Today’s post is brought to you from my good friend D, who originally wrote it as an email to a friend. Personally, I love it. I hope you enjoy it too.

I wanted to share with you a story and a lesson I learned. This is a rare letter. It does not require a reply, nor any thanks. Just attention for a few moments.

A man was walking his path. Few days after leaving the comforts of his house he came to the bank of a river. He stood there for a few days drinking its fresh water, eating its fish, sleeping on the soft dry sand of the bank. But to continue his journey he had no choice but to cross it, since there was no bridge in sight.

So, one day, he decided to do so.

As he stepped into the ice cold water, his legs and feet start to hurt. The current was very powerful and he was submerged several times by the force of it. As he struggled not to drown, stones and sands were painfully hitting his body. As he started to lose his strength and thought all hope was lost, two men on the other side of the bank came to his help, throwing him a rope and probably saving his life.

With his body still battered by the crossing, shivering from the cold, sore and exhausted by the sincere effort, the traveler stopped and turn back and stare at the river. Looking at its tumultuous waters, he said “thank you”.

In the short path of our life’s, sometimes, we face adversities. We have to cross rivers. There are two choices we can make.

We can either be angry at the river because its a river. Curse its existence and its choice of path. We can decide to believe that the suffering that it gave is fruitless and meaningless. In such a case, as we are presented with many rivers to cross, life becomes a continuous source of endless hanger, pointless pain and consuming frustration.

On the other hand we can choose to notice the gifts the rivers carry. Often we drink its water and eat its food. More importantly, as we face hardship we have the opportunity to understand who we really are. What are we made of, our strength, the meaning of courage and our weakness. Each time a river is crossed, we grow stronger and wiser. The path of life becomes easier. What are rivers for some, become small creeks to us, and they don’t bother our minds as much. In the moment of hardship, when all hope is lost we have a rare opportunity to see who really is next to us. The people who genuinely care for us, who selflessly help, and who can love without reserve and without the desire or need to be rewarded. In such a case, life becomes a continuous source of blessings and joy is behind every struggle.

One day, not too long ago, I too was in a very frustrating situation. I felt betrayed, and humiliated. The hate for a person and bitterness of her actions was devouring my days. I did not enjoy that state of mind so I asked a friend for guidance.

He asked “Are you starving?”
“No, not really” I replied.
“So you must be really really thirsty?”
“…No, not at all” I replied again.
“Well, then it must be you have not been sleeping for days”.
“I am not sure why you say that, but I slept fine” I said.
“So are you really so fragile?…. It is what it is. If you really understand the source of it, you can only smile and move on.”

Suddenly I realized I was not fragile. My disappointment with others was misplaced expectation and, in a way, it was funny as asking a dog to be a cat. So, I smiled and moved on.

How do we create a perfect software product in no time?
(Inspired by some Dilbert moments in work meetings… though essentially, that is what managers, executives, and other so-called leaders want and ask for [implicitly] these days. Oooooh, if only they can get it.)

Some of the answers I got… (thanks to my friends)

• hahaha you write one line of code…hello world and that’s it *ROFL*
• not sure, probably the same way we fly without wings
• in the design….you state that your goal is to create an imperfect software product..and therefore it is perfect by definition
• tell ur bosses to wait til we die and go to heaven first
• Buy it from Japan.
• – fix the requirements and don’t change them
  – agile software development
  – reasonable sized team (I’d say about 5-10 people, but it depends on the size of the project)
  and the last requirement
  – STOP MESSING WITH THE ORIGINAL REQUIREMENTS
• answer is simply stop writing becase “in no time” means only crap can be created

What’s you answer? Go.

In computer science, divide-and-conquer is a common technique applied in both practical programming and abstract algorithm to solve complex problems efficiently. In other words, a complex problem is continuously and/or recursively broken down to simple workable chunk to be managed, manipulated, and calculated individually, and finally re-combined to get a solution for the original problem. What a wonderful tactic!

Well well, does that sound kind of familiar? Maybe. Maybe not. I find it quite similar to the way we do things in life.

As humans, to make sense of life, to navigate through human community/society, and also for convenience, we break down reality into small chunks.

In nutshell, with our scientific mind, our logical mind, we analyze reality, break it down into “things” and give “things” names through words/language. As society and civilization become more and more complex, so more “things” and words are developed, and we begin to put many “things” and words together to develop patterns.

So in the beginning, there is reality but no thing.
Then we created things with language.
Then we create patterns of life with things and language.

And as days go by, we create more and more things, more and more words, and more and more patterns. And we are still going at creating more!

Patterns are like boxes.

So now, we are all given birth, and as we grow up, our parents and society would put us in boxes… and we grow up to put ours in boxes (perhaps some newly created ones)

Oh, you must be an upstanding citizen. Patriot who protects the countries. Muslim who worships Allah. Christian who preaches in the name of Jesus. You must be successful. You must make others happy. You are to love your parents. You should never lie. You must not have sex before marriage. You must obey the filial piety according to Confucius. You will become a doctor, lawyer, engineer, hedge fund manager or whatever. Work hard and you will succeed. Eat non-fat and you will be healthy. You need to get married, have a family, and have kids. Max out 401k and IRAs and you can retire. Oh my oh my! Boxes!

So you may be thinking now, “Are you saying we need to destroy and abolish “things”, words, and all patterns of life?” My answer is, “No”.

So what am I trying to get at?

My point is we are missing the point of living the whole way along. It is almost like we used divide-and-conquer without ever re-combining the simple workable chunks, but instead, keep on dividing the chunks into smaller chunks… On top of that, we completely forget the original problem we wanted to solve.

