Dare to be Wrong

People romanticize perfection that they forget the art of being wrong and learned.

Our education taught us to avoid mistakes at all costs. Mistakes are a big no – if you want to excel. However, against this eclectic and counterintuitive approach, we have missed the whole point of learning.

Faults are a big portion of our lives. Whether they are directly or indirectly caused, they should be a reason to rejoice. For every lapse, there comes a lesson… even creativity and luck.

Think about it, oversights made Washington refined his military tactics in order to turn the tides of the American Revolution. Lincoln’s mishaps eventually led him to employ Ulysses Grant who brought defeat against the Confederacy.

The Texas Revolution showed General Sam Houston and the Republic of Tejas’ blunders. They acted too late and never sent reinforcement to some of the war’s most important early battles. That emboldened General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana and made him complacent. At the time, being ahead of his main army, de Santa Ana’s battalion got lenient and forgot to fortify their position. Houston’s army advanced when they least expected, butchering most of the Mexican regiment. That one decisive action led to the capture of de Santa Ana and the eventual surrender of Mexico.

Let us be honest, being wrong can bring shame. But, derision is temporary if we eye improvement in the long run. Plus, we do not need to be caught up in the pangs of the past. Most of our miscalculations will pass. We must live and learn in the present.

Not all of us will be endowed to embrace faults. And not all will make that conscious effort to grasp it. It takes guts and harden determination to accept fault. Comfort at being wrong brings a certain mentality and a kind of character. It is a product of practice and willingness to espouse reflection.

In order to reach that level of comfort – engaging in fault – there are mindsets that create the whole experience.

Allowing Creativity to reign

One Reader’s Digest article mentioned of a maritime brainstorming session that happened during the first World War. At the time, the British Royal Navy was devising ways to clear shipping lanes of Axis Naval Mines. Several suggestions were laid out. But some of them were costly and impractical. It was until an officer trying to lighten the mood blurted about jumping on the mines. The idea was ludicrous. But shortly after he made that suggestion, another bloke proposed spraying the mines away to be approached and diffused by paddle minesweepers.

Taking Responsibility

Among the greatest entrepreneurial comebacks in history was Steve Jobs’. His Stanford Commencement speech recollected the times when he was publicly ousted from Apple to be back and later revolutionize the company decades after.

The speech showcased his reflections at the time and how he needed such medicine to improve. He admitted his shortcomings as founder.

It shows how one can rise from the ashes by taking responsibility – admit their fault – to reach the epitome of success.

Question your Beliefs – Reflections

Early in his political activism, Nelson Mandela embraced violence as a means to fight the apartheid government. His decade of incarceration led him to reflect on his past actions and how it molded him to be the unifier of the nation. In his memoirs, he mentioned – that his time behind bars led him to ruminate on the Gandhi type of approach and the Martin Luther King’s tolerance to unify all of South Africa.

In the end, his compassion led his countrymen to abolish the apartheid and summon a government which treated all South Africans – regardless of color – equal.

No matter where we are in life, it is never too late to admit and embrace fault. Aside from honing our skills, it is among our best ways to develop.

Vote Yes to Indigenous Voice

I do not know what the fuss is about the Voice referendum. Why are naysayers voicing a hog-type constitutional grab by our Aboriginals and Pacific Islanders? As Alan Jones of Sky News(Net) puts it, “The Voice will be a third chamber of Parliament.” 

For those who do not know, Australia is having a referendum(vote) on whether to pass The Aboriginal and Strait Islander Voice advisory board to the Parliament. That means that a body will advise politicians towards policies and laws that will affect our Aboriginal and Strait Islanders. It is about ensuring discussions are balanced for the people who have been neglected like history had in the longest-standing past.

Before we go further in the weeds of this referendum, we must examine the history behind this change. 

Like in the United States, the European settlers misrepresented the original citizens of the continent. Atrocities were committed against – to the extent of – driving them off their lands into barren settlements. Thus, for almost an eternity, the Indian Americans were wilfully deprived of opportunities. It was in the recent decade or years that the government placed a priority on uplifting the human conditions of our Indian American brothers and sisters. 

