What’s Your Story?

A friend of mine in NYC just started writing a blog. The whole thing is very well done and I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested in personal growth. He had one post today that really touched me. It's about a funeral he just attended and the woman who had passed away. As part of discussing that event, he mentioned the following:

Earlier in the day I had reconnected with an old friend. He told me a story of how he had recently met a fascinating woman in Africa in her late 70’s, and during their conversations he had asked her if she had any advice for him in life, anything she could tell him about what life meant. She raised herself up on her tip toes, stabbed her finger into his chest plate and, knowing she had his attention, said “when you’re about to die, someone will ask you the question, ‘what’s your story?’ And your answer… your answer had better be good!”

Here's a version of my story from last March (see prior post).

The One Sentence Challenge

One of the blogs I read issued the following challenge:

Physicist Richard Feynman once said that if all knowledge about physics was about to expire the one sentence he would tell the future is that "Everything is made of atoms." What one sentence would you tell the future about your own area, whether it's entrepreneurship, hedge funds, venture capital, or something else? Examples: An economist might say that "People respond to incentives." I had an engineering professor years ago who said all of that field could be reduced to "F=MA and you can't push on a rope." A couple of other good ones come immediately to mind: the GBN motto, "the future is uncertain, and yet we must act;" Bruce Sterling's "the future is a process, not a destination;" Yogi Berra's "prediction is very hard, especially about the future."

In my case, I'd probably say "everything happens for a reason" (see this post). Perhaps I suffer from confirmation bias, but I keep seeing more and more evidence in my life that it's true.

So, what would your one sentence be?

My life is my message

I came across a great quote by Mahatma Gandhi the other day. When asked by a reporter “what is your message,” he responded “my life is my message.” That is a valuable perspective and one that I've tried to take to heart - see, for example, this post. I haven't gone through this "my life is my message" questionnaire but it might be a valuable exercise at some point. The questionnaire includes another interesting quote by William Ellery Channing - "may your life preach more loudly than your words.”

The perfect problem

I just read an interesting article describing global warming as the "perfect problem" for its uniquely daunting confluence of forces:

• complex and inaccessible scientific content


• a substantial (and uncertain) time lag between cause and effect


• inertia in all the key drivers of the problem, from demographic growth to long-lived energy infrastructure to ingrained daily habits at the household level


• psychological barriers that complicate apprehension and processing of the issue, due in part to its perceived remoteness in time and place


• partisan, cultural, and other filters that cause social discounting or obfuscation of the threat


• motivational obstacles, especially the futility associated with what is perhaps the quintessential "collective action problem" of our time


• mismatches between the global, cross-sectoral scope of the climate change issue and the jurisdiction, focus, and capacity of existing institutions


• a set of hard-wired incentives, career and otherwise, that inhibit focused attention and action on the issue

There is a much longer report generated by these top thinkers (see PDF) but I haven't had a chance to read it yet. I guess it's a good thing that my purpose in life is solving complex problems because this one is as complex as they get.

Al Gore

The more I read or hear about Al Gore, the more I like him. The latest thing was a brief interview in Men's Health magazine (PDF version here). I wonder how things would have played out differently if Gore had been elected President. Then again, perhaps the reason behind his close defeat was allowing him to focus exclusively on global warming. In the article, he offers four basic guidelines:

• When a direction feels right, go that way to find out why. Fulfillment usually follows.
• Solve one problem. You may find you're inspired to solve more.
• There are a lot of us on the planet, and we do a lot of damage. We can also fix a lot of things, if we choose.
• Everyone needs a purpose in life. Even puppies.

On the third point, Gore makes an interesting observation: "Look, in the long run the earth is going to be fine. It's humans who are at risk." On the last point, he offers this story about puppies and purpose:

When I was in my 20s, my wife and I got a little puppy at the pound. We asked a dog trainer to give us some pointers. She said, "Okay, step one: What is this puppy going to do?" I said, "What do you mean? He's going to be a puppy!" She said, "No, no, no: Is he going to get the newspaper? Be a watchdog? Herd sheep?" And she said something very simple, but to me it came off as profound: "A puppy has to have a purpose." A lot of men out there don't feel like they have a purpose.

The last interesting thing in his article is a quote from scripture that Gore says often: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might."

