Tag: life

Tempering The Ego

“Ego, to me, is a holistic sense of our abilities, capabilities, and our possibilities. For the ego to not go out of control, it has to be tamed and to be done so repeatedly.”

The Ego can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. It can drive us forward to make progress in different areas of your lives, but it can also detract from us by setting our expectations too high and in not actually challenging ourselves to see if our ego is being realistic. Ego, to me, is a holistic sense of our abilities, capabilities, and our possibilities. For the ego to not go out of control, it has to be tamed and to be done so repeatedly.

When the Ego is not tamed, it has an unhealthy tendency to run wild. Your Ego can grow, often unhealthily, when you leave it to be unchallenged. I have found that those people with the biggest Egos in life are the ones who never challenge themselves to back it up in a real way. The Ego can inflate our sense of self to the point where we are actively deluding ourselves with who we want to be without taking account of who we really are.

Everyone has an ‘Ego’ or Latin for ‘I’ and as world-renowned psychologist Sigmund Freud pointed out1, we each have a perception of our ‘self’ that will differ often from how others would perceive us. Our ‘Ego’ or our ‘I’ is often about our physical self, the sum of our experiences, our innate abilities, and our drive to get ahead in life. The ego can grow, or it can shrink, often based on how we alone view ourselves, but it also is reflective of how others see us and what they expect of us. The Ego must be kept in check because it can inflate or deflate based on what we tell ourselves about who we are and how others tell us who we are. The Ego is malleable and can be different on the day based on what we experience or what happens to us.

You can have an excellent day one day where you win a sports competition, gain a promotion at work, or overcome a challenge that you previously thought was impossible. One good day can massively inflate our Egos and while it is good to boost one’s Ego and be proud of what you accomplished and how hard you worked, you should still have that sense of humility and understand that one good day does not mean that you are suddenly God’s gift to Earth.

The same can be said of when you have a terrible day such as perhaps you failed an important test or exam, a work presentation you gave wasn’t received well, or you had someone insult you or talk down to you. These kinds of events, especially in the same day, can really wound your Ego and your self-worth. While bad events can hurt you, you should not totally give up your Ego or sense of ‘self’ from them as that would be disastrous. One bad day does not have to be a referendum on the sum of your entire life. Your Ego has to be resilient, when it is both humbled and challenged, and this should happen on a daily basis.

My firm belief is that you should never get too low or get too high when it comes to the self or your Ego. You have to constantly remind yourself of what you do well on, what you need to work on, and what you have no experience or ability with. For example, I like to think that I’m a good writer at this point, but some articles have turned out better than I expected, and some have been worse than I thought. Despite how I perceive my written work and how others do so, I can continue to work on my style, syntax, and substance, and I can expand my writing focus to challenge myself that I may have previously avoided on different topics that are new to me.

I also think of how one’s Ego needs to be challenged especially in a new activity or hobby that you have picked up. A good way to think about the Ego is to challenge it in different ways by putting yourself out there physically for yourself to be tested in that manner. One example of this is to train in the martial arts where your body is being challenged. You may weightlift, run, or consider yourself athletic, but it’s a good way to measure yourself against others when you are training against other people who have been doing it for a while and who could be bigger or stronger than you.

It does not mean that you won’t become better as a martial artist, but you should temper the Ego by challenging those practitioners who know more, can teach you new skills and abilities, and who you can face off with even when you are getting beaten for a while by them. Whether it’s’ boxing, jiu jitsu, krav maga, or kickboxing, I think any martial arts, whichever one(s) you choose, are a great way to temper one’s Ego. This is because you’ll see just how exactly you measure up against other fighters, especially if you’re new to the sport, and while you may think you are strong, fast, or have great stamina, you won’t truly know if that is the case or not until you step on the mat or into the ring.

The same could be said when you challenge your Ego mentally such as when you try to learn something new or adapt a new skillset that you know nothing about. I find that learning a new language is a way to temper my Ego in a healthy manner because every language, while they have some similarities, are also quite different and cause me to adapt how I learn that language, and the kinds of difficulties I’ll have when learning it based on how the language is written or spoken.

While I may be great at learning Spanish and am comfortable there, I can throw my Ego for a loop by learning a non-romance language such as German. I can brag that I can speak one or two foreign languages well after a lot of practice and that fuels my Ego but so that it doesn’t get too fragile, I temper it by learning a different language or trying to advance my Spanish or other learned language with more advanced material.

The Ego is constantly changing and evolving because our sense of self is different daily. The key is to not let it grow too big without putting yourself out there and being challenged or by deluding yourself by not ever trying anything new by putting your mental or physical abilities to the test. The best way to temper the Ego is to constantly challenge it both physically and mentally to have a more accurate measure of yourself against other peers in your field(s) or area(s) of expertise.

You should not ever ignore your Ego as it is your sense of ‘self’ and how you fit into the world, but rather you should not think of yourself as either the best or the worst in anything without going out into the world and seeing where exactly you fit in. As the popular expression goes, “you’ll never know until you try” and when it comes to the Ego or self, you must be testing yourself and by extension, testing your Ego to temper it or and keep it in check. The worst thing to do to yourself when it comes to the Ego is to continue to delude yourself by not trying, never challenging yourself, or not trying to go beyond the standards that you have set for yourself.

Source:

1.) https://www.britannica.com/topic/ego-philosophy-and-psychology

Sunset Boat Ride in Lisbon

Camera: iPhone 12

Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Be Interested and Be Interesting

“How might you ask can you take a typical ‘small talk’ and make it interesting? Well, you should be able to show some humility by being interested in who they are by asking them some questions.”

