alice and life

Relocating home

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 18:03:53 +1200

I’ve decided to relocate my blog, you can now find me here:

http://helloalicewang.wordpress.com/

Feeling like I need something a little bit different :)

Hello Alice, we miss your posts. Hope to read something else in the near future =)

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 22:53:04 +1200

Hi Anon :)

Thanks for the nudge in the right direction! I’ll try to keep these regular again, and hopefully not as dark as the one just gone… I don’t quite know how I ended up where it did, hmm.

Alice

Thick and thin.

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 22:50:42 +1200

A few years ago, my biggest worry at the end of the year was my yellow highlighter running out of juice halfway through a reading. The most difficult decision of the day would be whether to break all the rules in my carefully implemented colour-coding scheme, or pause all my study until the following day when I could go and buy a new yellow highlighter.

Today, I just use a pen.

It’s been a while since I thought about writing, and I guess I needed a kick up the backside to get the ball rolling again. The irony is that I feel like my mind has never been more clear, yet also so cloudy. Most things about life seem so simple, but still there are those things that twist in your brain and that never seem to stop twisting harder.

This afternoon, I overhead a cancer patient telling his friend about how he wished he could just be dead already. The nurses joke with the patients about their pain and side effects, but it’s the kind of joke that makes your face smile but your eyes cry. I really wonder sometimes why people have to suffer - physically, psychologically, emotionally - but I never come up with any good reasons except to be in awe of the human body’s resilience and ability to cope with stress.

But we are not invincible, even though most of us live like we are.

I’m speaking on a panel tomorrow evening on the topic: “What would you ask the you in 15 years?” and I’ve been struggling to come up with questions. I feel like it wouldn’t really matter because for all the advice that I get given, I never truly take lessons on board until I have experienced it for myself.

I guess the only thing I would like to know would be what I value in 15 years time. There are a lot of things that we all want in life - I want a cool job, a nice house and cute kids .etc - and also a lot of things that we also don’t want in our life (I don’t want to live in a landlocked country). Then there are the few things that are essential to who we feel we are as individuals. Mine, at age 21, are to (1) have close relationships with the people who are important to me, (2) do meaningful things with my time, and (3) always find time and space to play. I have a theory that if we put our efforts into making sure that we hang on tight to these few things, then it really doesn’t matter what combination of the rest life will hand out to us.

I remember Steve Jobs saying that death is the greatest gift to life, and that all our fears fall away at the face of death. I didn’t really understand what he meant until I started a relationship with terminal illness. I’m not dying, but sometimes I feel myself living vicariously through the person who is.

Welcome to the abyss.

Embracing simplicity.

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 22:49:00 +1200

When I was in primary school, I remember finding out that “KISS” stood for Keep It Simple, Stupid. Being the immature little person that I was, I remember giggling to a lot of jokes based on this acronym.

Long story short, the phrase has stayed in my memory banks ever since.

A year or two ago, I thought that people who could think simply about life were not very “high-functioning” people. Things are complicated because things actually are complicated - and if you couldn’t appreciate how complicated things are, then you must not be switched on enough to appreciate the true nature of the situation.

Advice that other people would give me felt too general and too vague, and surely something like “do what feels right” was too simple to deal with the complexities of my young adult life.

When I was in Indonesia last month, a group of students did a presentation about building self-confidence in children from disadvantaged (mostly very poor) families and they cited this passage from the Serenity Prayer as their starting philosophy:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

At that point, I had been (and probably still am) struggling with changing life circumstances and how to cope with certain personal challenges. I was overcome with quite overwhelming inertia and physical exhaustion. Breaking dawn at the hospital wards and missed deadlines really take their toll when you are trying to convince yourself that you can still manage life as per normal - and my “normal” admittedly isn’t for the faint hearted.

I learnt two important lessons about making decisions during the past year, and it all came down to understanding how to think clearly and simply.

The first is the whole idea of not crying about spilt milk. If there is something that needs to be done or fixed, then do it and fix it. I’m flying off to the United States next Sunday for a month to visit a few hospitals in New York and see family, and I spent a good week bitter about all the things that I had to give up - two papers at university which means graduating a semester later, a forum in Hong Kong, an international case competition in Queenstown and an invitation to chair a panel at a national conference. I have a problem with saying ‘no’ to people and I felt that not only was I letting other people down, but that I was effectively stunting what otherwise would have been such an awesome second-half to the year.

