The good advice....
Sunday, April 15, 2012
I read an article today on a random blog and had to share. Some of his advice is perfect. I have highlighted what I felt to be most relevant to me in here. Maybe it will make you think a little like it did me. Either way, I hope you take the time to read it, and share your thoughts in the comments. :)
—–
Written by Adrian Tan, author of The Teenage Textbook (1988), was the guest-of-honour at a recent NTU convocation ceremony. This was his speech to the graduating class of 2008.
—–
I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.
My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.
On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.
Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.
And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.
Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.
The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.
You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process”
and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.
and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.
The good news is that they’re wrong.
The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.
I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.
You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.
Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.
So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.
Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.
I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.
After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.
Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.
That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.
If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.
What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.
Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.
What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.
Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.
The most important is this: do not work.
Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.
Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.
There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.
People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.
Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.
Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.
I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.
So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.
Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.
Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.
In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.
I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.
It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.
One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.
The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.
I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.
Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.
Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.
Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.
You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.
Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.
Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.
Mr. Awesome...is awesome.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Earlier this week a coworker was talking to me about dating. She asked me, "Lana does your boyfriend ever open your car door?" I immediately replied with, "Yes! Every time, even if I'm driving. He also always opens all my other doors too and always puts himself on the street side when we're walking."
She asked me if I feel like it's a bad sign if a guy doesn't do that for a girl. I thought about this for a second, which was a second longer than I needed to. I said, "If it's a first date, it shows an immediate sign of either immaturity, or lack of care for you which translates into your future relationship with this person."
Some of you may find that to be extreme, but I believe it to be 100% true. The guys that didn't open my door and take care to show me I was important, didn't do that for me in almost every other aspect of our relationships and it was all about them... always.
Side Note Rant: Ladies, never get mad at guys for opening your doors!!! So what if you have arms. Let them be men and take care of you. The rest of us that value that in men, really can't stand what you've done to the good ones! It's all your fault and you'll be mad one day that they don't and say 'Where are all the good guys?', and you'll only have yourself to blame.
Back to the main point of this blog...Mr. Awesome has consistently shown that even when he has 2 full time jobs, a full school schedule, and military duty, he will still take me to lunch or hang out with me and watch a movie, or will make time to call me EVERY day even if for just a minute because he knows it's important to me.
It's been over a year and a half since we first met up at Barnes and Noble and laughed our heads off in the foreign language section while I picked out Italian and French translation books for my Eurotrip. It's been a crazy ride since then. Pretending we weren't falling for each other because he was heading off to military duty, only to end up right smack in the middle of an awesome relationship. Writing an insane amount of letters and calling each other whenever we had 5 minutes to make the distance not feel so far or long. It was 9 MONTHS of military distance. Some girls go a year or more. I feel your pain, that's just brutal! I don't wish that on anyone!
We've had times with each other where I wanted to punch him right in the nose, or where he wanted to run far away from me because I was frustrating him beyond all belief. And times where it's just been butterflies and rainbows (I'm only halfway kidding on the butterflies and rainbows.) But he has never stopped opening my doors, calling me every day, and being there for me even when he has no time left to give, and making me laugh.
And that is why I'm grateful for you, and why I love you today. Thank you for being Mr. Awesome!
Why do you love your Mr. Awesome? OR What makes a guy become awesome to you? I love hearing from you, so please feel free to comment and share!
---------
Lately I post videos along with every post whether they fit it or not. This is a love song to add to the cheese already in this post. I love certain old music, and Sam Cooke is one of my favorites for songs like the one below. Enjoy!
She asked me if I feel like it's a bad sign if a guy doesn't do that for a girl. I thought about this for a second, which was a second longer than I needed to. I said, "If it's a first date, it shows an immediate sign of either immaturity, or lack of care for you which translates into your future relationship with this person."
Some of you may find that to be extreme, but I believe it to be 100% true. The guys that didn't open my door and take care to show me I was important, didn't do that for me in almost every other aspect of our relationships and it was all about them... always.
Side Note Rant: Ladies, never get mad at guys for opening your doors!!! So what if you have arms. Let them be men and take care of you. The rest of us that value that in men, really can't stand what you've done to the good ones! It's all your fault and you'll be mad one day that they don't and say 'Where are all the good guys?', and you'll only have yourself to blame.
 |
| A lovely Crab dinner after a day at the Pensacola Beach! |
It's been over a year and a half since we first met up at Barnes and Noble and laughed our heads off in the foreign language section while I picked out Italian and French translation books for my Eurotrip. It's been a crazy ride since then. Pretending we weren't falling for each other because he was heading off to military duty, only to end up right smack in the middle of an awesome relationship. Writing an insane amount of letters and calling each other whenever we had 5 minutes to make the distance not feel so far or long. It was 9 MONTHS of military distance. Some girls go a year or more. I feel your pain, that's just brutal! I don't wish that on anyone!
