Piggy’s Blog - Journey of Success and Greatness

I made some changes to the blog, as an SEO effort to make the site more search-engine-spider-friendly and to reach out to more people (if the changes have any effect). They are mostly internal, except one change. I changed the way the permalink is formatted which includes the post title, instead of just having the numeric post ID, which provides no meaning and relevance to search engines.

As a result, if you have previously bookmarked a post, please update your bookmark and I do apologize for the inconvenience. Also, if you experience any broken link in previous posts, despite my effort to go back and hunt for them, please notify me to correct them through the contact page. Thanks!

Everywhere I go on the internet and many materials I read, people use the word success as an acryonm of the possession of incredible money and wealth. I do not intend to criticize people who use the word as such, because such usage of the word has been built into us over the centuries and has become a natural trend. But a mindfulness to pay attention to such details and critical think such informaion is what we need to overhaul many existing problems. This brings me to the topic of wisdom.

Wisdom is the process of critical thinking accompanied by awareness. By such, I mean the process of taking in information, understanding and evaluating them, then using your own aggregated version of such information adjoined with your set of principles and values to change and make decisions — meanwhile, doing each step in the process with awareness.

Such is wisdom. Wisdom connects the dots between information, which is learned using intelligence.

The conditions of current society and education system have mostly strip away people’s ability of critical thinking. In other word, intelligence is emphasized and wisdom neglected. Without critical thinking, the more you study, read blogs, news, books, and accumulate informations, the more harmful it becomes because you will get information poisoning. Without the ability of critical thinking to process knowledge and information, you become a mannequin that is pulled in all the different directions implicated by them which came from different sources, or you may get hung up on one specific idea told by an important world figure, a writer or a blogger, which includes me.

Do not simply listen to me or others. Understand yourself. Think for yourself. That is what I always urge. And that is why I rarely dose out specific details or sets of rules and tips on what to do on personal development and personal finance here. First of all, because I am no expert and I am always still learning myself. Second of all, if my words motivate you to think and act for yourself, you can easily find lots of information out there. If I or anybody else simply tells you what to do and you simply follow the words, that is not useful in my perspective. Learn to critical think and you can become wise and useful for yourself and others around you, without reliance on experts, gurus, or whatever.

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime”

Each of us already has a lot of information inside our heads, being part of a culture, club, religion, or sub-community that are governed by a set of beliefs and rules… however, did you ever calm down and look closely to evaluate them? Did you ever attempt to understand what they truly mean? Do you simply tie yourself to a set of principles that came externally? And take them as your own and perhaps try to force them on to others? Do you dare not dispute them? I am not asking these questions to criticize you nor to ask you to haphazardly reject what you believe at the moment. I am asking you to think. Be honest with yourself. Be aware.

Imagine information and knowledge as a double edged sword and wisdom as the strength to wield the sword. Wisdom allows one to wields the sword of information and knowledge and leverage them to create positive change and results through informed decisions. Like someone without the strength to wield a sword that is too heavy for him will invariably get hurt swinging the sword, information and knowledge will invariably hurt those who lack wisdom yet wield them.

During today’s information age, we have more information, more knowledge available than ever, but we lack the wisdom to wield them currently. That is why so much harm we are doing to each other and to nature.

I was driving from Palo Alto to Los Gatos to a friend’s birthday gathering at a park. There was no strict time I need to get there so I took my sweet little time.

As I was driving south on highway 85, I had my windows down and the system up driving at 60 mph on the slow lane. I usually drive faster than that, but there and then, I had an epiphany, that everything as it is was perfect. The day as it is. I was in the moment. It was an exciting or overwhelming feeling but simple contentment and joy. The wind that comes driving at 60 mph was just right, so I kept the speed. There was absolutely no need to rush, so I did not rush. There was no need. Because that was the moment. There and then. There is no elsewhere to be.

While I was driving at my leisure, enjoying the wind, enjoying the driving, enjoying the weather, cars are zooming by me on the next lane at who knows what speed. It did not matter. I simply wonder where and why they are rushing to and felt slightly bad for those who feel they cannot slow down. Though I fully enjoyed being not part of the rushing.

That was awesome because how often can you admit that?

With today’s hectic life style, it’s hard for us to have alone time. I am talking about authentic alone time, where you are all by yourself (alone physically) and completely in the moment with yourself (lonely emotionally), not distracted from doing or thinking about other things. True one on one time. Just be there, with yourself.

How much one has mastered himself and his own mind directly shows in the comfort level when he is truly by himself.

“Oh my god, I’m bored, I need to…
… call someone on my cellphone!
… check Facebook!
… browse the web/YouTube/blogs!
… go out somewhere fun!
… go shopping!”

And BAM, you end up spending money. Therefore, to be comfortable being alone and lonely will help you save money. Follow me.

I dare to say a majority of people are not comfortable with themselves. Look at the rampancy where people are constantly, and I do mean constantly, talking on cellphones, texting, writing emails, browsing social networks, etc. Never a minute to be truly by themselves.

Being alone and lonely. To get used to themselves. To provide quiet moments for the mind to digest information. To simply let the mind rest so to stay calm. Through which, they can come see things as they are. But no, people are way too busy. They even try very hard to stay busy. They must succeed! But remember, what is success?

Consumerism is probably a result of this, where people fill their moments with the excitement of buying things, owning things, bragging about the things they own. They fill their moments and physical space with things, things, and more things as distraction.

Existing common knowledge says aloneness is bad. People avoid being alone. They even get depressed. “Oh my god, oh my god, I am all by myself!” Is being alone so bad? Is being lonely so bad? In reality, we are all alone since birth because nobody can fully be you, and nobody can fully understand you.

Like avoiding people they do not like, people avoid being alone. If you never get time alone, how do you ever understand yourself? Without such understanding, your action may or may not align with what you truly want out of life.

Do you want your life to be like rolling the dice? Or do you want to choose to be who you want to be? Is such busy life worth it?