A Love Letter to SL on Independence Day.

Merdeka Day for the Nation, Liberation Day for me. 

Pix by PineForest

Dear SL, 

August. A month of significant events, mostly of endings and beginnings, the end of summer and the beginning of fall, then comes winter before spring re-emerges. A time of rejuvenation, renewal and rebirth. 

August is an appropriate opportunity to dwell on the 3 Rs. On why and what is the significance of this eight month that happens to be the departure point of the women and young ones from my life. We have often wondered why among most things ponderable. 

You and I once wondered what it would be like to only live off on only one’s wits? 

What a question! 

What a life we have lived ever since we took that pilgrimage of only living on one’s wits to survive especially for the last seven years. Wittingly or otherwise. 

I know it’s nothing new to the many people who live not knowing where their next meal will come from. But nothing beats the experience of helplessness and anguish, I learnt that, like joy and happiness, they soon vanish like the morning dew and the morning glory. You stay fully awake and aware of the feelings yet detached to the emotions. It is just another one of life's experiences, it rises and soon passes away. 

We stay connected to reality while fighting the thought and question demons in our mind. 

Or stay lost in our thoughts suffering unreal stories. These are the only two choices presented to us in every moment of life. Stay present in reality or lost in fantasy. 

In the greater scheme of things, life is meaningless, so don’t take it too seriously. It is up to us to give it meaning. Our individual mission is to find out what drives our passions to give meaning to life. 

Tough question to address at first. But it simply starts with finding what you enjoy doing most and to do it until you can monetise it, live by it. You sell your own creations and that makes you an artist. 

Everyone who has picked up a tool, a pen, a knife , a move, a shovel or a gun to survive, has lived off our wits. 

Everyone lives by their wits, knowingly or not. We sell our talents to survive. Many still have yet to tap into their own passions. 

Find the intersection between your talent and your passion you will find your calling eventually. 

Once you find your calling or gift. You spend the rest of your life honing it and then give it away for free or for a price.* That’s Enterprise. 

• both monetizable. (Picasso said the first part, I added the rest.)

We have found our calling - You & I. It was the day we decided to leave the company of friends, old and new, at the Bank to seek new experiences in the field of Advertising in 1984.  It was a decision I had not regretted for we found ourselves in a world where creative, pragmatic dreamers run riot and thrive. And now, we are on the tip of a large enterprise, like most social enterprises with heart, to make the world a better place joining others to grow a new earth. 

Sounds altruistic but that’s what we have found lacking in this world that needs to be done. 

And if the journey to live only off our wits, has taught me anything; it’s this; 

We are enough. We are it. We are - Existence. Consciousness. Bliss. 

The universe truly conspires in our favour. 

Have faith. Come what may. 

One of my favourite quotes on life is “To joyfully participate in a life of sorrows” from Pico Iyer is 

further soothed by Albert Camus’s “ Life is absurd therefore meaningless.” 

He goes on to say; “ therefore it is up to us to give it meaning…”. 

I have to say on my part I was living with presence of mind - POM, searching & finding meaning all my life until now… when I realise I’ve found meaning when I found you SL in solitude. It was quite an eventful journey to traverse just to end up in inevitable solitude with you. If not, I dread to think how dreadful, scary and anxious life would be for me/us now. 

Life's like that I suppose; it happens to us like breathing or the beating of our heart, it's done for us. We don't know how or when it will stop or where it'll lead us, we just have to face or participate in this life unfolding in front of us. Unavoidably until we face it's greatest mystery- Death. 

And so I say, give your life meaning, write your story and tell your story. 

Inspire someone to live a more fulfilling life. 

It is our only defence left over technology. 

When we realise this, it is not only our independence day but liberation day as well.

With love 

Peter. 

P/s. Stay the course, let go and relax. 

Pp/s. Living off your wits means going out into the unknown, no well trodden path, no evidence of success or even survival. Enduring all that while forging a new path no one’s gone before. It is only when we were willing to abandon the shore that we sail the unknown horizon. We leave our stories as legacy. 

Ppp/s. This post also hallmarks the period we fly the magnificent coop we holed in for near 7 years living off our wits, to a lofty aristocrats neighbourhood nearby. 

Pppp/s. Did I say I Love You? I’ll say it again;  I Love you. 

Ppppp/s. I’m truly deeply, madly in love with myself. Because I am nothing and I see myself in everything and everyone around me. 

Since the first of the month I have been feeling under the weather. Cocooned in my shoebox for 3 full days I finally felt fit enough to wander around this new exclusive neighbourhood within a 500 meter radius. It was a delightful discovery of quaint little establishments that stocked my favourite things. From teh tarek & roti canai, to swanky omakase restaurants and quaint hipster cafes to a rustic supermarket stocking fine fare. Reminds me of Jalan Batai in Damansara Heights, Holland Village in Singapore and Washington Street village in DUMBO Brooklyn. It has been a different kind of new experience that signals a new phase in my life. Quietly pleasant. 

For the Excitement Seeker. Happy Merdeka.

The Dream ~ Henri Rousseau. Oil on canvas 1910. 

We now live in a world where excitement is the much sought after commodity where we constantly seek to feel good through any of our 5 sense perceptions. 

Often we fall into taking these perceptions for reality, when what we have essentially done is detach from reality, seeking excitement elsewhere instead of being present in the now to fully experience reality as it unfolds in every moment in front of us. 

True excitement comes from that. 

Stay present. Enjoy the excitement and the exuberance the universe is displaying in front of us every moment of everyday. 

