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The Hidden Value of 2 Dollars

“It’s only 2 dollars right?”

I had the chance to share about trust with Lockeman recently, and it took me stopping my own instinct to helicopter in to save him from his mistakes.

My son had his art class in Bukit Timah. I was going off for a meeting, and told him I might not be able to pick him up after class, so he had to take the bus back himself if so. Before dropping him off, I was worried he would forget his wallet, but because there were cars waiting behind me where I dropped him off, I couldn’t remind him to check in time.

True enough, 2 hours in, he called me in the middle of my meeting to tell me he forgot his wallet. “No bus pass, no money, how?” Initially, I considered leaving the meeting to rescue him, but then I paused. Singapore is generally quite safe, and he was in a neighborhood I am familiar with, so I just said, “Figure it out.”

Was I worried? Of course. But he got home safely, I found out later, so I carried on with the meeting. When I came home later that day, he shared with me how he managed to get home. He had borrowed 2 dollars from the uncle at the nearby coffee shop. I asked him what the value of 2 dollars was.

“Har? 2 dollars lor.”

I explained to him that the value of those 2 dollars went beyond its monetary worth. It symbolized trust. The uncle at the coffee shop had observed my sons week after week. Based on their consistent behavior, he knew they were good boys. They were also regular customers, we bought drinks from him weekly, so there was reliability and integrity in the consistency.

So, I told Lockeman that our actions and interactions with others mattered. It is the cause and effect relationship with the world around us. While there might not be a magical accountant guy keeping score, marking in green when you do a good deed, and a red cross if you do something bad, society has its own memory.

Being good and doing good has a way of making an impact. It creates a ripple effect that people notice. The world somehow recognizes those who embody kindness, consistency, and honorable values. In the case of the uncle, his level of trust had reached a point where he was willing to lend those 2 dollars.

Now, would he have lent 100 dollars? Probably not. Maybe 10 dollars, depending on the circumstances. If I had been a regular customer who regularly catered food from him amounting to 1000s of dollars every month, perhaps even 100 dollars would be possible. It all boils down to trust, built over time through our actions and choices.

This realization made me convey an important message to my son. Our daily actions have significance beyond what meets the eye. Whether it’s a small gesture or a larger decision, they shape the world around us. Some might attribute this concept to karma or a higher power, and various faiths offer their perspectives. But regardless of our beliefs, our actions have consequences. They contribute to a collective memory in society. By being kind, honest, and consistent, we create a positive impact that resonates far beyond our immediate awareness. The world has a peculiar way of taking care of us when we find ourselves in need.

#Fatherhood#lifelessons#value#values#karma

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Destination – Poem about life

In the bustle of city Singapore,
I sit in my corner, feeling forlorn,
History leaves a rustle long gone,
in place are places and people mourned.

Now the hustle never seems to cease,
A constant hum that never gives peace,
I hold still, on to beauty that passed,
on to joyful quiet it once brought last.

The world, the hustle, the life goes on,
still my heart remains in days long gone,
As I sit here in this busy city,
I hold on tight to my fading memories.

– Destination, by Why Keen

This poem was inspired by something I read on Facebook by Michael Han.

He was referencing an article he read, and this was what he wrote :-

What is the foundation of a good life, money? Enough of it to live a good life? In abundance of it to live an even better life? Or, maybe it’s just an insurance for a rainy day? Because perpetual poverty can crush souls and break up families.

Surely, you can be poor and be happy, but no harm being wealthy and happy, right? Better still, be rich, happy and surrounded by life-affirming relationship. Maybe you can’t have it all, but I trust if you have life-affirming relationships, you are always rich and happy. Definitions may vary, but contentment is its defining mark. It’s the common thread that runs thru it all.

Today’s article is however about loneliness. Yet, they are all connected. It’s titled “Old and lovely after a successful career, and even when living with family.” Curious?

Well, Mr Liu’s life is featured. He retired at 76. He “took great pride in providing a comfortable life for his wife and two sons. But he said life did not turn out the way he wanted.”

“His son was failing at work and his one relationship with his wife was strained. Unable to connect with his family members, Mr Liu became extremely lonely. He blames his younger self for prioritising work and not building a good relationship with his wife and children.”

I think it’s more complicated than what is described. The journey of a life allows for many u-turns and detours and ventures into our own dark woods. We are often lost for a purpose, even if we have not figure it all out yet.

I can’t comment much on Mr Liu’s life because he lived it in a way he knows best at the time where threats and opportunities avail themselves. He made his bed with those choices and he has to sleep on it. But having said that, one can still get a new bed, regardless of age; maybe not one so large and grand that it is often colder and quieter than it’s hoped to be.

Nevertheless, he has got a point for self-introspection when he blamed his younger self for prioritising work and not building a good relationship. I guess when we are young, we chase the wind and rush towards the shimmering mirage. It’s the thrill of the chase, ambition uncaged.

We thought we have it all covered. It’s all neatly planned out. We were so sure we were on track. We were also so busy in the sinking ditches, fighting for survival – before battling with our ego and pride – that we didn’t have the time to look up to the light of a better life when we retire.

