Passion and Synch

From 14 to 18, it was so special to feel that shy excitement making a duet with the guy next door amongst cheers from the karaoke crowd.  Achievements were never the aim.  Having fun and passing requirements was :) Enjoying being friends and learning from young and old teachers alike was rewarding.  The SN world was anti-competitive, anti-pressure, the lost child of the school lol

Then for the next 4 years, all they talked about was finding a purpose. Passions have to be utilitarian, even if the utility can just mean making oneself feel happy or content with 'having found one's path'.  It's better to partition oneself in a delicately balanced way, such that most highly-valued utilities can be realized. As Steve Jobs, Oprah, and many other graduation speakers have concluded, pursuing one's passions is perceived as one of the surest ways of living a meaningful life.

But then, not everything needs a purpose. Focusing on passions can be different from focusing on life.  The former can easily be an excuse for achievements. Would we trade losing the next hour planning and executing one's passion for those few minutes feeling shy or excited with friends and family, innocent, light, and pure? Would we spend the next day growing the same passions even bigger because that's the natural path the passions would lead to, or let life come in and tell you something else, in all its liberty and mystery? Either way works, hardly comparable yet both can be as satisfactory.  Yet, knowing the purpose is hardly the decision compass; synching with life may be.

It feels good to when we once felt surfing and 'synching' with life.  Recreating the experience could be almost impossible.  But we do know what we did NOT think about and what we spent our time on, because of some unknown feelings (gut/intuition).  We know what feels right, albeit no purpose, no clarity of passions.

Friendship - Grad reflection

found from 2009, on airplane home from college graduation :)

      JW, with his usual pragmatism, said with a tone of denial, of resistance or simply, of not being sure how to handle the fact that a few years from now, our friends will drift apart.  I sadly had to concur with him that we would not be able to attend to each other’s ups and lows, of important events in our lives, anymore.  But will it be that sad if when we meet again, all we will talk about is the past? Won’t we be able to talk about the present and the future, the mundane everyday conversations or meaningful conversations? I’m not sure.  The analytical me told me that there are many different layers of friendships: based on common interests, similar experiences, shared values, and the deepest level, shared purpose.   

      Friends with common interests will be able to have fun with each other talking about sports, girls, movies, music – you know, all those first conversations we have with new friends.  Similar experiences engage friends with common interest at another level where we bond through “hardships” and common achievements, like a team’s experience.  We would experience each other’s strengths and weaknesses, when they are happy and when they are stressed.  Shared values would then predict whether the friends can stay strong during the similar experiences.  Conflicts sometimes arise and should our foundational values are too diverge, we stay away from investing our time and efforts being with these friends.  

      Shared values can form really deep friendships, yet we change, as we grow up and as we are physically too far from each other to have shared experiences or to fully be together when our values change.  Our friendships are at risk at this stage, or put in JW’s words: our friendship base would shrink as we grow up.  Shared purpose may be able to heal this gap.  For example, we are concerned about each other’s happiness and dreams, or we share the same life purpose, broadly speaking, of improving ourselves, understanding the world, making impacts, and living with our human inevitable cycle of birth and death, etc.  These purposes will bring themes to our friendships and will make us, as my idealism and optimism say, stay great friends.  They have the potential to transcend geographic or temporal barrier to friendships.  Yes, our friendship base will shrink but at any point in the future, should we meet each other, I hope our common sense of purposes will still bring us conversations, tears and smiles, just like the brightly innocent, sincere and happy smiles we have had for each other, when we were at Stanford, radiated in the sun. 

Back

 

Back to life

For tomorrow that may never come 

For the world that falls and stands 

For romances chasing moonlights

For friends lasting through seasons 

For life and purposes 

For vast rivers, endless sky, beautiful imperfections 

It feels wonderful to be back 

Fresh and anew in joy 

:)

Facebook and the ivory international school dream

Back then, I wanted to move to an international school very early on in high school, tired of rote memorization and looking for * something else * that I believed was more holistic, with better teachers, better programs.  The tuition fees were exorbitant! And hence, I stood outside, from my public school looking faraway, for a freer land.

The international school community was then for me an ivory tower, an idealistic dream.  My dream was protected from all reality that was happening behind those walls.