All that I could think was: why me? I could have been so awesome.

If I stayed consumed by my circumstances, I would probably have found myself in a hole of self-pity. Life knows nothing about fairness, so there’s no point complaining about the cards that you are dealt. If you can understand the aspects of your life that you cannot change and have no control over, and learn to just accept them and worry instead about the things that you can change, then life becomes much easier and happier too.

Watching the paralympians compete at London has really crystalised that idea. They do more with their lives than what I can do with a fully functioning and healthy body. Sport, much like success in any endeavour, is all about the mental game.

The second goes back to one of the ‘mantras’ that I have relied on more and more to figure out how to navigate my life. I constantly ask myself about the things that I would regret ten, twenty or even thirty years down the track if I didn’t do them now. If I didn’t drop life in Auckland to pack my bags for the US, I think it would stick with me as something that I would really regret not doing for my mother while she was better.

Thinking about the things that you would (or perhaps wouldn’t) regret also means that short-term gratification really goes out the window. Missing a few trips and opportunities now really isn’t going to have any impact on my life a few years down the track, and so it’s not something I would turn around and say that I truly regretted giving it up - even though it might feel like the world to me right now.

Some things in life are far more important, and always thinking about what it would be like to see things in retrospect really helps to prioritise choices and decisions. I think that not doing something is sometimes actually harder than doing it. But if you rule out all the factors that make a decision complicated for you now - factors of recognition, prestige .etc - and go for the one that is going to make a bigger footprint on your life, then it usually turns out that not only is your mind a lot more at ease, but that you also tend to make better (and wiser) decisions too!

Turning 180 degrees from where I started, I now feel like too many people unnecessarily overcomplicate their lives. Most of our decisions are not really cognitive anyway - we don’t think, we feel - so why not do ourselves a favour and keep things simple?

Doing things for the credit.

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 18:58:00 +1200

Sometimes I think that my leadership style is a bit like a dictator. I get an idea, have a vision about how it’s going to be created, and then look for the team that will help me put it all together. By the time I have the team, it’s 1% concept and 99% execution.

But in many other cases, I am just as lost and confused as everyone else. People look to me for direction, and if I give you a straight answer - then I’m probably just making it up.

One of the things that I have noticed about university students, or perhaps just people in general, is the unwillingness to do things that do not receive recognition. I listened to an interview by the man in charge of London’s transport system during the Olympic games, and they joked about how if, by the end of the games, no one knows who he is - then he will have done his job well.

No one will congratulate him if he succeeds, because he is the invisible guy that make all the cogs turn. But should he fail, he will be the first person people turn their heads towards to blame.

The problem with new initiatives and quasi “startup” groups is that the work you put in relative to the recognition “reward” is terrible. You put in so many more hours than ends up actually being productive, and should you fail then no one will blink an eye.

But sometimes these are the best learning experiences. When you know that there is no credit waiting for you at the finish line, you attune yourself to the experiences and the things that make you tick. It stops being a means to an end, but an end in itself. And if there’s no “higher” purpose, then what are you doing here if not to learn and grow and figure out this thing that you’re doing and maybe even figure out yourself in the process too.

The things you learn from cancer.

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 21:02:00 +1200

I’m not sure if it’s because I’m becoming to notice it more, but it feels like cancer is stretching its hands across everyone’s lives.

A few decades ago, cancer probably wasn’t such a big deal because people weren’t living as long as they do now. Something else would get you first before cancer had its chance.

The advancement of medicine now gives cancer patients better chances, more time and a relatively comfortable departure - but none of this takes away from the fact that cancer is destructive on so many different levels.

It’s difficult to accept that there are hurdles that you cannot overcome. Of all the things that I have lost, you do learn a lot about yourself and about people in the process.

Human vulnerability is a beautiful yet sad thing. No one is bigger than their physical constraints - we are humbled by our own bodies. Pain batters and bruises. People will hang onto anything they can.

And you can tell so much about a person just by looking at them in the eyes.

Steve Jobs is not a perfect man, but he did have some interesting thoughts. He once said that “almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”

I don’t know whether it’s apathy that has overcome me, but you really learn how to separate the important from the insignificant; the meaningful from the irrelevant.

My hands.

