Looking at life & the world

THE OTHER week I complimented a colleague in my newspaper office for being able to write as well as me. She returned the compliment by saying I was the biggest egoist she had ever met.

I don't deny I am an egoist. Who isn't? Those who are sure of themselves, who don't suffer fools, complexes or neuroses, who can laugh at others and at themselves -- they are egoists.

Of course there are imposters, but you can spot the difference. It sounds contradictory but an egoist is humble. Take myself. When I think that despite all the countless combinations of life and circumstances, I am what I am (and I am not speaking behind some burning bush), I feel truly humbled -- I could have been worse, like many other life forms in my office!

On the other hand, a faker isn't humble, he merely carries an air of false modesty which initially caused you to suspect he was more than what he assumed to be. But underneath, he's only a lamb in wolf's clothing.

Look at China's paramount leader Deng Xiaoping -- beneath his short, lamblike stature lurks a big wolf -- who used to tell visitors he had no public role other than that of chairman of the Chinese Bridge Players Association. He was self-effacing because he knew and was prepared to show his strength and push through his agenda, in defiance of even former boss Chairman Mao Zedong. Just before Mao's death in 1980, a "criticise Deng Xiaoping" campaign was launched. When a group of admirers met Deng in a Beijing restaurant and began applauding him, he admonished them to continue "criticising Deng Xiaoping".

Egoists look at life and the world, and break out in laughter -- spontaneous, unrestrained and loud, laughing at themselves, at difficult situations, and at difficult people. The egoists are confident there is no situation or person they cannot handle. But, occasionally, there are situations and people they really cannot handle. So, instead of being bemused, they act amused. What else can they do? They will not whine or pule, for then they bring themselves down to the level their enemies wish them to be.

In fact, laughter is their unexpected and most potent weapon -- it discomfits hostile folks and encourages friends.

So that he is never at a loss, the egoist prepares himself thoroughly. He reads up, he talks to SMEs, he checks facts. Don't be fooled when he puts on a show of knowing and doing nothing and assumes a leisurely air. Inside his cranium is a dense pack of research on the work he's engaged in. How else does he acquire the calm superiority whether at a Powerpoint presentation or the watercooler.

[PS: SMEs are, of course, subject matter experts -- you know that, don't you?]

So, with his head well-prepared, the egoist can afford to follow his heart and instinct, agreeing with Pascal, the mathematician, philosopher and confident egoist, that

The heart has its reason which reason does not know.

Egoists are not incapable of logical reasoning. They can out-reason (and out-talk) most people. But what's the point? What are they trying to prove? You see, egoists do not have to prove anything because they are supremely self-confident and self-centred. Their life revolves around themselves, for they realises they're all that they've got. If they don't treat themselves well, no one else will.

They live a detached, unruffled life, with no demands and no expectations, and thus, no disappointment.

They live completely for the moment, mindful of the moment, moment to moment, for the moment is all that is authentic and meaningful. They don't brood over an unforgiving past or a fickle future.

A poem I studied in secondary school describes the outlook of such an individual,

Thus, scorning all the cares

That fate or fortune brings,

He makes the heaven his book

His wisdom heavenly things,

Good thoughts his only friends,

His wealth a well-spent age,

The earth his sober inn

And quiet pilgrimage.

-- Integer Vitae, Thomas Campion

-- first published, Sept 23, 1980, in the New Nation, Singapore's afternoon tabloid (now defunct). China's paramount leader Deng Xiaoping (or Teng Hsiaoping) was then very much alive and kicking, and, with Mao inside a glass cage and the extremists inside a jail cell, raring to launch his economic reforms.

Today, in the new Millennium, with Deng and most of the old leaders gone, people in China have forgotten Mao's mid-1950s dictum of plain living and high thinking, and are following Deng's make-money-not-politics pursuit. Those who want to make politics, of course, go to jail to keep them from harm's way.

-- Updated Aug 20, 2005

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Shooting the shooter shooting life at Labrador Park, Singapore, by Francis Chin, July 9, 2005, while munching durian and mangosteen with friends.