Wasn’t actually planning to do a word vomit this morning- I was doing some reading (blog.asmartbear.com today) But then a swarm of schoolkids boarded the train. I can’t actually tell if they’re primary school kids or secondary school kids. Probably lower sec.
They came in as a tsunami of noise, crashing through the train of quiet, weary adults. It’s 11:42 in the morning. They’re laughing, screaming, joking. The contrast between them and the adults is staggering. The kids are full of life and energy. They alight at Bishan- I’m switching trains. Several boys race each other up the stairs.
I’ve been meaning to write something about my transition from school to NS to work, but I’m not sure if I’ve actually published anything. I wonder if there’s a gap of knowledge there, because nothing really prepared me for this. What is “this”? Whatever it is that distinguishes me from the kids. Because I was one of them. I was a noisy rambunctious kid. I still am sometimes, in some contexts, but something must have changed for me to now look at them with a tinge of annoyance. They’re like a different species. When did I transition?
Now I’m on the circle line and there’s an entire row of old chinese ladies on the seats. I don’t understand their conversations, but if you have a cliche mental image of old chinese ladies talking, this probably fits that.
I pause to ponder. Who am I? Who was I? What will I be? I’m the youngest full-time employee at work, and the only person who is married and paying a mortgage. That changes you very profoundly, I think. Nothing in the first 22 years of my life really prepared me for what a mortgage feels like over your head. That’s over 100 months of work. About 10 years of non-stop work with no money for food, living, etc. The loan is technically 30 years. I’m almost done with the first. 29 years more to go.
If you’re not working towards financial independence you’re working into a sort of ruin. And you see that on the faces of everybody on the train at rush hour. Nobody wants to be there.
Nobody tells you this. They might tell you about scholarships and changing the world but they don’t tell you about how you really, really, really ought to save your money. Not in a compelling way, at least. Or maybe it’s impossible to be compelling to a kid at that age but I don’t buy that. I’m sure we can design games and tell stories that make them feel it. First we ought to solve that problem for ourselves. There is no dignity or pleasure in a run-out-the-clock solution. In this regard, being undisciplined with your finances is worse than smoking or some other sort of addiction (and they usually go hand in hand).
There is no grand insight to be gotten from this post. This is all exploration. This is one of the 90 or so posts I have to write before it all coalesces and comes together- something about financial/emotional management. I’m just identifying and collecting the dots at this point. The connections come later, if they come at all.
Somebody told me once that all greatest things built or created were the work of maladjusted people. I’ve always felt like I was destined for great things, or like I’m meant to do something significant. But clearly, this is just a coping mechanism. It’s psychological shorthand for the truth, which is… That I am a maladjusted person. It suffers from the same logical fallacy implication as “I didn’t do well because I didn’t study”- just because progress is dependent on the maladjusted doesn’t mean that the maladjusted will necessarily contribute to progress.
I don’t mean to say that as anything more than a statement of fact. I do not wish for the universe to sympathize and coddle me and my poor maladjusted self. I know that everything done is an act of performance, so yes I am performing right now too, but this time for a self-selecting audience. I will not be sharing or publicizing this. I am writing primarily for me and for anybody else who might get any sort of utility from this.
I know more clearly now than before that me being maladjusted isn’t anything to brag or boast about, and seeking sympathy for it is hollow… okay I’m at work, I will end this here and continue separately.
Here’s the context of the quote of a quote (Vinod Khosla quoting Martin Luther King Jr:)
A Tweet I saw recently showcases the mindset of the innovators that will lead this charge for change: “Cynics never do the impossible, achieve the improbable, take on the inadvisable. Hope is only path to extraordinary success.” Tweeting is an innovation few could have seen or defined: who would have thought a few years ago that millions of people would follow messages in 140 characters? And who would have thought that they could tell the mood of the nation? Or reveal the culture of a city, avoid traffic, sense the stirrings of a revolution, predict the financial markets, detect and map natural
disasters, predict the popularity of people, technologies and goods….I could go on forever! For the longest time, I have thought of innovation and its partner, entrepreneurship, as about “those who dare to dream the dreams and are foolish enough to try and make these dreams come true.” And foolishness is a key ingredient of both innovation and entrepreneurship. Martin Luther King said “human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted” and George Bernard Shaw echoed “all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.” It is this kind of creativity, innovation, and risk-taking that represents the fundamental driver behind economic, cultural, and social progress. – http://www.khoslaventures.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/InnovatorsEcosystem_12_19_111.pdf
There are certain technical words in the vocabulary of every academic discipline which tend to become stereotypes and cliches. Psychologists have a word which is probably used more frequently than any other word in modern psychology. It is the word “maladjusted.” This word is the ringing cry of the new child psychology.
Now in a sense all of us must live the well adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophemic personalities. But there are some things in our social system to which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I suggest that you too ought to be maladjusted.
I never intend to adjust myself to the viciousness of mob-rule. I never intend to adjust myself to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic inequalities of an economic system which take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to become adjusted to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating method of physical violence.
I call upon you to be maladjusted. The challenge to you is to be maladjusted—as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day, could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, “Let judgment run down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream;” as maladjusted as Lincoln, who had the vision to see that this nation could not survive half slave and half free; as maladjusted as Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery could cry out, in words lifted to cosmic proportions, “All men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the persuit of Happiness.” As maladjusted as Jesus who dared to dream a dream of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men. The world is in desperate need of such maladjustment.
(Martin Luther King, April 25, 1957)