But unlike America, Australia went all-in to make more egregious acts against our Aboriginals. At some point in the nation’s history, we removed Aboriginal children to “assimilate” into non-aboriginal families.

The Voice is to correct the past wrongs that seep into the present.

The word to correctly coin the Voice is – REPRESENTATION. The Voice will represent our Aboriginals and Pacific Islanders in Parliament. The body will not pass laws nor veto any legislation. This will not be a third chamber to forfeit our rights as Australian citizens. It is to set the commitment to look after our neglected people.

This moment is a needed reset for the horrors our forefathers committed in the past. It signals an era of inclusion. It is like the inclusion we created for our LGBTQ community. The proposed constitutional amendment is needed to accommodate our brothers and sisters, whom we have slowly accepted.

The plight of our Aboriginal and Pacific Islanders has been begrudgingly less understood. People assumed that having Aboriginal ministers in Parliament paved our path to catering to these people. It is more complex than everyone thinks. 

Aborigine is coined to group all indigenous people in Australia. Truth be told, each group is a country itself. There are variations in their customs and perceptions. The Voice will be the first step in capturing those voices. 

We acknowledge there are cases of violence and criminality within those Aboriginal countries and communities. But it is not comparable to the groups who are doing great and contributing to society. We cannot turn our backs on those people.

The Voice is here to stay. It will be the first Right to undo all of Australia’s wrongs. For us to go against the needed constitutional inclusion for our brothers and sisters – it is outrageous. Vote YES. We exercise our heart and rationality to share our freedom of being heard. Again, Vote YES. It is our only way to move forward. 

The Human Sweet Spot

Good and evil are arbitrary words. No religion or law can strike a balance between the two. Change is constant. Reflection geared towards finding equilibrium. At the extreme, any concept subject to interpretation – can range from polar conservatism to liberalism. An example – is the use of force to enact a law. We cannot define when the use of force is excessive. Hence, police brutality is still prevalent in sections of America.

At some point in Christianity, it tried to reclaim holy sites. Templars were religious warriors sent to reclaim large swathes of Jerusalem – the Holy Land. It had some victories, but the area had proved hard to rid of Muslim inhabitants. Fast forward to today, people cohabit the land with relative peace.

Muslims had holy wars. The violent onset was needed to achieve the norm it relishes today. Sectarian factions are present, with the Sunnis and Shiites divided over tenets of the religion. Those disagreements seeped into geopolitical matters.

George Bush attacked Iraq without evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction. And yet, people hold him in the highest regard. It did not cross their mind to arrest him like the United Nations placed one on Putin for attacking Ukraine.

What am I getting by pointing out all of these?

We humans are inefficient. That is our nature. We cannot perfectly define right or wrong, nor agree on what is truly good or evil. Handling and enforcing consequences are called upon when we have the resources to implement them. We can spit logic when we put our time into it. More often, we are with limitations and automatic reflexes.

As the famous Daniel Kahnemann used to say, we are creatures of two systems. Experience trains the first system. Every time we solve a problem, a reflex is born. With that in mind, every person will have a set of experiences similar or different to others. We have not considered – how we solve our new problems which harness Daniel’s defined second system. There are more factors to the whole system working but rest assured – we find bits of deviation and variation that put lessons on top of existing ones.

All spells doom for us. From the beginning, we made strides in technology and advances that propelled us towards prosperity – only to be pulled by our limitations. As we say, we cannot have everything.

Yes, out of all those things mentioned, we can find all the things wrong with humanity and sling every mud at leaders in the world for not solving them. The matter remains – we are what we are.

Embracing that will set us free.

We are done with religion dictating the right path when they cannot eliminate the veers of variation. I find world leaders have their own definition of how the world should operate.

We ought to find our unified voice: the voice of inclusion without pretenses. However, this is harder than expected.

Our saving grace is unifying against a threat to our survival. With an impending existential crisis, we find time to argue. We cannot get away from having our precepts squashed over. Whether mundane or logical, we find it hard to define what is needed.