Making small talk can be a necessary yet tedious part of daily life. It sometimes may not come naturally to you, and it can be forced at times. However, it is a courteous and polite way to get to know people who are complete strangers to you and to show that you are not oblivious to their presence around you. While ‘small talk’ often revolves around the weather, a simple ‘hello, how are you?’ or just mentioning something about the time of day, the commute to work or school, or maybe a small compliment to brighten their day, it can sometimes lead to a good conversation and even a new friend.

How might you ask can you take a typical ‘small talk’ and make it interesting? Well, you should be able to show some humility by being interested in who they are by asking them some questions. You can take a general comment on the weather to ask if they are used to that kind of weather or if it is new for them. That can lead to a talk about their hometown or where they currently live or if they are just visiting on travel. You would be surprised how a seemingly small question can lead to a wide-ranging and deeper conversation. A comment about the traffic or commute to your work can lead to a discussion on what could be improved about the roads, the transportation options, or if remote work would make things easier for you and the other person.

Even just asking for the time of the day can lead you to asking about their watch (if they have one), if their day is going well or not, and perhaps a comment on if the day is going fast or slow for them since we can tend to perceive time’s passing differently from one another. Key to taking ‘small talk’ to what could be considered ‘medium talk’, or a genuine conversation is to listen intently, wait until they are finished speaking, and follow up with a question or a comment relevant to what they told you.

If you are in a rush, are having a bad day, or are just not in the mood to continue the conversation, you can let it end after the ‘small talk’ or pleasant greeting or two. However, if you feel like you would like to get to know the other person or group of people better, make sure to listen, let them finish, and ask a question about them (within reason), or like the general comment(s) you made, and keep the conversation going for a while longer.

You should not have to do all the work in the conversation and if it is running its course, politely excuse yourself and say goodbye and that it was nice to meet them. Conversations naturally start and end but if you would like to be more social, make a new friend, or just put yourself out there in the world more, you must ‘be interested’ in those around you. You should do your best to refrain from making the conversation all about you at first and what you’re up to. Naturally, that should make its way into the conversation but if you started talking to this person, you would like to get to know them more, then, I believe you should be interested in who they are, find out more about them, and get to know them beyond just the time of the day, the weather forecast, or how their day is generally going.

Even if you feel like you don’t know much about their work, school, hobbies, interests, or where they are from, it shouldn’t prevent the conversation from continuing as you can show curiosity about their background and try to learn more about them from themselves. If there is anything I have learned about my own social life, people like to talk about themselves and will be happy to answer questions about themselves if done in a polite and respectful manner. It’s important to know someone’s boundaries especially if they are still somewhat of a stranger to you but usually, they’ll be willing to share a lot about who they are, where they are from, what they like to do in their free time, and what gets them excited about life in general.

If you feel like your social life could use a boost, I recommend being more interested in others and you should start to feel like you’re making progress in your conversations. Now, it should not be so one sided that they know nothing about you as that would be a bit odd as they’ll likely want to ask you the same questions in response. The conversation should not feel like a one-sided interrogation or a job interview. There should be a natural give and take where you both are interested in each other and you are letting each other answer questions, talk about possible mutual interests, and even discussing if your personal backgrounds overlap at all.

The 2nd part of a successful beginning of any kind of positive first impression is to ‘be interesting’, which I know is a broad statement to make but you should have things to talk about to that person. You should know a little bit about where you’re from, talk about what excites you about life whether that’s a particular hobby, interest, or activity you like to do. Your life will often involve work or school or both at the same time, but I would recommend making yourself interesting beyond what you do to make a living. If you like traveling, let the person ask you about where you’ve been. If you enjoy learning languages, discuss which ones. If you like to build bird houses or molding ceramic pottery, discuss the process(es) involved in getting either activity done.

While you should be interested in other people to get to know them and have interesting conversations, don’t be shy to discuss who you are in return. You should have a life that is beyond work or school even if it is a large part of our lives. If you don’t have many hobbies or interests, perhaps pivot to what goal(s) you have for the future. It is easier when you have a lot on going on in terms of your outside interests, activities, or hobbies, so that is where the ’be interesting’ comes into play.

You don’t have to be doing something cool, exciting, or fascinating every day, but I find it is easier to build a friendship or relationship when you can share something that you are passionate about and can even include them in on. Whether it is traveling together, going on a hike, building something out of wood or metal, or maybe playing a sport, you can show you are an interesting individual. You can also show that you are inclusive too by allowing yourself to show that hobby or interest to the other person and see if they would enjoy doing that with you as a result. They can also let you join in on what they enjoy doing as well giving you a new hobby or interest that you can learn more about, partake in, and build upon with that other person as well.

Being social may not come naturally or easily to some of us but I think a good way to make it easier is to ‘be interested’ in who they are, what they do, and how they came to be who they are today. Once you do that, you can show that you can ‘be interesting’ with what you enjoy doing in life and that you would like them to be involved or help them learn about it and see if it is something they want to try. I think these are two good ways to be better socially and can lead you to building stronger friendships and relationships as a result.

What is ‘True Wealth’?

“I believe the key is being able to maximize wealth in both facets as much as possible without sacrificing one or the other too much.”

There is a standard definition of ‘wealth’ as a concept: An abundance of valuable possessions, money, or other resources to the degree that it causes prosperity. However, what is prosperity to you may not be prosperity to others. I like to think of wealth is not an abundance not just of material possessions or of money or of how much you can acquire but also how much you value what inherently belongs to you. What I mean by that is your time, your health, and your freedom. While building wealth is key to having success in life, there are other facets to wealth that we can neglect if you are not careful.

