“Happiness is the result of personal effort, you fight for it, you strive for it, you insist upon it, and sometimes travel the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly for it.”-Anonymous
(Warning: This is a very long post, and I doubt anyone will read through this whole thing and do not attempt to read through this whole post unless you have time and you really want to gain insight on life, want to know about me and or hear me vent on my week and other things)
At this point in life, I’d say I am happy. Happiness is a relative term after all. I’m happy that I have a place to live, family, friends, and happy I am healthy and alive. I cannot say I am satisfied with my life. In fact at this point I am not even close. Life (as a proper noun) has been bringing “down on me”(jeremiah+50 cent) considerable unsatisfaction, or a more correct, real, valid term, dissatisfaction. So now I am going to analyze and dissect the opening statement like a neurosurgeon dissecting the opening skull of a patient. Everything in life takes personal effort, and I believe I’ve put in a decent amount of effort to get to where I am now, yet I am very unsatisfied because I have so many what-ifs and regrets that come along in life from uneffortful and unmature(or immature or amateur) actions that I can’t seem to let go easily.
One has to fight for everything in life, whether its love or a championship. I always try to fight my way to the top, win or lose. However, fighting is a broad term. So I’m going to start with physical fighting. From what I’ve remembered I’ve done a lot over the past years. In my elementary school years when I lived in a nice apartment community, me and a childhood butt-buddy used to fight with kids all the time to gain respect from the other kids, in other words we owned the neighborhood. I recall we even fought each other at times when we disagreed over childish things, after all we were kids those days. Of course our mommas didn’t like it but they could only shake their heads and spank us, and I’d like to say, both of us took the spanking like real boys, and I’d also like to add that we liked it. I also remember an instance in 5th grade one day after school, we were wrecking these school kids in clean games of basketball at a nearby park and this obscenely obnoxious middle school freshman whom I’m not going to name decided to interfere with our games. We let him play on a team like gentleboys, he decided to be a sore loser and start playing unfair because they were losing and we won yet again after a dirty game. He let out his pussy-ass anger and started calling us names.We didn’t mind and asked for another game. He wouldn’t have it and slapped one kid on our team. Then he pushed me and my friend. My friend understandably backed down since he was older than us, but I was pissed and wasn’t having any of it. I told him if he touched me one more time, I was going to beat him up. The pussy that he is and thinking he was all that didn't heed my words and immediately bitch slapped me across the face. It was completely silent for about 3 seconds and then we started fighting. He got a few slaps on my face again and a few pussy kicks. I probably went super-saiyan because I felt quite strong and shouted Kamehameha! in my mind and threw a megapunch to his face. The pussy goes down on the ground cupping his bleeding nose and this random 8th grader was like “oh shit”. His nose is apparently broken and the douchebag probably went crying to his mommy because next thing I knew the female dog comes to my house and argues with my mom threatening for injury compensation. Since I had plenty of witnesses at the scene, it was quite ridiculous of her to claim such things as her son clearly initiated the incident and I was clearly exercising my right to self-defense. I later find out he had to get some type of plastic surgery on his nose, bet his parents weren’t happy about the expenses and I guess karma is a female dog as well. After that, I had three straight years of peace in middle school until one final school day in the locker room after swim practice, some random Mexican kid who didn’t get picked up because his daddy was probably too busy making a living mowing lawns, wouldn’t stop harassing me about my chinese name and after pushing a few more of my buttons, I went at him. Fight lasted about half a minute because my teammates held me back instead of backing me up, which was better for me because I probably would’ve been suspended just in time for the 8th grade dance. Over the years I signed a personal no fighting treaty to myself as I’ve come to realize violence is not the answer. Then after yet again 3 more years of peace, one night of first semester senior year of high school I get in hopefully my last and final physical altercation of my life, this time with my old man. I was busy with homework and college apps late at night working on the family computer since I did not have a PC(personal computer) at the time, stressed out with so much shit on my mind in addition to being profoundly sleep-deprived throughout the week and exhausted from an intense early morning workout. To calm my fevered brain, I pull up this flashgame online, right when my dad walks in. He probably had a bad day at work or was on something because he yells the @#$% out of me. After a couple of minutes, I got tired of his bullshit and blew up as well and literally told him off. The guy couldn’t believe I had that in me as I had been quite peaceful for such a prolonged period of time. I guess both of our testosterone levels spiked at the same moment because we ended up on the floor wrestling each other and it was not the wrestling you do for father-son bonding time. Thank God my mom woke up and separated us because it would not have ended well. After that day, I had made a personal doctrine to always find solutions to problems without violence and will stick to it for the rest of my life. In other words, I'm pretty confident that I’ve mastered the art of anger management and peaceful diplomacy (to a certain extent).
