My favorite colors to wear are on the darker end of the spectrum – black, grey, charcoal, dark blue. But my choice of colors in shoes is red, deep and dark red to be precise, like my guitar.
That color captures a good part of my soul – the part that feels anger. I think most of the time the feelings were warranted even if the expression wasn’t. Regardless, I think anger was important in my development, it clarified what I believed in through what made me angry, it kept me alive and protected me when I was being bullied and attacked,
Anger is also often accepted as the only emotion men are supposed to have. That’s simply wrong. It wasn’t the only feeling I had, but I was just too immature or scared to show others – especially fear, sadness, and ironically, joy.
These days, I’m too tired to be angry at much. I’m not sure whether that’s a good or bad thing. But it’s there, a deep reserve to draw on in times if needed.
My doctoral dissection is less than 150 pages, short by many standards, and especially in my field where as a friend puts it so eloquently, verbal diarrhea is common. But as one of my advisors put it, it has at least double the work of a standard one. It was heavily influenced by General David Petraeus’ own Princeton dissertation on the US military’s counterinsurgency efforts during the Vietnam War and of course, the bible of strategy, Sun Tzu’s Art of War, and actually when I think more about it – the Bible itself.
The data analysis and writing took a relatively short period – as I recall just weeks. The hard part was coming up with the concept – this took years, a ton of reading, and waiting for everything to really set in.
This one is about waiting.
Especially in faith.
My favorite song of all time is U2’s With or Without You. I used to teach what I thought was a pretty insightful interpretation of the lyrics to my Sunday School class. I wrote a lengthier explanation to someone earlier that I may post at some point – that’s its own story. But I digress.
I read somewhere that the song has three entities in it. The singer, a woman, and a “you.” The woman represents sin or something negative and the “you” is God. Listen to it from this perspective, it can hold water.
The song’s main theme and lament at some point is about waiting. And how we do that – for resolution, hope, justice, grace, love, God to show up.
Recently, I remarked to my daughter’s godfather that U2 writes Christian songs without their listeners knowing it. Pearl Jam does it without themselves knowing it.
I took my daughter to a U2 tribute band concert. I think this is the one song that captures who I am the most – the ethereal opening, simple and solid bass line, the piercing guitar, and somewhat hidden, conflicted lyrics.
There’s this scene in the Bible where the prophet Jeremiah is complaining to God about some injustice or another. What God says back is interesting:
“If you get tired while racing against people, how can you race against horses? If you stumble in a country that is safe, what will you do in the thick thornbushes along the Jordan River?”
It is the opposite of a backhanded compliment. On the surface, God is rebuking Jeremiah, but if you read closely, He’s really telling him who he is or will be – someone truly strong.
In teaching, the rule of thumb is that for every hour of lecture, you spend 3 hours of preparation.
Bruce Lee – “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
A Hundred Eyes – “Kung Fu is supreme skill from hard work. A great poet has reached Kung Fu. The painter, the calligrapher, they can be said to have Kung Fu. Even the cook, the one who sweeps steps, or a masterful servant, can have Kung Fu. Practice. Preparation. Endless repetition. Until your mind is weary, and your bones ache. Until you’re too tired to sweat. Too wasted to breathe. That is the way, the only way one acquires Kung Fu.”
I interviewed for prosecutor positions all over the country.
Miami – 30K salary a year, nope
Sacramento – how far is it from the beach?
Boston – while my favorite US city, 36K, nope
Chicago – would have been cool, second favorite US city, got back to me too late
Queens – drug port of entry, ugly back then, still ugly, will always be ugly
And a ton of other applications to the rest of the 50.
At the end, it came down to Minnesota and Philadelphia. Minnesota made a lot of sense – higher pay, lower cost of living, presence of a mentor, could actually buy a decent place with a yard, safer (although professionally would have experienced less).
It ended up being Philadelphia for several reasons – I think I was done with the Midwest for a while, wanted to be closer to friends on the East Coast, and a seemingly better chance to find a wife. I also didn’t want to get talked to anymore at church basketball games.
I attended the Philadelphia Chinatown Church because I thought I would fit in. Also as stated previously. maybe meet a nice girl.
The girl I lit the candles for was actually relatively close, but I didn’t realize this initially because my sense of geography and direction have always been somewhat limited. I eventually did. But I digress.
It didn’t go well. Apologies to anyone with ties to the University of Pennsylvania, but wow, many of them need to chill out. You don’t need to be that on all the time. It’s Sunday! It’s church! We do not need a seminar on Guns, Germs, and Steel! There were a few cute girls, but nothing really fit. And to be fair, I’m also not much of a looker and charmer. Also, not Christian enough.
The straw for me was this Bible study I went to and the leader teaches us that all jobs are depraved. I told him that mine didn’t appear to be so. And maybe his job was the depraved one (it did seem awfully boring). That didn’t go down well.
I do meet a very close and dear friend in the city who was law enforcement who ends up laughing with me over the decades.
Recently, he told me the most recent senior pastor of the church got taken down for attempted child sex solicitation. We laughed so hard. Sorry, gallows humor and all that.
(Nothing funny about sex crimes. Speaking about depravity, I consider it at times worse than the taking of a life. We were laughing at the pastor).
This one is about my maternal grandmother – a truly remarkable person and the reason for many affected lives, in and outside the family. About many lessons including resilience, endurance, hope, and origin stories.
Grandma was dropped off by her father at the orphanage when she was 9. He told her he would come back for her in 2 weeks but never did. Grandma waited by the door of the orphanage in vain. We don’t really know why she got dropped off but it was likely because they couldn’t afford to feed her.
