A Lesson in Life: Know Thyself and Be Persevere

By: Jakarespati Wiradisuria (00.2767)

“Everything happens for a reason. And for every single thing that happened to us in life, I believe there are specific purposes designated by Him for us – not only to make life more meaningful, but also to be considered as an opportunity for us to make our world a better place of living. For some people, this might sounds very cliché, but once we find the tipping point that opens our mind, it all becomes clear and for sure living our life to the fullest day by day is out of the question.”

This note is inspired by my own personal experiences and catalyzed by ‘Outlier’, a book of Malcolm Gladwell (2008), a successful writer of ‘Tipping Point’ and ‘Blink’ – that I read on the plane during my flight from Makassar to Jakarta on April 12th 2009. I actually planned to take a sleep over the 2 hours flight since I was very tired after being stranded for more than 5 hours in Hasanuddin airport, Makassar due to flight delay. However, since I couldn’t get back to sleep after the not-so-pretty stewardesses woke me up just for a bunch of bread, I borrowed the book from someone who sat next to me. I found ‘Outlier’ quite intimidating the first time I saw it earlier at Kinokuniya, but for some reasons I didn’t buy it. Now I believe is the perfect time to get the lesson on what Mr. Gladwell wrote on that book of his.

I believe any of you who read this note ever asked this kind of question.

• What brought Bill Gates to his position as one of the wealthiest people in the world nowadays?
• Why Tiger Woods could be the most acknowledge golf player across the globe?
  Is it truly only determined by mere luck?
• Does talent become the major determinant factor for someone’s success?

The book tries to unveil that kind common question in a hilarious yet reasonable way.

Small thing that create HUGE differences: Capturing the Opportunity

In the book, the ‘story’ started from a weird pattern on a junior league team (baseball if I’m not mistaken) in US that shows us more than 70% of its main team member were born in the first semester of the year January to June, only 10% were born on October to December. Few will realize that there is connection between when you were born and the chance for you to success in playing baseball. In fact there is. The little league age limit is January 1 for each batch. That might not be a big deal for adults, but for a child at the age of 7-9 year-old, 8-12 months age difference does matter. It determines the physical strength for them to run, to hit the ball, etc. At the end of the day, small things like age limit for joining the team may become factor that influence somebody’s success.

Some of you may ask, does it really impact somebody’s future. The answer for that is yes. One opportunity being opened for you meaning there are hundreds, or even thousands of opportunities is going to be opened for you in the future. This is real when we said little difference could create huge opportunity in the future.

Tons of examples could be provided to emphasize the fact. In military world, many of my friends, juniors, and seniors from SMA Taruna Nusantara are considered to be well-known leaders in Indonesia military institution, whether in the Army (Kopassus, Infanteri, Kostrad, etc), Navy, or Air force.

Why is that? What makes the difference?

The answer is quite obvious. Similar with the example of the little league, my high school colleagues have had the chances to know about military lifestyle earlier starting by the age of 14-15 and being well equipped with basic needs they will need to be successful in the military – similar with some of my friends who have long line of military blood runs in the family. The opportunity that is being given in SMA Taruna Nusantara makes the difference. Most of them became the best in their own institution. The best cadet graduates always come from there ever since the school established in 1990. The story goes until recent days where they already have particular position in the society. Wherever they are placed, the best always being searched for, which implies guarantees their way to success assuming all other external factors are constant.

That is where OPPORTUNITY comes into play.


10,000 hours of practice

Up to this point, you might also ask whether it is really just being determined by the opportunity being given. One logical answer for that is ‘opportunity’ opens chances for us to do something more frequent, practicing things more regularly, and adapting things more thoroughly throughout the time. Practice makes perfect right? =)

In the book there is an example of how pupils in violin school could make a difference by having different class for different talent and most of the people in talented class practice much harder.At the end of the day, the pupils who are accepted into talented class have larger opportunity to become world class violin player since they are practicing way much longer and intense compare to the others. It is said up to 10.000 hours until they are having the quality of world class player, but the point is the longer you practice the better you are becoming. The same goes to professional football players, advocates, financial traders, even entrepreneurs.

Lesson #1: Grab the opportunity and make the best out of it with perseverance

This is one important fact that integrates the section of opportunity and practice above.

Have you ever wonder, what makes the similarities between Bill Gates/Microsoft founder, Eric Schmidt/CEO of Google Inc., Steve Jobs/Apple founder, and …. (I forgot the other two IT successful businessmen :p )? What do they have in common that makes them the tycoon of today’s IT industry?

Some of you may answer they are all genius, or they did not finish their college. That may be true (except for Mr. Schmidt), but that is not the real answer on their exact similarity concerning opportunity taking. The answer: ALL WERE BORN IN 1955.

So What??? This is the weird-but-may-be-true part comes in =)

The development and early booming of IT in this modern world happened in 1975-1980. At that time, it created opportunity for young people who were willing to learn new things and give significant exposure to such people. If traced backwards, those people were about at the age of 20-25, a perfect age to learn something new and gain passion for success in life.

After the opportunity being taken, they practice to be the best on their particular field, and add a bunch of passion to keep them in track despite any rough road occurred. These men does not take the success for granted, they really strive for the success with passion as their engine and PERSEVERANCE as their fuel.

That is how it works.

Lesson #2: Play our card well

As a human being, we were born with difference in so many aspects in life. The difference could give both advantage and disadvantage to us related with opportunity creation matters and effort needed in pursuing a precious thing we call by the name of ‘success’. With the analogy of playing a poker card game (read Arlo Temenggung’s note: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=48894072669&id=567326393&index=1 ), each human were given a set of card the day they were born. Some may think our card is a good set, some may think this is a bad one, and some may even get confused with what he/she has in hand. Everything is relative here, unless we know who we are and our roles in life.

Hence, know yourself first, only by then we could really play our cards well.

There is ALWAYS a reason why God gave you that ‘card’ =)

Listen to what Billie Joe once said:

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road; Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go; So make the best of this test, and don’t ask why; It’s not a question, but a lesson learned in time; It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right

I hope you had the time of your life.