"No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path" - Lord Buddha
"I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul." - Invictus by William Ernest Henley
June 9, 2010By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
Pacific Daily News (Guam)
On Memorial Day weekend, my wife and I watched "Invictus," in which actor Morgan Freeman plays South Africa's black anti-apartheid activist-turned-president, Nelson Mandela, and Matt Damon acts as the country's Springboks rugby team captain Francois Pienaar.
The two joined forces to help unite their people during the team's unlikely but successful quest to win the third Rugby World Cup in 1995.
Mandela condemned the white Springboks while in prison. As the country's president, he wanted it to be the team for all: blacks and whites. The film shows Mandela sharing with Pienaar the poem, "Invictus," which had inspired him in the prison "to stand when all I wanted to do was to lie down."
"Invictus," Latin for "unconquered," was a 1875 Victorian poem by English poet William Ernest Henley, who, at age 12, suffered tuberculosis of the bone that spread to his foot. His leg was amputated below his knee when he was 25. From his hospital bed, he wrote "Invictus."
"Out of the night that covers me, / Black as the pit from pole to pole, / I thank whatever gods may be / For my unconquered soul," reads the poem, which ends with "I am the master of my fate: / I am the captain of my soul."
Henley lived until age 53.
Mandela, now 92, was a leader of the African National Congress. In 1962, he was arrested, convicted of sabotage and sentenced to life in prison. He served 27 years, mostly on Robben Island, where he performed hard labor.
Mounting domestic and international pressure led South African President de Klerk to reverse the life sentence in 1990. On the day of his release, Mandela told the nation of his commitment to peace and reconciliation with the country's white minority.
With his party, he negotiated the country's first full democratic elections, which gave him the presidency. Taking office in 1994, Mandela worked on "balancing black aspirations with white fears."
Change is possible.
I write repeatedly that things and people change; that if we don't influence the kind of change we want to see, the change we don't want to see will crush us; that quality thinking brings quality life, and creative thinking and critical thinking determine our future.
But creative thinking and critical thinking are mistakenly interpreted negatively -- creative as in "a nutty professor" with "off-beat ideas"; critical as in "given to fault-finding," says the Foundation for Critical Thinking.
Yet, as the foundation reminds us, Webster's definition of "creative" is "showing imagination and artistic or intellectual inventiveness ... stimulating the imagination and inventive powers"; and the definition of "critical" is applying to "persons who judge and to their judgments ... imply an effort to see thing clearly and truly ... that it as a whole may be fairly judged and valued."
In the May 19 "What Chief Executives Really Want," Frank Kern, the senior vice-president of International Business Machines, the world's largest technology company, said a survey of 1,500 chief executives revealed "priorities" in leadership competency have changed in today's world.
Kern wrote that today's CEOs identify "creativity" as "the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future," and that "success requires fresh thinking and continuous innovation at all levels of the organization." The new "creative leaders" break with "traditional strategy-planning cycles" and pursue "continuous, rapid-fire shifts and adjustments," through a "combination of deeply held values, vision and conviction -- combined with the application of such tools as analytics to the historic explosion of information."
In her book "This Year I Will...," change expert M.J. Ryan of Professional Thinking Partners -- an organization that specializes in maximizing thinking and learning -- wrote: "I believe that people can change ... that we have the ability within us to truly rearrange our inner landscape and make changes happen within ourselves and our lives."
Speaking of humans' "awareness that we can stop doing the things that hold us back or cause us suffering," she asserts, "to bring new behavior into being takes work ... you have to really want to bring something into being. Deeply, truly, honestly." Or you'll be repeating "the same old, same old."
Ryan warned of the "paralysis by paralysis" -- a tendency to "get stuck in the (endless) whys," rather than decide and take action. Trying to understand "why we are the way we are ... can even prevent us from moving forward," she said, and urged that we switch from the "'why' thinking" -- which leads to "rumination and stuckness" -- to the "'what' thinking" -- which leads to "creative possibilities and forward momentum."
Aristotle, a student of Plato and teacher of Macedonian king Alexander the Great, wrote, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
Lord Buddha taught, "No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path."
Theodore Roosevelt advised, "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." And Abraham Lincoln, author of the Emancipation Proclamation (freeing American slaves), said "That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well."
Visionary leadership drives change, but change is sustained by teams of people who believe in it and are committed to it. All of us form those teams.
A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught political science for 13 years. Write him at peangmeth@yahoo.com.
The two joined forces to help unite their people during the team's unlikely but successful quest to win the third Rugby World Cup in 1995.
Mandela condemned the white Springboks while in prison. As the country's president, he wanted it to be the team for all: blacks and whites. The film shows Mandela sharing with Pienaar the poem, "Invictus," which had inspired him in the prison "to stand when all I wanted to do was to lie down."