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 23:05:08 +1200

If you could trace the memories of my hands, you would find that they have:

Played thousands of hours of music.
Touched the skin of countless people.
Written a whole journal of stories.
Broken many falls.
Knitted half a scarf.
Drawn lots and lots of doodles.
Created a few dozen sandcastles.
Ripped a book’s equivalent of unfinished manuscript.
Held vulnerable hands.
Made hundreds of dumplings.

In transit.

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:52:00 +1200

I’d like to describe myself as currently in transit between the life that I have been living, and the life that I’m about to live.

People aren’t always so patient and understanding of such a phase. They want to know what you are thinking and why. Why did you drop out of Honours Alice? Why did you go to Indonesia when you could have done so many more productive things with your life?

Why? Why? Why?

Anyway, here is something I actually wrote in transit at Sydney airport just over 2 weeks ago now that has recently been published. It’s about me trying to make sense of certain expectations that society has of me - where are you going and why? I can’t say I stand by what I said 100% right now but at least it makes for an interesting story.

You can find it here.

How quickly we let go.

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 04:07:00 +1200

On Thursday morning, I was in the backseat of a car driving back from Wukasari village back to the city area of Yogyakarta.

Just two hours earlier, I had been panicking about maybe finding myself dead before I could fly home. Wouldn’t that make for an interesting story? Fever, headache, muscle aches and stomach pains - coupled with a hard ground to sleep on, a little bucket for a bathroom and the heat - meant that more than anything in the world, I wanted to forget this place and go back to the comfort of the life and food and people and language that I knew and dearly missed.

I was so relieved to be able to sleep on a mattress in an airconditioned room that evening, but my ego hurt because I felt like such a wuss.

These overseas experiences that we have give us a glimpse of what life is like in a world vastly different from our own, but at the end of the day, it is still a world that is not our own.

When we leave, because we can leave, we return to our lives as quickly as we arrived. We forget the pain. We archive our memories. Sometimes we reach back to them and it tugs at us, but we let go.

Before we moved in to the village, I did a brief internship at an alternative education school for poor kids near the Jogja airport. I was touched by how happy these kids were to be there, and how incomparable the value of money was between our lives - with our university educations and the money to travel by air - and theirs.

Their need was pressing. But you get distracted by more need, everywhere.

Experiences blur into other experiences. You lose yourself momentarily, because you are neither here nor there.

You are one foot in; one foot out - and how quickly it is, that we can let one go.

Hi Alice :) I was wondering if you are still tutoring first year law at AU?

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 17:41:21 +1200

Yes I am :) shoot me an email at aliceandlife@gmail.com

Indonesia.

Sat, 07 Jul 2012 06:23:48 +1200

The past five days spent in Yogyakarta has given me a lot of perspective about who I have grown to be over the past 21 years.

I spent the day in the outskirts of the city at a school living a typical day for poor children in Indonesia. As much as I would like to think that I am adventurous and adaptable, my comfort zone is very small indeed.

I am stubborn, impatient and need time to myself. I am also critical, judgmental and headstrong. I love travelling for the experiences - the things we see, the things we feel - but find myself looking for things that I cannot find.

I love the feeling of being away temporarily because you are in the place that is neither here nor there. You can leave behind the history as you please, and you’re not yet constructing the future either.

Routine is just a flight away.

This is not our reality because we can escape it. At the school today I thought about how people can be inspired by the change that is being achieved in the local communities here, yet still go home and slot yourself perfectly back into the life you temporarily paused.

That is your life. This is just another experience to add to your library; photos to collect and publish and tag.

I often wonder about how these experiences impact on us as people. It seems like so many people are expert conference attendees. They are not agents of social change, but individuals looking for single-serving and disposable experiences.

This is (not) our reality.

It is our entertainment; our escape. And frighteningly real.

Indonesia in incredible...

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 22:16:08 +1200

… and completely blowing my expectations.

It is so different to anything that I’ve seen. We did a brief internship at an alternative education school today and it really makes you appreciate how lucky you are to have had a good education in New Zealand.

Will try and get a blog post going sometime over the next couple of days, but off to see a Indonesian ballet at a temple tonight! Internet access hasn’t been fantastic, but I’ve finally found a reliable cafe with wifi access - success :)

In the meantime, here’s a photo I took with some village kids up in the mountains surrounding Yogyakarta:

Very cheeky.

The opportunity cost of time is time.

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 17:11:55 +1200

So do all the things you want to do, now.

