The Lessons about Lessening Yourself

Should the condition of less inhibit us from doing more?

Should the more we have mean the less we feel?

Yet, less is more

Imagine how convincing the world will be,

as if we're hiking the mountain, going straight up,

where the more means more,

and in the less, means less.

But, what if the mountain we hike is circular,

in a way, we couldn't make sense,

for instance, how the hell is a mountain circular?

Us, trapped in endless motions of reaching,

achieving, accomplishing, succeeding,

failing, declining, lacking, in vain,

forever, doesn't sound right, eh?

Isn't it crazy,

how people in the condition of more, wanting less

so they can learn how to do more with less?

Where people with less dreaming about having more,

only to be dumbfounded that they can't do more,

I think,

they are wise.

COVID-19 Stir-ups, and How We Best Digest the Chaos: Nietzsche's Account on Truth and Our Need to Believe

The world is currently navigating through unfamiliar seas heading to nowhere lands. It’s been many years since we were faced with a stir-up this size (namely a pandemic), and no matter how resourceful and well-off our country is, we are never prepared. We are now facing unprecedented procedures in anything. Knowing that the coronavirus spread through the droplets of our mouth and nose, this affects how we conduct our social activities. Of all the effects this coronavirus had on the world, I assume the social effect is the most fatal. It questions our identity as a social animal, disrupting our habit of socializing, regardless of your social status or level. We always thought we were born ready, but just not for this one.

We were always safely connected and, in some way, heavily guarded when it comes to our social life. We can always go visit our friends and relatives whenever we feel like it, get involved physically with people, visit our favorite cafés or bars, or go shopping or for just the window. Our perception of socializing has been shaped, tried, and tested for years, that we could well-handedly deal with rejection, light loneliness, or even be content being with ourselves. Just as every break-in wreck the current form and leave some areas unwatched, imagine how a break-in this caliber is capable of doing to our conception of social life.

All chaos must be brought to order. That’s the simplest way to explain how to resolve every issue possible. Picture it this way, our messy bedroom is full of chaos, and organized one is an order. Chaos promotes problems, and order resolves one. Stirred-up life is chaos, and a well-ordered one is all we want. Then we wonder, what could shut up chaos, and what would speak for the order?

We would think, the invention of vaccines is the only answer. Some might think, and some already said that the answer lies in our ability to live ‘in peace’ with the coronavirus. New normal, they said. I noticed that there must be more than just those two competing arguments there, while the rational aim for taming the raging waves, the others create their own waves with their own arguments. See how a void can transform into a black hole in just months? Now, it’s all ours to discern them one by one, to pick which ones we would believe, because all we needed is something to believe in, eh?

Nietzsche has thought about these issues hundreds of years ago. Not that he has predicted the emergence of this virus (No, he didn’t know who makes this virus for a lethal purpose like you have heard somewhere), nor has the answers to these issues. What he has known for a long time is, how we, as a human being, are in dire need of something to believe. He knows, that our will (or being) is always in chaos, and need something to bring it to order. As in one of the paragraphs of his collection of aphorisms The Gay Science (GS), he said;

“The very fact that our actions, thoughts, feelings and motions come within the range of our consciousness - at least a part of them - is the result of a terrible, prolonged "must" ruling man’s destiny: as the most endangered animal he needed help and protection; he needed his fellows, he was obliged to express his distress, he had to know how to make himself understood - and for all this he needed "consciousness" first of all: he had to "know" himself what he lacked, to "know" how he felt, and to "know" what he thought.” (GS 354)

What he accounts as ‘consciousness’ is basically our knowledge, of things, of ourselves, or of whatever helps us communicate our needs to others, or as he writes ‘to make himself understood.’ And in my personal opinion, he’s not only talking about something grandeur but also about something peripheral to our daily lives. Consciousness/knowledge is something to be carefully maintained and regularly updated, think it to be like something we deeply loved, our vehicle maybe, that needs to be washed and polished regularly to maintain its shine. In that way, we need to maintain the sharpness and finesses or our consciousness, or knowledge, up-to-date.