Yet time waits for no man or woman. When we are old, we look back and mourn for lost time, for seasons that could have been spent less on chasing the wind and more on farming the land.

Alas, Aristotle once said: “The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.”

And the issue is, when you are in it, especially when you just started out, you can’t see clearly. It’s like being masked with narrow slits for eyes and you can only see but a slice of reality. We are very much like horses with blinders at both sides, only hearing the chanting of the crowd to finish first, to beat the rest.

The thrill of the chase, the rush and the climb is not always what we imagine it to be. When we arrive at the top, it may just be a place far lonelier than we can imagine. A place all the money in the world cannot console or reassure.

Going back to the article, the authors concluded with this: “Tackling loneliness is fundamentally a question about what makes our life worth living to ourselves and others, and whether we can create opportunities to build our own interests throughout our lives.”

But I believe these interests we build for ourselves have to be one that we readily share with others, keeping them in mind, and always deepening the connection as we journey along. That is what Aristotle means when he said that “wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.”

This also include the acquisition of power and fame. For if they are not instrumental to something else, but an end in itself, we will always struggle to reconcile what has been with what is. It’s lonely at the top.

Let me end with the words of the late Professor David Foster Wallace. He described the Western modern culture as such: –

“Extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdom, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it.”

“But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying.”

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”

Read that again. Let it sink in. You may just find your point of infection in your currently planned trajectory of life, whichever season you are in. Cheers.

Reference :- Original post by Michael Han on Facebook

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7th Heaven – Another 3 Word Game Story

Here was another story we came up with, with the help of ChatGPT as my editor. The 3 words were “Heaven” for the place, “Michelin Star Chef” for the person, and “Water Bottle” for the thing.

Let’s see what my own organic generative intelligence came up with.

Chef Julien is the proud owner of seven restaurants, each with a Michelin star for their exceptional fusion cuisine. Among his culinary delights, Chef Julien is famous for his delectable char siew that features a perfect blend of texture, taste, and aroma, making it the most coveted dish in the world. Despite the accolades and envy from other chefs, Chef Julien keeps the secret recipe to himself, even from his trusted team of assistant chefs.

However, one chef, Kong Wah Zai, an ambitious and upcoming chef, is determined to learn the secrets of Chef Julien’s char siew. Disguising himself as a fresh culinary school graduate with his youthful looks, Wah Zai successfully infiltrates Chef Julien’s flagship restaurant, 7th Heaven, and works diligently for seven months before gaining access to the inner sanctum of the kitchen.

Inside the inner sanctum, Wah Zai observes Chef Julien’s nightly routine of bringing a water bottle into a small furnace kitchen at midnight, only to emerge at 7 am with freshly cooked char siew that is then distributed to the other restaurants in the chain. The chef guards the water bottle closely, never allowing it out of his sight, which makes Wah Zai suspect that the key to the recipe might lie within the bottle.

After an elaborate scheme, Wah Zai manages to steal the water bottle and takes it back to his own kitchen to experiment with the contents. The bottle contains a special sauce that Wah Zai uses to coat his own char siew, following the same process as Chef Julien, and patiently waiting seven hours for the meat to be done. Wah Zai is confident that his version of the char siew will be exceptional.

However, Chef Julien’s reaction to losing his water bottle surprises Wah Zai. During a meeting with his team, the chef suddenly cries out, “Has anyone seen my bottle? It’s my piss from last night!”

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Social Media The Amplifier

Social media is a powerful amplifier of the human mind.

Human problems, such as selfishness, hatred, lust, greed, and laziness are amplified. We see this in an increased amount of depression being reported. We see this in research which shows social media correlating to increased feelings of depression among its users and another study that connects increased screen time among teenagers with a higher risk of depression and suicide.

Social media has also magnified positive traits like generosity and kindness.

This is because social media algorithms, whether you are talking about Facebook, TikTok or Youtube, are designed to maximize human engagement and consumption.

As a result, social media can be both a force for positive change and a source of negativity.

What is the difference? Mental fitness and wisdom. If individuals are emotionally stable, mentally sound, and self-aware, they are less likely to be negatively impacted by social media. Conversely, those who struggle with mental health issues, or are unaware of the impact of social media on their mental well-being, are more vulnerable to negative effects.

Social media is one of our first encounters with an artificial intelligence (AI) at scale, and it has already had a significant impact on the human mind.

The next generation of AI, such as generative AIs like ChatGPT, have the potential to amplify the human mind even further. Therefore, mental health and fitness are more important than ever, as we continue to navigate the complex and evolving landscape of technology and its impact on our lives.

As a parent, I am consciously weighing my options as we move into this new world. I have friends who try to put off exposure of their children to social media as long as possible, by limiting their usage of the Internet. This is possible because their children are home-schooled.

For me, that isn’t really an option, but it is also not an appealing one to me. I try to control exposure, and guide them to the realities of these technologies while teaching them how to be mindful of their mental being.

It is tantamount to giving my kids drugs in order for them to experience addiction, so that they can manage their minds better. Much like how vaccinations work, we have to expose their minds to inoculate them from harmful effects.

