Be

I resent those who tell me how to live, who to become and what path to take.

After all, I grew up in a household with 4 adults – in shifts – just for that: do’s and don’t’s.

Further up, all those “institutions” (tuition and instructors) from French lycée to Mandarin-oriented HS, from “secular” campus to secluded seminary, supposedly churned out graduates for the betterment of society. Yet, I learned from them conflicting accounts of what life is, meant to be and not could be.

Mind you. I tried. You can tell from age 4 on up, I have (and now, everyday first-day of school of life e.g. existential threats which, when I was back in school, hadn’t even existed: climate change, covid and A.I./misinformation.

This propaganda, that propaganda (during the Vietnam War, one supposedly dead man, Nguyen Van Be, held up a pamphlet whose picture showed him died for the North. In the South, I walked downstairs still in pajamas, straight into my own wake – with classmates held up a local newspaper showing I had committed suicide due to an IBM (grading) machine malfunction – today’s equivalent of those Dominion lawsuits.

How could it possibly fail me- a straight A’s in 1974 while others, B’s and C’s candidates been out celebrating.!

Then no one seemed to be responsible when shit hit the fan.

They closed the door (of the Embassy). They started the engine (of the tug boat). They ran away (honourable exit).

Blame it on Kissinger. Blame it on the Plumbers (Watergate). Blame it on Thieu, or Ky.

Blame it on anyone, except ourselves, the collective selves, byproducts of centuries of push/pull & wishes and whims forces (in Good Morning, Vietnam: our Armed Forces D.J. found himself “dating” the whole village – buying movies tickets for a long line of chaperons). We own the mistakes all right, but diffused .

Since we’re not quite “us”, it’s easier to shift and spread the blames around: from “I” to “We”: we ‘re the victims. War victims. Pirate victims. Consumerism victims (opioid?), of ill-suited match-making and match.com, of evangelism and baptism, of Ponzi scheme and facebook algorithm.

Blame it on China. Blame it on cheap goods, high-price of oil, but never on our addiction to anything and everything (for a kick).

Meanwhile, the commons are in ruin: roads and railways, bridges and airports, supply chain shut down and slow down. One never misses the well until it is dried up ( just wait up until Chinese goods’ slow-boiled pricing pulls a bait-and-switch on us – now that we’re all hooked on cheap products – we, the global community, pay either way, if not already- as we observe the climate change trajectory.)

I resent others for telling me how to live my life. After a few pokes, these self-appointed life coaches walked away in frustration “be that way then”, leaving me with lost ground and lost momentum i.e. my opportunity cost . Talking about a double self-sabotage: not being assertive up front (to set boundaries) only to pay out at the back end (of those dysfunctional and toxic relationships).

Some of us (prodigal son) learn by trial and error (the hard way). Others, by deductive or inductive reasoning. Most by osmosis or hand-me-down (my Dad is a high-ranking official – how about yours?). Each has different learning style and arrives at various points in the path (or stages of grief). Educators know not all students respond well to audio/visual stimuli. Some are leaning more toward kinetic or tactile (esp. autistic ones). Not youtube but youtouch. We are un-classifiable and un-boxable, with different dot-connecting and tech adoption rate. Backward nations still implement rote-learning, not internalizing (like our driving second-nature, stop at stop signs, no matter what).

Each possesses a percentage of those 19,599 genes that set us apart. Spindle cells shared with apes and whales. The gift of gag.

Find that sweet spot. Share it: our source code. Our fingerprints and footprints. Our originality and creativity. I like what Tina Turner says each time she performs “Proud Mary”, it’s different: she evolves on stage with audience feedback loop.

Or else, fans would not want to buy concert tickets. And what’s the point of dressing up differently, if we all ordered from algorithm-driven Amazon-prime (with current logistical problems, Santa might not arrive in time for Christmas). Imagine a Halloween with cookie-cutter “aliens” trick-or-treating.

