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Studying Under Nobel Winner Edmund Phelps
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Seeing the Stars at the US OPEN 2006
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Jessica Agra: Tennis Champ at Fourteen
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Travelers, We All Are
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Kamsamida Kim
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Confused state of MY religion
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A Leap of Faith
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Buon Giorno! The Start of a European Adventure
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Inspired by Leaders, Bill Clinton Included
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Leaving my Heart in Shanghai
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On Finding the Right Words to Describe Greece
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The Chronicle of Human Life
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The Kiss of Eternity: A Fairytale
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Til When Do We Continue to Care
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Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus
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A League of Their Own
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Dean Rudy Ang: Educating Future Men for Others
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A Teacher’s Voice
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Ithaca
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Nicole Lim: Life at Harvard
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The Lord of the Rings: Beyond the movie
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The Sound of Music
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The Game: Popet Lizardo on Tennis
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Filipino Wisdom in Foreign Shores
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Victor Calanog: Flying High
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Wilson Lee Flores: The Passions of a Writer
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A Greater Scheme of Things
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Remembering Our Grandfather
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Inspired by Leaders, Bill Clinton Included
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Thursday, January 1, 1970
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“Is high school destiny? Will the state that we are at a young age define who we’ll grow up to be?” Such was the subject of an article I received through email from Worthwhile Magazine. The topic alone was enough to pique my interest and after reading through the passage, I was left pondering over the questions raised. The issue was spurred by big news stories of last year such as Bill Clinton’s autobiography and the eulogies for Ronald Reagan and Marlon Brando – people who grew up in presumably limiting environments but went on to help define their times. Though many guesses can be made as to what pushed these people with dysfunctional childhoods to their later greatness, individual vision probably played a big factor.
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I grew up in a myriad of contradictions. My grandparents (granddad especially) were immensely fascinated by Chinese history, and would spin tales on Mao Zedong and the emperors of old. Growing up, I was a proud kid, for who else could claim that their grandfather was a poet and storyteller? Shamefully, as most of his works were written in Chinese, I couldn’t understand a great part of it – but crafty kid that I was, I kept this from my friends when bragging about my grandfather’s talents.
On the other side of the fence, my parents entertained me with tales of Western people who had marked history. My own brother was named after the ancient Macedonian leader, Alexander the Great, whose conquests and defeats enthralled my mother. To my delight but most of my friends’ consternation, my dad’s idea of fun at parties would be to make us memorize and recite lines from his favorite speeches. As a child, I would often joke about my lack of so-called artistic talent. Despite the numerous lessons forced upon me and definitely not for lack of trying, I couldn’t sing, dance, paint, or play any instrument well – but I could quote Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. This might have made for quite a bizarre childhood, but I reveled in the stories and this period rooted my ongoing interest in the lives of great men.
Of all the leaders, former US President Bill Clinton is one of the most controversial yet intriguing of all. Even his toughest critics cannot deny his great charisma, intellect and commitment to his people. My mom and I often joked that if not for his apparent political inclinations, Clinton would have made a better actor because of his remarkable boyish-good looks and oratory skills. Though I wasn’t the biggest fan of the choices he made regarding his personal life, I admired Clinton and was sickened at the idea that he would go down in history and people’s minds first and foremost as the President who was impeached because of his indiscretions with Monica Lewinsky. Public opinion of Clinton today has still not been completely restored (but then again, no President has ever satisfied a great majority), but it has fortunately been lifted since his trial in 1999.
I was part of the frenzied audience who eagerly awaited the completion of Clinton’s memoir. When My Life was released last year, I devoured the pages but admiteddly, took quite a while to finish the book in its entirety. The book broke records on the bestsellers’ lists, but was attacked by some reviewers for being too longwinded and self-serving. Flawed or not, My Life was a thoroughly engaging read for me. I was able to view history through the eyes of a great, complex man and come to a better understanding of his flaws and setbacks. Though he certainly led and and still leads an eventful life, Clinton’s recollections of his younger years tocuhed me the most.