We've had times with each other where I wanted to punch him right in the nose, or where he wanted to run far away from me because I was frustrating him beyond all belief. And times where it's just been butterflies and rainbows (I'm only halfway kidding on the butterflies and rainbows.) But he has never stopped opening my doors, calling me every day, and being there for me even when he has no time left to give, and making me laugh.
And that is why I'm grateful for you, and why I love you today. Thank you for being Mr. Awesome!
Why do you love your Mr. Awesome? OR What makes a guy become awesome to you? I love hearing from you, so please feel free to comment and share!
---------
Lately I post videos along with every post whether they fit it or not. This is a love song to add to the cheese already in this post. I love certain old music, and Sam Cooke is one of my favorites for songs like the one below. Enjoy!
The difference in duty and love.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
My cousin whose husband is deployed for a year posted this on her blog. She is a tough girl, and I pray for their family often. This also applies to me and any other girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband out there who spends most of your relationship apart from the one you love.
Lord, grant me
the greatness of heart to see,
the difference in duty
and his love for me.
Give me the understanding to know,
that when duty calls he must go.
Give me a task to do each day,
to fill the time when he is away.
And Lord when duty is far away,
please protect him, this I pray.
Amen.
MGD aka Jerk!
Friday, April 6, 2012
Tonight after my lovely Friday night workout, I did some mild yoga moves to relax, stretched and meditated a little. Feeling amazingly peaceful and energized after a run that kicked my butt takes a little practice. But gosh darnit, I succeeded tonight! I walked out of the gym feeling peaceful and relaxed, and a little bit more athletic, and then MAJOR GYM DOUCHEBAG smacked me in the face (and his girlfriend) with a big pile of garbage. Here's the story...(Disclaimer... if you can't handle hearing stories of domestic abuse, please do NOT read this. I don't want to ruin your night!)
I walk out of the doors of the gym and hear the following, "That's F***-ing stupid! WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS SO F***ING STUPID?! I AM SO SICK OF YOU HOW STUPID YOU ARE! I SWEAR YOU'RE CHEATING ON ME, SAY WHATEVER YOU WANT BUT IT'S ALL LIES!"
I look toward the obvious direction of the psychotic angry man's voice to see someone who could be an NFL linebacker due to his size yank a woman's purse from her arms and find her cell phone. I could tell that she was pretty close to my size. At this point she saw me (they are only about 20-30 feet from me), but I have to walk past them to get to my car, and also because I think if he sees me he'll relax.
She gives me this mortified look as if this isn't the first time he has done this. I size him up to make sure she's safe. I don't think she is, girls my size can NOT disable a man his size. He rummages through her phone and then gets really angry, screams, "YOU'RE F***ING FLIRTING!!!!" and throws her phone at her face, hitting her in the nose/eye region with it. The whole time he's screaming at her, she's just trying to calm him down. She was using a calm voice and saying, "You know I don't do that, you know that's not me. Why can't you ever just trust me? I never do anything to deserve this." Then she picks up her phone off the ground and runs into the gym!
I kept my eye on him from my car to make sure he left, and had my phone out to call the police or the gym people to keep him out of there. He angrily walks to his car, and then all the sudden I see him turn and run into the gym and start looking around for her. Obviously at this point I'm worried for her. He's in public and he doesn't care that everyone can see his psychotic behavior. That is a HUGE red flag of a person's anger! Not only is he a threat to her now, he's a threat to everyone nearby. So I call the front desk of the gym and tell them his description and ask them to find him. The guy on the phone said they were already on it, and a couple of the gym employees already had a hold of him and were throwing him out and taking care of the situation. GOOD!
I felt so sick watching him scream at her and throw the phone at her face. He KNEW I was there and didn't care at all. But I was terrified to step in besides making sure she was safe from a distance. He looked like the type that would've turned around and punched me had I gotten any closer. And his fist looked larger than my head. I wanted to walk over there, grab her arm, and take her inside. I wish sometimes that I were a big burley guy. Because in cases like this, I'd have done just that and then come back out and fought him. I don't always justify violence, but when a man uses it to dominate a woman, he deserves something in return.
