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

A boss purposefully scolded his wife in front of a new employee. After the wife take her leave, feeling satisfied, He turns to the new employee, and asked,

“Tell me sir, are you afraid of your wife?”, asked the boss smiling.

“Let me say this correctly..”, The new employee sighed and said, “Yes, I am afraid of my wife.”

The boss smiles even wider, and the new employee continues,

Yes I do have fear of my wife, as we are both grown up, she can leave me anytime, so do I,
and honestly, I’ve never even imagine my life without her.
I’m a Christian, and as I have fear of my God, I also have fear of my wife, and out of  it comes respect!
I respect her and I believe that she also respect me.
But, greater than this, we have love. we accept each other, and will forgive each other foolishness, and we long to be someone who can always support and grow together.

are you afraid of your wife?