"Invictus," Latin for "unconquered," was a 1875 Victorian poem by English poet William Ernest Henley, who, at age 12, suffered tuberculosis of the bone that spread to his foot. His leg was amputated below his knee when he was 25. From his hospital bed, he wrote "Invictus."
"Out of the night that covers me, / Black as the pit from pole to pole, / I thank whatever gods may be / For my unconquered soul," reads the poem, which ends with "I am the master of my fate: / I am the captain of my soul."
Henley lived until age 53.
Mandela, now 92, was a leader of the African National Congress. In 1962, he was arrested, convicted of sabotage and sentenced to life in prison. He served 27 years, mostly on Robben Island, where he performed hard labor.
Mounting domestic and international pressure led South African President de Klerk to reverse the life sentence in 1990. On the day of his release, Mandela told the nation of his commitment to peace and reconciliation with the country's white minority.
With his party, he negotiated the country's first full democratic elections, which gave him the presidency. Taking office in 1994, Mandela worked on "balancing black aspirations with white fears."
Change is possible.
I write repeatedly that things and people change; that if we don't influence the kind of change we want to see, the change we don't want to see will crush us; that quality thinking brings quality life, and creative thinking and critical thinking determine our future.
But creative thinking and critical thinking are mistakenly interpreted negatively -- creative as in "a nutty professor" with "off-beat ideas"; critical as in "given to fault-finding," says the Foundation for Critical Thinking.
Yet, as the foundation reminds us, Webster's definition of "creative" is "showing imagination and artistic or intellectual inventiveness ... stimulating the imagination and inventive powers"; and the definition of "critical" is applying to "persons who judge and to their judgments ... imply an effort to see thing clearly and truly ... that it as a whole may be fairly judged and valued."
In the May 19 "What Chief Executives Really Want," Frank Kern, the senior vice-president of International Business Machines, the world's largest technology company, said a survey of 1,500 chief executives revealed "priorities" in leadership competency have changed in today's world.
Kern wrote that today's CEOs identify "creativity" as "the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future," and that "success requires fresh thinking and continuous innovation at all levels of the organization." The new "creative leaders" break with "traditional strategy-planning cycles" and pursue "continuous, rapid-fire shifts and adjustments," through a "combination of deeply held values, vision and conviction -- combined with the application of such tools as analytics to the historic explosion of information."
In her book "This Year I Will...," change expert M.J. Ryan of Professional Thinking Partners -- an organization that specializes in maximizing thinking and learning -- wrote: "I believe that people can change ... that we have the ability within us to truly rearrange our inner landscape and make changes happen within ourselves and our lives."
Speaking of humans' "awareness that we can stop doing the things that hold us back or cause us suffering," she asserts, "to bring new behavior into being takes work ... you have to really want to bring something into being. Deeply, truly, honestly." Or you'll be repeating "the same old, same old."
Ryan warned of the "paralysis by paralysis" -- a tendency to "get stuck in the (endless) whys," rather than decide and take action. Trying to understand "why we are the way we are ... can even prevent us from moving forward," she said, and urged that we switch from the "'why' thinking" -- which leads to "rumination and stuckness" -- to the "'what' thinking" -- which leads to "creative possibilities and forward momentum."
Aristotle, a student of Plato and teacher of Macedonian king Alexander the Great, wrote, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
Lord Buddha taught, "No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path."
Theodore Roosevelt advised, "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." And Abraham Lincoln, author of the Emancipation Proclamation (freeing American slaves), said "That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well."
Visionary leadership drives change, but change is sustained by teams of people who believe in it and are committed to it. All of us form those teams.
A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught political science for 13 years. Write him at peangmeth@yahoo.com.
5 comments:
Its a critical thinking/writing like this that I keep coming back to KI Media. Thank you KI and Prof. Peang-Meth for your enligtment.
Forgive me for not literally understanding the entirely concret writing!
Perhaps, I hope I am completely wronged that no God can magically cure our Mighty leaders such as,
SihanoukVarman is a father of Khmer constitution and a greatest PoliSickans of Da whole world!
SenVarman is a new JayVarman 7 and 1/2 who heavenly got sending God to save us from the Killingfield!
Without them two, we are evidently already grisly ghosts!
Lord Buddha taught, "No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path."
Cambodian have been walking Buddha's path for centuries, trying to save ourselves. On the contrary, we end up killing ourselves, on the verge of becoming extinct.
You quoted plenty of good quotes for self-help, never on justice and fairness. If I try hard to save myself but I don't have fair level playing field I would end up becoming angry and bitter.
The blind side to this self-help suggestions is it failed to take into considerations darker side of human being.
Human are terribly selfish, only looking out for SELF. That is why there is greed, hatred, jealousy, corruptions, murders, slander, etc...
Buddha has no answer to these deep illnesses in human being.
There there is a limitation on how much we can help ourselves
In 13th century, dictatorship worked, not anymore in 2010, it will last no longer because of computer, internet and Cambodians are more educated, informed..
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