Avoid or engage?

So... people say we shouldn't dwell on the negative. Life is too short. Live it up. Don't worry be happy. Lets treat life as one big happy hour.

It looks to me like if you have an opinion about something that isn't amusing or mindless or if you go near anything thought-provoking, then there's something wrong with you. At least that's what I gather from comments in other people's blogs.

I think that's a fair representation of not just blogosphere but society as a whole. Hip-and-happening lifestyle blogs outnumber thought provoking ones by something like 500 to 1. That's normal. I remember in school, if you enrolled in philosophy or theology class or anything that requires you to think about the human condition, you're pretty much a freak. Outside of school as grown ups, saying anything thought provoking still makes you a freak. The only exception is when you're guessing who's gonna win the season's American Idol.

But no sweat... I understand people need a defence mechanism to protect their fragile minds from life's harmful ugliness. We only want to see the pretty flowers and keep quiet about the rotting ones. If not we'll lose all hope in life, at least according to one blogger.

Hmmm... if I didn't know any better the dude just admitted that life is indeed hopeless (since no one lives forever) so the only good way to deal with it is to stick our heads in the sand. Oh, and to say happy things all the time.

If that hits close to home, then there are more delusional people than I thought. No wonder they call mental institutions "happy" places, where everything is always happy 24x7. XD

I'm kidding. But I can see that a vast majority of us prefer avoidance rather than enlightened engagement. Along the way we developed a new ideal - that we can "buy off" our problems with money. It leaves us free to pick and choose "happy" things only.

Wait... let me get this right. We prefer to drag ourselves through 30 years of torturous employment - wrestling with the pigs in the office mud pool just so we could have enough $$ to qualify for a bank loan to buy off our problems - than learn to neutralize them with enlightened engagement at no cost. Yeap, got it.

Yes I am weird. I depart from the majority when it comes to engaging life. Perhaps my exposure in social work and martial arts taught me something. It certainly has made me a happier person (I think) than the guy whose life is dedicated to getting a hotter chick than his friends.

Just to share, these are a few simple lessons I learnt.

Lesson 1: No matter how much money I have or how good I am at avoiding, I can never outrun problems.
Lesson 2: A problem is not always a problem. Sometimes it is a teacher that teaches me patience and humility.
Lesson 3: The satisfaction from engaging a problem can be more enriching than avoiding one.
Lesson 4: Its far cheaper to understand life, predict its difficulties and not do stupid things to cause them to happen than to barge headlong like a bull and then look for money to buy off the problems I create.

This is why in spite of life's little knocks and bumps, I can smile.

And if you ask me if it feels good being able to "walk" anywhere I want to and be the 20-something guy I am without needing to hide my head anywhere, the answer is YES!! ^_^

Don't avoid. Neutralize.

I don't read newspapers because I feel that papers focus too much on bad news. Murders, snatch thefts, politics, that kind of thing. Like most people, I prefer to keep my mind positive and happy. I believe your state of mind determines who you are.

So like most people, I've adopted the strategy of avoiding bad news. Yeah, avoiding. Pretending not to see. Looking the other way while whistling innocently. Its works most times. In the movies, I clench my eyes shut when someone is about to get gored. I shun newspapers so those horrible stories won't reach my young impressionable mind.

Except that these things pop up everywhere I go. Even on the internet. Especially on the internet. Against my better judgement, I recently read about a young woman in the US who, so incensed at a kitten that was stratching her door, shoved it into an oven and baked it to a crisp, alive. This morning I read about how 3 young men in England took a fawn (a newly born deer) and happily stomped in to death.

I'm not even going to get into the horrors of mothers killing their own babies (at least half a dozen cases in the last 3 weeks alone), children killing their own parents, and an assortment of other things that men to to each other. And these are all in "civilized" countries mind you. Notably America and Europe.

In America, the standard defense for such things is always the same. Ladies and gentlemen, this man is not a criminal. He is a victim. A victim of a materialistic, gun-loving society that has gone out of control. Society drove him to it. Society made him feel angry, guilty, whatever. It is society's fault.

Hehe. I dunno man. If people buy that shit, then they will also hold god responsible for any crime. Man is egged by society to commit a crime. Society is nature's way of group survival via a collective. God created nature. Therefore, god is the root source, the real culprit behind every screwup on earth. They had better prepare a big cell. A very, very big cell.

Anyway, coming back to this thing about keeping my mind free, happy and delightful by avoiding bad news which is everyone's favorite technique. I am realizing that it doesn't work. Avoiding my way to happiness I mean.

When I'm with happy people, I think of 3 possibilities.

• They's really happy. They have no problems at all.
• They're letting their happy feelings override their no-so-happy feelings.
• They're totally miserable but pretend to be happy lest their friends run away from them.

I think for the most part, people hang out in the second category. There is an element of ignoring cum accepting cum avoiding there. Ignoring is actually a form of avoiding. And I think you'll agree that there's only so much we can avoid. And when we can't avoid life's truths any longer, we take the hit and we pretend we didn't get hit. We learn to become fakes. At the extreme, we become delusional.

Welcome to planet earth. ^_^

No, I'm not suggesting that we go around under a cloud of doom and gloom whenever we chance upon bad news. Even I would avoid such people, hehe. ^_^ I happen to think there's a much better way to handle life's truths, and that is to learn to accept bad news as something normal and nothing to be too upset about. For me, the phrase "this too shall pass" is a useful weapon to neutralize any news, no matter how bad.

And that's my point. Instead of finding ways to avoid, learn to neutralize. Don't be angry. Neutralize. Don't be hateful. Neutralize. Don't be sad. Neutralize.

How to neutralize? By looking at something bravely in the eye and telling yourself any one of these things. Nothing is forever. This too shall pass. What goes around comes around. This is night but there will be day eventually. Let go.