Wealth will come with sacrifices whether it is your time, your freedom, or your health as there are tradeoffs involved. You’ll find that to become more prosperous, you may have to sacrifice time, freedom, or health to build that wealth up whether in the form of money, resources, or material possessions. I believe the key is being able to maximize wealth in both facets as much as possible without sacrificing one or the other too much.

In order to gain more money, you may have to sacrifice your time in the sense that you exchange your time to earn money or you are not as free to do what you want each day because you have to work a job, grow your business, or learn new skills in order to earn the money to become wealthy. The same could be said of your health whereas you may have to sacrifice the time you could use to invest in your own health to build material or resource wealth with the time you put in to earn money or other assets. That time that could be used to be spent at the gym, on a run, going on a hike, or practicing a sport could go to your job or your business or investing into a new asset.

If you can find out what you truly value and what you want to maximize in terms of your wealth, make sure you prioritize it to have true wealth for you. For example, if fancy cars, big houses, and a lot of material possessions appeal to you, maybe you don’t mind putting a lot more time into working for that, putting your health on the backburner, and sacrificing certain freedoms to do what you must instead of what you want to. On the contrary, if you care less about possessions, material wealth, but still want to be comfortable in terms of money or investments, then maybe you can work less, focus on your health and free time more, and exercising more freedoms to do what you want with the extra time you have as a result.

You should decide what kind of wealth is best for you. What truly will make you happy, what you are passionate about in life, and what you want to get most out of life, you’ll be able to build that true wealth. I think the key for anyone is to maximize the 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week as much as possible. If you can build your wealth passively to get some of your time back, that is a key advantage in my view to having true wealth too. When you can be financially successful by having multiple sources of income, multiple options to build wealth, and with some or a lot of autonomy in your work or business pursuits, that really can be an advantage in not only being successful but happy too.

Wealth is not just about being financially well off but also about being well off in other areas including health, time, and exercising freedom in what you do and how you do it. There is a distinct difference between someone who must rely on others for their wealth building and someone who is able to create their own opportunities or build their own means of wealth in a business, in real estate, or in investments that can create more freedoms rather than slowly eliminate them.

You can have as many possessions as possible, houses, cars, and money in the world but if you have no free time, no health, or no autonomy in what you do or how you earn that wealth, then you may need to reassess if that is the true wealth that you want out of life. I hope that you’ll rethink what wealth means to you because only you can decide what you would like to prioritize as you build it. You must consider that sacrifices will have to be made, that time, money, and health are all commodities that can be saved or lost depending on what you prioritize these days.

I only ask that you realize that having the freedom to do what you want and when you want is underrated. It is a form of wealth within itself along with keeping your health in good shape as long as possible even if you must sacrifice some time or freedom as a result. Consider that you can be very wealthy in the material sense but if you are unhealthy, working all the time, and have to answer to others in order to keep building that wealth, are you truly wealthy or is it only one kind of wealth that you have?

Think about what you are willing to sacrifice, what you are willing to earn, and how to passively build on the wealth you want to earn to save more time and freedoms that can be used for health, time spent with family and/or friends, or enjoying what the world has to offer outside of your own wealth building. Wealth takes many forms as I mentioned so remember that while we often think of money, cars, houses, and other assets, we should remember that wealth can be time spent away from an office to enjoy a vacation, wealth can be an extra hour in the day to use the gym or go for a hike, wealth can be starting businesses that matter to you with hours of work that you set for yourself and only you can hold yourself accountable for. Think about the wealth that you want to build throughout your life and how you want to make it work for you.

Trust Is The Foundation

“Trust is the bedrock that glues our society together. It is the foundation for which our relationships are built on.”

Without trust, there can be nothing. Trust is the bedrock that glues our society together. It is the foundation for which our relationships are built on. Once that bedrock is ruptured, it can never fully heal again. This is why we place such a high value on it because it can be hard to find or even replicate whether in business or in work or in our lives in general. We learn from a young age the value of keeping our word, being accountable for our actions, and being part of a team or a whole.

If we cannot make a promise, we shouldn’t keep it. We learn not to overpromise, undersell, or to bite off more than we can chew in what we can be relied upon for. Whether it is a secret between friends, a business deal that should remain private, or our duty to uphold a certain standard in our professional lives, the ideal of trust is at the center of how we are expected to act and behave. Trust can be earned over time and can take months, years, or even decades to build on it but while it is hard to gain trust initially, it can last a very long time with repeated adherence.

However, once the trust is broken between people or groups or societies, it can never truly be fully healed again as it once was. While verbal trust is a key part of our lives, we often go above and beyond to string together the bonds of trust more deeply. We shake hands to formalize a deal, sign the terms and conditions of an agreement, have legal papers, lawyers, and the ‘fine print’ drawn up, so the trust given and received is as clear as day. There are multiple ways to establish trust with each other but there are just as many ways that trust can be broken too if you are not careful.

It is not just our work lives or business success that depends on the trust established within them but also our personal relationships. If you are not seen as trustworthy but those people who are closest to you, it is likely that will extend outwards to other kinds of relationships in your life. It is vital to maintain your trustworthiness across the board regardless of how fleeting the ties to the other person or group are. While our relationships, business dealings, and professional ties will all begin and come to an end, our reputation precedes us throughout our lives, and it is important to keep your trustworthiness intact as you navigate the years and decades of who you meet and who you establish connections with.

Trust is not only about keeping your word or telling the truth to someone else or acting in an honest matter, but it is also about not promising something that you can’t deliver on or embellishing or making up falsehoods to earn the other person’s trust. You may think you are able to take an action or provide something or to promise a result but if you cannot guarantee it 100%, it’s best to pull back and let that person or group know that it is not entirely possible. How often have you heard that expression, “don’t make a promise that you know you can’t keep.”

