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Well, this is very flattering. I was listening to Steely Dan lately and thinking how I’d like to write something about them, and look: a question specifically addressed to me!Reader, we live in dark times.In this period of civil strife and social division, when America’s international reputation is, let’s say, not at its shiniest, let’s all take time out to celebrate a truly American band.A band formed* by two wise-guy outsiders, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker (RIP).A band that harnessed the rhythms and harmonies of African-American jazz and American pop and rock, and assembled crews of expert musicians, black and white, to sing and play timeless and often beautiful, soaring, intelligent songs……about drug deals, weird sex practices, failed bank robberies, male gigolos, sexual exploitation and other time-honoured features of the American scene.Oh, and Nazis. They also had a song about Nazis.The short answer to this question is:I like Steely Dan.*Actually, they didn’t form it. It just sounds better that way. The band was formed when guitarist Denny Dias put out an ad for a keyboard player and a bass player who ‘must have jazz chops’, and Becker and Fagen answered it. But since Becker and Fagen dominated the writing, it became their band.Like nearly all the music I’ve ever listened to, I came to Steely Dan far out of their own time.I suspect that they’re one of those bands who clicked with a lot of their fans back in the day (when I was a very, very small boy), but I doubt that Steely Dan themselves scoop up huge droves of new fans as the years go by. I didn’t listen to them at all until I was after thirty. Their appeal is, as Spinal Tap’s manager would say, ‘selective’.I haven’t actually listened to all their stuff. I admit that some of it…doesn’t escape me, so much as contain insufficient vitamin contents for my needs as a listener.There are some smart but inconsequential Steely Dan numbers where they seem to be working to a formula, and I’m not sure I love the formula. But every band nods, now and again, and there are times when I think This maybe is aimed at people who were in their twenties when I was born.But when they hit home: ah, yes, then they hit the spot. The best Steely Dan is like nobody else: simultaneously romantic and caustic, lush and sordid, infectiously joyful and yet with a bitter aftertaste that you either love or you don’t.I have to admit, in advance, that my knowledge of Steely Dan is limited almost entirely to their music, and not even all of that.I’ve read Fagen’s 2013 sort-of-memoir Eminent Hipsters, which was sharply written and enjoyable but not terribly illuminating, and I would have liked to have my copy to hand for this answer, but it’s in another house. I do of course know his solo album The Nightfly, which seemed to be in every record shop ever when I was growing up. I have not listened to their later stuff at all, because that’s for later in my life.So this is an answer where I’m not doing my customary I’ve-read-more-stuff-about-this-band-than-you-even-knew-there-were-resources answer. It’s a tourist’s view of a city, not an answer by someone who’s lived there for a long time.So, y’know.Sorry it sucks.The cool-as-f*** intro to ‘Do It Again’: one of the very finest side one, track ones, ever, with that cowbell/bongo beat. ‘Do It Again’ is a quintessential Dan track: sleek, insinuating, faintly menacing in a way you can’t put your finger on. And let’s hear it for Denny Dias’ electric sitar solo, which I for one find positively erotic. The whole track is inspired simplicity. What’s it about? I’m not sure. Karma?Or from the same album, their debut, ‘Dirty Work’, with a gorgeous vocal by David Palmer. Palmer’s voice had a choirboy vulnerability that Donald Fagen never even tried to match, beautifully suited here to the situation of a guy who’s basically being used as a second-tier penis.We should say something about ‘Reelin’ in the Years’.I think I enjoy this song more for its tumbling vocal and cunning chord progression, with those descending diminished slash chords in the second half of each verse, than for Elliot Randall’s fleet guitar soloing, which is a bit scalar for my liking. I’m not much of a fan of the fake-Irish-jig bits, but Randall certainly earned his paycheck. But the song does stake out some of more of that peculiarly moral tone of some Steely Dan songs: that tone of What are you doing with yourself? We’ll come back to that later.Once again, from Can’t Buy A Thrill, ‘Midnite Cruiser’ is a lovely song, exploiting the soulful, grainy tone of drummer Jim Hodder’s voice, not surprising given that he wrote it. It’s got that great, yearning early 70s melancholy which used to drive me nuts as a kid, and which now I find appealing. It’s a song which seems to me to have compassion for failure: not something you find a lot in popular music these days. It’s also one of the few Steely Dan songs that you can imagine being played as hard rock.Moving on, there’s ‘Bodhisattva’ from Countdown to Ecstasy, a track I initially wrote off as a bit of a two-chord throwaway, but on listening to it again, the