Winning is Overrated

In Chinese, there is a saying –
“忍一時風平浪靜，退一步海闊天空 “

“Tolerate for a moment, (you’ll feel) the calm winds and waves. Take a step back, (you’ll see) the sky as wide as the ocean.”

I have been living in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past 20 years. It was recently that wherever I go within that area, I experienced an extreme amount of apathy from others, and I feel like that I’m becoming one of them. It’s a terrible feeling.

I do not know why the San Francisco Bay Area has degraded to such a terrible state of being where people simply don’t want to care about each other. One can say the contribution came from Trump, tech bros, homelessness all over, high rents and mortgage costs, taxation for everything, voting practices, social justice, sanctuary city policies, or simply the general smugness of it all.

I do not know. May I am generalizing. But I can feel it. I feel fear and stress all around me. I feel fragile egos who have to prove themselves when there’s nothing to prove. I feel like saying “hi” is a threat to someone’s personal space. So I stopped too, just like when I was living in Hong Kong.

Take this article, for example: Man caught on video in brutal assault, robbery in San Francisco arrested

While I won’t go into details of the video, I want to mention one consensus from the comment section of the article: nobody stepped in to help the victim. That’s beyond terrible.

So what do all these do with “winning is overrated?” Well, it is in my opinion that San Francisco has lost its way, and the root cause is this ‘winning at all costs’ attitude, basic etiquette be darned. The citizens are still touting to themselves that they’re living in the best city in the world when statistics like poverty level, crime rates and quality of life clearly say otherwise. To them, they are still winning! So they bring their ‘best ideals‘ to other cities and states when they decided to move, when other places clearly don’t want their ‘best ideals.’

Last week, I vacated a week in the Los Angeles area with my wife. I generally had a positive experience with the vacation, even though we were still in California. At the very minimum, the basic greetings toward strangers were present and the traffic was actually quite nice. At least people respect each other, regardless what they really think.

With this experience, I decided to make a resolution – I must calm myself and take a step back, which I have tried a few times in the past but failed to do it consistently. I must try again. I must say hi to strangers, fully expecting that I will not get a response. If someone cuts me off in traffic, I must wave in gratitude instead of the usual angry response. And I must stop doing too many unnecessary things that affect my mood (e.g. reading sad Yahoo news/ watching Youtube), and only concentrate on acquiring knowledge towards my future success. That also means getting out of the San Francisco Bay Area, if necessary (as long as the wife agrees.)

If I have any business in reaching my goals, this is a resolution I must make. I don’t want to be in any more ‘winnings’ that serve no purpose in my life.
I learned that success and winning are not the same thing. I must now tolerate and take a step back with consistency. Unfortunately, I have already failed today, but I’ll try again.

It’s 2019! Wherever you are reading this, please take care of yourself.

-Sam