The only way we can go about all of these is by finding a universal cause of being. The universal stance, out of that – we agree with our norms. This proved to have some level of success with the implementation of the UN and other organizations of world order. But all of these cannot guarantee a way to move forward.

Luck has everything to do with all of these. It might be serendipity that humans came as a product of evolution or creation. At some point, that idea is to run out. It might spill the end of the next chapter of humanity.

We all must agree to disagree at this point. Due to our complicated nature, we are to find our sweet spot. Hitting our sweet spot as humans – is finding our unified voice and agreeing our best recourse. It will be our truth until our time as humans ends.

Lucky to be Alive Today!

We are lucky to be alive today! In this day and age, we have scientific discoveries backed by evidence. Disproving them takes an elaborate process to dissect and replace their premise. We have come a long way to build our knowledge and tools to expand our horizons.

Remember the debunked myths of Earth being the center of the universe; how about snake oil curing all diseases, or Covid becoming flu-like after it had mutated, and people developed immunity – not at the start of the pandemic.

Hardly any appreciation goes with all of this. We forget that it evolved. Human knowledge deviated from the made-up stories of our ancestors. Now, we connect the dots with empirical data and question their verity. Gone are the days when kings made up truths to suffice a society clamoring for an explanation. We equip with more certainty. Until facts are debunked or improved, most truths today become standard.

We have our yesteryears and ancestors to be grateful for—the frontiersmen who dedicated and even sacrificed their lives in pursuit of progress. Much of what we enjoy today are the fruits of their labor. In effect, it is just – to play our role – to pay it forward for the next generation.

Look around. Everything is intertwined. The internet makes communication easy – making the world flat. Computers level the playing field. Anyone with an idea can type it and distribute it to the world. Artificial Intelligence makes headwinds to gather all pertinent data, find all patterns and improve our decisions. Nanotechnology paves the way to more computing power.

Invention sparks from an idea. It catches fire – technology is born. Or it can be a trudge to adoption (e.g., airplanes). By recognizing how we can invent and improve, no small effort disdained for its contribution. Our appreciation of what we have today should reflect our contribution to improve and built on those technologies. It ensures humans perpetually move forward.

Do What is Hardest

We are given the advice – Why complicate when you can make it simple? Often than not, that counsel limits our potential. Humans progressed because of the pioneers who made the trip to the final frontier – to push our limits. They complicated their lives to expand our horizons. Scientific advances produced by the people who sought complicated hypotheses. In a way, they made our lives easier through incalculable mistakes they made in the process. That commitment makes the fruits we enjoy today – inexcusably easy to an unquestioning mind.

Our society entrenched with the discomfort of questioning the fallacies of reality. In theory, society is a reality made up. Therefore, realities are timely made-up truths. It gets replaced as another sound truth comes along. That communal activity is inherent to being social. Much of what we enjoy today is because of what we collectively made it. There are conveniences and advantages of going with that flow. However, we should not place all our facades on autopilot.

By purposely perplexing ourselves, we exercise and develop our volition. Volition is a gift from the absolute that we should nurture. “Absolute,” however, we make – him, her, or it (God) has gifted us with a brain worthy of reaching horizons. Religion can be correlated to the absolute but can never be as infinite as many of us indoctrinate. It is a tool we should use accordingly.

It is in our best interest to an arbor that sense of judicial hardship and development. To question and try everything. Many of us avert to the idea of self-reflection. Not all will have this gift, but for many of us reading this, it piqued our interest – we might as well examine the idea.

Doing and pushing our hardest has some rhythm to it. It is about finding what works best. As mentioned, it is about dipping into uneasiness and pushing our limits. The whole point of this is maximizing our being.

Question Everything

Our minds are constantly on the move. 

Every second we are processing information. We have stimuli that tell us about the world. Most of them get dropped, and some bring a deal to our attention. 

In the case of our reflexes, we train to respond to an experience. These are stored deep in our brains. We draw to them to go about dealing with everyday life.

Questioning, experiencing, and reflecting are the beauties sought by most of us who constantly develop. 