I would really hate to regret something I didn’t do a few years down the track.

Indonesia

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 22:03:00 +1200

Flying off to Indonesia tomorrow for two weeks and doing some last minute research on the country.

Did you know that:

Indonesia consists of just under 18,000 islands.
Is the fourth most populous country in the world.
Has the most active volcanoes in the world.
You can find every disease known to man in Indonesia.

Let’s hope that I come back home in one piece!

1. Why did you choose to pursue law instead of music? 2. If you could do anything in this world, knowing you can't fail, what would you do?

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 21:11:00 +1200

Hello! Thank you for your question, and excuse the super long answers that are going to follow…

1. Why did you choose to pursue law instead of music?

A number of things helped shape this decision, but I think a lot of it came down to gut feeling.

I used to say that if a Music & Law conjoint was available, but I would have picked that – but I think I probably would have dropped it after a year or two.

Music is generally segmented into three types of courses: performance, composition and musicology. I wasn’t particularly keen on music theory, never really enjoyed performing very much as a child because I always felt like I was being judged (and wouldn’t have made it as a performer anyway – I might have gotten into music school on performance but would’ve had done some of the lowest total practice hours in my year) and then composition was something that I thought I could and should pursue on my own.

What I really wanted to do was conducting, but there’s not really a linear path to that. I would have probably needed to have studied overseas at a top music school, but it wouldn’t have been affordable and also was a bit lazy at that point in time to put in the effort of applying and getting my portfolio ready.

A part of that decision was also that I really enjoyed my “liberal arts” subjects in high school – I loved English, Classics – and falsely thought that law might be similar to that.

Job security and career prospects was another consideration. And of course, I was comfortable doing academic subjects (and not so confident in my abilities to write or play good music) and so it seemed like the best choice at the time.

I’ve thought about this decision in hindsight quite a few times, but I definitely don’t regret studying law. Even though I’m not heading off to be a lawyer after I graduate, I think law teaches people to think in a particular way which can really come in handy in life. It also forces you to assert yourself.

The only thing I might have done differently was maybe to not be so lazy during my first 2 years of university study and actually sit my LRSM exam. I had picked my pieces and started practicing, but major lack of discipline kicked in!

I really which I was tech and commercially savvy though. Soft skills are really fantastic. But you sometimes really need hard skills too. If I could stay being 21 for a few more years, I would come back and do a bit of engineering and commerce. Super geeky, I know.

2. If you could do anything in this world, knowing you can’t fail, what would you do?

I would do something totally ambitious like attempt to make the world a better place by improving health, living and education standards. Or be a professional tennis player!

But in practical terms, I would totally take the plunge and go with a crazy idea that I have – when it comes. One thing that I have been thinking a lot about is equality of opportunity, and the role that education plays in achieving this. Even though people may receive the same formal education, obviously family background – things like socioeconomic status .etc – play a big difference to the opportunities that a person can access and achieve.

Not enough high achievers head into education, even though that’s where they are needed the most (the pay incentives, lifestyle and prestige .etc of professional services is too appealing) and so if I knew that I could achieve substantial change on a systemic level by really improving education, then I would do that.

I think I’ll probably still chase that idea somewhere down the track, but of course you have to start from somewhere – and now is not the right time.

One thing that I’ve realised is that if you truly care about the cause, then you want to be as valuable and add as much as you can to it. I think my value add now, compared to my value add in a few years, is HUGELY different. It sounds a bit like economics, which people somehow perceive to be incompatible with positive social outcomes, but there’s a lot of truth to this.

Hope that answers your question :)

curious :) When you are tired (or plain defeated/unmotivated) but need to keep going (mentally & physically), where do you find that strength to pack another punch? I mean, where do you personally draw strength or the need to fight for a better life?

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 22:23:53 +1200

Hello! Interesting question :)

I’ve had a lot of people recently ask me how I “do it”. I’ve never been able to answer that question very well but here is an attempt…

I think most of it comes down to attitude, and I suppose mine has been shaped quite a bit by particular life experiences.

Having a good attitude is, in my opinion, what really defines a person. You can have a certain set of talents and inherit a certain qualities, but the attitude is what makes and breaks people. This is why I find entrepreneurship so fascinating, because you are essentially creating something from zero. People can do some truly incredible things and it all comes down to having a good mind.