Nowadays, with facebook and the Internet, the walls are torn down.  Yet, if I were a student now, how would I feel?  Envious with the prom parties, the international travel photos, the non-Vietnamese facebook friends, the good-looking dresses? Disappointed with a world not always filled with motivation, good friends, good teachers? Or simply appreciating what I would be having even more?

With facebook and such transparent personal information load, would the world feel more empowered, or more disenchanted with more reality? When more truth is relatively easier to seek now than before, people could be more self-conscious. But their quality of life, improved or not, seems to me not being essentially driven by this development.

A human day

Once again, things remind me that we can never know for sure when would be the last time we see someone and can just exchange some nice acts between humans: a smile, a handshake, a hug, a sentence.

And that realization has melted all the other worldly emotions. When it's between humans, I ought to remember that I will never know when would be the last time.... 

Power, Money, Love, Ideals, and Life frames

- You know why you should advocate for U.S. colleges over other countries? Because it's where kids can be asked to dream and have both the freedom and the social pressure to dream and pursue one's dream.

---
The Singapore and U.K. education frame students' purpose around making it to the top of the corporate ladder, and hence, valuing money.  The Australian education teaches students specific vocations, valuing stable life.  The Vietnamese education separates professors from students, which makes students have nothing more exciting to do than to bond with each other more and hence, to value love.  And here I am, indoctrinated by the habit to ask why, wonder about life's purpose, like a black sheep in these circles when talking about "dreams." 

I recently find myself at odds with the circle I'm familiar with as well.  These people I know, inspired by their U.S. education and understanding so well their own life reasons, are pursuing their dreams, ambitious, worth-pursuing.  Some others make do with what they need to live first, money and family.  Some take advantage of the time and the skills to become, step by step, more powerful.  When the pieces are arranged together, the attractive picture of various impacts and happy lives shimmers.  On the pessimistic frame, it looks as though some dreams have been left behind for new dreams and the realistic life to take the lead.  On the optimistic frame, maybe it was just a hole in the U.S. college education: one should not strive for individual impacts or for becoming heroes, because in reality, the collective impacts of a generation and how those interact with external forces of the society they live in should worth more than any particular case.

When I get depressed and put on my pessimistic frame, I could be so sarcastic of people, even though they do nothing wrong or bad, and being sarcastic of them means being sarcastic of my own self.  When I put on my optimistic frame, I have to turn off my impatient desires for answers and angst for knowing the future.  When I couldn't care more about anything and stay with my under-twenty personality, it feels like a kid, so optimistic, moving on, playing, smiling.  Sometimes, it feels sad having such a messy soul, as it makes sharing too challenging.

Adjusting our life

Adjustment Bureau is ok although philosophically speaking, it can go much deeper than just quick-and-simple lines about destiny and free will.  And there the can-change can-do American spirit, as humble as it is trying to be when talking about all the man-made wars all based on free will and the perpetual search for self-interest benefits, still remains forever strong with the ending.  Is there a deeper plot when the original novel's author wants to elude about God's intention to test human beings and to let them have a say and be a part of their own lives?  And there is a "protecting angel" who might come in any form as well?  Is there something more thought-provoking to think about the choice of risking everything, the usual comfortable route - "on the way" to be a great dancer, a successful politician, a president - to select the non-beaten track of to pursuing love and letting love complete the rest?  Power - Money - Love - the triad competing interests and options that makes the analytical mind weighs.

A soft and sweet song to the "hopelessly romantic" catered to the Western-raised consumers, the movie makes me think about how in Eastern novels or folklore, those who don't listen to the Gods' words, end up being separated from each other or having to suffer from limitless pain as they live their love and their life (Nguu Lang - Chuc Nu, Truyet thuyet Lieu Trai). 

Off-topic: the Plan Book in this movie is so detailed and precise, so different from the typical general La so tu vi that many Vietnamese usually read and "adjust" their lives accordingly =p

because small things matter

:)

Mobility

(Semi-Fiction...) 

Mobility

The wind permeates her face, blowing her hair towards one direction. Usually afraid of the cold and covering herself in thick jackets, she rolls over her jacket sleeves to embody the wind. To live and embrace what she thinks is the best the city could offer: chilly wind and blue sky. But that’s about it.