One has to fight for everything in life, whether its love or a championship. I always try to fight my way to the top, win or lose. However, fighting is a broad term. So I’m going to start with physical fighting. From what I’ve remembered I’ve done a lot over the past years. In my elementary school years when I lived in a nice apartment community, me and a childhood butt-buddy used to fight with kids all the time to gain respect from the other kids, in other words we owned the neighborhood. I recall we even fought each other at times when we disagreed over childish things, after all we were kids those days. Of course our mommas didn’t like it but they could only shake their heads and spank us, and I’d like to say, both of us took the spanking like real boys, and I’d also like to add that we liked it. I also remember an instance in 5th grade one day after school, we were wrecking these school kids in clean games of basketball at a nearby park and this obscenely obnoxious middle school freshman whom I’m not going to name decided to interfere with our games. We let him play on a team like gentleboys, he decided to be a sore loser and start playing unfair because they were losing and we won yet again after a dirty game. He let out his pussy-ass anger and started calling us names.We didn’t mind and asked for another game. He wouldn’t have it and slapped one kid on our team. Then he pushed me and my friend. My friend understandably backed down since he was older than us, but I was pissed and wasn’t having any of it. I told him if he touched me one more time, I was going to beat him up. The pussy that he is and thinking he was all that didn't heed my words and immediately bitch slapped me across the face. It was completely silent for about 3 seconds and then we started fighting. He got a few slaps on my face again and a few pussy kicks. I probably went super-saiyan because I felt quite strong and shouted Kamehameha! in my mind and threw a megapunch to his face. The pussy goes down on the ground cupping his bleeding nose and this random 8th grader was like “oh shit”. His nose is apparently broken and the douchebag probably went crying to his mommy because next thing I knew the female dog comes to my house and argues with my mom threatening for injury compensation. Since I had plenty of witnesses at the scene, it was quite ridiculous of her to claim such things as her son clearly initiated the incident and I was clearly exercising my right to self-defense. I later find out he had to get some type of plastic surgery on his nose, bet his parents weren’t happy about the expenses and I guess karma is a female dog as well. After that, I had three straight years of peace in middle school until one final school day in the locker room after swim practice, some random Mexican kid who didn’t get picked up because his daddy was probably too busy making a living mowing lawns, wouldn’t stop harassing me about my chinese name and after pushing a few more of my buttons, I went at him. Fight lasted about half a minute because my teammates held me back instead of backing me up, which was better for me because I probably would’ve been suspended just in time for the 8th grade dance. Over the years I signed a personal no fighting treaty to myself as I’ve come to realize violence is not the answer. Then after yet again 3 more years of peace, one night of first semester senior year of high school I get in hopefully my last and final physical altercation of my life, this time with my old man. I was busy with homework and college apps late at night working on the family computer since I did not have a PC(personal computer) at the time, stressed out with so much shit on my mind in addition to being profoundly sleep-deprived throughout the week and exhausted from an intense early morning workout. To calm my fevered brain, I pull up this flashgame online, right when my dad walks in. He probably had a bad day at work or was on something because he yells the @#$% out of me. After a couple of minutes, I got tired of his bullshit and blew up as well and literally told him off. The guy couldn’t believe I had that in me as I had been quite peaceful for such a prolonged period of time. I guess both of our testosterone levels spiked at the same moment because we ended up on the floor wrestling each other and it was not the wrestling you do for father-son bonding time. Thank God my mom woke up and separated us because it would not have ended well. After that day, I had made a personal doctrine to always find solutions to problems without violence and will stick to it for the rest of my life. In other words, I'm pretty confident that I’ve mastered the art of anger management and peaceful diplomacy (to a certain extent).
Another aspect of fighting is basically striving or insisting upon something. Using last week’s discussion, motivation is essential for this aspect of fighting. I know that I am the happiest when I achieve any goal after being motivated and putting in effort or fighting and striving for something and it pays-off. Simply put, it’s always the best feeling in the world when you want something so badly and you get it in the end after working for it. Yet paradoxically, the more you get, the more it takes to be satisfied.... Last but not least, to participate relentlessly in life basically to me means living life to the fullest, not wasting time, and always trying my best at everything (within certain limits).
