Chapter 1:           My Future Decided

There is always this “moment” where everything in life is decided.  Maybe it was in year twelve, maybe it had to be years later, maybe it was an event under your control, maybe not; but there is a time in your life where the whole course of your life is decided.

For me, this moment was when I scored a one-in-a-lifetime scholarship at the specialist music school, Pacific Coast High, where I majored into classical piano.  Located in Beverly Hills, this is where I lived my life.  I was no star however, a very average life; my parents were both working parents, but I studied with the likes of Ashlee Simpson; I even went to Church with Miley Cyrus, where the Jonas Brothers’ dad was youth pastor.

It is surely an interesting observation, that in life, sometimes, the most effective strategic moves we can make are those that we do not intend to happen.  We just go on living life, entering doors that open, leaving behind the ones that have closed, and your dreams just come true.

After hearing my story, I am sure many of you will ask why my decision to study at a music high school changed the course of my life; rather than maybe when I was fifteen, my last year at PCH, when I had to make choices of what I was going to study at University, if at all?  I promise you we will get to that in due time.

It is commonly said that there are two guarantees in life: (1) taxes, and (2) death.  Despite the blatant omission of other probable choices such as contractual warrantees, and acts of God, why does society fret the Armageddon of these two matters more than any other?  Although little can be said for underlying reasons for societal psychology, perhaps the question of fear can be quickly overcome if only one found the perfect antidote: education.

Taxes are administered to literally every aspect of society.  Even Capital Gains, is taxed today.  However, nobody put it better than Benjamin Franklin who observed that nobody can “take” what man has emptied into his head.  Knowledge learnt, is the tree of life that humankind has been searching for indefinitely: non-taxable!

Further, knowledge is free from death.  As one generation passes the knowledge to the next, knowledge transcends time and thus from death!

The Chinese mastered the politics of education before any other civilization.  Education is only as effective as the numbers who study for it, and although realized the national good was expensive, knew very well that ignorance would be even more expensive.

Early schools though, saw the dual objective of study.  As we move into a knowledge-based economy, there is a lie being spread that education is only for making a living.  No, early schools knew that education was also for living, and classes such as etiquette, ethics, theology, and philosophy were readily abound.

Having reached a mid-life crisis realization of lost fundamentals of the early schools, many institutions are scavenging back into history to find other pedagogical treasures they may have lost.

For this very reason, medical schools have recently reverted from the 1900’s teaching-based structure back to the learning-based paradigm of the Athenian period.  Problem-based learning now accounts for a much larger majority of the substantive course; and practical training is now a requirement.

We are just relearning what we forgot though: it is not what is taught; it is what is remembered, transferred, and used – that is, what is learnt.

After I graduated from high school, I went on to study medicine (MBBS) at Harvard University, and then a PhD in Engineering from the UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles).

After a few years of tutoring at my University, I was accepted as a lecturer at the University of College London (in England), teaching medical engineering.  In due time, I had progressed through the ranks of assistant professor, to associate professor, to full professor.

During my work in forensics, I had a fantastic opportunity that arose within the field of defense.  Eventually, I became a secret agent at MI5, eventually rising to special agent.  I was then forth known as Special Agent Shum to my closest friends.

Recently, The Walt Disney Company looked at corporate expansion into England, and as the federal defense agency in England, the MI5 was put on their case.  After a few failed attempts by existing personnel to foil the corporate battle between Disney and Nickelodeon, I was called on to the scene.

Even before you step into Disneyland, you are greeted with an unusual looking train that takes you from reality into the dreaminess that is known as Disney.  Secluded and with no more remnants of the surrounding plains, the noise of the five o’clock traffic of a major city has now changed into the teen pop jingle that is Disney.  With all acting as reasoning actors in the Economy that is Disney, the King With No Overalls is all too abound, with kids too encapsulated by its glory to realize the reality: that it’s all unreal.  What is being sold is in fact not happiness, but only hope.  However, maybe hope is happiness; even the chief happiness?

Unwary of the war that is waged outside the Fortresses of Disneyland, warlords fight in the intellectual battle of hope and reality.  Disney executives launch a box office bomb propagandizing that hope is a prerequisite for “dreams come true”; and realism maniacs complain to the United Nations’ International Court of Justice of unfair play, unreasonableness, and misleading conduct.

Whilst the ideological corporate war is waging, our homes deal with the same battle civilly.  Older citizens, who have been victimized by the naivety that is hope, know all too well the fever that is known as disappointment.  The more the child is drugged, the worse their fever will be, until eventually, they wake up to reality, too paralyzed to ever hope again.  At least this was their story, factual to the tip.

Whereas there are 5.1 billion people on earth at this very moment, a Gallup Poll found that less than 3% have access to the world’s riches.  Statistically then, most will never realize their dreams, and will only be greeted by the slow compromise and surrender of their fondest hopes.

As economists and actuaries make this dispiriting realization, parents just know better than to expose their children to the two-faced joker that all too disappointingly smacked them in the face.

On the deathbed of many of the world’s most successful, analysts have often asked what their strategies for success were.  Whether it is success in chemistry, physics, physiology, or literacy, the answer is always the same: they believed in something when no one did, they hoped.

Without these dreamers, we would never have seen the victories that are known as Lincoln, Edison, Teresa, Disney, and Wilberforce.  Martin Luther once stated, “Everything (important) that is done in the world is done by hope”.

If only society came to a holistic understanding of accomplishment that moved away from “me” to “us”.  To me, a thousand mining failures is worth the one that hits gold – and the winner has an obligation to celebrate his success with the thousand failures; just as the thousand failures have an obligation to keep as a good sport, hold that upper chin, and share in the victory of the winner: for he too, has won.

Once we gain a holistic view of success, I think that Man will realize that their greatest fear is not that they are weak and undesired, but that they are powerful beyond their imagination, and never had a jurisdictional right to constrain the Image of God.