STAND UP!

“Jimmy?” said Grace

“Yes?” I said

“Brian’s feeling depressed.”

“What do you mean, depressed?”

“He failed the accounting exam”

Without saying a word, I went straight to his room. There he was, slumped in his chair. Brian looked up at me.

“Dad, I am so sorry. I let you down.”

Just as he was about to cry, I locked his eyes with mine, with such intensity that he couldn’t resist.

“You were never lucky. You were never meant to be lucky.”

He was shocked to hear those words for they were not words of consolation. He wanted what I would not give him. For that, I became defiant and determined to bring up his spirit.

I continued, “Understand that. You are the type who has to work hard to be fortunate. I know you. Those are not failures. They are shortcomings. You will always go through a pattern. Shortcomings, frustration, anger, pity.”

I straightened my back.

“Get up from that seat! Get up at this instant!”

He got up.

“I said, get up! Get up with dignity. Stand tall. Get up with the confidence to face the test. You have gone through this before. Get up! You will succeed. But you will have to go through a series of shortcomings. That is your fate. That is your pattern. You will succeed.  I don’t believe so. I know so. You are my son.  I have observed you from the time you were born, the time when you wanted something and you succeeded in getting it. You have the character, the determination. Never ever use the word ‘failure’. You have never failed because you never stopped trying. Failure is when you stop trying, when you give up. That was never you. Not getting what you want is a shortcoming. That’s how you work. That’s how you move closer to getting what you want, what you want to be.

I know you are hurting now. That’s good. It means you want it so bad. It means you will get it. You will get it.”

His chest raised, his back straightened.

His face relieved, regaining the determination he had momentarily lost.

I placed my hand on his shoulder. He got his consolation. At the right time.

“Thanks, Dad”, Brian said

I left his room with a smile.

I remembered him. I remembered the lessons he had taught me a long time ago.

“Thanks, Dad”

It's about Be-ing

It must have been when Chris was in his teens. He came up to me, and in a soft voice, he asked,

“Do you want me to be like you and mom?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean, do I have to have a profession that society approves of?”

“Well, don’t put me with rest of the guys. I became a philosophy teacher and Papa and Mama weren’t so happy about my decision. Papa was silent. But, Mama kept on reminding me that I could still be a lawyer.”

“Yeah, Dad, that’s what I mean. Do I have to be like your brothers, a lawyer, a doctor?”

I was the last person to tell anyone to be that, although I have nothing against those who chose the kind of professions that society approves of.

I usually don’t like looking at anyone in the eyes. But, when it is called for, as in this case, I can gaze at anyone, as if to say, “Listen, for I am about to tell you something very serious. So, I looked into Chris’ eyes and spoke the words that have, I believe, an everlasting influence not only him, but also on his siblings. I said,

“Never try to be what you don’t want to be. Never be like anyone, just to get society’s approval or your parents’ approval. But, there’s one thing that I demand of you, and your brother and sister, I want you to be like me and your Mom. I want you to always learn your craft. I want you to develop self esteem, self determination, self-discipline, self confidence. I want you to continuously develop values that you will need when I am gone. Yes, don’t be a professor, or a lawyer, or a doctor, or an accountant, or an engineer. Be the best that you can be in whatever you choose to be. It’s not about having a title. It’s’ about being the best that you can be.”

Since then, Chris continuously yearns to gain knowledge about his interests. He has gone farther than any yoga instructor that he has come across. He’s become a chef that many senior chefs can be proud of. He has even gone farther than I did in understanding Indian philosophy.

This is not about being a yoga instructor or a chef or a great reader of a  particular philosophy. It’s about realizing one’s potentials and developing them as much as one can. Happiness, Aristotle once said, is the actualization of one potentials. In one word: self-actualization.

The Unluckiest Person In The World

This story was told to me by a Polish friend, Kasia.

“You know, Jimmy,” said Kasia, “I have a friend who is the unluckiest person in the world. He was so unlucky with everything that he touches.’

She continued:

“I remember the time when he decided to apply for a job in Germany.  He applied and was granted an interview. But he had no money. So, he renovated his old car to sell it off, use the money to buy the plane ticket and have some money left to rent an apartment. If everything goes according to plan, his wife will join him in Germany.

He had the car renovated. It was very nice and clean, and he thought that it would be easy to sell it off. In communist Poland, there weren’t many cars. It was a luxury to have owned one.

A buyer called and wanted to see the car. They agreed to meet at a certain place. But just as my friend drove the car out of the garage, a truck hit it and tore the car in half. The car was beyond repair. He was shaken but unharmed.

The surprising thing was that he did not get mad at the truck driver, or even at God. He had always known he was born with no luck. His brother, however, was the opposite. Unlike the others, my friend learned to accept his fate.

My friends and I couldn’t accept his fate. How could such a terribly nice, harmless, compassionate guy ever be so unlucky? So, I gathered our friends in Germany and Poland, to help him out. In Poland, I collected money that went to buying the plane ticket, and the apartment in Germany. I called our friends in Germany and told them that one of them was to pick him at the airport, and the other was to prepare the apartment. My friends and I wanted to give the gods of fate a good fight. At least for now.