Now that we’ve understood the concept of consciousness/knowledge as a basis to integrate ourselves (keep ourselves from chaos,) let’s talk about the source of them. Inside or outside. In this essay, let’s turn our focus on only the outside source. We normally gain knowledge from the process of consuming and digesting information. Let’s imagine this case by going to the shopping centers (hypothetically, we’re still physical distancing), where we could find numerous stores offering different things. Now, go back to the last point where Nietzsche said that consciousness/knowledge always comes from necessity. What do you need from shopping centers?

Let’s refer back to our discussion about the coronavirus which has created a stir-up so enormous we couldn’t see clearly any more what it is we exactly need, and we scaled down our need to whatever comforts our mind. And it is what we need! In general, we need to be comforted, be secured with our lives and the future, don’t we? This is what Nietzsche opposes, as he called it the ‘sabbath of the sabbath’, or if freely translated, ‘the final truth.’ Of course, we’re not talking about anything final here, but you see his point here, don’t you? We need the kind of consciousness/knowledge that comforts us. In what way? I guess everyone’s different.

Even before this pandemic, there is already a gap between ‘what we know’ and ‘what we want to know,’ that creates a tension that we manage daily with ‘managing expectations’ strategy. We’re used to this term and adapting to it. We have limits, and what the pandemic does, it expands those limits until we’re helpless and succumbs in desperation. That creates the perfect window for the bombardments of information to sneak in and err us. What we need is strategies, different ones from merely managing expectations, because sadly, now it’s too blurred to expect. What are those strategies, and how we could finely tune ourselves into it?

Of course, these strategies are nowhere near practical, because learning to face reality with practical things never works. Instead, we’re going to see how we should approach various types of ‘consciousness/knowledge’ the world has to offer. As Nietzsche puts it;

“No, we have got disgusted with this bad taste, this will to truth, to "truth at all costs," this youthful madness in the love of truth : we are now too experienced, too serious, too joyful, too singed, too profound for that... We no longer believe that truth remains truth when the veil is withdrawn from it: we have lived long enough to believe this. At present we regard it as a matter of propriety not to be anxious either to see everything naked, or to be present at everything, or to understand and "know" everything.” (GS 4)

There are three degrees – according to Nietzsche – to knowledge, as commented by A. Setyo Wibowo in his book Gaya Filsafat Nietzsche, the first one is ‘veiled-truth,’ a deception, which leads us into the second phase, the dissatisfaction of what we already know, the realization of a veil covering the truth, encouraging us to try to uncover it, which we never will, or even if we will, it won’t be the truth anymore.

Nietzsche thinks that the truth will never be uncovered because it’s too chaotic, and when it’s finally uncovered, it’s not the truth anymore, Idee fixe (fixed idea, an idea that dominates one’s mind especially for a prolonged period: obsession.) The revelation of the truth is a two-edged sword for Nietzsche, one brings light to one side, the other disguises the other. How then, and what then, should we do to REALLY uncover the truth? Nietzsche’s philosophy is never about finding the truth, instead, he offers ways to stand face-to-face with the truth, and how we shall conduct ourselves before the truth. Further, he puts it;

“’Is it true that the good God is everywhere present?’ asked a little girl of her mother: "I think that is indecent": a hint to philosophers! One should have more reverence for the shame-facedness with which nature has concealed herself behind enigmas and motley uncertainties. Perhaps truth is a woman who has reasons for not showing her reasons?” (GS 4)

What he offers us to do is to show some reverence to it, ‘perhaps the truth is a woman who has reasons for not showing her reasons.’ For Nietzsche, to be able to talk properly about the truth, we must first acknowledge the contradicting nature of the truth itself, the chaotic side of the truth, and never arrive to a shallow conclusion. Nietzsche believes that we, as a human being, will never arrive at the ‘final truth,’ and realizing that, for him, is already a quality.

