Passionate Living

Although it was Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk [1] that turned me into a TED [2] enthusiast, up to this day my most favorite TED talk remains Sir Ken Robinson’s on how school kills creativity [3]. The talk introduced me to the work and thoughts of Sir Ken Robinson, and I was brimming with joy to find that he shares the same ideas as I do on the topic of education. Of course, this meant that I went on to find more of his content online and eventually purchased his seminal book, The Element [4].

Sir Ken Robinson [5] is a leading thinker on the subject of creativity and education. His life work has led him around the globe, giving talks worldwide on the current educational crisis and the solution we can take to solve it. He has worked with individuals and institutions alike, with businesses and governments all over the world, and he has been endowed with knighthood for his achievements in his field.

What’s most interesting, is that Sir Ken Robinson suffered polio when he was less than five years old. This experience would’ve left many other children and their parents fall into the valley of despair and declare that the boy’s future is ruined – but that didn’t happen in the case of the Robinsons. Sir Ken opted to focus on strengthening his mental assets, causing him to be accepted and acknowledged by advanced educational institutions, and he continued on to become an authority himself.

Finding your Element

The main body of The Element talks about the importance of finding what our passion in life is. It is important because not only does our self happiness rely on the alignment between what we do for a living and what our true talents are, the very sustainability and welfare of our communities and culture also rely on the individual and collective strengths of people who tap their elemental energies. In the book, Sir Ken Robinson conducts numerous interviews and research into the lives and lessons of many prominent figures in current and past societies, and found that many of these figures discovered their own element through self thought and made their own way to reach whatever it is that is most natural for them to pursue.

Which brings us to the topic of education: in the concluding chapters of the book, Sir Ken Robinson explains the damage conformity to conventional education has on our society, and promotes that we should transform education to acknowledge the individual strengths in every person and encourage it in order for these individuals to become high achievers in their lives who have an organic understanding of themselves and their environments and also be able to contribute well to the progress of their communities. This strikes a particular chord with me – more now than when I first read the book – because I too think and have seen that many of my friends and people in the community around me place too much power on conforming with social expectations and official high level educational institutions. Now, I’m a graduate of one of these institutions myself – and I was a successful participant of the industrial method of education – but I dropped the paradigm the moment I learned that success and happiness for me has no significant relation to the level of formal education I achieved or what multinational corporation I work for.

Especially in my country – Indonesia, which is still considered a developing country – the emphasis on being an employee and working for a well known established company is the main aspiration parents have for their children and the main motivation the children study hard for their exams (if they’re even interested that is; many children are disenfranchised by this method of living and learning). The problem that arises from this social mis-construct is that many children feel they are not good enough (since they under-perform in school testing) and therefore assume they do not have their place in society other than being “the common folk”. When instead, simply using a different paradigm and a different social construct, these same children could eventually grow up to be artists, dancers, painters, innovators, community leaders, social entrepreneurs, and reach their own independence through self reliance and autonomy.

The other climate crisis

This space is not enough to explain how much of an advocate I am of being authentic; and how much I view organic education as being an inherent and critically important part of that. The prominent people who have achieved success and fulfillment are often the people who find their education after and inspite of formal education in schools. They find their true calling after they dropped out or after they go through a post graduation identity crisis.

But must that be the only way we can discover our true identities and our true passions? Must we barter the first 16 to 25 years of our lives for the freedom of our identity? Is that the price we must pay to learn what it is that makes us happy – by going through a system that teaches us what makes us unhappy? The formal education system that still stands today is a product from the industrial era and was made for industrial purposes: to produce factory workers in an assembly line method of approach. Now we are entering the knowledge worker era [6] where self reliance, autonomy, and self learning are all critical to find our place in society and achieve physical and emotional success.

An analogy would be this: now that cellphones are here, how would you feel if you were still forced to use land-line telephones – the ones that have dials on them? Sure you can still use them, but their efficiency, reliability, and accessibility are made obsolete with cellular technology. This is how I view standardized formal education has become: an obsolete technology that had its use during the day, but now it’s time to move forward to the technology that is appropriate for us and especially for our children, who will face a future where the technology they use as everyday part of their lives are not even here yet. The system needs to be changed, the paradigm needs to be corrected, and the stakeholders need to be involved; we are in an educational crisis, and like the environment, if we don’t take action soon, we end up endangering the very survivability of humanity.

