I don’t remember the last time I just thought – felt the breeze of the air conditioner pass over my skin, every oscillation after every oscillation a reminder that I was growing up in a controlled environment where things were somehow regulated and modulated, that this space that I was a part of was a part of a training, it seems, for the broader world.

The thing I’ve learned about training though is that life seems to be an unending series of trainings or exams – and how well you do in the ‘training’ determines whether you can progress to the next stage; there is no real ‘final’ moment or exam – everything is merely a preparation or a test to see if you can get onto specific paths, where again you will be tested. 

In school, you go for your first trainings – arithmetic, English, literature, history. In classrooms you sit, listening to the teacher either wax lyrical or drone (most likely drone), told that you must sit for the first term exam; after the first term, you’re told not to get complacent – the second term awaits. A succession of second terms come and go and before you know it, they’re telling you about an SPM, an SAT, a GRE, and before you know it, you are 50+, the SPM becomes PMS (if applicable), and you realize that whoops, it was all exams all the way down. 

…But that’s if you’re ~ privileged ~, as society might say.

If you’re not ~ privileged ~ in that way, surely you don’t have exams – surely you wouldn’t be tested.

But nope, life isn’t that simple. Job applications with no degree? Those are exams. They’re harder though, since you didn’t take those other exams. Marketing and sales to a random prospect? An exam. Dating? Exam. Meeting in-laws? Exam. Marriage? The ultimate exam… 

And you get to do it all over again when you have a kid and the exams continue!

Life is interesting in that way – an unending test, a continuing challenge that never really ends. 

In that sense, I think it could be easy or tempting to think about slowing down, retiring, stopping, having the challenge disappear – but I think it is rather more healthy to think that challenges are normal, and part of the basic structure of the universe; they can be arbitrarily difficult and tough, but even ‘overcoming’ any particular exam or challenge is never the end.

In a way, I feel that life is an eternal overcoming of oneself – I’ve definitely felt this to be true in recent days, whether the objective results match my aspirations or my sense of self.

The challenge is to accept that and to continue to strive, knowing that in the best of worlds, from the greatest men that history provides, that the challenges will not end – but they will only become more grand and interesting.

When things don’t go well, I too will not be happy.

When things go well, I will take joy.

I too have emotions, I too have feelings.

I seem strong and in many ways it is fair to say that I am strong, but there are times when the cracks will form.

After all, I too am human – seeking to be anti-fragile, but not quite there yet.

I am blessed to be lifted up by the grace of the universe.

For each person, I feel that there is a sort of fate – a range of things that happen in the course of the writing of their destiny, each page unique and tailored to the person’s nature, experiences, encounters.

And to each person, I suppose that there is a set of things that they are put to do, whether by their own nature or by the universe.

In doing what I do at the moment, it feels that there is a sort of animating force that lies within, pushing every single exertion, clip deletion, spoken word, idea that comes out from the internal engine that is my mind.

I imagine that in some alternate person’s history, it would not be so – they would feel a different animating force, and it might be on a different topic; rather than politics, they might be interested in a specific niche or aspect of business; rather than any of those things, they might be consumed by the high art of painting, music-making, or some other fancy that I might call a flight but that they might call an all-consuming raison d’etre.

Once upon a time in life, I used to be a little more judgmental, I feel, of possible raison d’etres – ways that people could live their lives, manifested in the daily choices and the everyday actions that they take; I don’t feel like that anymore – in many ways, it’s more of like… “Do what you have to do”?

If I think about it further, I guess that immediately sweeps out the people who just choose to do nothing or choose to break the law with no compelling or justice-driven reasoning and sit there crying, unchanging, doing nothing except complain day in day out as they live out authentic lifestyles that whether privately or publicly I say that I neither like nor respect – so I guess I change my mind; I am judgmental after all, but I just wanted to think that I wasn’t judgmental, and a part of me was trying to corner myself into a somewhat superior moral corner.

I am sure that a master philosopher would be able to take everything that I’ve said here and then write a dialogue out of it – but I think my basic observation is this:

As long as you don’t break the law as commonly accepted by both legal scholars and the ‘reasonable man’ and as long as you don’t do nothing, you should feel empowered to do what you have to do – you should be able to be who you wish to be, exist as you wish; you don’t have a right to talk to everyone because it’s everyone’s right to determine who they want to talk to, but certainly you have the right to try – to act, to react, to initiate, to respond, in order to get what you want out of life.

I guess this naturally invites a specific question.

What is it that you do, Victor? Why do you do it? How are you getting what you want out of life?

Well, I educate people and train them for exams, but I also do it more broadly by teaching them about politics and society; I educate myself by learning from the historical figures of our time directly – all in the service of my own self-enlightenment, through which I yearn to see the enlightenment of those around me, whether they may like that enlightenment or they may not.

The last question?

I don’t have a clean answer to that, because I’d have to answer at least partly in the negative.

I think that I am responding to this world mostly by instinct rather than through full orchestration – I think that there are many things that I’ve done and am doing and will continue to do that respond to different parts of the hunger inside me – but in terms of directing process, energy, intelligence, and articulating a full vision of what it can or should be, I think that we are still short.

But I don’t think that it is unmeaningful.

I guess some of you may already be aware of some of the things that have been happening, and you may also know that blog posts like these are a dreadfully low resolution medium to understand what these things are.

I leave it to you to understand the wider context – it should be a fun exercise 😀