Ming’s Wisdom

I was cutting my nails after watering the plants in the garden, and thinking about the cycle of life, the interactions between plants, fungi, bacteria, and animals, and how they eat each other (after death or during life from shedding) to survive, and how each kingdom nourishes the other kingdoms.

So I happened on the thought of what happens when you’re killed in nature by another animal, and you die. You are no longer conscious. you no longer know the pain it was to have been killed. You forget everything. And this was a sudden shock to me, the true realization of what death is. It felt like the soul was taken out of me.

But the one thought that could console me was the fact that the molecules of my body would still exist, and they would nourish the rest of the world and all of its living things, and my molecules would help to sustain a whole ecosystem of living organisms, and I would technically still be alive, thriving in fact, though animal, plant, fungus, bacteria, I wouldn’t know which i’d be in.

Now I think that philosophers have so often thought about death and were extremely afraid of it, but really they are missing the next step, the realization that the amazing miracle of billions of molecules of this earth came together in just the right configuration to give them, even though it’s for such a short period of time, the valuable present of life and consciousness. It really is a present that you never asked for, and never did anything to earn it, yet extraordinary effort was put into aligning those billions of molecules to give you such a present, simply because. So we really should be very appreciative of this life that we hold, and be super thankful to whoever decided to put in such effort to give it to us.

Having a bad memory can sometimes be a blessing, especially when listening to music. I like to play music while driving, often putting a single song on “repeat-one”, so that the song plays again and again forever (when I’m in that mood, I’ll keep one song repeating for 20-40 minutes during a drive). The beauty of this setup is, when you’re done listening to an amazing song, you get to listen to it again. My memory is bad enough that when I listen to the song again, it feels like a whole new experience. And sometimes I might even forget that the song is on repeat, so I’m pleasantly surprised at the end of the song, that I get the luck to hear it all over again.

On a somewhat, but only marginally related note, life is beautiful, because it doesn’t give you the opportunity to fail. You really really aren’t talented enough to truly fail, because it would take an extraordinary effort to succeed at failing. How does that work? Because life is a continuously repeated cycle of 1-second time segments. You are only talented enough to fail for one or more time segments (some of you who are extra talented may be able to achieve failures lasting several multiples of 86,400 segments – multiples of a day). You may shout out that you’ve achieved failure, but a failure during one time segment inevitably is washed behind you into a past time segment when the next time segment takes its turn to be the present time. The failure is short-lived as it’s mandated to be attached to a time segment that slowly scoots to the back of the line, off into memories to be forgotten. The very next time segment that comes along is a new opportunity to succeed. The cool thing is, most things in life allow you to fail continuously for many time segments, and success is achieved as long as you achieve success for at least 1 time segment only (as long as you don’t seriously injure yourself in trying, that does follow you to the next time segment). If you take a bigger picture (bird’s eye view) of time, we can assign each hour of a day to be our time segments to be analyzed. There are 16 waking hours in this day, so 16 time segments. You may be able to achieve failure in one or more of your time segments, but after that failure life inevitably pushes another time segment onto you, forcing you to try again. Given a 1 in 2 chance of failure at a given goal, you have a 1/2 ^ 16 chance of continually failing. That’s 1 in 65 thousand. So you’d have to be extremely talented, be very persistent, and have extraordinary discipline to actually fail. Frankly, I don’t think anyone I know really has the patience and endurance to fail, so just go out and do it!

There’s not enough time in life to regret things, since it could be better used towards exploring other opportunities.

Today I stayed at home.

My family is moving to California and living with me. I’m very happy about it, and have been cleaning recently to make room for our truck-load of stuff. Since I no longer work, I have just enough time to go through the things in the garage to “simplify” things a bit.

But today was more than just another day of cleaning. Even though I wasn’t going on an exciting date like Stephen, and wasn’t lounging around in underwear doing nothing like Joseph , and I was simply home scooting furniture around and scooping squirrel poop out of the garage, I spent my day with a feeling of fulfillment, that nothing could have made this day better.