We seek to go after experiences to widen our vision of the world. With targeted discomfort, we hone our skills to process the new. We love the unknown – this keeps us on our toes.

The world is not rudimentary. It is constantly evolving. Laws change with every surmounting discovery. Examples are – the theories of the solar system and gravity. Copernicus proved the sun was the center of our solar system, not the Earth. In the case of gravity, Einstein proved that in a continuum of space and time, some particles bombard other particles – besides being attracted to them. Energy is released in the process. Albert further his attempts to prove that a particle negates the continuum of space.

It is our purpose to question our status quo. Even if it’s stable, it is in our best interest to question. The most recent example of this – was the pandemic. People did not know what to do. We had experts who advised us. They had references to their findings and communique. These data were not out of thin air. For those of us who asked the right questions, we knew how to arrive at the answer. How to get them. We even question our answers. We draw the line between what are facts and conspiracies. People who question for the sake of it – are fools to their tendencies. The best form of reflection – is to conclude with the most and by being open until the new crux.

Not everyone will share this passion. We are a few in this world – fortunate to be brought to this circumstance by luck and fate. Thus, it will be in our world’s interest to practice this. It will be a lonely endeavor, but we seek to make the most out of it. 

Si vero desidero.

Not Everyone

We are all created unique.

As humans, we are made different. Every day, we live and exercise that difference. No actions will be alike. All of us will do something different.

In the case of living, we are living according to our means. We live by our perceptions and norms. We act according to how we like.

As social beings, we long for conformity. At times, we try to be different. However, most of the time, we do not draw attention.

By norms, we automatically refrain from activating our deep thoughts. We go for the path of least resistance. Thus, not everyone will go for the hardest. Almost the majority will go with the flow.

It may be unfair to generalize. But we have a few great men who will chase the end of the world for a goal. We draw the line.

Not everyone will be exerting his fullest. Not everyone will achieve them. What the heck? Why put so much pressure?

Like any endeavor in this world, we cannot explain why. We forge on our path. Anything goes.

With that, most of us have the tenacity to dream big. Continue. The world does not bring us the same-minded people. We cannot afford to diminish our ambition. Not everyone will understand us. Why worry about them? We pursue what makes us happy.

Our Call to Action

No humans are alike. At the time of writing this post, we are 7 billion people and growing. These are a unique set of qualities and attributes. Each strand of DNA replicates and mutates with passing generations. The human race is indeed a wonder to behold.
We have sets of similar attributes. Humans commune through similarities. Our societies are founded by the elements of convergence – may it be geography, familial, or anything we identify. Indeed, sociology makes us distinct above all of earth’s species.
Apart from our community, we exert our unique voice. Most western countries teach us to find our flare. Among the vagaries of life, it is finding our distinction. It is being distinct along with the sense of belongingness. This is a delicate operation.
However, for those who set the bar, we are never content with finding that distinction. We influence uniqueness, propagate this distinction to be a force and make it an agenda to prophesize change – to make the world better. This sets us apart.
This will be a formidable task. The task – we do not want to back out. This world is full of middle ground. There is nothing wrong with being in the middle. But, for the world to continue churning, we ought to push the forward. We maximize our efforts.
This manifest our burning desire to be unique, never to be drowned by the noise of the world. Our push starts within us that brims – as we find our character – which sets our destiny.
We continue to push regardless of whatever is in front. Only time tells how our efforts bared fruits.

Does it matter?

“It does not matter!” as Chester Bennington puts it. That song summarizes the whole human experience. It is a pessimistic view, but that is one way to see it.

On the other hand, we can elaborate on the human experience. By doing so, we own our definition.
Let us reflect on this. What matters?

Humans are a tiny part of this big cosmology, a speck in the world of sand. Further, we overestimate what we do – compared to the expanding universe.

Everything we do is finite. We are bound to end.

Our consciousness contributes to a spectrum of extremes. It created good and evil.

Will this matter to the universe? A big NO!

Just live life. Some of us performed atrocities. And some ended theirs. We have experienced the best – like the Lunar Landing. Eliminate the humans in the equation – those will not matter.

