Friday, October 21, 2011

A Father’s Advice

Liang, you have become patient and tolerant because you are now objective and thoughtful.

I quite appreciate the Occupy Wall Street movement because the people in the financial industry are generally speaking greedy and even immoral. One famous U Penn-educated economics professor says finance-major university graduates are the most unwanted people in modern societies because they tend to create financial problems than solving them. I tend to agree with him.

Liang, life from now on will be more inspiring and exciting but also more challenging for you. You will like it although very often you will find yourself with difficult choices to make. Don't worry about that.

Why? Because it's important to make the right choice but it's even more important to act the right way after making a choice.

Secondly, because you will keep learning and we shall always share with you our experiences.

In my opinion there are four kinds of people we still need today and will need in our future society. They are visionaries, of whom you tend to become one. Number two, operatives who tend to be dutiful and meticulous. Number three, the workers who get things done. Number four, the priests who try to comfort human souls.

A successful person always needs to have a mix of the four kinds of abilities; it’s just a matter of proportion.

About your involvement in the Wall Street Protest, I quite like the new concept of majority rule. Give it a try, Liang, because my limited experience of the old majority rule tells me that the old rule is not really flexible enough to embrace new ideas.

Again, Liang, let me share with you my observations of development on the society level. I tend to think that there are three kinds of people who are never obsolete. They are politicians, financiers and workers . World development in the past 500 years has told us that. Do you agree?

Liang, these days, I have been travelling with Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I went to Shenzhen yesterday to prepare opening a branch office there after the Chinese New Year. In the coach bus, I happened to be reading this chapter, which started with this paragraph. Want to know what Kundera says?

“Anyone who thinks that the communist regimes of Central Europe are exclusively the work of criminals is overlooking a basic truth: the criminal regimes were made not by criminals but by enthusiasts convinced they had discovered the only road to paradise.”

It's cliche but rewritten by Kundera who is a good writer so that it is refreshing to read.

If you want to read on, go to page 170.

Liang, as Mom says, you are insightful and perceptive. You have had the power to do something different. It's just a matter of what and how big.

Keep going, keep working and keep learning and it will be a complete life! Do you think so?

Love,
Dad

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