Passionate Living

Besides writing your own spiritual memoir, keeping a journal to document your thoughts is also an important part of personal growth. I started writing a private journal in March 2005 – after reading Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits – and have kept writing it since. I’ve found that writing a journal has been an integral part of my growth, mainly because of the fact humans learn the most during the sharing process.

I put every year of my life as one volume in the journal, and in 2010 I’m on my sixth volume. I also put a title to every volume to signify the main theme of that particular year. One of the most significant themes I have is the 2008 theme: “Hope”.

It’s interesting to see my life progress according to what I project in my mind at the start of the year. Writing “Hope” as the title truly brought back a part of me that had been missing for several years before, and has been an important introductory step into my discovery of happiness. But halfway through writing “Hope”, around the time of my 26th birthday, inspiration struck me and I changed the theme of the journal mid-way: “Action”.

True to principles, writing “Action” has led me to be a productive writer and musician ever since. Now that the new beginning is upon us, I’m thinking whether I should continue the theme of “Action” or change into a new theme. Whichever I do, I’m using this opportunity to share to you the writing and music projects that I’ve started and plan to start, since “Action” has become a part of my life.

The ideas that stir in my head (ongoing projects):

Passionate Living
Integrity, Love, Trust, and Music

Obviously – this is the blog that you’re reading right now!

Passionate Living: Dreamer
A Dream Journal by Endy Daniyanto

Inspired by These Are My Dreams. Writing a dream journal has it’s own benefits, one that I might write about in a future post. Meanwhile, head on over and see what weird dreams I have.

Passionate Living: Inspired
Quotes from bestselling authors

This started as an excuse to use the Tumblr blogging platform (of which I have come to love). It’s mostly quotes from books by TED speakers, and I try to publish daily. But publishing daily, even for short quotes, isn’t as easy as it may sound.

Music Production Tutorial
This simple blog-style magazine is for musicians who want to learn the art of do-it-yourself music production

Part of sharing about the music production methods that I’ve learned so far. Besides learning again for myself, I hope to establish myself as an artist and also engineer. The posts I write here I also post at EzineArticles.

and projects that I want to start:

26 Songs in 52 Weeks
Write and release 26 songs in 52 weeks

Because, you know, I’m just obsessed about being a singer-songwriter. There have been other artists – Jonathan Coulton and Ari Hest – that have done their version of this before, except they write 52 songs in 52 weeks, which is too many for me. This is my main project for 2010.

Passionate Living: Unscripted
Side blog for non-music related thoughts and developments

Since I wrote the article about Parkour Artists, I’ve been introduced to the local Parkour community. And since I’m not a sporty guy at all, being healthy and enjoying active exercise has always been one of my dreams. So I thought I’d make a side blog to write about Parkour, and other interests that may be too short to write here.

365 Days of Happiness
Write about discovering something new every day for 365 days

Inspired by and part of Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project. I believe that making a new discovery every day is one of the keys to happiness. This is also part of establishing myself as an expert on happiness.

I too think that this might end up in a mess. But at the beginning of “Action” I said to myself I want to be prolific. And in the spirit of embracing imperfection, I’m going to go through with all these ideas.

Cheers,
Endy

Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin [1] asked some time ago “Which best spiritual memoir is your candidate?”, and in the spirit of reincarnation that the new year brings I feel it’s appropriate that I take the time to share with you the importance of writing your own spiritual memoir.

Dante Alighieri, painted by Giotto

A spiritual memoir is different than a biography or journal because it captures the thoughts of the authors who write these memoirs in their journey to discover their spirituality and find their peace and happiness. To answer Gretchen’s question, the most influential spiritual memoir for me is Dante Alighieri’s La Vita Nuova [2].

How I came upon Dante’s memoir is an experience worthy of the word serendipity. This time last year, as fate would have it I was working on my own memoir [3] which at first had no intention of being a spiritual one. This memoir is a collection of all the poetry I wrote since the very first poem (ca. 1996) to the very last one I wrote at that time. Why I wanted to compile the poems into one collection was itself born from my desire to catalog it as a source of reference for future use in songwriting.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson [4] also played a role here, because after I read his Essays [5], I was inspired to pour my thoughts and ideas into writing, like he did. That’s when I started to also write commentary and the history behind each poem I wrote. Little did I know, that someone somewhere seven hundred years ago had already done the same thing.

At first I was hugely influenced by Emerson’s style in writing, but it wasn’t until I bought and read Dante’s Inferno [6] that I read a footnote mentioning a memoir he wrote prior to his magnum opus The Divine Comedy, that consisted of poems he wrote, with additional commentary. Naturally, I was inclined to learn more about his prior work, and that’s when I came upon La Vita Nuova after searching online the life and history of Dante Alighieri.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Beata Beatrix, 1863

La Vita Nuova captures the essence of “Courtly Love”: what Wikipedia defines as “spiritual love” [7]. Finding this wealth of knowledge was like finding a diamond in a mud pond, because I was experiencing the exact same experience, almost word for word from its description, as Dante experienced when he fell in love with the beautiful and ethereal Beatrice Portinari [8]. When Dante decided he would rather use his love for Beatrice as a platform to get him closer to his Creator, that’s when I realized we had a spiritual similarity in our life processions.

As an homage to the similarity between us, I titled my own spiritual memoir La Vita Nueva.