Do you agree that education needs to be transformed, as Sir Ken Robinson writes? Share your thoughts on the current education system, its benefits and flaws, and share what you think would be the solution for future education.

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*I also spent the month of November re-reading and curating quotes from The Element. Have a look HERE if you’re interested.

*IMPORTANT NOTE: I am moving the blog to a sub-domain of my site. If you have subscribed by RSS, please change your feed subscription to the new site. Thank you.

[1] Book Review: Eat Pray Love, 2009
[2] TED Official website
[3] Sir Ken Robinson on TED
[4] The Element, by Sir Ken Robinson
[5] Sir Ken Robinson Official website
[6] The term knowledge worker is borrowed from Stephen Covey’s The 8th Habit

Young toddler female girl playing in the sand in late evening light by Mike Baird

… it was a very good year,
it was a very good year for city girls,
who lived up the stairs,
with all that perfumed hair,
how it came undone,
when I was …

The original lyrics to that song by Frank Sinatra is when I was 21, but I’m modifying it a little because in this story 22 is the number. I’m looking at 22 because it represents a number that keeps popping up when I learn about the age of certain successful people. Here is a list of people whom I regard to have achieved success (or a certain degree of it) when they are age 22:

1. Colbie Caillat. Her debut album is the reason why I considered choosing music as a serious career. Because of her, I took the liberty of learning how to make music using independent resources. Colbie has reached global stardom and her debut album has received an RIAA platinum status (selling more than one million copies) – and she reached all this at the age of 22 [1].

2. Ali Hale. One of my favorite authors (currently working on her debut novel), Ali is a freelance writer who runs her own blog at Aliventures but is mostly a guest writer for other bigger blogs. I call her successful because she has reached the goal of being a freelance writer and living out of the 9 to 5 endless circle. She also writes easy and relaxed articles that are of a higher quality than most list-bloggers in the blogosphere – and she achieved this at the charming age of 22 [2].

3. Dirk a.k.a Diggy. I don’t read Diggy’s blog per se, but he made a guest post at PluginID – a blog by Glen Allsopp [3] that I read – and when I went over to check his profile, he too is age 22. I think that I can say Diggy has reached a degree of success also, because his blog is a professional one and I assume he is making a living from becoming a blogger. That’s why I think I can say he’s succeeded, because making a living being a blogger (with quality content, and not just lists posts) is always a target you set for yourself and includes an independent lifestyle of your own choice [4].

Where was I?

So, learning about these people and seeing the various degrees of success they’ve reached made me think where was I when I was 22? What was I doing? Was it important, or just a waste of time? Then I realized that I did do something important when I was 22, but unfortunately I can’t show it: or at least, it’s not something external that I can show – there is no tangible result that I can display as a trophy.

It also made me question again our recurring question of the week: what is real? When you were 22, how did you look at yourself when you were 16? And if you’re over 22, what were you doing those years ago? I wonder whether there is a relation between social norms that are currently prevalent in our global culture and succeeding at the age of 22 – since that is usually the age we graduate from college.

I think that graduating from college/university puts a large perspective on our lives, because we deal face-to-face with the question: who am I? What do I want to do? Where do I go from here? It makes us ask these questions and gain insight into our true character, and our true achievements that we want to reach.

Before and after

I look back at when I was 22, and I get mixed reactions. Because on that year, there was a significant change in my life. So profound that I believe I would’ve been a completely different person and if I can make an assumption, I would’ve been richer but less happier than I am today (because, you know, starving artist and all that).

But I wouldn’t change a thing. Because for me this is real, this is the happiness and tranquility that I worked for (and yes, happiness is a conscious effort, for all you hippies reading this). And I may be a little bit unimpressive from the outside, but I can say pretty charming on the inside (as is obvious from this blog, I hope you see).