So far so good. My friend arrived at the airport where our friend met him. They both got in the car and drove to the apartment where our other friend was waiting. The car, however, encountered some minor problems, and what should take only 30 minutes going to the apartment, had taken them 3 hours.

While, in Poland, we waited nervously for the latest news. Did he make it alive? Did he get to the apartment? Did he get there in time for the job interview?

The next day, my unlucky friend left for the company. The traffic was terrible. They got stuck for more than 2 hours. The friend, who was driving, was nervous and cursing. I imagined my unlucky friend just sitting there, quiet, his eyes closed.  

When they finally arrived, he took the elevator to the 11th floor, where he met with the manager.

The manager was stunned: “Didn’t you hear?” said the manager.

“Hear what?” asked my friend.

“The job was taken. I left a voicemail message.”

Disbelief. Anger. Resignation. That was how we all felt. But not my friend. He took it in stride.

The following day, he was back in Poland.”

Kasia turned her head towards me and said, with eyes that demanded your absolute, undivided attention:

“Jimmy, you’d think that if you knew you’re unlucky with things, you’d be angry, depressed and pessimistic, no?”

“Yet, my friend wasn’t all that. He took everything as it was. He never got mad or depressed. We felt bad for him. He was so nice. The nicest guy I have ever met. It’s so unfair.”’

“Are you still in touch with him?” I asked.

“Yes, of course. All his friends are still in touch with him, always looking out for him.”

Then her eyes let go of me. She kept quiet for a moment, as though she had stumbled upon a memory of a very, very important event that she could not, or didn’t want to share it with anyone else, not even with her husband.

“Um, Kasia?”

“Yes?”

“You okay?”

“Yes.”

“You know what?”

“What?”

“Your friend, he is really not that unlucky.”

She searched for answers in my eyes.

“He has friends like you. That makes him the luckiest person in the world.”

Her body now, turned completely focused on me, her eyes soft and endearing

Offers me a smile.

That said:

“Thank you, Jimmy. Thank you so much.”

You’re Entitled To Your Belief. But ...

Confucius once said - and I am paraphrasing him - that life is beset with so many problems that we do not need to add another, but confused problem of figuring out whether there is life after life. How to live well is what many people do not know. And, this is a ‘clear’ and factual problem worth thinking about. Problems are created when we mix and treat false thoughts as though they were amongst the facts of living.

What are false thoughts? What are true?

They say that your destiny is written in the stars; that is, your destiny has already been determined before you even begin to act with consciousness. But, I do not know this for sure. No one does. I only know it to be an unsubstantiated belief.

Like all other beliefs, an unsubstantiated belief is another interpretation about the meaning of one’s meaning of life. However, I do know that, because I am conscious (I have consciousness), I can refuse to be defined by something above or below me. It is my free consciousness that I am able to rebel against any thought that belittles the free state of consciousness, be it mine or yours. So, I say, not only do I support the idea that life - here and now, between heaven and hell that I know nothing of  -is worth thinking about, the fact that I am conscious of my acts and realize that I can change my attitude about them, I am after all a free, conscious being. With this consciousness, I am a rebel. This makes me side with the existentialists.

True, biology talks about DNA and other biological determinants. But it would be a logical mistake to jump to the conclusion that due to our physical appearance, our psychological make up, our natural inclination  being biologically determined, it does not follow that the meaning of my life is similarly predetermined. These are parts, and parts don’t tell us the entire picture. In fact, we do not know even the entire picture of a person.

So, what is a false thought (or, belief) ? In my previous article, I stated that for a statement to be true or false, it has to be verifiable. That is, there has to be solid proofs to judge whether a statement is true or false. An unverifiable statement, then, would be neither true nor false, for no proof or evidence exists to back up one’s assertion. You will find a similar idea In the philosophy of Kant. According to Kant, a concept that has no way of being proven to be true or false, is an empty and hollow concept. God, for example, is such a concept. However, for Kant, knowledge must leave room for faith.For logical positivists, who uphold the principle of verifiability, God is a meaningless concept: neither true nor false. For Kant as well as for the positivists, a false thought or knowledge would then be verifiable. While positivists would, in the case of God, consider the concept meaningless, Kant, on the other hand, would leave room for faith. He makes a stand on the existence of God, without any proof or evidence to back up his decision to believe. Ironically, so do the positivists: they decided to not believe in a God.

In some cases, especially in the field of science, I would abide by the principle of verifiability. But, from the perspective of life, I  - as in the case of Kant - need not wait for something to be verifiable to be able to make a stand on it. However, unlike Kant, I can still claim that a belief is false. You see, life forces everyone to pass judgment on a belief. There is no such middle ground from the perspective of life. So, how can I make such a claim that a belief can be true or false, if a belief can not be verified? Let us make it clear that for Kant, belief is neither true nor false. It is a choice. Yes, it is a choice; but we still can judge a belief to be true or false; however, not in the way logical positivists use these terms.