It took me two months during the end of 2008 to write it from idea to a finish product. During that period, as I always do in most of my writing, I discovered more about my identity and more about what principles I stand for as a man and as a human being. And as I still experience, there are sentences and revelations that take me by surprise, since I didn’t know I could express it in such an eloquent manner and with such appropriate words that make me ask myself, “Did I really write this?”

But yes, I did write it. And I decided to share it with whoever wants to read it. Because I believe that my journey isn’t mine alone. I know there’s at least one other person. I believe that there have been plenty others who have chosen the path of spiritual love, and have discovered their enlightenment and inspiration from above. That’s why I want to share my story, to speak to the others who have experienced or are experiencing the same, that they aren’t alone.

That’s why I think it’s important to write your own spiritual memoir, as a landmark in this time of your life when you may be going through a fundamental transformation that will still resonate with human beings seven hundred years from now. I know that’s the way it is between Dante and me.

It’s also interesting to note that there are three new years this new year: the Islamic new year, the Gregorian new year, and the Chinese new year (I believe they also coincided last year). So, there are three good reasons to use this momentum to gain a fresh start (not that you have to wait for new year to make one). And one of the best ways to start the next chapter in your life, is by giving context to the previous chapters that came before.

“In every scene, these eyes come to the same conclusion.
If yours does too, then this journey is ours.”

—

[1] Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project. Her book is due out 29th of December
[2] Dante Alighieri is a famous Italian poet who lived in the 13th century. La Vita Nuova, his prosimetrum biography is available in the public domain
[3] La Vita Nueva, 2008
[4] Ralph Waldo Emerson, a prominent philosopher and prolific essayist during the 19th century
[5] Essays and Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barnes & Noble Classic Series
[6] Inferno is the first part of The Divine Comedy. La Commedia is considered Dante’s masterpiece, and is believed to have shaped the modern Italian language
[7] Courtly Love on Wikipedia
[8] Beatrice Portinari is the love of Dante. The inspiration behind La Vita Nuova, and the figure standing beside Dante in Heaven as depicted in Gustavo Dore’s “Empyrean” – the painting I attached HERE

Since seeing Elizabeth Gilbert [1] and Sir Ken Robinson [2] on TED, I’ve purposely seeked out books by other TED speakers that have become my favorite. One of them is Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational [3]. His book is a different kind of book than the ones I’m usually interested in because it talks about behavioral economics: a study of economics based on human irrationality, as opposed to human rationality conventional economy theory is based upon.

Dan Ariely himself is an interesting person, mainly – other than being a humorous and intelligent professor at Duke University – because he experienced a life-changing injury that gifted him with a great sense of compassion for fellow human beings (or so he would like to believe). Ariely suffered major degree burns that left him hospitalized for months and was forced to undergo many painful procedures in order for the scars to heal (and to this day they haven’t healed completely). It was this period in his life that he draws the most lessons from, and he shares intimate details within the book.

Ariely has a professional interest in behavioral economics, which is a relatively new field of study in the social sciences. The point of behavioral economics is to study human economic decisions – such as buying and selling things – based on the assumption that we are irrational beings. The conventional economy theory is based on the assumption that all human beings act rationally, but Ariely’s study in his Predictably Irrational raises some serious questions (if not rebuttals) towards the paradigm that we have been holding on to all this time

So predictable

The book consists of many experiments Ariely conducted mainly on his students in the MIT campus (and sometimes he would come over to the Harvard campus also). From the many experiments, Ariely shows us that indeed the economic and social choices that we make as human beings aren’t as based on rational principles as we would like to believe. The experiments themselves are funny, insightful, and surprisingly simple, so as to make us think are we really that predictable?

One of my favorite experiments is the “decoy”: Ariely used an example of a magazine subscription service that had three subscription options. The first option was to subscribe to the online edition for $59; second was subscribe to the print edition for $125; and third was subscribe to both the online and print edition for $125. Which one would you choose?

Based on common sense, more than two-thirds of the people in the experiment chose the third option. But here’s the clincher: when Ariely took out the second option (print for $125), only one-third opted for the third option. This experiment shows that many of us make our decisions based on relative values, therefore we are easy to manipulate to some degree by marketers who stand to profit from taking advantage of us.

Not so rational

Reading about the experiments teaches me new things about myself, and especially the economic decisions I make. It has surely made me more self-aware about my purchasing habits. Ariely raises all sorts of questions for us to ponder: why do we date the people we date; why do we hold on dearly to our houses when we sell them; and why is it easier for an accountant to steal from a bank account than steal straight from a lady’s purse.

There are precious moments in the book where Ariely questions the validity of many claims in our society that hold important roles, such as does expensive medicine actually work better than cheaper medicine? Learning from the conclusions that he obtains, we are given a peek into the fragile inner workings of our psyche and our society, and we are forced to re-question ourselves and our beliefs. From his explanations, we gain a better understanding about ourselves by admitting that we aren’t that rational after all.

For me, this book confirms what I already believe and rephrases it in a better sentence. I believe that we stand to learn a lot from Ariely’s lifelong study of behavioral economics, and how it affects the choices that we make in our lives. Reading his work will re-introduce you to your world, from a point of view you may have never seen before.

—

[1] Book Review: Eat Pray Love, 2009
[2] Book Review: The Element, 2009
[3] Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational