. Forcing people to live based on others’ religious interpretations is an archaic remnant of intergenerational myth. Dogma is somebody else’s thinking. Religion is a one-size-fits-all ideology not interested in forward thinking. It flourishes because it is taught in childhood when we don’t know any better and reinforced throughout our lives. There is little chance of undoing all the synapses in an indoctrinated brain. Our short lifetime and future exposure to antithetical views ( especially in religiously homogenous societies ) severely limit our ability to understand opposing beliefs.
The universe and our accidental presence in it have no meaning! When we pass, we are dead as a doornail. There is nothing after that. No “afterlife .” By whose account is that? Does Carl Sagan or Stephen Hawking count? How about 3000 members of the National Academy of Sciences ( about 190 of whom are Nobel winners )? Do you think they are credible?
Or would you instead believe an assortment of old men who say our life’s meaning and purpose is to serve God and that we will be rewarded in heaven in our afterlife? All based on an ancient book written by idle shepherds who thought that thunder and lightning were utterances from God. Their imagination led to a: “930 yr-old Adam”, “burning bush,” “impregnation of a woman by a ghost,” or “rising from the dead .” I rest my case!
You can be sentimental and twist it however you want; it does not change reality. Faith, belief and conviction are human attempts to create a fantasy; it’s as old as humanity itself, fueled by fear. “There is no external process that assigns meaning to our existence. Our culture and upbringing and the role we played in these environments are the forces that provide the fuel to commit ourselves to certain goals in life.” ( excerpt from:
https://www.balita.ca/understanding-lifes-meaning-amidst-a-pandemic/, )
Our emotional attachment to the question of the “meaning of life” sets us up beyond material life. Even the nominally religious invariably clings to infantile thoughts of a philosophical nature. Was destiny determined by the life I have lived? Has the big fellow up there had anything to do with how things have turned up?
“Socrates famously said that the unconsidered life is not worth living. He meant that a life lived without forethought or principle is a life so vulnerable to chance and so dependent on the choices and actions of others that it is of little real value to the person living it. He further meant that a life well lived is one which has goals, and integrity, which is chosen and directed by the one who lives it….”
A.C. Greyling
How many of us can read such a quote and honestly conclude that we are living a life we have chosen for ourselves? Or are you like one of many who, at the end of life, regret a life lived not true to themselves but as expected by others?
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs attended college out of parental pressure, but as we now know, both quit and pursued a career of their own. I have never thought of myself as living the life of Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos, but they are my heroes because it’s a self-directed choice free from anybody else’s direction. The fact that they revolutionize something in the process makes it even more elevating.
The important thing is that we are living our potential in our chosen careers. And that we are happy with our relationships and comfortable with our social life. As we wind down, we leave a legacy of service and fellowship in the community more enhanced than before we came.
“Sooner or later, at some point in your life, you’ll realize that money isn’t everything. Nor is happiness. No! We are not here to be happy. The aim of our life should be fulfilment. More than happiness, man seeks meaning. And when he finds it, his life becomes fulfilling.”
― Abhaidev, The Influencer: Speed Must Have a Limit
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