It’s not only about breaking a promise that shatters trust but also trying at something that you said would happen and guaranteeing its success without being realistic about the odds or about if you could deliver the intended result without error, delay, or setbacks. You not only have to be honest with other people to establish trust but also honest with yourself and what you can and what you cannot do for them.

Our own ego can sometimes hurt our own trustworthiness because we are biased in believing we can do more or be more or accomplish more than what we can do when we make a promise. It can be difficult to reign back our promises to others and to pull back our own ego when it comes to what we are capable of. However, it is necessary to keep our trust alive with the other group or person with whom you are dealing with. I believe it is better to hurt our own ego when it comes to being realistic about the promises or the actions, we can accomplish rather than to lie or to embellish or to delay the unrealistic promises that were made, which hurts that trust or even breaks it completely. When the trust is broken, the other person won’t think you’re honest or reliable or even a good person so that is why trust itself is the foundation for which any kind of relationship is built upon.

Trust being the foundation of an individual’s relationships is key, but it also portends to our society and our world. Shared values, beliefs, and rules are built on trust in that if you will follow them and obey them so will everyone else living in that society. If that trust is broken in the sense that there are rules for me and you, but not for them, then that trust in one another starts to erode. Basic civility, courteousness, respect for laws and rules, and overall trust builds society up and when promises are broken, when double standards are common, and when one party or group holds unfair advantages over another group, without any kind of recourse or change made to make the society fairer, then the society will suffer as a result.

It is no accident that more productive and successful societies and countries function at a higher level, and it comes down a high level of trust between its citizens regardless of age, gender, race, socioeconomic background, etc. When trust is shared by all to play by the rules and do the right thing for each other, then that society and/or country will flourish as a result. How can a society establish strong economic ties, pass new laws that are enforced for all, and foster a strong education system that works for all? if it is not built on that fundamental trust that we are to look out for one another rather than to take advantage of one another instead.

If you can read this article knowing that your trust for your fellow man or woman is high and that they can rely on you as you would rely on them, then you’re in good shape where you are with the trust of your society. However, if your trust in your fellow man or woman is waning and you are skeptical of other people’s intentions often, well, then unfortunately, your society has a lot of work to do to rebuild and strengthen that fundamental trust. You should be part of that change by helping to build up the trust in one another again where you are at rather than to keep poking holes in the foundation or to tear it down completely. The choice is yours to make.

Treating Every Day as a Gift

“While it does no good to dwell endlessly on our own mortality and ponder how long we get to have our existence on this planet, we should take heed each day when we wake up in the morning and when we lie down at night just how special it is to be alive and breathing.”

Recent events in my life have reminded me just how fragile and precious life itself is to me. As you get older and the years start to speed up rather than slow down, you start to realize more and more just how fast time flies and how fleeting life can be. While it can be easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day routines and the busyness of what we have in our own schedules, there’s no denying that we only have so long to live, and we should remember that we are not going to be around forever. It does no good to dwell endlessly on our own mortality and ponder how long we get to have our existence on this planet. We should take heed each day when we wake up in the morning and when we lie down at night just how special it is to be alive and breathing.

Our mere existence at miraculous odds through multiple generations of ancestors who came before us is a clear reminder how miraculous it is to have the gift of life. It can be easy to lose perspective on how the state of being alive rather than the opposite is so special, unique, and wonderful that we can take it for granted. Even when life inevitably throws its challenges, obstacles, and setbacks at you, it is important to slow down, take a deep breath, and remember that this too shall pass, and that having life is always worth the struggles and suffering involved.

I believe that instead of getting caught up in going through the motions, checking all the boxes, and waiting for the next day to begin, try to take a minute or even a few minutes to reflect on the fact that you are in the here and now, reading this article, being able to breathe, eat, drink, and be part of humanity as so many who have come before you. Life is a miracle when you really think about it, and you only have one life to live. Make peace with the fact that life is not forever, our bodies are mortal, and what we should not let trivialities, gossip, and regrets swallow us up as we live and breathe.

Remember to make peace and share love with those closest to you because they such as yourself are mortal too and will not be around forever. Try not to hold grudges, feed off your resentments, dwell endlessly on what’s past in your life. You should try as much as you can to be present in the moment, appreciate what blessings life has given you, and enjoy the beauty and wonder of what living in this world means. We all know that life isn’t perfect and that many days in our lives are a struggle where we might be treading water unsure of where we’re headed, what the meaning of it all is, and how can live a life that others will remember.

Try not to dwell on those questions endlessly but rather strive to be the best person you can be. If you’re a brother, be a better brother. If you’re a mother or a father, be a better parent to your child or children. If you’ve done wrong, atone for what you did and seek forgiveness from others. You can never truly right past wrongs, but you can strive to be better in your life from there on out. Be willing to tell your family and your friends that you care and love them if they have been there for you as much as you have been there for them. Life is precious and fleeting not only for us as the narrative of our own journey through this world but also for those others we love and cherish who we share our precious life with.

Treating every day as a gift even when life is hard will make you more appreciative, grateful, and reflective on what truly matters during our existence. We do not know when our time will come to say goodbye to this world so you should always strive to live true to who you are and to leave this world better than you found it. I encourage you to take a moment or two before you get out of bed or fall asleep to reflect on what life you have led so far.

If you are content with your life and have made the most of it, you are on your way to building a fulfilling canvas that will be bright, colorful, and detailed. If you are not content with how life has gone, think about what joys you’ve had so far, how life could be more fulfilling, and what you can do to improve upon it as it is never too late to make our one life the best it can be. Do not get discouraged by mortality and that our existence may be finite.

