Tackling my own weaknesses

To grow beyond understanding, one must first embrace one’s own devil child. It took me a long time, but I have finally reached a stage where openly admitting my own weaknesses is as natural as breathing. In the wake of this revelation, I realized that I never took the time to follow the trails and obtain new enlightenment. The thought just occurred to me and what you will be reading, is enlightenment in the progress within myself as it gets revised in my mind. I decided to blog this in real time for a change.

Primary devil: Honor

The one main theme that has prevailed through my father’s teachings as well as the Chinese cultural influence is the notion of honor. It explains why I’d always show up if I say so and give some insight into why I used to get pissed off if a person is late when they agreed to meet at certain times. I also keep track of the nice things people do to me so I can reciprocate accordingly. Honor makes my word a binding contract no matter how much I ended up not wanting to do it.

The weakness of having such binding honor allows anyone who manage to persuade me in the moment a chance at what I’d never agree to. It also made me do more than what I should have. Some usually think of that as me trying to be nice, little did they know, I am just abiding by honor. I’ve since taken actions to deviate from honorable behaviors into other ways of being. To be more true to what I feel I want to do, instead of letting a notion drive me.

Two things made me realize this:

1. Honoring a contract is based on human. A contract is still a word, when all hell breaks lose, a contract won’t matter and the lawyer will be happy.
2. Being honorable all the time doesn’t bring people to you. It is doing the right thing at the right timing that does.

Secondary devil: Challenge

We want what we can’t get. An idea that’s echoed by many and quickly adapted by me once I understood the concept. This change, by far is the hardest one to reverse because it came to me as a revelation to what life is. Yet the very idea, is contrary to a different concept from the Buddhist path of Wu Yu (No desire). I have but a glimpse of understanding of why this is not an absolute to abide by. That understanding comes from the knowledge that in order to ascend as one human to the next state of being, the whole human race needs to improve as a whole. A great question I often amuse myself with is if I can arrive at these same conclusions if I were born in the medieval times.

The challenge confirms with a few psychology principles:

1. The more one do for another person, the more one like the other person.
2. If you pull back, it creates an awkward vacuum. We as human wants to fill that vacuum by nature.

I’ve since intentionally create such vacuums during interactions with people and have since refrained from trying to fill in the void when others create such vacuum. I don’t have a concrete conclusion yet, but it has been interesting observing my own raging emotions as it happens.

Tertiary devil: Change

Touted the strongest ability I possess by myself, is also a big hurdle in my life’s way. I want too much and try to be too much. Being good at adapting ensured that I’d get hooked to most of the things I set my mind to do. It is great if time is infinite, however I’ve soon realized that the reverse is true and I need to focus on a few if my life’s plan involves becoming really good at something. It is certainly where the human race is heading to, with so much new information being discovered at each second.

I’ve decided to settle down in Montréal to reap the benefit of growing roots, yet at any given time during my stay, I’ve often considered the following:

1. There’s a work exchange program with country so and so, I am going to take it!
2. There’s a job offer from this other city, I should consider that.
3. There have enough money to last me a few years, I should disappear and backpack for a few
4. I can’t speak French that well, I should move to an English speaking city.

This is still a big problem for me and I have been managing to keep it down by analyzing each action financially. However, it’s getting harder and harder after the discovery of a partner in crime with the same mindset.