cunning bop-style improvising on it is a joy. And the basic point of the song, the warning against throwing your cash after gurus, is as timely as ever.However, ‘The Boston Rag’ is an epic track, which is weird given that I have even less idea than usual of what the f*** it’s about. There’s a lightly sketched low-life scenario, given a minor-key, downbeat feel: Lonnie is coming and going to the more than usually passive narrator, but more than that, I wouldn’t like to say.But it’s all then brought onto a new level by the gloriously epic chorus—except what is the ‘Boston Rag’? A google search suggested that it’s a peculiarly disgusting sexual practice involving…well, look it up yourself on Urban Dictionary. But be warned, because for all I know, you’re eating as you read this. Still, whatever the song is about, the yearning in it is palpable.The melody in the chorus is written out in Steely Dan Complete, which I consulted for this answer, and which consists of transcriptions of the songs of all their original run of albums, but it doesn’t really make sense without the surrounding harmony. I wonder if the band didn’t learn this from, among other bands, the Beatles: the Times critic William Mann once pointed out that the Beatles seemed to think simultaneously in terms of melody and harmony, and ‘Boston Rag’ hangs on its sumptuous harmonies for so long that it seems to be the case here too. Some nice filthy guitar here, too, presumably from Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter, still some years away from being the defense consultant and batshit prepper that he would later become.Then, moving further on, ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’, with its intro stolen from Horace Silver’s ‘Song for my Father’, was I think the first Steely Dan track I ever heard that made me go Who’s that? That is brilliant.The soaring harmony vocals, the cunning chord change in the chorus: it’s sophisticated and yet seems totally natural.But what’s the tone of the song? Is it a guy trying to tell a girl that he’s looking out for her? Or is it a guy trying to gaslight a girl that he’s the only one looking out for her? I suspect the latter (but you don’t even know your mind), but whichever, Baxter delivers a lovely, chiming solo.And I love that vertiginous little lick as we go into the chorus, which seems almost to depict Rikki’s head spinning at the temptations and traps of the world, just after But if you have a change of heart:It’s another example of this band delivering a highly ambiguous sentiment in an unashamedly beautiful package. I really dislike this when, say, The Beautiful South does it, but for some reason I don’t mind it when Steely Dan does it.‘Any Major Dude Will Tell You’ seems to me to be another song where the guy is trying to tell the ‘you’ on the song Look here, kid, you don’t know how it is, so let me tell you, but the overall mood of the song is, brilliantly, light and pretty, as casual and authoritative as a supposedly innocent arm thrown around the shoulder, with that innocently pretty little guitar lick.You could almost write a treatise on Steely Dan’s use of words like any, everyone, all: a lot of songwriters write from one person to another person, but there’s a tendency in Steely Dan songs for the singer to be delivering wordly wisdom to the ‘you’ of the song, as if the singer’s position with respect to the ‘you’ is that of the more experienced partner, possibly giving good advice, but certainly posing as someone who knows more than the ‘you’ knows.This, I think, is one of the things that is appealing about them: the sense that they’ve seen stuff that we can’t imagine. But of course, it’s also the stance of the con-man and gaslighter: the person who wants us to trust their superior wisdom, so that they can exploit us. And from the fact that they wrote that kind of song over and over again, I think they knew that very well.I can’t let ‘Parker’s Band’ go unmentioned, for the sheer flash of its playing, and for the fact that it’s perhaps the only rock song that’s actually about Charlie Parker, one of my musical heroes. It’s appropriately up-tempo and busy.In the course of researching this answer, one of the songs I heard for the first time is the extraordinary ‘Your Gold Teeth II’, from Katy Lied.It takes a couplet from ‘Your Gold Teeth’ on Countdown to Ecstasy, ‘Do you throw out your gold teeth / Do you see how they roll’, and turns it into something mysterious and lovely.After a tense and very jazzy intro with some dazzling vibraphone runs from Victor Feldman, it settles into a lulling 6/8 metre (with occasional bars of interspersed 3/8) which I can only describe as a jazz shanty, and Fagen sings a mysterious, prophetic-sounding lyric which sounds to me like something the young W.H. Auden would have nodded at with approval. Denny Dias is back for a great, bop-ish guitar solo, which negotiates some very classy chord changes, and then, just to prove that it’s not all about being clever, he continues to solo over the much more folkish and simple changes of the verse.Oh, go on, let’s hear it:This is one of the few Steely Dan songs that I can imagine a party singing along to. ