Last Words I Take With Me from P4

It's a little early for last words but I think I have experienced one of the best courses anyone at B-school can take. In parting, our dear PIM professor (a.k.a. Foul-mouth Fernando, whom some of us suspect to be gay, but don't quote me because I can't tell straights from bends) has shared the following words with us:

Caminante
No hay camino
Se hace camino al andar.

Al andar se hace camino
Y al volver la vista atras
Se ve la senda
Que nunca has de volver a pisar.

Caminante
No hay camino
Solo estelas en la mar.

For the rest of us who did not understand Spanish or Castillan (which includes moi aussi), the English translation reads:

Traveller,
There is no path.
You make the path as you walk.

As you walk, you make the path.
And when you look back
You see the path
That you will never travel again.

Traveller,
There is no path.
Only the wake of ships upon the ocean.

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Recall Oasis: "Now don't look back in anger, I heard you say."

Stringing It All Together - Analogising it

If someone emailed you a notion of hers, and you find it thoughtful, maybe even somewhat meaningful. And after a moment (oh, perhaps something like a month later), you think that it might be something that you want to blog about. Maybe it is an idea, but you want to expand on it, give your own version of it. It's like, taking a song and remixing it - maybe call it the greyscalefuzz blogrot remix (except that it's with a piece of writing). It is essentially your own thing, but with a premise taken from someone else. You know, borrowing, re-doing it... perhaps even giving credit for where it came from.

So, if you did all that, does it count as plagiarism?

I don't know, but if this post gets taken offline for some reason, you know why.

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A friend told me in an email (not so long ago) that a relationship is like a piece of thread. When you embark on a new relationship, it is akin to cutting a length of the thread with a pair of scissors. As the relationship progresses along, through all its ups and downs, there might come a point where it breaks into two - perhaps it is an event that prompts a break up, or maybe something like an extended period of being apart. When a thread breaks, it is possible to mend it back together again - perhaps using glue, or maybe some sticky tape.

However, no matter how much the thread gets put together again, it is undeniable that it was separated before - everyone will notice that it has been mended. It's like that patch that one sews onto clothes: the patch covers up a tear or hole, but it is undeniable to one and all that the clothes are ruined and that patch only served to accentuate that. The thread is thus noticeably weaker - everyone around can tell. Why not then cut a new length of thread and start again? Perhaps this new length won't break so easily.

I liked my friend's analogy, but I decided that, like countless analogies I've heard in my life, it bears expanding upon. Think of it as an exercise in helping people make sense of the world: analogies help us manage as if the world was a simpler place to live in. Analogies were the first real and crude (and perhaps even oral) instances of models of the world. Models were built to help people simplify and generalise the world they live in - using analogy is just a way of doing that.

As for the thread analogy, one should think about what the thread is made out of first. Is it nylon thread? Or perhaps just ordinary button sewing string? Or is it layered and thick like a rope? A thick thread made out of a tough material is surely harder to break, or cut, than the ordinary string. It might even bear more weight and can take more strain if anyone tries to pull it apart.

Likewise with a relationship: if the relationship was built on more solid ground, then it is perhaps more able to stand most stress and strain put onto it. A relationship built on common goals, principles, faith, and background has more 'fibre' than one based on lust, money, companionship and availability. When it is important attributes (principles, faith etc) that connect two people, it is less likely that one can find these attributes in other people (probably because it takes too much out of one to dig out such gems).

On another point in the thread analogy, the bit about mending a thread seemed kind of odd. People don't usually mend thread - they just throw it away and use a new one. It should be kind of hard sticking two separate pieces of thread and expecting it will function like a new one, right? Perhaps, instead of a relationship being like a piece of thread, I think everyone is like a thread of their own. When one thread finds another thread, they may want to get together and form a bend knot (something like... tying the knot, but not in the marriage sense). Note: Bend knots are knots formed when two pieces of rope are tied together at the end.

It is the kind of knot tied that determines the strength of the relationship. Oh, and whether the two threads were compatible in the first place (try knotting together sewing thread and nylon). It is not impossible for two incompatible pieces of thread to be knotted together. It depends on what kind of knot is being used to bring the two together. A well-tied knot ensures that the two separate threads stay together under pressure - they don't come apart easily.

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Being home now, I sometimes tune into NewsRadio FM93.8 while driving (this being in Singapore). This is largely because it supposedly has more informational content (it does make for less mind numbing fare than the typical morning show tripe). One of the items I do enjoy are the interviews they put on the air, and there was one which I heard three times already (well, they can't do THAT many interviews, so some of them get substantially more airtime).

This interview was with a Singaporean ex-priest with an education in public policy and an MBA to boot. He is now running some sort of leadership coaching program for Singaporean undergraduates. Unfortunately for me, I didn't manage to catch his name (despite 3 hearings of the show), otherwise I would have googled him.

The interviewee witnessed an interesting coaching session using a familiar analogical exercise: a jar is provided to the participants along with the following items: some fist-sized rocks, pebbles, sand and stones of varying sizes. The objective was to fill the jar with as much of the rocks, pebbles and sand as is possible to fit within the jar. As is the case, if one had filled the jar with the sand first, it would have been impossible to put in any of the rocks or pebbles since the sand would have packed the jar tight.

When asked what the exercise had meant, the textbook answer was that the items represented priorities in life, and the rocks and pebbles, being the biggest, were the biggest priorities in life. If they were sorted out first (i.e. placed in the jar) then any space leftover may be filled with the sand (the small things in life). If the small things were to be done first, then there would have been no space for the big items, since the sand would have filled the jar without leaving any room for other stones.