Happy Independence Day Malaysia 🇲🇾 

Mid-Year Stock Take - Letter to Jon at 35

Mushroom cloud over Nagasaki 9 Aug.1945

 

Dear Jon,

Here we are, just breaching the second half of the 25th year of the 21st century. Also breaching the 35th year of your birth to your departure on August 9th. 

Admittedly, I have discovered more things about today as time progresses. It's perhaps of our fixation on birthdays that we overlook departure days. It has taken me nineteen years to realise more facts about August 9;

Apart from being Singapore's national day, and that it's exactly two weeks or 15 days after your birthday, 

it was also the devastation of Nagasaki when the US dropped a second nuclear bomb to unofficially and brutally end the war.

 It’s been a year since I last shared endings and beginnings with you. It was the beginning of the 2024 Paris Olympics ending around your departure date leaving the world relatively safe and peaceful. 

Fast forward one year, this post is a sort of report card of where the human race is at. 

1. The human race has never been so comfortable, peaceful and empowered in their daily lives. 

2. Things could get worse. 

3. Things could get really bad. 

We live in a material world. We do all that matters in search of better lives chasing dreams in a society that has provided the best in healthcare, food, living conveniences, economic and technological advances are unprecedented yet we’re on the verge of self- destruction. 

There is a serious trust deficit growing amongst us since the end of the cold war. From relationships to families, communities and nations. Most people in the civilised world are living ultra comfortable lives yet not happier but more anxious desiring more of everything material that we think will make us happier. Be it entertainment, food, sex, possessions or anything that provides distractions from ourselves. 

The endless scrolling of screens be it the mobile devices as an extension of our hands or the large screens as extensions of our living rooms, searching for news and useless information so we can feel-better. That’s not what happiness looks like.

As if not serious enough, we are heralding the dawn of Ai, arguably mankind's greatest technological achievement, coming into the mix. Although the possibilities are positively game changing, the dangers of misuse by bad actors using Ai to plot world domination, loom ominous. 

Not withstanding Ai, the madness is already upon us. Israel is carrying out a systemic genocide on the Palestinians since October 2023. As if mad with bloodlust they have started wars with Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen with the aid of their lackey the US and no end in sight.. 

It is a slow and painful genocide in Palestine. The Israelis are deliberately starving women & children and mindless wars are being waged in the Middle East that could escalate into another nuclear third world war. 

One would think that after Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy & the Japanese defeat in the Second World War would have taught us the futility of war but apparently not. It has been exactly 80 years since the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked by the US ending the war but more wars are being waged around the world today instigated or led by the US. 

Isn’t it ironic, that the liberators of the free world from the horrors of the Second World War has been the sole peddler of wars ever since? It seems that the most powerful nation on earth is hell bent on destroying it. America has been entrusted to lead and police the world and they have done so with impunity. The age old adage still rings true; 'Who is going to police the police?'

These realities come to light when Donald Trump won a second term in the White House. A convicted felon managed to win a landslide victory beating the democrats whose last term was disastrous even irresponsible. Democrats or Republicans, America's politics have, from the onset, been divisive- "Either you're on my side or you're against me." This is nothing new as Americans have subscribed even invented this form of 'game theory' for decades against it's own people as well as the rest of the world. The world's largest human lab has in turn, turned the world into it's own human lab- bringing it's own ideology of governance or justice to all, inflicting chaos and destruction everywhere they choose. The only diplomacy they know is through force or coercion. Donald Trump is no different from his predecessors. 

"When all you have is a hammer, every challenge you face becomes a nail to be hammered out."

The only difference is that Trump is not a career politician but a 'businessman' and hopefully he can begin to see that business can only be done with mutual transfer of value benefitting both sides leading to a multi-lateral world, not one of domination by a facist regime. In fact, America is known to be a plutocracy (ruled by the rich 1%) or even kleptocracy (ruled by thieves) and the only reason they can be that is that they wield the biggest hammer. 

However, with the inevitable rise of China after a century of humiliation, there is a new world leader in the making. Compared to four thousand years of civilisation, it took only a century of humiliation to put order to the chaos largely brought upon themselves, tranquilised by the comforts of the spoils of internal warfare and imperial rule handed down through the dynasties. Starting with the end of the Qing Dynasty, China bade farewell to it's last emperor Puyi and the Chinese Communist Party won complete victory in the Chinese Civil War and the People's Republic of China was founded in August 1950. 

So in a sort of a roundabout way, I have briefly but more importantly recounted the journey and establishment of a world power worthy and capable of standing up to the US in the delicate balance of power as to who holds the bigger hammer, be it in military strength or Ai advancement to rule the world. 

I often wonder what we wouldn't talk about son.

Happy 35th Birthday Jon.

Guernica

 This isn't a Painting. It's a Prophecy.

A child admiring Guernica by Pablo Picasso at the Reina Sofia Museum

In 1937, Picasso painted Guernica to immortalise the bombing of a Basque town by fascist forces. 

He painted suffering - systematic, senseless, state-sanctioned genocide. And today, Guernica repeats itself. In the form of Palestine. 

As Israel continues its assault- on hospitals, on homes, schools, refugee camps, on an entire community- this painting becomes more than art. It becomes a mirror. 

The bull. The horse. The mother. The child. The soldier. 

Each tells the same story in a different tongue. We've seen this before. And yet we let it happen again. 

If art is meant to awaken, let this post stir the ones still asleep.

Watch through each frame. Read closely because silence- just like war- kills. 

For those who are so moved by the systemic murder of the oppressed, more conflict is not the answer but peaceful retaliation is. We can start by pressuring the UN to cut economic ties with the oppressors. We can vote with our wallets and our clicks, putting pressure on brands and global organisations assisting in the genocide. We must do so relentlessly, until change is rael. Stop the genocide.