Two people, an older lady with a young man, walked over to the dumpster a short distance from my open garage door. They pushed a cart with them, wearing plastic gloves and immediately started digging through the trash. Being a compulsive recycler, and also being educated in the art of California CRV refunds, I knew exactly what they were doing. I asked if they were looking for bottles and cans to sell for money, and offered to bring mine over. I didn’t have that many to give, but the look of those two making a living off of those cans made me feel so very sorry for them. So I did what I had to do… steal some from Joseph’s pile (no one tell Joseph ). I put it together with mine in a bin and carried it over for them. The young man said thanks in a shy and embarrassed way, then insisted on carrying the bin back for me.

Later a man in a motorcycle outfit walked towards the dumpster. He was very friendly, and started talking to me. He had a Hulk Hogan kind of look, but had trouble lifting up the trash that he was trying to throw away because he broke his wrist. While dumping the trash the weight of the trash can caught his wrist at a wrong angle, and he froze. He called out to me to quickly help him catch the can so that his wrist can stop lifting. We talked for a bit more. He can’t work anymore because of that accident, so he asked if I could let him know if I was throwing out anything useful.

Several hours passed, and to my surprise an older Asian lady walked towards the dumpster. Like the pair that came earlier, she also didn’t look homeless, pushed a cart around, and immediately started digging. Yet again I felt very compelled to give her some bottles and cans. So I took a couple more bags from Joseph’s pile… hey he hasn’t recycled them for half a year and they’ve been taking up precious space, so I consider it public domain now due to negligence . As she saw me walking towards her with two bags in hand, and realized what was in those bags, I could see a deep smile form on her face, a smile that cried relief that today will be a good day, that there will be food to eat. She was recently laid off, and has been coming three times a week. As I started walking back, a small kid ran over with some of his family’s bottles, and yelled that he had more coming as the lady thanked him. I could tell that his family has been saving those bottles regularly for this.

As I continued to clean, thinking about those bottles, my neighbor came home from work. I met him and his wife, talked, realized they’ve been living there for two years now. Apparently, one day during the winter every year, the peak of the rainy season overflows our gutters, which are poorly designed to flow through a hole in the garage, through the length of the garage, to the street, and the overflow goes into the neighbor’s garage, damaging their stuff. He looked very happy that I was cleaning my garage, because he had come over a year ago when his garage got wet because the water passage through the garage was clogged (by the squirrel poop), and no one could unclog it because so much stuff was on top of that passage. There was no more stuff on top of that passage, and boy was he excited. He immediately offered to sweep the passage for me, which was now filled with squirrel poop from the surrounding area, which I was putting off to do later since it was very stinky. He didn’t care it was squirrel poop. He swept that passage full of poop like he just won the lottery, and carrying it all with him in a broom pan, made his way towards the dumpster.

I finished up my cleaning as it got dark. The garage was finally clean, and I could walk from one end to the other. Water could flow from one end to the other. Today has been fruitful. But what will happen to everyone that I met today? They were all amazing people, and I hope that they find what they are looking for, be it bottles, health, or a dry garage. In one day of staying home I got to see the interconnected web of the neighborhood, how people who lost their jobs came over to the dumpster for their income, how one family thinks about them each time there are bottles to throw away, how neighbors ask each other for things and how neighbors can help each other out. My garage door was open today, and during that one day of open doors neighbors from every direction came and talked to me and revealed their biggest secrets that they are probably embarrassed to even tell family and friends about. It was amazing to see how these neighbors lived life, how their lives are intertwined, in this cased through that one dumpster in the middle of it all. This one dumpster showed me so much about how life can be difficult when all you have is someone else’s trash, but as long as you cherish what you have and delight in the relationships surrounding you, your life can be quite an enviable treasure. No longer having to work on a Thursday, and leaving that garage door open, has uncovered for me the neighborhood coming alive, making the scarce goods found in the dumpster their treasure and life. Finally I wrapped up and carried the last of the trash to the dumpster. That was my day.