Wrapping up, in an unprecedented period as these, it’s hard for us both economically, socially, and philosophically. As what we already know is going under a huge test, it’s normal that we feel uneasy, stressed out, or even losing our way. I guess, what Nietzsche is saying in the excerpts above, specifically about reverence, is to take every information with a grain of salt and always position ourselves in the questioning side before believing. In the end, all we needed is something to believe in, eh?

Understanding the principle of everything.

Our understanding of anything is built through constant reasoning of things we encountered. We never thought about taking up a certain job for a living, but when situations hit the fan, it suddenly became a sensible decision. Our ability to make sense of anything is what makes us human. Even for really bad things we excused ourselves from when we gave them time, it could become fairly acceptable.

For centuries, people have spent countless resources to try to understand these kinds of processes. Philosophers and theorists have all come with their own version of 'thinking' to separate good things from bad, to understand moralities and immoralities, to perceive realities and to learn perpetually. What hits me hard when thinking about this, is sometimes we stop ourselves on the wrong step of the whole process. We came too early with conclusions, denying facts and information worthy of analysis.

Our understanding of right or wrong should be firm enough to keep ourselves from stumbling, and flexible enough to understand others. Does it sound like applying a double standard? Maybe. When we try to approach it from a different angle, we'll find ourselves some steps wiser. No one would like to apply a double standard, of course, it's not advisable. But, awareness not to force our standard on others is another trait to learn, right?

We understand things by dissecting them into separate sections, making sense of them individually, and then reconstruct them completely into one while we analyze the connections between each section. The whole thing might be the same, but when it comes to dissecting reconstructing, it may differ one from another.

For example, we all want to be loved, and we all have our own love languages (Google and test yourself). When it comes to our relationship with others, it might not come out simply the way we expected. People around us would need to understand ourselves fully to know how to treat us right. If we're treated wrongly, it doesn't always mean that people want to harm us in any way, maybe they just don't understand us well enough.

What we need to do, instead of rushing into the conclusion, is to try to analyze the situations better. Keeping a positive mind may help, but the most important is to try to extract what motivated people in doing things. We may think 'good' as A, which contains combinations of A1, A2, A3, and so on. Others may also understand A as their target, but the combinations may be different. If we try to judge only from the combinations, without putting the motivation in check, we are senseless and downright unwise.

There are motivations and there are principles. Ideally, our deeds, motivation, and principle are in line. Deeds are relative, so are motivations, but principles are firm. There are some key takeaways I would like you to understand here:

1. Hold yourself from anger. Try to listen to what others have to say when the combinations they perform don't go exactly as you've planned. You're not all-knowing, so are others.
2. Explain things backwardly. Instead of laying down instructions, try to build awareness of the Principle. That way, your explanations would not sound like orders.

Hope this helps.

The Plural Nature of Perfections - On Choosing Condiments Wisely

Howard Moskowitz is an American market researcher. He was appointed by Campbell’s to help their struggling brand of spaghetti sauce, Prego. Instead of sitting with focus groups to try to understand what people wants in their spaghetti sauce, Moskowitz prepared forty-five varieties of spaghetti sauces, all varied in their tasting characteristics; spiciness, saltiness, sweetness, aroma, and many more aspects his mind could think of. He sat down trained food tasters to analyze each one of the sauces, and took the prototypes on a tour to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Jacksonville, and asked people to eat bowls of spaghetti and rate them on a scale of one to a hundred.

As a result of the taste-trial, Moskowitz found that people have different definition of how “perfect spaghetti sauce” should taste like. Later on, He clustered the findings into three major groups, plain, spicy, and extra-chunky. Prego doesn’t have the extra-chunky version of their spaghetti sauce, and thanks to Moskowitz’s research, they launched Prego extra-chunky. The effect was extraordinary.

Ramen stalls have selections of condiments on the table. Soy sauce, chopped chilies, sliced onions, salt and peppers, and various aromatics are available within our reach. Most sellers now offer customization on their menu books, hardness of the noodle, doneness of boiled egg, thickness of the broth, even the portions. They try to cater everyone, with the assumptions that what’s perfect for one may not be for others. Moskowitz changed the world of consumers’ behavior research with his conclusion.

