enjoy.the.journey

Haha, I’ll need to force myself to continue reading this book, as I’ve already paid $30 for this book (need to squeeze and maximized my return from my investment)

It’s actually quite fun to read a book @ the beach, I can distract myself to watch the sea or other people when I’m bored, or when I need to refresh my eyes/mind. But, because I get easily distracted, I only finish a few pages Here’s some points from today:

• learn how to profit from your failures, for in life most of you will know more of failure than of success, and if you can learn from your failures, you will have learned much.
• the early bird gets the worm, true, and what does the early worm gets? — eaten
• the second mouse gets the cheese, not the first — in a mouse trap point of view.

taken from the Good Life by Peter J. Gomes

Happy Chinese New Year, Gong Xi Fa Cai, Xi Nien Kuai le. Not to forget, Happy Valentine day, Wishing u a full of love and prosperous roaring year!!

Aristotle wants us to understand that for him, fulfillment or satisfaction means being good at what one is meant to do. Here we have to understand the difference between the use of “good” as a moral quality (e.g: Mother Teresa went about doing good) and as the excellent fulfillment of a function (e.g: Stradivarius made good violins). Both were good at what they did, but one was so in a moral sense and the other in an aesthetic or performative sense. Aristotle is closer to the latter than to the former. Taking note of Aristotle’s musical example, I offer two of my own in the hope of clarifying what he means to say.

1. Many years ago, I first heard Jessye Norman sing in Elgar’s oratorio The Dream of Gerontius. I sat in the second balcony of Boston’s Symphony Hall on a Good Friday afternoon, and with Norman’s final note at the end of a timeless three hours, I felt as though in her voice I had heard the most sublime sound of my life. I had never heard of Jessye Norman, but at that moment I was convinced that she could do nothing better than what she was doing, that nobody could do it better than she, and that she was the very incarnation of excellence itself. That was not a moral decision, for I knew nothing of her character or personality  or whether she was a good or a bad person. I simply knew that she was good, indeed excellent, at what she did. That is the sense in which Aristotle uses the notion of excellence and good: the good singer is one who is good at singing, and reason and activity with excellence make it so.
2. Among the pleasures of my life is a long friendship with the cellist Yo Yo Ma. I have known him since he was a freshman at Harvard over a quarter of a century ago. It was when Harvard’s seven best undergraduate cellists sawed their way through their repertoires in the presence of the great Russian cellist Rostropovich. Each student played a piece, and at its close the maestro, speaking through an interpreter, would say a few things, suggest a twist here, a turn there, and then move on. The maestro seemed mildly bored by the whole thing, but he gave a good show of artistic temperament, his Russian language not failing to communicate his pleasure or dissatisfaction.
   the next to last contestant was Ma, and I was one of few in the audience who did not already know of his reputation as a prodigy. He began to play, and when Ma plays, his whole being becomes an extension of the music and of the instrumentalist, instrument, and, indeed, even conductor. The late great trumpet player Armando Ghitalla, used to say that some musicians play the notes, others the rhythm, and some, finally, the music. Ma plays everything, is everything, and well before he had finished – in that particular Saturday morning session – the maestro jumped up, gesticulating wildly, and, in a torrent of Russian too fast for translation, forced the youth player to stop. We were stunned. Was he pleased, impressed, angry, dismayed? We could tell that Rostropovich was excited beyond words, and we thought he was about to throw a tantrum. The encounters between the two of them became intense and physical, and we onlookers were witnessing some form of transformation. The poor translator could not get a word in edgewise. At the end, Yo Yo finished with a flourish, and the maestro, throwing all of his European reserve to the winds, flung his arms about the neck of the slight young man and showered him with kisses. The other cellists burst into applause, the audience jumped to its feet, and although no one knew quite what had happened, all were conscious of the fact that they had witnessed something extraordinary. Only in the wake of the pandemonium did the translator have a chance to say that the maestro had said he had never before heard such a playing in his life and that he, the maestro, was in the presence of genius.

How does one describe such a moment? It was, as Aristotle said, “Happiness: the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence, in a life affording them scope.” The good cellist is one who is good at playing the cello, just as the good person is one who is good at being a person, doing what is most good, most noble, and most pleasant. What the good person and the good musician do is perform virtuously, and the virtue of something is related to the notion of its ability to perform excellently its characteristic activity.

The characteristic activity of a musician is to do music excellently, and the characteristic activity of a human being is to be human excellently: the effective discharge of this function is the only real happiness. We do not do virtuous things in order to be happy; rather we are happy because we do virtuous things; and we are only truly happy when we are doing what we are meant to do and being what we are meant to be.

taken from the Good Life book by Peter J. Gomes

As I re-read this book, (The Power of Purpose, by Richard J. Leiger), I find it very refreshing, and kinda give me a, okay maybe two or more, good slap in the face. I’m still continuing to re-read this book, but meanwhile, here are two good quotes that i took from first few chapters of this book. You can click on the quotes to translate it between English and Bahasa Indonesia. Enjoy!