Take comfort in knowing that your life, however small it may seem in the grand scheme of our universe, influenced those around you and that the world was changed by your place in it. You may not be remembered a thousand years from now after you’re gone, but you will always know deep down inside what kind of life you led while you were here, in its good and bad times, joys and sorrows, its pleasures and pains. Hopefully, you may be able to rest in eternal peace knowing that the life you had lived, regardless of its days, months, years, or even a century or more, it was worth the gift of life itself.  

The Case Against Hyper-Individualism

“You can be an individualistic person but that does not excuse selfish or amoral behavior at all.”

It is not inherently bad to look out for yourself and your own interests. How many times have you heard that you have to “be a better friend to yourself” or to “take care of yourself?” If you can’t help yourself, then how can you help others out? The key thing to keep in mind with being individualistic is that while it can help you as a person, you should always remember that it does not mean neglecting, hurting, or disadvantaging others in the process. You can be an individualistic person but that does not excuse selfish or amoral behavior at all.

I would argue that hyper-individualism has become more and more common in our society and has led to people being taken advantage of, scammed, lied to, or otherwise mistreated because they had someone take advantage of them because they were acting in their own interest but without regards for others who were affected. If I had to give my own definition of what distinguishes hyper-individualism from individualism is that in the former, you are looking out for yourself only without regards for others or you are looking out for yourself even if it may cause other people to be negatively affected by your focus on individualistic behavior.

While it is okay in my view to strive to achieve your own goals, seek out a better life, find your own path, and to not be dependent on others if you can afford to do so. It is not okay to hurt others in the process by robbing them of their own goals, their own chance at seeking a better life, and even preventing them from building a community where the individual takes a back seat to the interests of a group.

I find that hyper-individualism is similar to a ‘dog eat dog’ kind of world where everybody is on their own all the time, there is limited or no support if you fall on tough times, and where communal living or community-building is sacrificed for individual power seeking, wealth gaining, or prestige building. Caring about oneself alone and not others at all or not caring if your own goals, success, and overall happiness may put others in a bad place can also fall under what hyper individualism would be to me.

I believe that most people cannot be hyper individualistic because since the early days of our species, we could not live on our own without the support of a tribe, group, or a small community. Everybody had their own individual wants, desires, or needs, but we worked together to achieve those needs by catering to our individual strengths. Each person brought something unique or useful to the larger group and that is where individualism can play a healthy role within a community. If you can hunt, you can provide food to yourself, yes, but also to others if you are good at what you do. If you can fish, you can fish enough to help yourself but also for others in the tribe too. The same could be said for cooking, cleaning, protecting livestock, building shelter, etc.

This kind of individualism where we express ourselves in what we do best and how we can contribute meaningfully to a larger group, community, or society helps to make individualism a powerful force, often for good. Where hyper-individualism goes wrong is where you only look out for yourself and don’t share with anybody else or lend a helping hand with your skills and talents. It is not good to hoard or be greedy but that is what hyper individualistic behavior is based around and the disturbing thing to remember is that it seems to be encouraged more and more by our popular culture.

Think about the advertising and marketing messages we often receive: do they cater to your needs or to the needs of a group? When society is largely telling you to constantly be going after the money, the cars, the clothes, and the fancy mansions, this kind of behavior often leads to hyper-individualism. Sadly, we don’t hear about how we can use our skills to help others or to volunteer to use our resources for a shared good or effort. It is up to us to resist hyper individualistic behavior as much as possible.

Hyper-individualism may make that person feel good at first, but it is an empty feeling especially if they are not contributing anything meaningful to the larger society. Yes, you were able to buy a nice car, a flashy television, and an expensive house, but while that’s good for you and your own skills and abilities, is that all there is to your life? For a few of us, maybe that’s good enough, but I believe that we feel happiest and most fulfilled when we not only share our talents with the world, but we use those talents to also better the world in some way.

Individualistic societies and more community-focused societies can both be wealthy, happy, and productive, but if you go to the extremes of individualism or to communism, to state the obvious, societies will often crater in on themselves and cease to function well. I like to think that the best societies in our world are those that recognize, encourage, and foster individual talent but to use that talent to create a better society and to make sure that success while rewarded financially or otherwise, is also meant to help others receive a helping hand up so they too can also succeed and pursue their individual dreams and goals.

My analogy for hyper-individualism is if you’re in a rowboat and you have six people in the boat, and we’re all meant to row to get to the shore. Problems can start to arise when you have five people rowing in sync together and starting to move the boat faster and faster to the shore. However, if that sixth person does not row at all because he or she does not want to or if they want to row back out to sea, all six people as a result are going to suffer together because of that one person’s hyper-individualism.

Think of that rowboat of six people like a society of a million or a billion people. If you have one person or a few people ‘rowing’ against the others and hurting the total society as a result, the problems even a few people can cause would affect everyone in that boat or in the society negatively. Let’s all remember that we all rise or fall together and that while individual success, wealth, and prestige, is admirable to achieve, it is not everything in life and we are judged not just by our own merits but by our character and our values as well in society.

They Know, They Just Don’t Care

“A lot of personal and professional issues that are unaddressed or dealt with will not go away and will need to be handled. In most cases, the problem or issue will metastasize and becomes even more difficult to resolve.”

The popular adage that goes “the first step to solving a problem is to realize that there is one” is key to recognize in life even if it involves admitting an inconvenient truth. A lot of personal and professional issues that are unaddressed or dealt with will not go away and will need to be handled. In most cases, the problem or issue will metastasize and becomes even more difficult to resolve. On top of that, you’ll often need more manpower, resources, or funds to solve the growing problem when it could have been tackled days, weeks, months, or years ago.