So, I ask you: if you’re older than or are 22, then where are you in your life right now and where do you want to go? If you’re under 22, then what kind of person do you want to be or what kind of life do you expect to live by that age? Are you just going with the flock and doing what everybody else does, or are you making your own rules and sculpting your own path?

Cheers to good age and good aging.

P.S: There is one other instance when 22 curiously pops up: in John Mayer’s new single where he sings “It’s been a long night in New York city, it’s been a long time since 22″. So, which video to link to: Frank or John, Frank or John? I think I’ll go with John.

P.P.S: I’m planning to move this blog to a sub-domain, and I plan to do it on the 1st of December, 2009. So if you’re reading this from an RSS reader, I would appreciate if you would check into the site on that date to change your feed subscription.

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[1] Colbie Caillat on Wikipedia
[2] Well, 23 actually, as she told me. But let’s turn that number down a bit for consistency of discussion Read her thoughts on success on Aliventures, Getting More From Life by Ali Hale
[3] PluginID, by Glen Allsopp
[4] Upgrade Reality, by Dirk a.k.a Diggy
[5] Photograph by Mike Baird. Because we are all young at heart.

Empty by Selma Broeder

Continuing this week’s theme on acid testing, I’ve just realized that that’s a recurring theme of this blog: to question what we think is real, especially the things that we claim we are, because it is an inevitable part of finding your true identity. I feel that many claims have been made, but very few of them executed. And this bothers me a lot because even the people who hold high ranking social positions still make more claims than they can carry out.

It applies to everything we have ever touched: love, compassion, and the very fabric of humanity. Naomi Dunford sums it up beautifully (and rather quite edgy) in one of her articles [1] (read #3). The moment I read that sentence, it brought to my attention that this must be real – else, how can someone from the other hemisphere also have the same objection towards false claims as I do.

In my previous post [2], I asked whether we truly want society to be correct. I’ve found out though, that most of the time and for most people those words only show false sophistication. The people who make the claims without participating in the work want to receive the credit and acknowledgement as part of the solution, but they don’t surrender to principles and instead surrender to their ego.

Circles, Covey style

I’m sure you know of someone who is like this. I’m sure you have been or still are someone like this. So how can we learn to know the truth about ourselves, to be aware when we say something that may sound like we care but we only say it so that we sound good (in marketing, Naomi calls this “deceptive marketing” [3]).

In his highly influential book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” [4], Stephen Covey writes about how we have a circle of concern and a circle of influence [5]. I think that when people say they care about something, they are referring to their circle of concern. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean they can do anything about it (not within their circle of influence).

It’s OK when you realize that you care about something that is out of your field of influence – examples would be like a major natural disaster happening in another country (Katrina or the Asian Tsunami comes to mind). But, what’s not OK is when you think that something is outside your circle of influence, when in reality you can do something about it. This is what happens when people complain about something as if they would do something if they had the chance, but then come up with an excuse when the opportunity presents itself to them.

Show that you really care

So what do we really care about? What are our true powers? Complaining about the low level of education of other people and how reckless they are driving in traffic but doing nothing to be part of the solution is just a waste of time.

Acid test yourself. Do experiments on yourself to find out and prove whether you have integrity. What I like to do is ask myself hypothetical questions or put myself in another person’s shoe and think about how I would react to the same situation (or, you could blog about it).

Too often we blame other people for being weak, when we ourselves are as weak as they are. Too often we think less about other people, when we ourselves can’t prove our worth when we step down from our ivory towers and into the battlefield. Too often we think that we have done a rare act of kindness, when in fact it is the least we can do.

I won’t ask how you see other people as being hypocrites, they always will be. I ask how you see yourself as being a hypocrite, because we never seem to be. Unless you’re brave enough to look in the mirror.

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[1] 6 Things They Mean When They Say They Have No Money, Naomi Dunford – small business marketing consultant and writer for IttyBiz
[2] Room to Breathe, 2009
[3] Deceptive Marketing Techniques: Which Ones Are You Using?, Naomi Dunford
[4] The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey
[5] Click HERE for further explanation on circle of concern and influence (courtesy of Mary R. Bast, PhD.)
[6] Photograph by Selma Broeder. Because our words are empty.