No knowledge of heaven or earth or what comes after life, can be definitively made - reflectively or unconsciously. It is a non verifiable belief; yet every individual has to make a stand. Life demands it. The best way to sense life’s demand is to observe it in its purity, without reflection: observe the flower, even after the storm; the child who has yet to be socially formed; the injured bird who fights to live; every living organism, in its non reflective stage, that is in its natural, prereflective stage, not knowing about heaven and hell, but the life that it lives: all testify to the fact that every living thing, humans or not, desire to continue its existence. This desire to exist is made conscious in humans in that every human being lives for a meaning. This meaning, therefore, complies to the desire to exist, meaningfully. Any belief that degrades the vicissitudes of, the trials and tribulations, the violent changes in, life, is, to me, a false belief.

Believe in a God, if you must, But a false belief in a God is a notion that God opposes self development, an expression of the desire to live with and in meaning. A false belief in a God is a notion that He will solve all human problems. A false notion of God is a notion that He punishes humans who opposes Him, and therefore deserves to die a violent death in the hands of his violent followers, his so called believers, who only have one agenda: to control other people.

But, a true belief is that which celebrates and embraces, therefore except all the changes, all the tests that life throws in his path. A true believer is one who does not seek to have a supreme being solve his problems, while he sits and prays and hopeless waits for a miracle. A true believer, on the contrary, is one who prays to his God - whom he has chosen to believe without waiting for verification - for strength, so he himself may solve the problems, or at least accept with courage the inevitability. A true believer is one who desires to exist with meaning, and therefore, focuses his energy and time on the here and now.

While everyone is entitled to his belief, we can still pass judgment on his belief. Life gives us that authority.

Trust, Belief, and Understanding

For more than a thousand years since Christianity introduced the articles of faith, i.e., Jesus Christ died but will come again; He is the son of God, Holy Trinity, etc., Christian and non-Christian thinkers have debated on the relationship between faith and reason. St. Augustine’s rendering of it is that faith seeks understanding. Understanding, said to be limited, cannot even grasp the meaning of the objects of faith. For that man will forever be in a state of despair, a state in which his heart and mind will forever seek answers to the fundamental questions of life and purpose. For Christians, it is necessary to believe first before understanding. Once understanding has faith to guide its quest, understanding will finally find the answer to the mysteries of life. And, man will find eternal happiness.

Why is this situation problematic?

Faith vs. Reason
Faith is a belief in certain things or metaphysical beings whose nature and ways are,  to any human being,  incomprehensible. Faith is unconditional; and as such, one is said to have faith when he places no terms and conditions for him to decide to believe.

Reason is a human ability to understand what is humanly comprehensible: Einstein’s General theory of relativity, which very few human beings understand, is nonetheless comprehensible; and, deep and universal human experiences such as selfless love and compassion. A child may not grasp the deeper meaning of life yet. By the time he grows in experience and reflection, those experiences become intelligible and appreciated. True, there are mysteries that cannot be solved in anyone’s lifetime, or more accurately are not to be solved. They are rather to be embraced by all human beings. These unsolvable mysteries weren’t meant to be solved. The encounter - if one finds time for reflection - only deepens our appreciation of life once we have stopped looking for answers and accept and them for what they are.

So, if reason cannot grasp that which is way beyond the realm of human experience, then it does not make sense – not only in the logical sense, but also in the human sense that it can be understood by the most mature of men – to put trust in that which no man can ever hope to gain knowledge.

My stand is very simple: if I can’t make sense of it all, then I do not try to make sense of it all. If these objects of faith are beyond human comprehension, then why should I even be bothered by them at all. If they can not be verified to be true or false; worse, still not experiential like the mysteries of livingness, then why bother myself with them? Life is complex, whose mysteries are experiential, to be embraced, not to be solved. Why then complicate life even further with things that are beyond the realm of human experience? Why not deal and live with the mysteries and problems of life rather than waste time and energy on things outside human experience?


Belief and Trust
I think that the long time problem between faith and reason can be dissolved (as opposed to being solved) by introducing ‘trust’.

I learn to trust and therefore believe in a living person because he is ethically principled. Trust and therefore belief is directed towards a living person, not in someone who died a long time ago. If the living person was influenced by someone whom I have never met, and this living person is ethically principled and spoke dearly of this influential person, then I shall consider his life and the moral stories told about him by a living person whom I have encountered. The formation of trust and belief is established in my direct encounter with a person who deserves my trust and loyalty.

Does that mean I accept - or must accept - everything that he says to be true? Many would think that a follower should. But, our ethics prohibits the formation of a master and slave mentality, a shepherd and his flock. On the contrary, disagreement of views is encouraged and encouraging: on the one hand, it shows that the revered person has taught, through his ethical actions, the value of independent and responsible thinking; on the other, his admirer deepens his respect and love for him. This is a dynamic relationship that no follower or master can appreciate.

Such is belief and trust that deepens our understanding of human relationships, of the encountered mysteries of life. Given time, in his own way, everyone will attain that understanding. It is called wisdom.