I truly believe that knowing a problem exists and refusing to solve it or letting it fester is worse than when a person is unaware that there is a problem to deal with in the first place. Pleading ignorance when you know the truth but lie to yourself and to other affected problem will lead to a lot of stress and turmoil in the long run. There are numerous ways to describe this kind of mentality but to me, it’s about someone or a group of people knowing that a situation is unsustainable or untenable and refusing to fix it even when it would be the right thing to do.

Acting or admitting fault or an error is never easy but doing so is the first step in actively solving the problem instead of letting it continue. Standing by and not admitting what’s going on is not right or not sustainable will put you on a collision course with a rough ending in most cases. This kind of mentality of “knowing but not caring” can erode trust, relationships, and even ruin people’s lives if it is allowed to go on. In this case, knowledge of a problem and not acting to resolve it can cause a lot of damage in various areas of life. To make this ‘knowing and not caring’ examples of hypothetical professional or personal situations where this kind of attitude would lead to negative consequences, let me discuss two instances where ‘knowing and not acting’ can lead to regrettable events:

Let’s say that someone worked hard to be trained as a lifeguard and was paid to do so by the local city by the beach for the summer season. Many people were trained, funds were spent, and chairs / stations were built. The foundation is strong so that people’s lives can be saved if something bad were to happen and each of the lifeguards were trained in CPR and other first aid tactics in case it is necessary.

Not only are the lifeguards trained in first aid, but they also need to pass swimming tests to qualify for the city’s public beaches as employees. However, since the city’s budget is running a deficit because of improper management and cost overruns, the city council must decide where to cut funding to balance the budget. The folks in charge of the budget knew that the deficit would cause problems when they projected in in the previous years, but nothing was done about it.                                                                                                      

As a result, costs need to be cut by the city so difficult decisions will need to be met. The city needs to keep schools open for some students to receive summer school and must pay the public-school teachers to do so. They also can’t reduce the police or firefighter budget given that the summer season tends to be the busiest for them and they also are guaranteed pensions that are negotiated by the unions.

Sadly, the only way to start to balance the budget is to cut recreational programs including the lifeguards at the beach even after they did the training, and the city spent the money to train them for these jobs. Other recreational programs will need to be cut along with reducing hours for access to public parks and sports courts. Most regrettably, the city council will have to cut access to the public beaches there because they don’t want to take the risk of having liabilities involved of having its citizens swim without lifeguards present. It causes a lot of anger, disappointment with the city’s residents as well as students who were looking forward to swimming, playing on the beach, and seeing friends but since the city can’t afford lifeguards, the public beaches will have to be closed the whole summer season.

While many individuals or one individual in city government would be responsible for seeing where the budget deficit would start to harm the city’s services, but because no one looked hard at how to prevent the deficit from affecting the public recreational programs or saw that cuts would need to be made in a year or two years’ time in other less important areas, the problem was unaddressed. It’s about knowing the problem exists in this case, but doing little or nothing, or ‘passing the buck’ onto someone else in the city’s government rather than working in advance to fixing this issue before people’s lives were affected.

Another potential issue is that it is difficult to keep watch over public beaches 24 hours, 7 days a week. Chances are increasingly high then for an accident to happen where college or high school kids come to the beach even when it’s closed or limited to swim or have a bonfire. Because of their anger, they may end up swimming in defiance or doing something that could put themselves in harm’s way. Not only will the city not have lifeguards there to prevent that from happening, but it’s possible that the city will be blamed or liable for any possible accident or issue with people using the beach illegally because they did not balance the budget in advance.

A potential tragic loss of a life, an accident, or the loss of trust in the city’s government are all regrettable consequences that could be avoided if a group of people or person(s) would do something about the problem when they knew of it rather than letting it grow out of control later. While this is a fictional instance, this kind of regrettable story or event happens a lot in our world and the issue at hand could often be avoided with due diligence, foresight, and good work.

More generally, regarding possible examples of this kind of ‘knowing and not caring’ regarding someone’s personal relations, I believe this could apply to situations when it comes to family members or close friends not helping someone out when they know their beloved family member or friend is going through a tough time. They may know of a problem that person has like an addiction to gambling, drugs, alcohol, or other substances, and believe that only they can help them rather than taking them to a licensed professional or a doctor.

This can also be applied when that person’s addiction is harming their relationships, is getting worse, and tends to cost that personal financially, morally, and in other ways. If the family member(s) or friend(s) don’t address their beloved one’s problems head on and let them continue, that affected person in a personal situation will be more likely to hit ‘rock bottom’ and may not be able to be saved from themselves. When that person is not reigned in and told that they have that problem the family member or friend knows about, then they are doing a real disservice by not helping them get better actively. Letting the addiction or mental health problem continue even when that other person in the relationship or friendship knows it must not go on but won’t take action to resolve it, then that’s a prime example of where ‘knowing and not caring’ enough to solve the problem can really backfire.

Sadly, in most cases, the friend or family member affected may suffer even more from the problem not being fixed or aided by the significant other. They can lose themselves fully to the addiction, end up losing their job, their home, or even their life as a result. Part of being a friend or a family member is to be there when that person needs you the most. They don’t want you to sugar coat things and sometimes, you must give them the ‘tough love’ by telling them the absolute truth and letting them know that they have a problem, but that they are not beyond saving, and that you can go ahead and help them get better. That is the mark of a true friendship and relationship when you know about the other person but also care enough to help them be and get better if necessary.

The world can be a messy and complicated place but the concept of knowing when a problem exists in your personal or professional life and not doing anything about it and trying to find a solution to it is disheartening to me when it does happen. It does happen a lot in life, and I hope that you will be different to act on the problem rather than letting it fester. You may change someone’s life or people’s lives for the better when you know about the problem and address it so the solution can improve lives and make the world a better place through your actions to find solutions rather than let the problems you know about to multiply and grow.