I do take one extra step though. I try to understand why bad things happen. The answer depends on what you believe I guess, whether its the devil, karma, or the great juju under the sea. If I had to take a stand, I would say karma makes the most sense to me at this point, because of its close proximity to the law of physics. If you've heard of F = ma, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, you'll understand what I mean.

So what does accepting and neutralizing do for you? It makes you a happier person I think. Genuinely happy, not delusionally happy. (BIG diff there. One liberates you. The other grows you into a cranky old man or woman.) You spend less energy pretending. You come across to everyone as more honest and genuine. You accept that no matter how bad things are, the sun will always come up the next day.

So, be cool, be well and be happy.

Fool's gold

What does this guy mean to you?

Let me guess. An idol worshipped by godless and probably misguided people, right?

Let me tell you what it means to me.

What I see is the image of a person who is humble (modest clothing), generous (the sack filled with goodies to be given away), sturdy and patient (swallows the problems the world throws at him, hence the big tummy), and does it all with a big smile. Oh, and the gourd in his hand is medicine. To help heal other people.

It is the paragon of virtue, cast into an image for the benefit of peasants who cannot read thousands of years ago.

The statue is not meant to be worshipped. It is an instruction manual in 3D on how to be a good person. That's what I see.

If you know what this statue means, tell me. ^_^

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Lets assume you're a guy and you're dating this girl who's giving you all the signals that she's interested in you and is serious about it. You walk on water all day. A pal of yours gets concerned. Rumor has it that your new girlfriend is getting engaged next week and obviously not to you. Should he tell you?

How about another scenario. You just got a surprise bonus in your paycheck. You've been planning to upgrade your car for a while now so you spend the whole weekend shopping for something that you feel will finally do you justice. You find it and put a $10k downpayment. This is so exciting, you feel. But your colleague doesn't seeem so excited. He knows something you don't - that it would be your last paycheck. You're about to get laid off, along with a few others who also received these "bonuses." Should he tell you?

Lets push the stakes higher. Your little sister has cancer. The doctor pulls you aside and quietly tells you that there is no hope. She's weeks away from "checking out." But she's so bubbly and cheerful, you tell yourself. She even told you what she wants for her birthday next month and all the things she plans to do when she leaves the hospital. How do you tell her?

What do these scenarios have in common? False hope. Something you see in everything from dodgy product promises to bad investments.

I know what you're gonna say. Just tell them the truth! The truth shall set them free! Or something like that.

If so, hear me out.

Humans can live without a lot of things but if there's one thing they cannot live without, apart from food and water, its hope. I think you'll agree with me on that.

Hope is why a man, flat broke and down to his last penny, would borrow from a loan shark to gamble, because a slim chance of winning some money to buy food is better than confirmed starvation.

Hope keeps people from giving up. You remove hope from someone and you might as well send him to his death.

So if that's the case, would you? Remove hope from someone I mean. Would you tell a poor man, "Don't gamble!" Or tell your sister, "Forget your birthday. You won't live long enough to see it." Or tell someone, "You'll never get out of this hellhole no matter what you do."

Would you tell the truth if it removes the last reason for someone to live?

Where would you draw the line?

(Oh, the connection between this topic and the laughing Buddha? I am trying to keep my humor while being mindful about life. Hey I'm still learning.)

Bordered

I was at a tech seminar downtown this afternoon and it bored the hell out of me so I decided to leave early. Not wanting to be stuck in the traffic that was building up, I decided to wait it out at Borders the bookstore.

Usually the first place I would head for is the business section which was what I did. I wanted to see what the famous Wall Street gurus are saying now that they'd all been taken to the cleaners by the recession. I mean its just amazing to see how back in 2005, these guys were spinning bestseller after bestseller on how to make a million bucks. Now very same guys are on their way to bankruptcy, brought down by the tricks they taught their readers to follow. Man what a joke.

And as I suspected, the "how to make a million bucks" shelves have no new titles. Some old and familiar ones were going at 20% off. Wonder which idiot is going to buy them even at 80% off, now that they've been conclusively proven to be bad ideas.

Then I wandered around and found myself at the World History section. I think I was driven there by an old question that I never found an answer to, and the question is, why does man kill each other.

So I came across a book by Niall ferguson entitled "The War of the World: History's Age of Hatred". He mostly wrote about the turn-of-the-century wars in Europe, Russia, the US, a little about the middle east, and a smattering about the Japanese in world war 2. He basically lays out why he thinks the 20th century is man's most brutal century.

Err.. say what? The 20th century was man's most brutal century? Haha, what were you smoking Mr Ferguson? World war 1 & 2 was a picnic compared to the time of ancient imperial China where it was reported that the emperors massacred up to half a billion of their own people. In those medieval times, that's what, 30% of the world population killed in a couple of thousand years?

These were not foreign enemy combatants unlike the casualties in those European wars. These were their fellow countrymen, civilians mostly, and many were put to death for really, really stupid reasons. How about burying thousands of them alive in one afternoon together with their dead emperor just so that they can all serve the big boss in the hereafter. Or dying in the process of building some giant silly monument? Stuff like that.

Its not just the Chinese emperors. You got people like Alexander, Tamerlane, Genghiz, and all the other "great" conquerors who took millions of lives as they swept across entire continents, sticking their swords into anyone who crossed their paths.

No, world wars 1 & 2 are just tiny chapters in man's history of violence and if I may predict, they sure as hell won't be his last.

What's proven beyond any doubt is man's love of killing his brother. What's harder to ascertain is why. What is that common thing that connects all these violent chapters of man throughout the ages? And why is it, despite the age of enlightenment, reasoning and science, that things have not changed.

That was the explanation I was looking for.

Well, it seems none of the books at Borders answered that question so I had to leave the store empty handed.