In this city, black, yellow, brown, white, hippies, geeky, transsexuals, music producers, poets, all live together. One MUNI train could offer the one-color-at-a-time human chain: white enters and as white leaves, yellow and black comes in. As yellow leaves, MUNI is all black. If the train runs at 7pm, when the blue sky is substituted by somber streets with hardly any street lights, everything around her would be black. There would be voices singing raps, a young girl calling her mom for directions to get out of the train, and smirks guys exchange with each other that she never understands. The train goes from North to South and hence the order of the colors. She hopes it would be because of just her own xenophobia and the differences are just in one’s mind. Her white friends do not know this part of town exists. Her yellow friends empathize that the area is dangerous. Familiarity with the urban scene, Paris, London, Hong Kong, Saigon, New York, can’t help her avoid uneasiness.

She has friends living in the city, those from the most coveted schools in the country. They live with housemates, girlfriend and boyfriend, chasing not their dreams, but their independence and freedom.  They put up with the cold, the wind, the MUNI color changes, to join packs of others in the city. In fact, few take the MUNI at all.

All want to explore, although a few know what they are searching for. Many don’t want to miss out a once-of-a-lifetime youth to live free and lively in the city and in the Bay. Like them, she loves lounges, bars, Italian restaurants, French cafes, old bookstores, and the AT&T baseball games. She would drive down to see Halfmoon Bay and check out Monterey. The spiky dark green pine trees, lazy light green fields, heavy broad high mountains, and flashy ocean waves of the Bay never fail to let her down – like the chilly wind, it refreshes her face and her skin.

She does not really like her landlord, and rarely sees her housemate, who works for a hedge fund. She remembers that he’s really smart, the latest memory she has of him. None of her friends has a particular attachment to the city, and they still enjoy life. One occupies his thoughts in philosophy and theology, resisting to date as he would later leave for home. Another is fully consumed by work and boyfriend, living and changing life along regions in the U.S. every few months. Her sorority draw-mate can never be sure how long she can keep dating the same person. Life in the city strolls. Attachment is taboo. Exploration is important. Apathy to the MUNI is convenient and sometimes, necessary.

-        -  I’m going back to Cambodia.

-        -  What?

-        - Yeah, I can’t stand life here without family. It gets lonely. And I’m getting married.

She was shocked by his statements. 1.5 year out of school, 1 month knowing the now-fiancee. And yet, she’s happy for him.  Three years ago, the fiancee’s parents gave a profile of someone they thought would be compatible with her. She didn’t like his name and dropped the profile. Three years later, they met on their own through a mutual friend. He may have found what he’s been searching for.  Time in the city may just be necessary to run until the true treasure comes. Having the treasure refresh his soul and heart, he now could leave the chilly wind that refreshes his face and skin.

-        -  I don’t really want to stay at this consulting job but I love my community in the city.

-         - What community? – she asks for more details while enjoying her exquisite Italian crabs and clams, reaching out to her nerves, demanding them to think about “community”

-         - Yes, I counsel drug addicts every weekend. A group of us take class on psychology and counseling.

It’s odd to her that her friend who for sure goes home in 3 years makes the efforts to build a community beyond his social sphere. Why should he care about a community that in the long term, he will not really have a stake in. How many of him are there?

What does it mean to be free? Is the pursuit of freedom the same with pursuit of dreams? Is the pursuit of dreams the same with realizing, making and remaking, and living dreams every day? What does it mean to enjoy life? While knowing that figuring out the answers to these questions is the very reason why her friends and she live in the city, she knows her values are neither in independence nor exploration. She likes being well-grounded, living passionately for others and for a community she loves. In that sense, to be free is not like to be like bubbles floating and birds flying. It’s more like leaves budding high from deep roots.  When there are lots of them, shades will form. Fresh, light, green, peace. But trees can’t move.

-          

      - Yeah, I think I could be a tree to see how things have changed over time – her friend said to her.

-         - This lake is gorgeous. Maybe I could be a lake. It moves, but still attached to a certain region only. It cleanses and refreshes but not too intimidating. It runs deep. 

San Francisco

I miss Paris.

Through San Francisco. 

The subway street bands. 

The delicate buildings. 

The confusing transportation. 

The lost feeling. 

We all have many dreams. But only one dream at a time could roll live. 

We all have many edges. To protect. To take back trust. To stop mind-sharing.