This whole week at work, I got to be a part of teaching this class to young summer campers called Residency 101. It’s basically just talking about the body, the senses, organs, different types of doctors, and the path to becoming one. I’ve got to admit, I have never met such cute, awesome, and humorous kids. I had the time of my life with the class and the kids, and enjoyed every second of it. At lunch on Friday I was talking to a co-worker and she kept venting on how much she didn’t like teaching the kids and how she couldn’t wait for the week to be over. She then asked me how to be popular with the kids and make them listen. I told her you have to actually like them and don’t tell them to be quiet every 5 minutes and use other tactics to have them enjoy learning and have fun, after all it is summer camp and not school. Maybe she was just PMSing, it might be that time of the month for her. When she told me this was her last week, I expressed verbally how im gonna miss her, but in my head I was like whatever, I’m gonna miss my campers a lot more than you. They brightened every one of my days this week, despite everything that has been going on outside of work. Then after work on Friday, I took a nap and then went with my friends to celebrate a fellow Cornellians birthday, someone I met in the beginning of summer and from the start, I could tell is one of the nicest, humblest, and chillest dudes, someone I would totally take the risk of breaking the law and buying soda illegally for. After getting back home relatively late, I just couldn’t fall asleep because I had so many things on my mind, so I randomly pick a movie out of my stash and watched it alone, felt like a loser but whatever, it happens to the best of us. Coincidently I picked this deep movie called “Reign Over Me”, starring Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle. Now Adam Sandler is my favorite actor and one of the funniest guys out there. He has had great comedies, but is given no credit and is not known at all for dramas. The movie blows me away. It is now one of my favorite movies. Honestly, I rarely cry at all, and the last time I was close to crying over a movie was actually watching another movie of Adam Sandlers called “Click” where there was this one scene that for some reason, only hits the heart of male audiences. Well this movie was deep. I mean it was very deep, just how my friend Jenny would like it. Here a link to a brief summary of the movie. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0490204/ I usually don’t analyze the quality of acting in movies because I don’t care about that stuff, but I’ve got to admit that the acting throughout was amazing. Basically, its about a lonely guy played by Adam Sandler who lost his 3 daughters and wife in one of the planes on 9/11. He is psychologically messed up after it and isolates himself from the world for about 2 years. Then one normal day in NYC, his college roommate played by Don Cheadle bumps into him and they make each other better men. It starts off slow, but builds up and there were a few parts towards the end of the movie where I started crying for real, it was pretty sad, like the movie and on my part, (no judging please). But whatever all that matters is that after watching it, I felt pretty good. There are always people out there who have it worse, and the whole point of the movie is that no matter what happens in life, great friends will always be there.
So after all this self-reflection, I do not understand why lately I have been so unsatisfied with myself. I feel like at times, I fight myself too much and expect too much. Which leads to the last topic of my post. I have not read a book for fun since reading The Great Gatsby (one of my favorite books) for a freshman writing class at Cornell, and so since it’s summer, I picked up one of the many books I bought off clearance at Half Price Books with my buddy Kevin. The book is called “Final Exam” and is a compilation of stories on a surgeons journey through medical school and into practice, and basically how she dealt with death on a daily basis. Again, it was pretty deep, probably not as much as my friend Jenny would like, but deep enough. In my life thus far, I have only dealt with a death once. His name was Brian Lo, but everyone called him B-Lo. He was my brother, a brother of the Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity at Cornell. He was also a senior in the Cornell School of Hotel Administration and a son of two chinese immigrant parents. He died in an accidental fire at his apartment on his last day of college classes. He had a real estate company ready to employ him right after graduation, which would’ve took place 1 month after his last day of classes. Heres an article about it from the Cornell newspaper. http://cornellsun.com/section/news/content/2011/05/09/friends-say-brian-lo-%E2%80%9911-victim-cook-street-fire-loved-smile
I remember being present when an administrator personally broke the news first to all of us who were sitting and fidgeting at the house. It was horrible, the worst feeling ever and a lot of brothers immediately started bawling. I didn’t cry however until his memorial service which was a few days later, while i was watching and listening to his close friends share stories and thoughts about him. I personally did not know him as well since I had only known him for about 3 months. He was rush chair and rushed me along with other freshman during Cornell rush week, so we only man-flirted, partied, and broed it out. He was one of the reasons I joined DKE, because from the day I met him he was funny and very bro, (he also had big muscles, and he was Asian). In fact, he was the buffest Asian in my fraternity, but joked around with me a lot about how I would take his place once he graduated. I didn’t expect to become the buffest Asian in my fraternity 1 month earlier than he predicted. He would at times, drunkenly tell me how he saw a lot of himself in me and how I had potential to be his protégé. He had these ridiculous but unique catchphrases, similar to the one liners I use (ex: "Cornell guys are easy on the eyes, easier on the heart"-Brian Lo). During the pledging process, he was one of the few brothers who was not a douchebag to us pledges, and actually helped us out. “There’s more to life than being angry” is what he would tell some of us when we were pissed at some of the brothers. He would always reassure us that we were the best pledge class he had rushed and tried his best to quell our fears the week before initiation when all us were scared shitless. I remember through the worst parts of initiation when I just wanted to quit I would think back to my big brothers words of wisdom: “If you are going through hell, keep going.” Then I would think back to B-Lo’s drunk words of wisdom to me the day before: “Are you tough? If you are tough, you will get through anything.” Those words till this day still keep me going during hard times of my life.
