I have been working for 5+ years, and I have met and worked with people now to make an observation — It is not the majority of people to respect their job, or in the least, not even the work or task at hand.

Let me put it another way — People want reward, whatever it maybe, after doing work, in desperately being so, the reward is prioritized over the work itself. As a result, the quality of the work is often compromised.

I have said that the best thing (quality) happens when we are in the moment. When we are so dead set focused on rewards and “the end”, we are completely away from the moment. It is ironic because reward is dependent on the quality of the work and never the other way around.

Can you be sincere in the moment and give the attention to the task at hand that will create quality?

I try to do that. This is even true when some tasks are not “as important”, when grunt work is forced upon me, and when projects have many not-so-pleasant elements. No, it does not mean I don’t get grumpy and whinny sometimes, but without striving for perfection, without thinking so much about possible rewards, I do my best to perform the task at hand to a certain level of quality.

Sometimes even after doing that, things still don’t turn out great (sometimes due to underlying reluctance… or laziness…), but always, at least I give it a try (even if just a little bit). And by giving it a try always, the frequency of “good work” is naturally higher.

Frankly, some people don’t even try… and it is so obvious. It’s not surprising. What with society mostly telling us “to get rich” and “to be important” etc., and so little teaching about respect, wisdom, etc. Bleh~~

Well, about rewards. I’d love some too. Who doesn’t? Though, perhaps they may never come. I know what is enough. And for the many times that I create decent work, I find the reward in itself. Plus, whatever I do, I find there is always something new to learn.

At this moment, are you waiting for the perfect time and situation to do something? Perhaps something to change your life forever. It’s so important, that you must require the perfect time so that you are guaranteed result.

Well, that’s a bunch of bull.

I am guilty of that myself. Lately, being honest, besides having things to deal with in life, which we all do so it’s not really a good excuse anyways, I am having a difficult time of coming up with post. I am having difficulty because I feel that I do not have great writing (aka. perfection) that I deem presentable, even though I have 4 pages of drafts sitting in wordpress, many of which are quite full of content.

So to get out of the rut, I am just throwing this post out. I take the initiative. I give myself a chance to keep my thoughts alive, or get the flow going.

There will never be perfect timing. There is no perfect result. If there is perfection, wouldn’t we be there already by now and we wouldn’t need to do anything.

Of course, there needs to be a balance between doing nothing and forcing issue, and neither is any good. I “made” myself write this post because I both think and feel that if I don’t, I will keep waiting for a perfect post to be the next post and writing anything now is better than doing nothing still. Of course, I find this relevant for everyone also.

So, are you still waiting for a “good” time to start something? Tomorrow? Next week? Next month? Your next birthday? New year?

Quite a few things were going on the past few weeks that had taken me away.

New Feline Friend

About 2 months ago, I added a new friend at home — a kitten who was 6 weeks old. She came from a friend’s landlord with half a dozen new kittens, and I thought this is a great way to make a difference for one life by saving her from the shelter. If you don’t know, many shelters put their animals to sleep after a certain period of time.

Needless to say, we had to get used to and adapt to each other over the past weeks. It’s stressful and hectic but at the same time, very rewarding from between having the new companion, learning about her and training and communicating with her. Animals do tell us what they want, if we are sincere to read and understand them. Fleas are a pain in the butt. And I had never heard a cat purr before this, but now I get to hear it everyday.

Of course, this means new expense for food, litter, vet. and what not. But life is not always about me, or ourselves.

Baby Shower

There seems to be an epidermic of pregnant women in Bay Area. Anyways, a good friend is having her first baby so there of course is baby shower. I got her a card with a personal touch of writing + a $25 Target gift card. For the first time of my life, I ate a can Gerbil baby food. Despite the sweet potato taste being somewhat okay, I swear I will never torture any babies with these food.

College Friend

Something definitely out of the norm is the visit of a college friend, who I hadn’t seen in 2+ years. It was exciting to see each other again. As it’s her birthday, a group of us went out to Little Sheep Mongolian hotpot in San Mateo. The place was so crowded and we had to wait some 30+ minutes. Yet, the food was alright. I don’t think it’s worth it.