According to Cambridge Dictionary, condiments are substances, that you add to food to improve its taste. Condiments are irreplaceable in all restaurants, because however customized the menu books are, still, people has needs to personalize the dish to their own perfection. Condiments should be improving, not worsening the taste. If our soup turned out to be too salty, try better next time. Measuring how many pinches of salt necessary should be our life purpose from now on.

We are all created differently with others. Some have little undercooked noodles they get angry very easily, some have really thick curry-like broth they dry up pretty fast, and so forth. Did we ask how we are customized from the beginning? I don’t think so. Our physical features are what describes how customized we are compared to others.

Of all the condiments we could pick up and apply to our ramen bowl, one of the most important to base everything is our discretion (how many pinches of salt) relative to the bowl we have. Choosing condiments requires maturity, a teachable and humble heart, and a set of open eyes, of course.

Rooted to the fact that we are a learning being. There are four stages of competence as described by Martin M. Broadwell, a management trainer and an author, which relate to the psychological state involved in the process of acquiring skills. The four stages are;

1. Unconscious incompetence

As learners, we are demanded to recognize our deficit, and to admit that we have no idea how to do something. This stage is crucial because the battle against denial happens here, and if we are not careful, the unresolved battle will be carried on to the next stage, which;

2. Conscious incompetence

Once we admit our deficit and start to value the skills needed to cover our deficiencies, we can gather our focus and determination to learn and move on to the next stage;

3. Conscious competence

Through series of learning and failing, we finally reach the stage where we have acquired the skills needed to cover our deficit. In professional setting, reaching this stage is considered adequate, but in personal sphere, it’s better to continue on to the next and the last stage;

4. Unconscious competence

Reaching this stage in a professional world might work as a double-edged sword. Sure, we get to save a lot of time doing the work since it’s become our second nature and it’s easier to teach to colleagues and staff members. On the other edge, it might lead to complacency towards new methods and technologies. In personal horizon, it never hurts to exercise respect and forgiveness as second nature, doesn’t it?

I started collecting wristwatches since several months ago. I build my collection based on my taste and current financials. Funny thing, I went through those stages every time new pieces appeared in front of my very eyes. Of course, I only want the pieces I love to make my collections, so do other collectors.

We spend our time and resources chasing everything that we need or what we think we need. On the process, we go through failures, hardships, and we keep pushing through until we achieve that something. See those things as pieces making up your collection, some are vintage, vulnerable and sensitive, some are brand-new, could take a beater and very dependable. Are you happy enough with whatever you have in your collections?

The good traits we collected are like condiments we apply to our ramen. Choose them wisely and apply them considerably, season your bowl (and life) the best you know how to. Add some pinches of flair, ladles of relentless love, sprinkles of joy, and some splash of vulnerability. It doesn’t matter if others apply more salt or less soy sauce. Everyone strives for their own perfection at their own pace. 

Build confidence in uncertainty

The idea of being a polymath (one who excels in many subjects) has resonated so deeply in my mind this couple of years. It’s all started when I watched a TED video on YouTube hosted by Emilie Wapnick on the subject of “Why some of us don’t have one true calling.” The term she used was multipotentialites. I will break it down into several sections for us to really dive deep into her idea. 

What do you want to be when you grow up?

She started off by sharing how she had too many interests, where she struggled to find an answer to the above question. She began to find the pattern which she thought could explain the inconsistency. She used to be really interested and devoted on a subject, only to be left off out of boredom. This pattern had caused herself anxiety for two main reasons, first, how likely could she turn one of those interests into a career if she kept leaving when things get boring, and how she started to sense something wrong for being unable to stick with anything. 

We live in a society where everyone should only pursue one thing and be happy with their choice. It means we need to kill everything else for “The One”. For some it’s not easy, especially for us who are open to all possibilities. We want to do well for life, and at the same time, we still want to keep our options open. 