On Territory and Hierarchy

“It’s not just being rewarded financially but there are also the noted past benefits such as being the first to eat at a meal or having livestock awarded to you for leading the tribe or group.”

When you rise in the hierarchy of any company, firm, or organization, you are likely to be rewarded for it subsequently. It’s not just being rewarded financially but there are also the noted past benefits such as being the first to eat at a meal or having livestock awarded to you for leading the tribe or group. The leader, if he or she does a good job, gets first dibs on what they would like as a result whereas if it’s money, food, or what I think is the most common today as it was in the past: land or space.

In my view, there is a direct correlation between rising in the hierarchy and having more space or territory allotted to you. This kind of correlation has really stood the test of time when you think about the era of feudalism when there would be lords over the land and forts or castles would be built to maintain that territory, even if it was contested by outsiders. When you think of the rise of empires from the Ottoman to the French to the British whose kings, queens, emperors, or sultans who would make their royal palaces and compounds as elegant, grand, and massive as they could.

Even your modern-day Presidents and other heads of state live more lavishly than 99% of their population and while they may command a modest salary, they still hold the keys to a massive home and office where they have people waiting on them to make sure any of their needs are taken care of. Because of the way hierarchies are set up, the people who have the most power tend to get the most benefits in terms of taking up space and territory because of the office or title or family legacy that they hold.

While it would make sense that in a capitalist society, you must ensure lopsided rewards and benefits to those people entrusted with political or other forms of power. When you think of your average CEO or company owner, they tend to on average also take up more territory or have more space than your average person. As your status rises so does the amount of acreage or square meters you would like to claim as your own. While there are exceptions, popular culture encourages the acquisition of power and status to correlate with not only acquiring financial wealth but territorial wealth too.

You can even see this in terms of who gets the most space in the c-suite or in the average office. While the average worker may have to work in a cubicle or share a space with others at a lower level of hierarchy in their organization or company, the management or higher-level executive will often have the corner office or their own floor depending on the place of work. It is easy to see where your status in the working world is just by seeing who is taking up the most space even when the impact you or your colleague have on the firm, company, organization, may be different in terms of actual value provided.

The societal drive to get that corner office, or to get a bigger home, or to have a piece of land to call your own is an innate part of what keeps our drive to boost our economic means in life. Taking up territory and holding it is such an innate part of our caveman-like nature that even if we may have come out of the caves into homes, palaces, and offices, we still strive to show off to others where we are in the hierarchy by showing how much space we take up compared to the other guy.

While there’s nothing wrong with staking your claim, working hard for what you earn, and claiming that corner office or hectare of land as your own, it does not mean that you’ll automatically be happy or fulfilled. It’s likely you’ll be satisfied, happy, or content with how far you’ve come and how hard you had to work for your spot in the hierarchy, but it does not guarantee you long-term happiness or fulfillment. When you think about it, while you can get an office or a home or a castle to yourself, it can cause a tendency to isolate yourself, to think you know better than anyone, and worst of all, to lose a kind of empathy for what your co-workers, your compatriots, or your community is going through.

You may be able to stock more resources, live more lavishly, and show off to others, but it won’t fill our most basic need as human beings, and that is to connect with one another on a deeper level. You may have family or close friends but the higher you are up in the hierarchy, the tendency is there to ignore others’ advice, or to start thinking you’re better than other people even when you may not know what to do or what the answer is, and it may prevent you from being touch with other people are going through who are going through a tough time in life.

The more we seek to rise in a hierarchy, whatever it may be, the more likely it is to lead to isolation, loneliness, and even unhappiness if we use the territory that we have to shut the door on interacting with others around us or who work with us. It is tempting to let our success and our status get to our heads, but it can lead to increased narcissism, apathy toward what got you there in the first place, and an ego that can run out of control if it’s not checked by others.

When you think about a successful leader or executive, they let others tell them when they are wrong or show humility when they don’t know the answer. Instead of isolating themselves entirely, they make sure those people who helped them share in the success and are treated well. They share their space with others instead of hoarding it for themselves. They go out in the community to find out how they can help as a leader with more resources and knowledge. Instead of becoming a hermit with a lot of territory but no one around to help, a good leader will let people in to give advice, counsel, and to back down when he or she knows when they are wrong.

It’s the reason why dictators, kleptocrats, and monarchs can be so out of touch with their compatriots and why the CEO who has his own floor and never leaves his mansion are not long for staying in power. They neglect having people around them to be part of their apparatus and to tell them when the decisions they make should be rethought. It is also because when a leader hoards all the wealth, territory, or resources for him or herself and their family or close friends, people who are worse off tend to notice, can congregate, and organize together, and an overthrow of that leader is just around the corner.

A good leader makes sure that he does not hoard more than he needs to succeed in his role and that he or she relinquishes their title so a successor can rise whatever the vocation to share in the continued success of the company, organization, or firm. There’s nothing wrong with letting your rise in hierarchy allow you to acquire more land, territory, or money, but to hoard it all or to do nothing to let others improve their own lot in life to make sure they have the same shot at success is a recipe for disaster. You cannot take land with you after you’re gone so the priority should be on making sure you are a good leader first and also someone who uses their status to assist others, to make wise decisions, and to help give other people in their community or country a leg up so they can have enough territory to live a good life and share their own success with their family and friends.

‘The Whale’ – Film Review and Analysis

“‘The Whale’, directed by director Darren Aronofsky shows us how low someone can go when things go wrong in life but also how our lowest lows can also bring out the best of us when it is most important.”