Lesson 1: be (not the Paul Anka’s Papa type of “each day he lives through me” crap – own yourself)

Lesson 2: die each day (prerequisite to be born anew)

Lesson 3: rinse and repeat

Unlike the Beatles’ Yesterday (I am half a man I used to be), we’re not living a half-life effect of chemistry. Our bodies process less than our calories intake (twice the size I used to have). We exploit less than what we were initially given (brain cells and DNA genes) i.e.regressing, from dumb to dumber (as the internet and our understanding of the universe expand more and more). Life has to be more than just the maintenance of it.

Albert Schweitzer once lamented the worst thing in life is wasted talent ; unused or under-exploited.

Given the existential challenges of covid and climate change, our collective self needs to rise to the occasion (e.g. vaccines for children).

United (in diversity) we can face any storm. But first, realising who we are (uniquely) that brings values to the table. The gay and the straight, the darker skin and the lighter skin, the tall and the short. We need the brain power for network effect and to scale. We don’t need a repeat of failure (uniformity mistaken for unity) i.e. keep repeating the same theme, the same team, all the while hoping for a different result. Group think, with echo chamber; albeit sounds comforting (Kumbaya) at first i.e. harmony, strength in numbers, hunting in pack etc.. but when “shit hit the fan”, the whole group, party or administration crumbled or dissolved. The Kennedy’s team was purported to be the Best and Brightest. So was Bush’s. Then we got Vietnam and Iraq. Next mistake won’t be as easy to get over.

For once, go for self-validation not self-recrimination or self-sabotage. Then, perhaps, Earth can get on its business of self-correcting and self-healing (fixing climate change by inducing covid, just to push a point). Given the self-righting feature of the universe, our existence and contribution seem trivial and minutia, scale wise (just because the Church said the Earth was flat …). Now we know (ask Shatner, our primary source).

Realizing our short-coming is the first step to self-improvement: Church back to its Confessional Booth, and Scientists back to the drawing board: observation-hypothesis-test-conclusion-re-evaluation. Then and only then should we direct our attention slightly toward others (situation awareness), learning from their “Medieval” mistakes and/or cheering them on on their “scientific” findings. But, don’t interfere or intervene.

Empathy trumps judgment (Jesus himself concentrates on drawing s/t on the ground while Taliban-like crowd just wanted to “stone the bitch” back to Stone Age). Without context and nuance, it’s hard to make a case from initial observation. We dismiss others in a blink of an eye (e.g. homeless folks, non-Catholics, White evangelicals etc..). The less we want to invest in understanding others, the more divided our society becomes.

I once grew up in a family with four adults who, in shifts, told me what to do, what foreign language to spend money on (French was a waste, in hindsight, post Dien Bien Phu era). I was spent….my energy depleted from rebelling and resenting. When I first arrived in the US, well-meaning people even wanted to re-name me – inadvertently invading my space!(as we have all found out, those who speak a foreign language ended up winning the war over the US who speaks the Queen’s English).

American live by privacy, individuality and personal data e.g. social security, credit card, bank account and zip code. Vietnamese sense of self is a collective one: extended clan and village, pushing canons uphill (Dien Bien Phu) or living in underground tunnel (Cu Chi). One’s identity is tied to clan, caste or strategic coupling (college-educated). Harmony is key, and that leads to groupthink. Those Luddites who objected to the 1974 IBM grading machine perhaps saw their nepotism and favouritism enterprise went to the ground, hence, trumped up the misinformation that triggered my “wake”.

The more “naturalised” a refugee becomes, the more he/she own his/her mistakes, more accountable albeit at various speed of self-discovery, self-awareness/improvement and tolerance (for risks/ambivalence). The all-knowing (though we see as “through the mirror darkly”) respects our self-realization (and free will) that some parts are alterable and some not. For our un-alterable part, we need patience, humility and self-compassion. Life is a long journey of getting to know me (self-hacking). Still I prefer doing it comfortably in my own chair, in my own time and term.

Last lesson: BE. Let the sum of my heartbeats to their own drum. Let it be. Children of a lesser parent. So what.