Marshall and Maureen Cogan achieved great financial and professional success. He was a partner at a big New York investment-banking firm. She was a rising star in the publishing business, who would become editor-in-chief of Art & Auction magazine. Their three children were all in private school and doing well. The Cogans had a beautiful co-op apartment in the city, and they had just built a summer home in East Hampton. It was a big, modern place near the ocean, and people came literally from around the world to see this unusual home. It was featured in more than one national magazine. And the Cogan children seemed to love that house as much as their parent did.
Then trouble arrived. Marshall, who had been growing bored at the investment firm, decided to strike out on his own. Despite his high expectations and the encouragement of his colleagues and friends, Marshall’s new business never really got off the ground. His timing turned out to have been miserable — right at the start of a recession. Almost overnight, the business Marshall had sunk all his savings in was worthless, and the income he was expecting had disappeared. All this bad luck was topped off by one final blow: just at the most crucial point of his struggles to keep the business afloat, Marshall came down with hepatitis, which confined him home to bed for more than a month.
Marshall’s bankers were full of personal empathy, but they wouldn’t budge an inch in their demand: “You’ll have to sell the new house.” He couldn’t stand the idea. It was hard to break the news to his wife. He had no idea how she – or the children – would react.
He needn’t have worried. “Then we’ll sell the house, that’s it,” said Maureen.
So the Cogans sold their house, along with every last piece furniture in it. All they would have to do was pack their clothes, collect the children’s toys, turn out the lights, and lock the door.
“Look, we should take the kids out to the house,” Maureen told Marshall the day before the new owners were set to arrive. “We can give each one of them a big trash bag to put all their toys in, and we can bring all that stuff back to the city.”
Marshall wasn’t so sure. “I don’t want the children to see it,” he said. “I don’t want them to be a part of this. You and I will do it.” <– this statement seems familiar to me :p
“No way,” Maureen told him. “They’re going to come. They’re going to see what it is to be down. They’re going to understand, because they’re going to watch you come back, and they’re going to understand that if that happens to them one day, they can come back too.”
So the parents agreed. Everyone piled into the car, and they rode out to East Hampton. The children cleaned out their rooms, while the parents collected the clothes and a few other personal effects. When it came time to leave, they all stood together for a moment on the front steps of the house, and then Marshall locked the door.
Then the five of them climbed back in the car for the drive to the city. That’s when Maureen spoke quietly to Marshall. “We’ll put this in perspective,” she said. “So, we’re not going off to our house in East Hampton. Life will go on.”
And then she talked to the kids as well. “No, we don’t have our house,” she said. “But we have a nice apartment. We’re together. Daddy’s healthy, and he’s going to start a new business. Everything’s going to be fine.”
It was. The children didn’t have to change schools. They even made it to summer camp that year. Soon enough, Marshall was back in business and doing well. More important than all of that, a lesson had been learned, a lesson that showed up again almost twenty years later.
Explain Maureen, “My oldest son had a failure. He started a business that we had to close down so it would not go into bankruptcy. It was tough, public failure to him, and he was very young, just twenty-five. I remember saying to him, ‘How are you doing?” And he said, “It’s awful. I’ve got a few more months before I’m closed.’ He didn’t want to go bankrupt; he wanted to pay off his debts, close the business, and leave.
“But then he said, ‘I remember the time it happened to Daddy, and I’ll be fine. I will get through this. I know I can do this because I watched, and I remember.’ ”

above story is taken from “The Leader In You” book by Dale Carnegie.

hmm, a very powerful story. Reminds me to enjoy the journey more. Every step of the way, whether it’s walking, climbing or falling down the road, every moments has it’s own uniqueness, I need to learn from it and savour every seconds in it. some of the lesson that i draw from this story:

• Keeps bouncing back. Failure may come, but life goes on. I may fall but l’ll bounce back, get up and start walking down the road again.
• The importance of having a partner that understands and supports me.
• The importance to understand and support my partner.
• Many important lesson that can only be drawn in failure. So I don’t need to cover my failure, rather I need to admit it, and let other’s also draw a lesson from it.
• Success is not a one straight road, it comes with obstacles, bends, and failures along the way.
• What does this means? I don’t quite get the meaning: “We’ll put this in perspective“, anyone can help to explain is very much appreciated. ^^
• Need to keep being positive!  Learn to be positive throughout all circumstances, results, or stumbling block. I need to realize that how I react/ my attitude is not controlled by things/circumstances around me, rather more on my decision to be positive!
• When something doesn’t come out as expected, learn to bounce, start with small things, build the confidence, and then leap back. One thing that is important is to have friends/partner who cares and support us to build our confidence and gain our momentum back.

enjoy your journey, every step of the way!