The idea of “one true calling” is highly applauded nowadays; somehow we put too much effort to define those phrases. If I could only choose one question to ask in order to try to understand kids, I would pick the question above, no doubt. Yet, that’s the question we get asked at almost every points of our life. Answering to that question might be easy in the beginning, just name any profession available and we’re good to go. As time goes by, we start to be pickier with our answers. Time shows its glorious power. When we chose one subject to study at Uni, we just killed hundreds of possibilities on what we could’ve been.

Multipotentialites superpowers

Then, she made peace with herself and found three so-called superpowers the people with many interests have. 

• Idea-synthesis

Mix of ideas and experiences came from the journey could be really resourceful in finding new roads people would never think about. Innovation happens at the intersections. Multipotentialites, with their ability to find the core of many subjects, could make that happen by combining two or more subjects into new ventures to pursue.

• Rapid-learning

The key of successful learning experience always starts from the point of not-knowing. From there we build our glossaries of knowledge page-by-page or failure-by-failure. Most people feel good with what they know and what they’re good at. They feel too good until it becomes a fear to learn something new, what we called “comfort-zone”. Multipotentialites have overcome those challenge by familiarize themselves in the learning position. They are used to be beginners, and when a subject sparks their interest, they go hard on learning and finding and researching. Also, the skills they learned when they were beginners before are easily transferable to the new subjects they are beginners now.

• Adaptability

The ability to fit ourselves into every situation is highly regarded as one of the most important skills to develop in order to succeed in the 21st century. Changes are inevitable, and how we pivot will measure ourselves up to thriving. Multipotentialites are known to be the best to adjust themselves because in order to have interest in many different subjects and to thrive at them, they need to be adaptive and constantly adjusting to situations.

Where are you now?

Let’s think about jigsaw puzzle. Of those thousands-of-pieces in a box, what is the probability of two pieces to match at the first draw if we draw two pieces from the pools? What is the probability of us finding the “one true calling” if all the pressure are on our shoulders picking the subject to study in Uni? How do we finish the jigsaw puzzle if we struggle in finding a match for the piece we hold? And if even we found the match for the piece, how those two-pieces-bound-together find a next piece to match to form the whole picture? What if the pool is incomplete? Where do we find the missing pieces?

It might be the case that the pool is incomplete, if those small pieces represented what we need to thrive in the world. We could have interests and motivations on hand, but missing skills, or we could have connections and skills, but missing confidence. What would you do if that’s the case? Would you just simply choose to not choosing, or would you jump into other pools where you could find what you need? It’s okay.

If we zoom-out on our vision a little bit, we start to see the big picture, and start realizing that in order to complete the jigsaw, we don’t need all matched pieces on hand to be transferred to the frame, but by putting one piece at a time diligently, and make sure we have room to adjust.

If you want to watch the talk, 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sZdcB6bjI8

There's nothing for nothing

I remember the time I tendered my resignation to my current employer. It was the day when the sun shone the brightest, and the setting sun saluted me on my way home. Truly, it was the best day I've ever had since I signed their offering letter. I still can recall that moment perfectly, word by word I said, with me smiling from ear to ear. That day, after a long and hard consideration, was the resolve of my problem of thinking about the purpose of my life. I always admire people who work in creating things, who can make impact towards the society they are in. Please, I wouldn't be angry if you said we can make impact in everything we do. There's no denying that in theory, but in practice I didn't really think so. My two cents.

I know many people who had fought a really good and fair fight, but still lost. I would easily tell them to quit, because it's the easy way out. You tried your best and you failed, that must be because that something wasn't for you. I used to feel sorry for them, they had given everything, fought until the end, worked the hardest, cried the least, or even bled out the most, but still managed to achieve nothing. It's a waste of time. If only we could be wise enough to pick out the right fights to fight, the right person to love, the right job to give ourselves into, or the commitment to commit into. Life would be easy, then.

We couldn't always choose our way with a perfect sanity, especially when someone/something presented itself in front of us, making it to be a perfect destiny to us. We were careless enough to take it on, wore it to our senses, or even dedicated ourselves into something seemed so clear, yet very vague. Was it our false beliefs in play? What would they produce, if not only to waste our time?