2022 may be over but I am still thinking about the most emotionally impactful movie of the past year, which deserves its own review and analysis. Likely to be nominated for a few Academy Awards at the least an Oscar for Best Actor nomination for Brendan Fraser, ‘The Whale’ is a powerful film about a man’s desire to try to right past wrongs in some way before it is too late. ‘The Whale’, directed by director Darren Aronofsky shows us how low someone can go when things go wrong in life but also how our lowest lows can also bring out the best of us when it is most important.

Aronofsky’s filmography from ‘Requiem for a Dream’ to ‘The Wrestler’ to ‘Black Swan’ to ‘The Foundation’ to now ‘The Whale’ all deal with flawed characters looking to right past wrongs or to find redemption in the most meaningful way(s) before they are past the point of no return. Aronofsky so brilliantly can capture psychological drama and tension in each sense in his movies that by the end, you’re so emotionally affected by it all that it can be hard to wrap your head around what you just watched. As a director, he is excellent at painting a picture of a person or people in distress and how while they may have had good intentions, they are almost too far gone to seek redemption or a new start.

Different from Aronofsky’s past films, ‘The Whale’ is adapted from a play of the same name dating back to 2012 so the screenplay that is written and the way the film is set up is exactly how a play would be seen on the big screen. There are few characters, the plot does not get too murky or complicated, and the setting remains the same largely throughout the whole film.

Film critics today may dismiss this film as lacking scale and scope in its ambition, but I was drawn to how beautifully it portrays what could be real people living real lives. ‘The Whale’ may be a film and fiction but it likely portrays real situations and real tragedies that some people unfortunately come to pass in their life. The film deals with multiple real world issues affecting people from obesity to alcoholism to lost loves to broken up families that most people in life can see how that can throw someone’s life off a cliff and make it almost impossible to recover.

‘The Whale’, as the title makes clear is about a severely obese man named Charlie who weighs around 600 pounds and suffers from multiple health issues because of his weight issue. He is estranged from his teenage daughter, separated from his alcoholic wife, and unable to turn the video screen as an online English professor because of his weight condition that may affect how his students see him. His only interaction is with his friend, Liz, who is also a nurse who comes to take care of Charlie especially with his multiple health issues causing him to be near death and at risk of heart failure.

Charlie has become a tragic figure in that he only has Liz left in his life after suffering the loss of the man who he fell in love with. Because of that love, he sacrificed his marriage with his previous wife and his relationship with his daughter for. After the affair he had with his student, Alan, who is also the brother of Liz, for whom she was adopted by a family and her father who was a pastor in the New Life Church. Liz was able to escape the church’s cultish tendencies but Alan’s possible guilt from being disowned by the Church and perhaps his family as well for his homosexuality and relationship with Charlie caused him to end his own life.

This terrible series of events punished Charlie and his eating condition after the death of Alan exacerbated his obesity and caused him major depression and an inability to form relationships with others beyond his caretaker and friend, Liz. Charlie is not looking for any pardoning of ‘sins’ from God or the Church that disowned Alan but rather the sole forgiveness of his daughter for whom he last saw when she was eight years old. Ellie is not a child anymore but is a rebellious and sullen teenager who misses her father and lashes out at her mother, who deals with her problems by downing a bottle of liquor, rather than raising her daughter to be better. Charlie is no saint in the matter in that he did commit adultery with Alan and led him to neglect his daughter, Ellie, and to push his wife away as well.

He never made amends for having caused them both grief and pain with his impulsive decision. His love for Alan eclipsed his love for his daughter, which he struggles in the film to get back. When the New Life Church’s doctrine and his family’s discontent with Alan’s sexuality, Alan’s suicide caused Charlie to spiral further to eat uncontrollably and to negate his relationships even more by becoming a total recluse who cannot even leave the house because of his body weight and inability to walk or drive a car.

‘The Whale’ also highlights how Charlie is not looking for pity from others or for forgiveness. He knows how much his life has gotten out of hand, but he is hoping to do ‘one thing in his life’ right before it’s too late for him. He believes that while his daughter acts out and despises what he has done, that there is still hope for her and that can she achieve her potential but to more importantly to ‘be a good person.’ It may be too late for Charlie to turn it around in life much to Liz’s, his wife’s, and even Ellie’s disappointment, but Charlie knows that redemption is possible for each of them and that even if he is not there, he will try to leave money for his daughter to have a future, or to tell his wife that he is regretful for him leaving them for his affair, and that he apologizes to Liz for what he has done to himself with the loss of her adopted brother that has strained their friendship in the aftermath.

Charlie does not want to be saved by God or religion or from himself but he wants to know that his life through the birth of his daughter is one thing that he got right in life and that while he wasn’t there for her before when she needed him, he can try to make amends before he leaves the world, and to encourage her to be better than he was, to be better off in life, and to be kind to others. He may have lost hope for himself, but he has never lost hope for his daughter.

Similar to how Charlie encourages his English students to be honest with their written essays, he tries to be honest with Ellie in why he did what he did, how he could have been a better husband to his wife, Mary, and how he let Liz down after the tragic death of Alan. Not everyone can be this honest, but Charlie has nothing left to lose, nothing much to gain, and with not a lot of life ahead of him except imminent death due to his body’s condition.

Despite all the concurring factors, Charlie is trying to regain his humanity and his family back as much as he can recoup after it had been lost even if he has become ‘The Whale’. While he may be misunderstood and loathed like the whale in the book Moby Dick by Herman Melville, he is not beyond redeeming himself in the eyes of others and providing some closure for himself in a life that had gone so far astray yet for which he had also been able to give something out of love back to the world to live on in the form of his daughter, Ellie.