This truly has to stop. Something that you must, you must get a handle on. And that is the amount of negativity that surrounds the average human being from the morning till the night. If you turn your phone on when you first awaken, you are bombarded with doom and gloom and pestilence and poverty and failure. That’s even before you’ve reached for your morning coffee.
And the sad part is, it’s just not real for your life. Your life for the most part is pretty good. Your bed is warm. Your pillow is relatively soft. You can get up to a clean environment.
You can make your coffee. All of this very very positive. And you’re saying to yourself as the news bombards you, wait a moment. I have never been shot. I have never been stabbed.
I have never been blown up. So how is this real? But then that dark voice inside you says, but you could be. It could come to you. The end could come today, and it will be painful.
And, you know, sadly, it is true. We live in a very fickle world. It could all end today. There could be a catastrophic end to your life right now, driving your car, walking across the street, whatever it is, but probably not. Probably not.
In sixty eight years of life, I’ve never never succumbed to any form of violence. Not once. I have had a bag or two stolen here or there. I have been spoken to rudely once or twice. I have been beaten up in a fight.
But for the most part, things have been okay. Pretty much okay. So I think we should anticipate the good, really, the good. I’d like to tell you a story to clarify what I mean. I’ve applied for a new visa, and it’s a visa that is only awarded to people who have contributed to the Taiwanese society, and it has to be endorsed and lauded by an organization, an institution, and you have to show where you actually have worked, where you’ve taught, the work that you’ve actually done.
And I put all this together with the help of a lot of really kind and really good people, And I was then told by my friend Irene that I had received this Visa. Okay. That sounds rather nice. So then I was walking the other day through Costco of all places, and I got a phone call. Your visa now is ready.
Your new APRC is ready. Please come and get it. Costco is very close to the immigration department. So in we went, and Irene had a special number on a piece of paper, and she presented this number to the security guard, and it was like you entered into a lottery. We were escorted to a special room, and the tea was poured.
And suddenly, there were many people all congratulating me and I see my picture and my ID card has been blown up to a very large size. I meet the director of immigration for Central Taiwan. I happen to have our book with me. Grandfather is dead and I signed it and give it to him and he’s taken aback. We go out into the main corridor.
We take a picture. A lot of hands are then shaken and we leave. And I thought to myself, wow. Wow. The great friendships I’ve had the honor to make along the way.
People like Luke Lin, whose organization in John Wa has, gosh, gone on forever seemingly helping people. He’s helped us a lot, and here we are. So I think the point is that in all this negativity in the world is a lot of joy, a lot of good luck if you will. And I’m only drawing on myself as a small example of what is available for all of us. So the negativity that we’re presented with on a daily basis is false.
It doesn’t exist. But I have to give myself a different story, don’t I? I have to give myself a story of success and potentiality and goodness and kindness and lovingness, and it just goes on. Right? I have to say that it is a good life, and I can make it better.
And, yes, for sure, bad things do happen at times. One time in my life, I didn’t get on an airplane, and the airplane did crash, and everyone was killed. And I’m still here talking to you. That actually happened to me. It’s true.
But the point is I wasn’t on the airplane. I was given good luck to go on. Why am I here? What is my mission? What happens when I leave here?
So if you sit back and you kind of dissuade yourself from the negative forces that come to us on a daily basis, a hundred thousand pieces of information supposedly. If you dissuade yourself from this and you say, wait a moment. This is like shrapnel during a fight, if you will. It’s exploding all around me, but it’s not affecting me. I’m going to go on.
I’m going to get my notebook out this morning, and I’m gonna write down my goals and my aspirations and my hopes and my win, my win of the day from yesterday. Of course, I always make a note of that, and I’m gonna push on, and it’s going to be a good life. I do not have to be a victim at all. I don’t have to be a victim. I actually have to be a success.
To me, this is very important, I think, that I do have to realize that around me, things will occur, things will change. People I love will come and they will go rather tragically, but I will go on. I will go on to the very end. So I must promise myself that I will be a good representation of a human being. I will learn to talk to God as I see him.
I will learn to talk to my fellow man as I appreciate him, and I will learn to talk to myself as I should be. I would learn to become the man or the woman that I deserve to be. Not easily, of course. It is far far easier to be unhappy than it is to be happy because happiness is hard. I I must go into that deep pit called me, my psyche.
I must step down and slowly but surely learn. Dissuade the negativity and be filled with hope. Push on. Push on. Push on to the very end.
I will have success. This is my promise to me, whatever that means. And you know what they say. You know what they say. If I wanna get rid of this negativity and enjoy success, I have to be a critical thinker.
Extremely important because critical thinking is wonderful and critical thinking is great, truly great. You take care. God bless. Bye bye.