And so I spend a lot of time doing things that will clear up my mind, because I realize that in situations where you are stuck between a rock and a hard place, you can lose everything as long as you still have your resilience. I always take time out to broaden my views and learn more about the world. It helps that I have trouble saying no to things that interest me, and I like reading about the things that I generally also end up writing about – the human condition or the human psyche, whatever you want to call it.

Anyway, to the question! There are a few things that push me.

The first is purpose. There have been a few situations in my life recently where you realise that not making it through is not an option. Sometimes things overwhelm you and you have too much on your plate, but when giving up is completely out of the equation, that in itself removes a lot of the struggle.

I remember talking to a number of people over the years about how they managed to overcome significant adversity. Their answer to “how did you make it through?” was always “well I had to.”

There is no ‘other’ choice.

The second thing is resilience. In practical terms, you can’t build resilience from nothing. You need to give yourself a break when you need a break. When my brain is shutting down and every inch of my body and mind is saying no, no, no – I take a shower. It’s a bit weird, but I go and take a long shower. And it feels good. And then I come back to whatever I was trying to do. The other things that refresh my mind is looking out a window, and sitting on a bus. I don’t know why, but moving things really helps me reflect and gather my thoughts. I actually once took a subway all the way across Beijing and then back again because I needed some time to think.

If I had a car and a license and money to burn on fuel, I would go for long drives. Not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself.

You also need to spend time with people who make you want to keep going. You need to also surround yourself with people that you can feel vulnerable around. People that can help you put together a plan, or just listen to you swear for half and hour. I don’t swear very often in everyday situations, but I swear a crap load when I’m under a lot of pressure. Sometimes I swear because I’m terrified. Sometimes I swear because I’m miserable and want it to just disappear and be gone. Do something that lets you get it out.

And be nice to yourself. I have to admit that although I’m generally a nice and patient person, I am a total bitch to myself. I put myself through hell and back and really know how to punish. I think we have to realise that we are only human, and if there is something that we really can’t do, then just let it go. Some things are really not worth it.

When all else fails, I think we all need to cling on to some smidgen of hope or faith. I generally believe that things will always work out for the best, whether that’s in a week’s time or in a few years or over a lifetime. I have been shaped quite a lot by my migrant background and the sacrifices that my parents made, and that has given me a lot of clarity in my life – not in the sense that I know a lot more, but that it has made the equation much simpler that it otherwise would have been. I have also met many interesting people whose stories have given me a lot of perspective.

I find strength in stories that inspire me, and in a life filled with interesting experiences rather than going through life and having done everything ‘right’. I have the luxury of having options, which I realise that many other people don’t have. But I think fear of deviating from linearity not only traps us but it also paralyses us.

I have many lows, and sometimes the lows can really get very low. But it all comes down to taking yourself not so seriously, realising that you have very little to lose physically and sometimes just a matter of mentally committing and saying: “fuck it, let’s do this”.

A spanner in the works.

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 22:07:00 +1200

For the past two weeks or so, I have been experiencing major writer’s block.

So for all the thoughts that have started and ended up in nobody’s land, I thought - screw it, let’s cure writer’s block by writing something about writer’s block.

One of the reasons that I haven’t been able to finish off anything that I’ve tried to start is because I have been spending a lot of time thinking about nothing in particular. It’s not the same as having an empty mind; it’s like the feeling that you get when you are given so much information all at the same time that you don’t know where to start and so you foolishly try and process it ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

You know that your mind is thinking - just not what it’s thinking.

Sometimes when I have serious conversations with people, I can’t help but just start laughing. One of the weird things about me is that I laugh when I’m nervous, scared or tired. But in these particular conversations, I laugh because I sometimes think that life is just so terribly ironic.

Wind back to eight years ago, I remember being so jealous of other people who had all the things that I didn’t have. Wind back to now and you can’t believe that you and them, and them and you, were and are still the same people.

Life can be so funny like that.

On an (un)related note, I had a really awful morning today because it was one of those moments (which are becoming increasingly common) where you have one foot in each door and are failing at both. Having responsibilities in two or three different places can really tear me apart sometimes, because you feel like you’re simultaneously disappointing two or three different people.

But you can’t help it, because you only have 24 hours a day and only one chance at 9 am on a Monday morning.

Disappointment hurts.

