‘How one navigates through the randomness of this world is what determines why some people succeed even when they start with nothing…’
FIRST off, congratulations to the many varsity teams of my beloved alma mater, the University of the Philippines. From chess to badminton, even swimming I think, the Fighting Maroons have done swimmingly well (no pun intended), a great source of satisfaction for someone like me.
I say someone like me because here’s a fact: since I was in UP Elem in the 1970s, my father and his colleagues from the UP College of Medicine would cheer on the Maroons basketball team playing at the Rizal Memorial and I would tag along. Those were the years when we played with the cards dealt us, not only UP but also UST, FEU, Adamson, NU, and UE. There were only six of us, and the basketball championships were usually a UE-UST show, with FEU and Adamson surprising the field once in a while.
UP and NU were almost always the doormats, as I learned from my father.
Today, it’s no longer the case where UP is concerned, and even the basketball teams are tops. Am proud of the UP women’s team that placed second runner-up, the highest in decades, and it’s still a young team. The men’s, on the other hand, are playing in their fourth finals in five years.
With that done, let me focus on my topic for today.
I don’t know what you believe in, but I do not believe that our lives are foretold or preordained, or that we do not have the capability or the opportunity to change the trajectory of our lives for better — or even for worse.
And that there’s a randomness to all things. Each second, what’s happening all over the world is a series of random acts, thoughts, or words that add up to an exciting whole. True that for some the randomness can mean heartache, defeat, even death, and the pain that goes with that; but for others it’s the exact opposite. How one navigates through the randomness of this world is what determines why some people succeed even when they start with nothing while others, given almost everything they need, still end up with utter failures.
But there’s one aspect of my life where the contrast between randomness and order makes me smile. And this is when I look at the immigration stamps on my passport and compare the practices around the world to ours. It’s clear to me that our Immigration officers believe in the randomness of the world while everyone else seems to believe in the need for order. Just see how your passport is stamped for arrival and departure: many countries make sure that the departure stamp is next to the arrival stamp — making it easy for you to account for your trips. And the stamps are big and well-inked.
But ours? It’s random. Stamped on page 2 for departure then on page 4 for arrival; or on 6 for departure and 3 for arrival. And it seems the BID is having budget issues when it comes to their stamp pad ink!
Then again, when I think about it, this default towards randomness and lack of order is also why Filipinos thrive in chaos. We seem allergic to order and so when things go awry, we are able to adapt and survive where others will go crazy making heads or tails of what’s happening.
So yes, I think little things like how our passports get stamped tell us a lot about the countries we visit and the value they put in order vs randomness. And when it comes to being Kings of Random, we are tops!
“Top One” for random, that’s us!