Something we were super sure about, to be something we regretted. It must took a long road of reasoning. We are the creatures of thinking, that's the part of our evolution. Thoughts evolve, for better or for worse. Descartes had done his part in explaining this to a good measure. We will have our own perceptions, our undisputed beliefs, for something we learned in our life. We would answer without doubt and without even think of it, that 1+1=2. Up to this point, I wouldn't say that 1+1=3, that would be the end of the world. That was the simplest case of math, everyone knows that, or at least everyone agrees on that. Descartes' methodical doubt requires us to always negate our thoughts, our convictions, and our knowledge in order to juice out the truest of convictions, knowledge, or truths.

We are the creatures of thinking, yet we ignored our contrasting thought for the easy way. We pulled ourselves out of thinking, hoping that everything would turn out alright eventually. When it didn't, we complained and had no one to blame but ourselves. We would think to ourselves that we did everything we did for nothing.

The road of reasoning might be uphill, and we might have already burst ourselves into scatters of nothingness before we found what's behind it. If you think you are in this position, well I think you're in the right place, just as I am here typing this for the exactly same reason, bursting out. 

Romans 8:28

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who[a] have been called according to his purpose."

Ecclesiastes 3:11

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet[a] no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end."

If I may be allowed to combine these two powerful verses, it would be;

"God works for the good of those who love Him, in His own time not ours, and we may not know what He's doing in our life."

We don't understand God's timing. God is good all the time and only because God is good and God is with us and love us all the time, our life therefore will be good.

We were all once burnt out in our journey, thinking that we wasted our time by doing the wrong kind of things, loving the wrong person, fighting for the wrong fights, which got us nowhere. We ignored that when we are the creatures of thinking, we are also the creatures of learning. We learn when we fail, and by the lessons we had learned, they changed our perspective towards things. 

Let's try to be resilient in our journey, for the journeys and everything they have to offer shape us as a person. Let's keep collecting pebbles of wisdom and truth to fuel us towards our destination.

Don't budge only because we make wrong choices, keep ourselves standing strong in faith that the best is yet to come, and there is nothing for nothing.

Chip in

When I was in Uni, photography had taken more than half of my life. The way I perceived it was very clear, I wanted photography to be part of my future. Passion comes with a price, just like every hobbies the world will know. The desire to buy new lenses, accessories, memory cards, bags, straps, and countless things under 'tech' section on web store, it knocked my door everyday.

I needed to distinguish which one I really need and which ones were only just happy pills. Then, I came into realization that I might need a new lens. And just like every other Uni students I knew, I started saving up, with THE goal in mind. I set my mind to it, and placed a deadline to it. I wanted to make the purchase at one of the annual photography expo, because I knew I could get good price there.

Then came the day of the expo. It was cheaper than I expected, but checked back to my savings, there's no way I could do that at that time. Burdened by the desire, I went to my dad and asked, "please chip in, I need only xx amount to make it." He did, and I made the purchase. I was happy, actually very happy.

How I went on with that, "I bought this myself saving up, yes my dad chipped in." Like it was the smallest thing someone's ever done to me. It struck me recently, how I responded to it and it left me ashamed. Really ashamed of myself.

It all comes down to how we value things. How we couldn't value small gifts/victories comes from our self-realization that we already own our game, ONLY need small things to perfect it. It doesn't only undermines people, but also God. We often try to understand Him however we like it. We ask him from our position that we already have something, and only need God to chip in. Then we would go on, "I did this on my own, yes God chipped in."

We will value what we are grateful for. We are not wired to value nothingness, it doesn't add up. Our value system were built on what we have, and if something adds up, then come in, if it subtracts, then go away.

We were confident in our strength, and when waves hit or lacks crept in, we started looking for solutions. We went to God. Then we started asking, "God please, I only need these amount, nothing more, I don't ask much".  It's not much, so we took it for granted. We undermined God to our standard, while He's all powerful and all knowing.

Ephesians 2:7‭-‬10 MSG

Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

Dwell in His embrace. Celebrate small victories. Let Him be in the driver's seat, and enjoy the ride of gratitude like never before.