I hope this girl breaks up with him. She looked a little helpless in the parking lot when he was in her face, like she'd been there a million times and didn't know why he was always mad. I can't even imagine what he does when no one is watching. I'm so glad she was in public this time.
Abuse makes absolutely no sense to me. Losing your temper so completely that the person you claim to love, you now are determined to hurt? And all for the sake of your love? That is not love, that's obsession and it is unhealthy and wrong. Jealousy doesn't come from love. Anger like the kind he displayed tonight doesn't come from love. It comes from lack of self control and insecurities. If anyone reading this is with a guy like that, or even a girl like that, please dump them, and let the police have them seek anger management therapy. You didn't provoke it, you didn't deserve it. They are just mad and insecure. Life is too important to let someone destroy you. Trust me, I've been there. It takes years to repair what you've allowed them to do.
Healthy relationships are the kind where if you disagree or argue, you don't say things you can't take back, even if you're hurt or angry. And you NEVER block someone's path and get in their face to scare them into apologizing. Sure those types of people win their arguments, but they lose everything that actually matters in a relationship.
To get rid of the sad/gross/angry feeling I have right now after writing this post, here is a positive, love song (about a healthy relationship) for you to listen to:
Check!
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Last night I did something off my somewhat oversized bucket list. I was convinced to sing karaoke with my roommate Erica. We sang this song. Isn't this video awesomely bad and sleezy? HAHA, it's terrible. I'm just a tiny bit ashamed to admit I had this song memorized in high school. (Sorry Mom.) Some of the lyrics I never knew before last night. I pretty much laughed my way through the ones I felt a little awkward to sing.
Disclaimer: To my friends and family that don't want to see a rap video that's a little dirty, please don't click play. :)
Disclaimer: To my friends and family that don't want to see a rap video that's a little dirty, please don't click play. :)
On womanhood.
|
| She's speaking from my heart. |
Men and women are not the same. We deserve equal rights, but we are still not identical creatures. We have different chemicals controlling how we behave, and we have different natural instincts. As women, we should never apologize for who we are. I should never be sorry that I don't act male. I am not male. A guy should not apologize for not acting female. He is not female. We should however strive to understand and accept each other and our differences as often as possible. We are complements of each other.
A friend once told me, "Women and men are equal, but we are not the same. I don't want to be successful by being just like a man. I want to be successful as a woman." I think about those words often, she seemed to understand what I didn't completely. I spent so much energy trying to pretend I wasn't sensitive, or that I didn't want to be a typical girl. But I am those things.
Here I go... embracing what makes me so amazingly feminine, and what makes me... ME.
I cry. (I know your brain just exploded). I don't cry all the time, just during the following situations: laughing really hard; extreme frustration/anger; exhaustion; sad or ashamed; proud moments, like when I walked out of my last college class of my bachelor's degree after my last final. I practically skipped to my car, and then when I got in I sat there for a minute and cried a few tears of joy. (I know most guys reading this will have no idea what tears of joy are...so unlucky.)
I have moderately thick skin, which means, sometimes it isn't. I am pretty tough at work. I have no choice. You can't cry at work (except in the bathroom). But away from the office with family/friends, if you're mean or insensitive, it will often hurt my feelings. There's rarely a legitimate reason to be mean.
I love to love. The older I get, the more my heart has room for the good parts of life, and less room for what isn't necessary. I am a believer of the phrase, "Love makes the world go 'round."
I require silliness. Silliness is the best part of life. It is mandatory in my relationships of any kind. It is mandatory to handle the crap life throws at you. How can you handle when crap hits the fan, if you can't laugh about how gross it is once it gets all over you?!
Some girly things...When I was little, I used to judge a dress's quality by it's ability to spin out when I spun around. Ask any little girl. It's really fun.I'll never forget how jealous I was of girls that got to shave their legs before my mom let me.
I was also jealous of the girls who got to wear heels. The first time I wore them and heard the "clack clack" sound when I walked, I felt like I'd made it in life.
I hate horror films and spiders. They freak me out beyond normal amounts.
Nothing beats a good pedicure. Foot and calf massage, and cute toes? YES PLEASE.
I love men who can be men. Protect me. Protect our family one day. Honor and value your roles as a man and honor and value women's roles and you have my respect.
Thanks for reading. let me know your thoughts on this post, womanhood, or even your favorite thing to eat. I just love hearing from people that read my blog! Oh and here's a song for you to listen to that has nothing to do with this post, but the video is neat.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