It’s funny how after someone dies, you learn more about the person and respect him so much more. I learned from an active alumni that he was one of the main reasons our fraternity went from sketchy and shitty to mediocre and respectable. He was one of the only senior brothers who cared about bringing up our status on campus and instead of fucking around throughout his 3 years as a brother, he put in countless efforts and ideas to make our fraternity better. He revolutionized the rushing procedure to draw in the best and ensure that we have status insurance for years to come. On the day he died, my pledge class promised we would try our best to make sure his dream of DKE being one of the top houses in Cornell would become a reality. What sucks is that his parents don’t speak English and didn’t even know he was in a fraternity, so they have no idea what he had done for us, what a role model he was, and how important he was to our fraternity because we could not explain or express the positive impact of their sons’ life on us and so many other people. There were a lot of heartfelt stories about him shared during the memorial, but one thing that always came up was how he was always smiling, no matter what happened. I miss his smile, no homo. I miss his daily lessons on how important protein is. I miss his “Awwwwww steve xu, eat more protein and you’ll be like me” statement every time I am eating dinner at the house. I miss the same brief conversation that goes like "wow steve xu, so much protein" every time he sees me at lunch lounging on the couch with a plate full of food and I miss his chuckle every time I'd reply, "not enough, B-Lo, not enough". Last but not least, I miss his positive attitude on life every second he was awake, and I know he would be pissed off at me if he knew I was dissatisfied with my life and having negative attitudes as of late and taking life for granted. So Brian Lo, I'm dedicating this post as well as a smile on my face to you.
It’s funny how after someone dies, you learn more about the person and respect him so much more. I learned from an active alumni that he was one of the main reasons our fraternity went from sketchy and shitty to mediocre and respectable. He was one of the only senior brothers who cared about bringing up our status on campus and instead of fucking around throughout his 3 years as a brother, he put in countless efforts and ideas to make our fraternity better. He revolutionized the rushing procedure to draw in the best and ensure that we have status insurance for years to come. On the day he died, my pledge class promised we would try our best to make sure his dream of DKE being one of the top houses in Cornell would become a reality. What sucks is that his parents don’t speak English and didn’t even know he was in a fraternity, so they have no idea what he had done for us, what a role model he was, and how important he was to our fraternity because we could not explain or express the positive impact of their sons’ life on us and so many other people. There were a lot of heartfelt stories about him shared during the memorial, but one thing that always came up was how he was always smiling, no matter what happened. I miss his smile, no homo. I miss his daily lessons on how important protein is. I miss his “Awwwwww steve xu, eat more protein and you’ll be like me” statement every time I am eating dinner at the house. I miss the same brief conversation that goes like "wow steve xu, so much protein" every time he sees me at lunch lounging on the couch with a plate full of food and I miss his chuckle every time I'd reply, "not enough, B-Lo, not enough". Last but not least, I miss his positive attitude on life every second he was awake, and I know he would be pissed off at me if he knew I was dissatisfied with my life and having negative attitudes as of late and taking life for granted. So Brian Lo, I'm dedicating this post as well as a smile on my face to you.
No comments:
Post a Comment