When I'm gone

After reading my last post, my brother-in-law ELSALSERO asked me how I wanted people to remember me. In his case, he said that he hopes that people will remember him as a nice person who was never too busy for a conversation, and always genuinely interested in that person's well being. In my case, I hope people will remember me as someone who lived his beliefs, could be counted on when it counted, and left things better than he found them. The first part - living my beliefs - is especially important to me. When my kids were born, I decided that I wanted to be a good role model to them. In my mind, that couldn't be "do as I say, not as I do". Therefore, if I think something is important for my kids to do, I need to make an honest attempt to do those things myself and lead by example. For instance, I hope that JD and AJ will have work/life balance, be healthy and fit, have a relationship with God, and be genuinely happy. A couple of years ago, I couldn't claim to have any of those things in my life. I'm still not there 100% - and may never be - but I continue to strive for improvement each day. I owe that to my kids and I owe that to myself. As Charles Swindoll, the American writer and clergyman, put it, "each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children."

The Star and Crescent

I'm a member of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity. Our badge (membership pin) is referred to as the Star and Crescent. By chance (looking at the back of a Kappa Sigma desk calendar), I was reminded of our ideals. Specifically:

The Star and Crescent shall not be worn by every man, but only by him who is worthy to wear it. He must be a gentleman ... a man of honor and courage ... a man of zeal, yet humble ... an intelligent man ... a man of truth ... one who tempers action with wisdom and, above all else, one who walks in the light of God.

I can't think of a more succinct statement of the type of man I'm trying to become.

My world view

I'm currently taking an online religion course through Foothill College. It's focused on the western religions so we're reading about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The midterm assignment was to write a 1,500 word essay on your "world view". The exact topic of the essay was left pretty open-ended but the professor suggested that people answer questions like why they took this class in the first place and why they believe the things they do regarding religion (or other topics if religion isn't important to them). So here's what I wrote...

Becoming a parent is a clarifying event in a person’s life. I have two sons. JD will turn four in a couple weeks and AJ will be two in May. In the months leading up to JD’s birth, I began to do a lot of soul-searching regarding the type of parent I wanted to be; which, in turn, made me think more generally regarding what type of person, husband, son, brother, co-worker, etc I wanted to be. This two-year period of self-analysis culminated in what I refer to as a “personal goal map”.

Over the last 18 months, I have lost 40 pounds – and kept the weight off. I have mended my relationship with my parents and opened up new lines of communication on that front. I have deepened and strengthened my relationship with my wife. And I have overcome (or at least made significant process towards) some of my personal demons such as being a workaholic to the detriment of my personal relationships. I have accomplished a lot in a relatively short period of time and I am proud of that.

But there is definitely something still missing. I have a multitude of blessings in my life but I am often left wondering what my life means in the grand scheme of things. In the context of my personal goal map, I still lack the religion and spirituality component – taking time to step back, reflect, and meditate and determining an affiliation with a particular religion (if any). This was my primary motivation for taking this class. By better understanding the world’s religions (or at least the western religions), I can integrate elements of these wisdom traditions into my own world view and potentially also decide which of them I want to affiliate myself with and go deeper into that particular faith / community. Also, as I mentioned in my reflection to the first lecture, I hope this course will help me get closer to unconditioned reality and be able to refract bits of its light and energy for my children and those around me. I wish to see past specific religious language (that turns me off) to the wisdom and unconditioned reality that lies beneath (that turns me on).

In terms of my current spiritual beliefs, I would summarize them as follows:

• There is a caring and merciful God.


• God attributes more significance to being a good person (doing unto other as you would have them do unto you) than to adhering to a particular religious doctrine.


• God hears our prayers and will provide support, but only if we are true of heart in making those requests


• Everything happens for a reason – even if the reason isn’t immediately apparent.


• Everyone has a purpose in life – and mine is to solve complex problems.

I haven’t always believed in God. My father is Hindu and my mother is Christian. Rather than select one of those religions on my behalf, my parents decided to go the opposite direction and not make religion a meaningful aspect of my childhood. We did not attend religious services and rarely discussed religion in our home. We did celebrate Christmas and Easter but those holidays were much more about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny than they were about the life or resurrection of Christ. When I was younger, I referred to myself as an atheist. In hindsight, agnostic would have been a more accurate label. As time has gone on, I have come to refer to myself as “unaffiliated” since I believe in God but am not affiliated with a particular religion.

My belief in God actually happened quite suddenly when I was 19. My wife (then girlfriend) and her family are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – the Mormon Church as it’s more commonly referred to. As my wife’s sister was preparing for her mission to Chile, I began talking to her about religion in general and the Mormon faith in particular. Specifically, I asked her how someone goes from not believing in God to believing. Her simple answer to that question is that you pray about it – you read a particular faith’s doctrinal materials (e.g., the Bible) and ask God whether that faith is “true”. So, that’s what I did. One night I read portions of the Book of Mormon and kneeled down by my bed to pray about it. At first, my mind was very chaotic and I couldn’t focus on what I wanted to say to God. But, moments later, my mind become very clear and I felt peaceful. The feeling didn’t last long and I wasn’t “saying” anything at the time, but that brief moment solidified my belief in God. My interest in God had been growing over time and there were certainly seeds planted prior to this, but that one moment, that feeling of peace was the tipping point.