Surely, we all choose to live however we want. Here, I am entertaining the idea that there could be a more favorable experience of living. More specifically, to get better in touch with reality, and hence lead to the result of being able to find harmony with ourselves and our environment.

We have forgotten that we had created things, words, and patterns from the very beginning to navigate reality but they are not the reality. Yes, they are now part of our human reality but still, not THE reality.

Think of it this way, when you see a banana, you can call or think of it as banana. But if you don’t know the word, “banana”, is the banana still reality, or is it not?

You know it.

Reality is more than just words and patterns. When we lack the words and patterns to label and define parts of reality, it does not mean it is not reality!

And so we miss the point.

Us modern people since industrialization, let our logical minds completely dominate, to the point where, words and patterns ARE reality. When reality is something outside of the realm of our words and patterns, we get completely insecure and to make us feel alright again, we invent new patterns to try to force things the way we like, and if unsuccessful, we twist and bend words to conceal and cover the reality. That is, in a most simple example, we would deny a banana is there if we lack the word to call it.

As such, we are often either in denials, or in complete ignorance of reality to do what we need to do as real solution.

We take our patterns too literally. We take ourselves too seriously. Seriously!

Therefore, instead of tips, techniques, or methods, I write what I do here — mostly for my own enjoyment but also — it will be much more substantial for each of us to shift our fundamental attitude of life, of reality to bring about real change.

If I shall put it more strongly, beyond the limit of our rules and language, lies truth and enlightenment.

The one crucial step, to mature as a human being, to become wise, and probably even to enlightenment (if you are so inspired) is to learn the patterns but be able to set them asides, knowing that they are artificial.

Do no abandon words and patterns. Do not fight them. To make use of the patterns (as our original intent of creating them), we just need to re-understand them as patterns. As invention for our own convenience, words and patterns — developed through thoughts and conveyed by words — make good servants but poor masters.

It is no news that California government is taking a chunk of our paychecks now only to pay us back later, hopefully not with IOUs. Besides the general emotional response, beyond the effect it may have on our budgets, this is a general trend we can see of our society.

We keep on borrowing from tomorrow.
From individuals to local government to the national level.

Correspondingly…
From moving debt from one credit line to the next.
To taking tax revenue that really does not really exist.
To taking on great deal of national debt to “stimulate” economy. (Social Security aside…)

And most cases, if it is not that we don’t try to pay it back, it is that we have spent/run out of resources to pay it back. But in the end, the debt will always catch up and bite us in the ass. Somehow, eventually.

Borrowing from time, borrowing from tomorrow will never work. It will never solve anything.

When will we learn?

I asked the question, “What could be wisdom?” last post. Indeed, it is quite elusive. FB @ FabulouslyBroke.com mentioned common sense, and how her parents and grandparents have them.

So, old people come to mind when wisdom is mentioned?
Then, is wisdom simply old age?

Though, that still does not answer what wisdom is. Old age is also not it because there are many unwise old people. It’s just that they are more likely to be wiser than their young counterpart.

I find in eastern culture (not the eastern culture now), the people have more emphasis to wisdom due to the influence of Buddhism and Taoism. There were a bunch of people who were in search of being enlightened. Just look at the existing techniques… meditation, yoga, reciting mantra, zazen, physical isolation, etc. The ones who become enlightened thus become masters and seem to have answers to everything in life. But some of them get there in a day. Some of them take several decades. Some died before.

Now, let me quote FB’s one sentence, “Wisdom is also common sense worked in with logic/rationality.” Wisdom seems to be this part of us that works along side our rational mind…

So wisdom is not so much information. Nor a skill that could be learned through discipline. But as said when I talked about eastern culture, wisdom seems to somehow needs invoking. Yet, it cannot be taught. What is it?

I can offer no definite answer either :P It seems to be the knowing of the known and unknown. Thus, it’s our full being that knows that we know what knowledge we know (logical mind) and ALSO knows that which is indescribable through the logical mind.

Wisdom then becomes the knowing, the understanding, the realization of our full being.

Thus, if knowledge, learned through intelligence of the logical mind, are puzzle pieces, wisdom is the one to put them together for the “optimal” result in life.

Taking that further, I would even say that if knowledge is the car, the wisdom is the driver. Thus, given 500 horsepower of knowledge, there needs to be a driver who can handle a 500 HP car. When a driver, who is only capable of driving 100-200 HP (normal) car, drives 500 HP of knowledge, we WILL have tragedy. That is definite.

Let me give another example, if you give the famous katana Mursame to a child to wield, it is with certainty that he’s going to lose a limp or two if not kill himself. So someone with great swordsmanship should wield it. But also, if fallen in the wrong hands, many people could be killed.

What about someone with a ton of wisdom but almost no knowledge? I don’t know, can we still call this person wise? Ha… anyways…

Too much knowledge, not enough wisdom. I observe that is the state of affair our world is in.

A balanced person, a balanced world is when wisdom and knowledge are in proportion.

Wisdom being the knowing of our full being. When we accept and embrace our full being (if you let yourself into what it means), perhaps you can find wisdom there.

I think until then, we have to live in a world driven by knowledge, or rather, people who are drunk on knowledge that will continue to be more and more chaotic until we become wiser. In this sense, for future as humanity as a whole, economy and politics become “small problems” until we resolve this. This making philosophy more important than ever.

If knowledge is power and with power, comes responsibility, what does that tell us now?

The responsibility is not just how we are going to use the power (knowledge). More importantly, the responsibility is also knowing when to use the power and when NOT to use the power.

Of course, drunk people would not listen to this kind of crap.