Few know that President Clinton, born William Jefferson Blythe III in Arkansas, was named after his father, a traveling salesman who had been killed in a car accident just three months before his son was born. His mother remarried in 1950 to Roger Clinton. Clinton grew up in a turbulent family. His stepfather was a gambler and alcoholic who regularly abused his wife, and at times Clinton’s half brother. Clinton wrote, debated, played the saxophone, and eventually made it to Georgetown and Oxford universities on a Rhodes Scholarship, a law practice, then to Little Rock and the governor’s mansion, and eventually to the White House. At Yale, Bill Clinton met Hillary Rodham, and they married in 1975. Their daughter Chelsea, named after the 1969 Joni Mitchell song “Chelsea Morning,” was born in 1980.
Clinton’s memoir is an inspiring story of a man who rose from poverty to success and calls for a negative response to “Will the state that we are at a young age define who we’ll grow up to be?,” for it certainly does not. At the same time, Clinton’s story serves as a reminder for us to be more understanding, if not kinder to politicians. For kindness does not equal ignorance, and it will do every country a lot of good to realize that their leader, who still at all times must set a shining example for the people to follow, is after all human and in parts flawed like all the rest.
If I could summarize his thousand-page memoir into a few paragraphs, I would. But as it would not do it any justice, I share with you some of the beautiful passages which striked me the most while reading My Life.
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I learned a lot from the stories my uncle, aunts, and grandparents told me: that no one is perfect but most people are good; that people can’t be judged only by their worst or weakest moments; that harsh judgments can make hypocrites of us all; that a lot of life is just showing up and hanging on; that laughter is often the best, and sometimes the only, response to pain. Perhaps most important, I learned that everyone has a story—of dreams and nightmares, hope and heartache, love and loss, courage and fear, sacrifice and selfishness. All my life I’ve been interested in other people’s stories. I’ve wanted to know them, understand them, feel them. When I grew up and got into politics, I always felt the main point of my work was to give people a chance to have better stories.
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My father left me with the feeling that I had to live for two people, and that if I did it well enough, somehow I could make up for the life he should have had. And his memory infused me, at a younger age than most, with a sense of my own mortality. The knowledge that I, too, could die young drove me both to try to drain the most out of every moment of life and to get on with the next big challenge. Even when I wasn't sure where I was going, I was always in a hurry.
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Apparently, a lot of people who grow up in difficult circumstances subconsciously blame themselves and feel unworthy of a better fate. I think this problem arises from leading parallel lives, an external life that takes its natural course and an internal life where the secrets are hidden. When I was a child, my outside life was filled with friends and fun, learning and doing. My internal life was full of uncertainty, anger, and a dread of ever-looming violence. No one can live parallel lives with complete success; the two have to intersect.
I would continue to struggle to merge the parallel lives, to live with my mind, body, and spirit in the same place. In the meantime, I have tried to make my external life as good as possible, and to survive the dangers and relieve the pain of my internal life. This probably explains my profound admiration for the personal courage of soldiers and others who put their lives at risk for honorable causes, and my visceral hatred of violence and abuse of power; my passion for public service and my deep sympathy for the problems of other people; the solace I have found in human companionship and the difficulty I’ve had in letting anyone into the deepest recesses of my internal life. It was dark down there.
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According to Ernest Becker [a philosopher who wrote The Denial of Death], as we grow up, at some point we become aware of death, then the fact that people we know and love die, then the fact that someday we, too, will die. Most of us do what we can to avoid it. Meanwhile, we embrace identities and the illusion of self-sufficiency. We pursue activities, both positive and negative, that we hope will lift us beyond the chains of ordinary existence and perhaps endure after we are gone. Whether we succeed or fail ,we are still going to die. The only solace, of course, is to believe that since we are created, there must be a Creator, one to whom we matter and will in some way return. Becker seemed to have met Immanuel Kant’s test of life : ‘How to occupy properly that place in creation that is assigned to man, and how to learn from it what one must be in order to be a man.’ I've spent a life time trying to do that. Becker's book helped convince me it was an effort worth making.
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Notwithstanding the setbacks, sometime in my sixteenth year I decided I wanted to be in public life as an elected official. I loved music and thought I could be very good, but I knew I would never be John Coltrane or Stan Getz. I was interested in medicine and thought I could be a fine doctor, but I knew I would never be Michael DeBakey. But I knew I could be great in public service. I was fascinated by people, politics, and policy, and I thought I could make it without family wealth, or connections, or establishment southern positions on race and other issues. Of course it was improbable, but isn’t that what America is all about?
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Credit to Arnie Sachs, Brooks Kraft and Bob McNeely for some pictures used in the article.
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