In the afternoon, I spoke to a lecturer who, after correcting some horrendously awful misunderstandings that I had about the course, told me that I had potential. I could go to Oxford, he said. I was on my way to the top, he said.

BUT, he said - and this is where I laughed, because irony can be so cruel sometimes - but we make choices in life with the circumstances that we are given. Just because I am on the right track doesn’t mean that I’ll get there. Life has stuck it’s foot out and said, things are going to get tough.

An analogy: I sometimes really dislike the ‘deck of cards’ metaphor because when you have a genuinely crap hand, all you can rely on is good luck. Sometimes it’s beyond skill and hard work and how you play your hand. Sometimes you just have to believe in something - God, karma, anything - that things will work out.

And sometimes they do.

Sometimes they don’t.

I wish I could underline the words “have” and “believe” and “something”.

Someone was listening to Ke$ha on the bus this evening and I must say, society sure does a good job labeling and wagging the finger at “happy” music for being “dumb”. On the other hand, “intelligent” music can be horribly depressing. Anyway, so Ke$sha was on this bus with me and I felt so full of nothingness (the overloaded type, the systems error) that I so badly wanted a life of 100% spontaneity.

[Explanation: I also have a bad habit of jumping to extremes.]

I’ve always been such a relatively good “Chinese daughter” (c.f. children in general, “Chinese daughter” is in a class of its own) that doing spontaneous things always felt like my adrenaline kick. The not-so-rebellious rebellion against order and being sensible.

But you know what I’ve realised? Sometimes being spontaneous is to be sensible. There are so many variables that have put you where you are today that your very existence is, by definition, a freak accident. To cite my good friend Rawls who has been keeping me company over the past two weeks, every single aspect of who you are, where you are, and what you can do, is truly arbitrary.

Life is one giant fucking gamble.

It’s time to shut up now and go deal with it.

Not where they hoped they'd be.

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 20:59:00 +1200

A number of reunions and ‘brushes with the past’ serve as a constant reminder of how life can take such unexpected turns.

Life takes us up and down - sometimes it will be charitable; at other points, life can be cruel.

And sometimes we just need a slice of humble pie.

Take a look at this fascinating set of photographs capturing images of a struggling young generation of university graduates: Not Where They Hoped They’d Be.

When the lack of motivation to study hits, I dream about being a...

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 21:21:05 +1200

When the lack of motivation to study hits, I dream about being a pirate!

I wish I had the finger dexterity of this pianist. He does a really fantastic performance of Pirates of the Carribean, which happens to be one of my favourite film scores.

So catchy.

Why you have nothing to lose.

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 12:17:00 +1200

I am in constant denial of the fact that one of my defining characteristics is that I am easily bored. I wanted to call it a “problem” or a “flaw” because sometimes it really truly feels like a problem that I wish I could just throw out, but I suppose it’s actually just a characteristic that, like crazy morning hair, needs you to (a) admit to yourself that you can’t change the fact that you have a predisposition to an unruly attention span and (b) tame the monster every once in a while.

The flip side of being someone who is bored easily is that you feel like you have nothing to lose. It makes you rather reckless sometimes, but also frees you of the fear of missing out or losing out on something.

You know that there are so many more interesting things out there in the world that any particular instance isn’t such a big deal.

I think our society is plagued by this fear of losing something. There is something wired into us that we struggle to live in the moment and in fear of the future to come or the future to be.

We are scared of screwing up, and that fear chains us to always staying close to averages - never extremes.

The fallacy is that people believe they have to be extraordinary, different - ‘special’ - in order to achieve the things that lie on the extremes of the bell curve. All the ‘normal’ people are doomed to being only 1 or 2 standard deviations away from the norm.

But from what I have seen of these brilliant people, they are really just ordinary people with an indestructible conviction for what they do.

And young people really have nothing to lose. We all learnt to walk and talk by falling over a lot and sounding ridiculous for the first few years of life. Yet we forget that failure is all part of the process. I really hate failing at things, to the extent that I’d almost never go for things that are deemed ‘too risky’ if I didn’t hate being bored even more.

If you aspire to be average, then you will almost certainly be average.

On a related note, I read a convocation speech last year that I stumbled upon again recently - and I think it hits the nail spot on. You can find it reproduced below!

Adrian Tan, author of The Teenage Textbook (1988), was the guest-of-honour at a recent NTU convocation ceremony. This was his speech to the graduating class of 2008.

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.