We will live to fit. Our volition gave us a unique manner to live. We live however we like.

The Truest Form of Wisdom

Covid made us wiser?

What will we say wisdom is?

Most of us will think about the years of experience we have. Or the age in which we all gathered to survive. As we say – we weather all that comes to us and garner the invaluable skills that those struggles came with.

All the above have an impact on wisdom. However, in its form – it’s more of a state of mind rather than what we accomplished through the years.

Age solidifies wisdom. We harness our inputs and resolution to a problem because we have ironed out something similar. It does not guarantee the outcome, but it is better than hours of brainstorming or reinventing the wheel.

We can draw from the past. Our history contributes to wisdom. It is how fruitful our yesteryears tend to determine how wise we are.

Stop. We wave our disclaimer to all of these.

Not all our old will be wise. Not everyone will be like Gautama who finds enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree. Not everyone will have contentment and happiness on their deathbed. Some of us will die with unmitigated baggage – regrets, insecurities, and negative emotions.

What made our older generation astute – is the human ability to adapt. Be it passive, it progresses our civilization to where it is. There is wisdom in – drawing lessons from our past.

It is where we will draw the line – active adaptation.

Adaptation is the capability to surmount a difficult situation. For us humans, natural selection is always at our doorstep. We prevail at every turn with our cunning. In parallel, we are constantly bombarded with circumstances to enrich or threaten our survival.

Given this case, we might as well take full advantage of adaptation. We need to go full active.

By ensuring our mindful engagement in all of these, we expand our horizons. We do not just draw from the past, but we practice what we can now. It might be too cumbersome for some of us who are on autopilot. But this is the truest form of wisdom – being mindfully engaged.

It is easier said than done.

In the same way, some of us practice racism and extremism – showing our contempt for being mindful. Our leaders declare war because of nationalistic fervor. Many of our bosses cannot reflect and see their limitations. We predate our doing. Some of us take the shortcut without fully seeing the probable outcome of our actions. It is evident we are ill-equipped for mindfulness. Therefore, we must go the extra mile to have wisdom.

This ideal and its practice are a culmination of being in the moment.

Religion may facilitate the state of mindfulness. But, because of its dogmatic tendencies, it is predilected towards religious conformity than practicing the now.

Being present and in the moment will take effort. Humans are reflex beings. It takes time to make a habit of being in the now. Plus, not everyone will master this.
Life is too short. We want to make the most out of it. Wisdom is among those things that make everything excellent. It never peaks.
Let us do ourselves a favor. Let us chase the purest of wisdom. We all bet, it will all be worth it!

Dreaming and becoming a great writer

I am sick of being pushed around. Since I cannot blame my boss for the system, I must chin up and take any mischief head-on. It is the same shit all over again. At times, I get scapegoated for things. America has the most tendency to point a finger. Australia dill dally.

Employment has the heaviest hand – capping you from reaching your potential.

I cannot do this. Why? I simply cannot. Inefficiency has the most bearing on this. Politics always gets in the way. Organisations have many red tapes. Every corner I turn, I hit a snag. I am trapped.

It takes so much to do good. People may or may not recognise it. Vested interest, egos, broken systems, unrealistic timelines and plain stupidity have been a wick for disaster. It hardly turns into calamity (believed by the executives) when the bottom line is not that bad. Not everybody will share your passion and enthusiasm.

What is it then for me? Do I settle? Fuck, no. I can do more.

Every inch of me has an itch for greatness. I know hard work. I am knocking barriers.

A business has a lot to work out. There is a lot of risk of unknown. I can try it, but my idea may or may not reach the world. I thirst for the world. I want to share my talents with the world – it is my conviction.

After years of soul searching, I found the formula. It will be in writing. I need to master the basics. It is the same concept as running a business – that I reach my target audience with a well-crafted message. It is worth the shot!

Where the rubber hit the road, I started to encountered bumps. These personal bumps are in the form of self-doubt and procrastination.

Will negativity fuel my entire dream to reach? No. It will be a balance. I wanted to write because I can, and this will let me attain my utmost. I will be my boss. Watch this space.