Ironically, the moment that solidified my belief in God in general did not solidify my belief in the Mormon Church in particular – although the genesis of that pivotal prayer was reading the Book of Mormon. At the time, I was simply seeking the existence of God – something larger than myself. I wasn’t ready for more than that and God didn’t proactively offer it up. Since then, I have been reluctant to explore religion further or adhere to a particular religious doctrine. It’s just too hard for me to buy into a specific set of facts regarding events that took place two thousand (or more) years ago. Also, in the back of my mind, I wonder whether choosing to affiliate with a particular religion means that I am implicitly saying that one religion is “right” and the others are “wrong”. Therefore, I have steered clear of specific religious doctrine and consider most (if not all) of it as myth (useful in terms of revealing wisdom but likely untrue or exaggerated in a literal sense). Instead, I’ve focused on being a “good” person (more accurately a better person today than I was yesterday) and have tried to follow the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would them do unto you. As close as I can tell (and this course is helping fill in some blanks), the Golden Rule is one thread that runs through every religion. In terms of the lectures from the course, this approach seems in line with the idea of post-dogmatic religion in which there is less emphasis on what you believe than on how you live. It also seems in line with the Jewish belief that all good people who follow their conscience are loved by God and will receive his mercy regardless of their specific faith.

Regarding my final three spiritual beliefs (God hears our prayers, everything happens for a reason, and everyone has a purpose in life), those beliefs have emerged out of personal experience. In one of the lectures, it said that people often develop their belief systems by forming hypotheses regarding how life works and then observing whether those hypotheses are confirmed or denied over time through personal experience. That is certainly the case for me. I don’t pray that often and when I do, I try to focus on thanking God for what I have rather than asking for something I lack. But there have been instances where I have felt overwhelmed by a situation and have enlisted God’s assistance (and received it). For example, one of my cats (Max) was recently diagnosed with cancer. While we pursued chemotherapy, I also asked God to give me the ability to know when we should end Max’s suffering. Max didn’t respond to the chemotherapy. While it was a very difficult decision to put him to sleep, I considered my prayer answered since I knew in my heart when the time was right. A similar thought process applies to the belief that everything happens for a reason. While life seems chaotic and random, there have been enough instances to the contrary that now I believe that God has a more active hand in things – often presenting us with challenges now so we can be strong enough later to do what we need to do.

Finally, in terms of everyone having a purpose in life, I had always struggled with that question. I wanted to believe it was true but I didn’t know what my purpose was. One day, I was reading an article about the book The Purpose-Driven Life and one of the examples was a person who felt their purpose was bringing order to chaos. The thing that really struck me about the example is that the person had always wondered why chaos seemed to follow him wherever he went (and resented it). But when he thought about his purpose in life, it become clear that anything to the contrary would be counter to God’s plan – and the person began to embrace the chaos that often entered his life. This got me thinking about the fact that people constantly bring me complex problems to help them solve. It happens all the time and sometimes the multitude of problems annoys me since it taxes my energy and ability to spend time on other things like my family, health, etc. But rather than resent these requests, I have come to believe that solving these complex problems is my purpose in life and it brings pleasure to God – although I still struggle with balancing these requests with other personal considerations.

This is my current world view. I am sure it will continue to evolve in the future and I sincerely hope that experiences such as taking this course will help inform it for the better – for both my sake and the sake of those I love.

In the beginning

Since becoming a parent four years ago, I've given a lot of thought to the type of role model I want to be for my kids. That, by extension, has caused me to give a lot of thought to the type of person I want to be in general. Upon closer examination, there were a number of areas that needed a lot of improvement. So I've tried to tackle them as best I can. The process continues today and will continue for the rest of my life.

Regarding the title of this blog, “GNP 3.0” is actually a slight play on words. I developed many of my personal goals right around my 30th birthday and software releases typically have version numbers such as 1.0, 2.0, etc. Therefore, GNP 3.0 was a short-hand that I used to refer to the collective set of things I was / am trying to accomplish in my thirties. I turn 32 in June.

In terms of what I'm trying to achieve, I would say I want to be someone who...

• Seeks happiness


• Recognizes his many blessings and appreciates what he has


• Strives to be great
  

In terms of creating a blog, I thought it would be a useful way for me to reflect on what I'm doing and learning. It's also a convenient way for me to share this process with those I care about. If you see something that peaks your interest, please post a comment. Otherwise, just feel free to drop in whenever you want to see what I'm working on. This blog is really for my benefit ... but you're all welcome to come along for the ride along with me.