Sounds scary? I am not exaggerating when I describe social media now, and the GPTs that are arriving as drugs, I really am concerned. But what can I do, when this drug is going to be a part of the new reality we are moving into?

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How I Fast for Longevity – It’s Not as Hard as You Think!

I’ve tried various diets over the years, but I always found them to be troublesome, expensive, and painful.

Most of the time, it was difficult to find diets which tasted good. When the food tasted good, it would be expensive and unsustainable. Hence, there were many layers of pain associated with complicated diets, and I hated it.

Diets == Pain To Me

Let me describe how I got on the path of fasting in 4 stages :-

Stage 1 – Make a Long-term Pact with Yourself

The first step to fasting is to have compassion for yourself. I recently wrote about how we all have a “Shadow Self” and to be successful at fasting, I needed to get mine, as I call him, fully aligned on the journey.

Me and my Shadow Self

What I did was make a pact with my Shadow Self, agreeing to allow him small breaks whenever he wanted. The goal was to develop the habit of fasting while allowing little breaks along the way.

Think of habits like the current of a river, constantly flowing in the same direction and steadily moving towards a destination. Individual actions are like rocks in the river, causing small ripples but not able to change the overall direction or force of the current. Just as a few rocks won’t divert the river from its course, a few counter-actions won’t break the power of a strong habit.

However, if enough rocks accumulate, they can create a dam that alters the flow of the river, just as consistent counter-actions can eventually weaken a habit’s hold. Ultimately, it’s the strength and direction of the current (or habit) that determines the destination, while individual rocks (or actions) have a limited impact on the final outcome.

For good habits, like exercising regularly or eating less sweet stuff, deviating once or twice and resting for one day out of the week from a regular run, or eating that ice cream cone that I crave once in a while, would not affect the result by much.

Conversely, bad actions are fine as long as you do not turn them into a habit. For example, I have smoked socially with friends before, but only once a month, and never again until one year later. Each time I smoke may not do good for my lungs, but it is not really that bad in the long run.

Stage 2 – “Three Meals a Day is Enough!”

At 42, I remember a time when our parents insisted that we ate only three meals a day. If we asked for snacks before dinner, our mom would say, “No! Dinner time already!” After dinner, she would say, “You just ate!” 

The only legal times we could snack were tea time, which would happen between 3-5 pm, a small window. Most of the time, we would just skip that.

Convenience stalls were not readily available in Singapore in the 60s

For our parents’ generation, it was even harder to get snacks due to families being less affluent then, and the fact that it wasn’t as easy to get food. There were no supermarkets or 7-11 then. Hence, people were slimmer and fitter back then.

Then, as we got more affluent, we started to eat more. And somehow, there was a trend of eating many smaller meals throughout the day. It was supposed to help us control our weight. That led to children being encouraged to snack often, especially before activities. And we were told, “How to study if you haven’t had a healthy snack?”

But little did we know, we were actually getting our bodies in a constant state of being fed. This means our body rarely needs to use fat as an alternate source of fuel. I will write more about ketosis in another post, but basically what happens is that our bodies would not switch primary source of fuel from glucose to fats unless we go through at least 12 hours of not eating.

Hence, step one is to just maintain having regular meals, 3 times a day as was the “original way”. Then, have a 12 hours of fasting in between, which is usually easy because we would be sleeping most of it.

We have our dinners, and end before 8pm, then have breakfast, literally, we break fast, 12 hours later, at around 8am.

So that was what I did first, which meant cutting Netflix snacks which I used to have with my wife. I must say, this wasn’t easy. But I did this with compassion again, which meant that I would indulge once in a while. When we go watch a movie in the theatres, we would still get pop corn, even soft drinks are allowed, so my roommate was kept happy and satisfied.

Stage 3 – “16:8”

After getting used to eating regular meals, I realized that sometimes, even when feeling hungry, I could delay breakfast enough to skip it and only have lunch. This meant breaking my fast at 12 pm and fasting again after dinner at 8 pm.

I was doing what is popularly known as the “16:8” fast, which is a 16 hour fasting period, followed by a window of 8 hours of eating.

It’s easy, you probably have skipped a meal when busy before

When I was busy at work and did this, I felt hungry, but it was bearable. I started doing this more regularly, but I only did it from Monday to Friday, then went back to regular meals during the weekends. I also allowed myself to eat anything I wanted within the 8-hour window of eating from 12 pm to 8 pm. That meant char kway teow, ice cream, ice kachang – you name it, I took it.

Overall, it was a sweet deal for my “Shadow Friend”, and we easily got used to the 16:8 schedule without any pain at all.

Stage 4 – 80-hour fast

After watching the documentary by Chris Hemsworth, I wondered if I could fast for four full days like he did since I could already fast for 16 hours without any problems.

So I tried it, and it was an interesting experience, to say the least. Although I made it through safely, I did have to overcome some difficulties, which I’ll share in a future post.

However, I can say with certainty that the only reason it worked was because I fasted with compassion for myself.

Thank you for following me through this long post! It is much longer than I expected! As usual, however, I need to qualify that I am not a medical doctor, but merely following up with the research I read and heard about, and then testing these on myself. Do check with your doctor, especially if you have any health conditions before embarking on this exciting journey of fasting!