Later, she was “given” to a wealthy family to be an indentured servant. They were cruel to her, making her wash the roof in the rain to save water. She got sick. Grandma also got beaten a lot for misbehaving. Guess who else took after her – yours truly and her great granddaughter – her first great-grandchild with her blood.
Although she couldn’t swim, she rescued two of her master’s family from drowning. And survived a Japanese bombing AND torpedo attack. In the latter, she was so brave, she stole into the luggage compartment to retrieve their possessions when the ship was sinking.
Raised 6 kids, survived poverty, widowhood. Tough and smart as hell. Never sat die. Confronted a woman who was trying to steal away grandpa. Threatened to chop off a burglar’s hand with a meat cleaver. Quit smoking cold turkey overnight just out of sheer will.
On her deathbed, still sharp enough to curse out nurses by their mother tongue.
Tough as hell but also kind. Loved pets and people.
Many lived because of her.
I met her master’s family at her funeral. Because it was a Christian ceremony, no Samuel L. Jackson options were available to me.
I almost didn’t want to write this one, but it’s memorable for many reasons – 20+ years and I still can’t wrap my head around it. I’ll let you decide.
This incident occurred in Indiana during the winter of my second year in law school. I attended an Asian American fellowship hosted at a Korean church.
Another church set up a retreat held at a site several hours away, I drove our group on a Friday evening. It was snowing and Indiana roads are often dark. When we got to the site, the only means of entry was a one lane road. It was night when we arrived. The first event is a worship service where within moments, everyone is crying loudly.
How do I know it was everyone? Because the senior pastor pulls me up on stage in front of everybody and asks why I’m not crying. I’m too tired to respond. He then places his hand on my head and asks whether I feel anything – like a tingling. Nope. On my chest. Nope. Exasperated, he asks what’s wrong with me – I reply “I’m Chinese.” He then goes “Oh, ok” and lets me go.
For the next two days, we are subject to what can be only described as emotional manipulation. They feed us meals consisting of small styrofoam cups of instant noodles. No showers or bunks, we sleep on the floor, overflowing toilets. We get woken up early and kept up late for services. I wanted to go home after the first day, but we were snowed in.
The pastor keeps trying to get me to give in. Physically and mentally exhausted, I do. But I’m the last one to break and I did not cry. We Malaysians are tough suckers when we need to be. I just made up some BS about having to let go and trust God more. I may as well have been reciting Bernoulli’s equation. That’s how much I wasn’t thinking at that point.
Thankfully we manage to go home. As I recall, I play goalie in floor hockey that night. It never felt so good to be alive and free.
A colleague once said true power belonged to me in our unit – the one in the corner who schemed. I wasn’t sure whether to shake my head or laugh.
First, I only sat in the corner once – at the basement of 1 PP with no heat or A/C. The other times, I was actually placed in the middle of the floor plan. Next, I’m no schemer. I took my job extremely seriously, but during downtime played fantasy football (5 teams simultaneously, one even unbeaten) and studied the teachings of Bill Belichick.
I did plan extremely carefully in terms of the Department’s policies and procedures. A significant part of strategy.
That being said, a lot of strategy is muddling through. Make it to the next day. Buy as much time as possible. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. When that happens, muddle. Like crazy.
This principle shows up in history and individual lives. In the Battle of Britain where the German Luftwaffe wanted to soften England for invasion, the British RAF fought back hard. They were strained to the breaking point. Then suddenly, Hitler decides to suspend his plan to invade. The Brits eventually bought enough time to regroup and for the US industrial and military juggernaut to enter the war.
A military friend told me about a fellow soldier who was in bad shape and had to be placed on suicide watch. My friend helped get him through and now he is married with kids.
One of the British slogans for the war was the oft cited “Keep Calm and Carry On.”
There’s an analogy about how caterpillars have to undergo a drastic (painful?) metamorphosis to become a butterfly. Apparently, the caterpillar’s parts are completely transformed to become this supposedly beautiful new creature. And somehow this validates the purpose of struggling.
First, I think I prefer being the caterpillar. No need to fly and have fragile wings. I’m happy being a little green thing hanging out on a leaf and eating said leaf.
Yet, struggling is an inevitable part of our existence. You made it look so effortless on your end. Not like me, so apparent at times and frankly ugly, inelegant, and choppy. Struggling, however, gives us our true skills and powers – the gifts that matter.
A former undercover would often refer to this concept – viewing the world through different lenses. A significant part of Orientation, the big O in OODA.
Probably oversimplifying this, but basically the more lenses one has access to, the better the probability of generating an effective, efficient solution. Lenses are connected to the diversity of life experiences, skill set, culture (national, ethnic, professional), and other factors.
If you ever get frustrated when someone gives you advice that doesn’t fully address a complex issue, an insufficient or inadequate set of lenses is probably at issue. When they draw on a prior experience that doesn’t exactly fit yours. A possible analogy here is a toolbox. If you only have a hammer in it, you will hammer at everything, including situations which require another tool.
In the real world, this is part of the reason why religious institutions have such a difficult time with sexual assault / child molestation issues. Yes, there are definitely many instances of cover-ups and malfeasance. But I also think that this is due to lack of familiarity with justice and victims. Christianity can focus quite a bit on forgiveness, grace – which can be misapplied to overemphasize the needs of the offender or perpetrator. Sadly, I know quite a few instances of this phenomenon.
On a brighter and much more hopeful note, the possibility of combining lenses is exciting. In a world that is increasingly based on overlapping cultures, professions, values, even necessary.
Also connected to leadership. Before Ulysses S. Grant led the Union to victory, he had a series of professional and personal experiences, many of which weren’t stellar. In many ways, however, those experiences and the skills, knowledge gained prepared him for his formidable role and task.
So read, travel, talk to people, watch stuff. Just make sure it’s on a wide scale.
Songs of Pain and Hope 