The fascinating part about meeting people from the past is to see the reflection of your old image from your friend during the interactions because that’s what they will rely on to react to you at first. If you had changed, it is very possible to fall back into old patterns again if you do not pay attention. At the same time, if you had fundamentally changed, you may feel how it seems like yourself is a different person. I certainly feel that way.

Los Angeles

With the friends, we went down to L.A. for 2 days vacation. I indulged myself a bit on food and finally visited Hollywood and Beverly Hills. While there, I found one of my inspirations on the Walk of Fame — Bruce Lee.

A coffee shop that is worth mentioning is the Urth Caffe , which is awesome if you are into organic. Even if you are not, they had a great environment and very yummy drinks and dessert. I ordered a wonderful Cafe Mocha Granita and a delectable piece of tiramisu.

Leaving the complaint until the end, I still hate the traffic in L.A. and is very much reminded it. We barely and only caught the end of the sunset on the Venice beach because of it. And that’s after some aggressive maneuver that I don’t usually do. Bummer.

Back to more regular postings after this.

What if you are wrong?
What if we are wrong?

What if everything that we have come to known, everything that we have done are completely wrong all along?

Therein lies one of the biggest reasons that people hardly ever change.

Yet, therein lies the key to real change.
Therein also lies one of the key to spiritual growth — that everything we think we know as truth is not so.

Can you accept?

Knowing that you are wrong.
Knowing that you don’t know.
Could be the biggest hurdle for the change you need.

Knowing that you are wrong.
Knowing that you don’t know.
Is a wonderful first step to a new beginning.

The labor day ended so fast. I hope everyone had a good time.

Did you exert yourself too much and is trying to recover from it during work week?
Did you eat too much on the holiday [again]?
Are you planning and looking forward excitingly to your next vacation?

Are those the average ways we treat our vacation and holidays? I am not sure but perhaps they are quite close to the average.

Let me take a few minutes to talk about playing vs. the average way we spend our vacation.

I feel like the average ways we spend holiday are us overcompensating for the hours we’ve sacrificed working. On the flip side, we also plan all the festivities and excitement in an attempt to get us in the mood to work again, or some sort of rewards for working hard.

First of all, a bit of logic. If we had worked hard for hours and days and finally holiday comes around, we always (that we must) take our bodies through desserts, wine, parties, and exotic places, when do we rest? If we are to recover in order to do better work, what in the world are we doing to our bodies? Adding stress upon stress. So that means the logical way to spend holiday is to rest, calm down, finally do some exercise, and assume more proper diet to help our body recover from the junk food and abnormal meals during the week? By the way, watching TV is not really resting either.

Consequently, the observation I have where people fill their schedules with festivities and assorted dramatic events with the goal to make us work better… is completely paradoxical.

Also consequently, there is little wonder why disease and cancer are upon us these days.

Well now, I am not against playing. I am saying we need to find a balance, between stress and rest. People have a problem with stress management because they are always stressing themselves out, albeit in “good” ways.

Now that I mention playing… I’d like to ask, “What is playing?”

For the answer, I would point us to look at kids. How do kids play? Well, I’ll just answer it.

Kids play without a sense of purpose, and I find that modern people lack this sort of playing very much. The worst part is, we are taking it away from kids younger and younger now.

To truly play is to play without purpose. So the above scenario where we play on vacation to make us feel better and stronger for work… is not really playing.

Playing for the sake of playing. Purpose-less. Perhaps we need to find more time to do things that are purpose-less. I would not be surprised if we do this and find ourselves becoming happier, healthier, and more compassionate people.

Is that so unimaginable? Probably for most of our heavily left brain biased modern people, who would condemn the idea of living, playing, behaving without a purpose — in the sense that what we do is not a mean for an end but doing for the sake of doing? Can we accept that? No?

Then I would end on a question, would you need a purpose to love someone? Yes, you need a purpose? Well then, so much for unconditional love…