The interviewee then mentioned one particular response he heard which struck as being somewhat very incisive. One participant's view was that the rocks and pebbles, the big things, were one's dreams, while the sand was but the itty-bitty stuff of life. If one were to fill his life living out the itty-bitty stuff, fussing over the mundane and unimaginative, then there would have been no space for the dreams. The dreams, according to this participant at least, are the most important things to address in one's life.

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I am wondering, and am still wondering to no end, whether or not I am achieving my dreams: I still don't know what they are, and I still don't know whether the path I am walking down leads unto it. There is no analogy or model that can help direct my life: there is only analogy or model to help me understand how best to live it.

The Word

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." John 1:1-5

One of the most abstract ideas that came from the bible was concerning the Word. The Word from the above passage obviously refers to Jesus. But just as simply, I think the passage is trying to hint at the power of the spoken word - Jesus, being God's son, came to the World to spread His Word, and it was with such a notion that the writer of the Gospel of John regarded Jesus.

(Oh, on a side note, theologians will actually use this phrase to expound on a whole load of information, such as that this phrase explicitly mentions Jesus as God, and not as a being created by God. As such, he isn't man, but God in the flesh.)

Anyhow, I just wanted to start with something that brings me to my real topic: words are powerful things, whether they be written or spoken. Words have the power to change or even to stymie change, and the first instance of such a thing happening (and again I quote from the bible) was when God created the world: Let there be light, and there was light. Amazing how something spoken (albeit by a omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent being like God) can have the power to create and to bring forth something new.

But that's just the bible... or is it? How is it that we, as mere human beings, have allowed words to affect how we act or how we feel? How is it that we have afforded mere words that much power?

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Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. I disagree - I think words can hurt. I know - I've experienced it so personally before. When you love someone and he/she doesn't love you back, gentle words to decline may soothe the pain. But when someone prefers a quick and dirty way out of a sticky situation, the nastier words the better.

Words can hurt, but I hear it is only because we let them. Can one really be that insensitive to another's utterance or opinion? The answer as I have learnt to say it: It depends.

But I shall not elaborate. :)

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My favourite comic book author (so far) is Alan Moore, the original creator of works such as V for Vendetta, A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Watchmen. Look out for the movies, but don't bother looking for any credits to Mr Moore though - only a genius dissociates from the bastardization of his own work.

In any case, one of his less well known comics was Top Ten. A not so major character (but important to the plot) from the story was called Harry Lovelace, the hostage negotiator otherwise known as 'The Word'. The Word's power (it is a comic book and he is a super hero amidst a book filled with them) comes from his ability to compel people who hear him speak obey him. He is very, in a word, persuasive.

See, all he has to say is 'Put your hands up!' and you're compelled to do just that, without any rhyme or reason to. I think it is an especially useful ability to have: need cash? Just compel people on the street to hand the money in their wallets to you. Want sex? Just ask for it.

But the Word is really a metaphor more than a real character - the Word is like that character you have to obey in real life. The boss, your sergeant, the missus. Anyone with the power to say something to make you do an action, or to feel an emotion. Like an order issued for you to quickly get an assignment done. Or a guilt trip to emotionally blackmail you for not buying her flowers for her birthday.

(Sidenote: I think that being the Word in the comic book isn't all it is cut out to be though. Suppose you can't turn that ability off, and whatever you say is going to be taken literally. You can't really joke around much, like when someone tells some really kick-ass joke, and you're laughing your hardest, and you happen to utter "Ah you're killing me". Imagine what the consequences would be.)

So, in a way, having the power of the Word - whether it means that you're the one with the power to order someone, or to create specific emotions in someone else - you are responsible for the words you speak, so speak them with care.

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In a recent episode of the anime xxxHoLiC, a character, one of a pair of twins, has an inferiority complex. She lets whatever she hears about herself influence her person, and much of what she had heard were negative comments from her twin sister. In and of itself, the words that she had heard were not meant to limit her abilities - the fact is that she herself acts as an amplifier for the words spoken, and they become a limiting mechanism.

Simply put, if you keep hearing someone say that you're clumsy, and you believe it to be true, then you will be clumsy.

Perhaps it comes down to 2 factors... no 3 factors: the issuer, the receiver and the amplifier. The issuer speaks, the receiver listens, but it's the amplifier that makes either something sound trivial, or makes it the most compelling thought-provoking message ever heard. (And here I start getting reminded of my uni days as an electrical engineering undergrad - hard to imagine now, but those amplifiers we were all made to build have such enormous philosophical relevance, and yet, we were so caught up in the capacitors, resistors and general circuitry of it all that we fail to see the amplifier as nothing more than a goddamn hindrance to graduation)

The amplifier comes in many forms but I believe the one most important is that amplifier inside of oneself. Some people I know manage to tune that amplifier to only hear what they want to - like a low-pass filter of sorts, they filter off all the high frequencies and hear the good parts (the bass). Some others are unable to hear the good parts, and tune in only to negative comments, on which they remind themselves of their fragility.

I can't offer a way to tune that amplifier to hear the whole message though, and it is only human to tune in or tune out as we see fit. Perhaps it is important to realise that we inherently tune the messages we hear, and that should be sufficient to know. I have always heard that it is important to analyse what you hear in the context of what the issuer is saying - perhaps that is where I shall start now.

I shall start listening - without tuning.