A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university Professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.
Offering his guests coffee, the Prof went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups: porcelain, plastic, glass, some plain-looking and some expensive and exquisite, telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.
When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the lecturer said :
“If you noticed, all the nice-looking, expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. What all of you really wanted was coffee, NOT the cup, but you consciously went for the better cups and are eyeing each other’s cups.”
“Now, if Life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of Life doesn’t change. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it.“
So friends , don’t let the cups drive you…enjoy the coffee instead.
A poignant piece by Shel, who remembers his friend Charlie:
He gave me the two things I need most—encouragement and shit. He gave a lot of people encouragement. He saved the shit for a select few of us. His encouragement pointed me toward the top and his shit stopped me from going over it.
Charlie taught me about life and living; about death and acceptance. He taught me ethics without preaching, about tolerance without suffering assholes and about patience even if I wouldn’t get to the bloody point.
Who’s Ira Glass? Nevermind. Watch this video first (hat-tip to David Silver). David wrote that it’s “five minutes and nineteen seconds of smart advice“.
I’ve transcribed the parts which I felt was the essence of the video (read this post). My personal take-away: We’ll suck at what we do, probably for a long time. But that’s no excuse to not try, and try again. There’s no short-cut getting from here to good.
Human beings forget. I was told it’s this forgetfulness that allows humans to cope with the pains of life. So it’s a good thing that every once in a while, Death comes along to remind us what Life is about. Herry shares his thoughts here:
Life is indeed short. Sometimes, when we are working so hard, leaving us with no time for our family and ourselves, hearing news like this, makes us wonder why we are doing all these for; if all things are going to lead to the same path, death, and death can be so soon.
I happened to be reading Kenneth’s post while listening to this song by “Stereophonics” at youtube. Kenneth was sharing about this experience in running the 10km Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon. The music; his words. They all seem to fit nicely. Kenneth was describing what he observed and experienced in the marathon. I thought it alluded to many things in life.
They say that we just have to row our boats merrily down the stream. I think it’s more like a marathon. Or a slow walk. Whatever we choose to be.
“… being disappointed is okay, but don’t be disappointed for too long. Two or three seconds is the optimum length.”
From a comment left by Sami, who wrote it in response to one post where the author expressed disappointment (the author chose to keep the blog private, hence no link to the blog post).
I was reacquainted with an ex-classmate recently. Noticed his name in the CC list of an email. I asked if he was that same person I knew so many years ago. He was, and he rememebered me.
This morning, I noticed he was online (on Gmail) and we ended up chatting for quite sometime. During our conversation, he mentioned something that I thought was blog-worthy. We were talking about marriage and children, and being a father of two, he wrote:
The kids are like ball and chain but for me I kind of enjoy dragging them and watch the world busy themselves and race by.
Heh, he gave me permission to blog that.
He struck me as a philosophical sort. Doesn’t surprise me that he counts Gandhi as a major influence in how he views life. Perhaps Philosophy and Parenting goes hand in hand.
[UPDATE 31 Dec 06: I've since learned that "Hearing Impaired" is not a preferred term. I should use "Deaf" or "Hard of Hearing". Thanks.]
In my view, those who cope well in life tend to adopt a philosophy that they are comfortable with.
Here’s Joseph, who blogged about his hearing-impairment being deaf. Near the end of his post, he asked — perhaps rhetorically — whether he has a choice in being deaf. It’s clear to me he has made a conscious choice to accept what he can control and what he cannot.
Getting something like a Cochlear Implant, after weighing the risks, is a conscious choice. Accepting that one has to make do with a physical disability as best as one can — that’s a conscious choice. Blaming everything on “fate” and being angry with the world is also a choice, arguably not made consciously perhaps (Joseph didn’t come across as having taken that last position).
“Acceptance is also a choice”, as I inferred in my “I Am Singaporean” podcast. When I read Joseph’s (who is hearing-impaired) blog post, two words came to mind: “Pragmatic Acceptance”. It may seem like I’m trying to be a smart-aleck in choosing such a term; “acceptance is acceptance” right?
Well, I think there’s “acceptance” (as in saying “I’m not even going to try since I can’t change things”) and there’s “acceptance” (as in, “I know I can’t change things right now but I’ll keep a look out for tomorrow”).
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Posted by Ivan Chew
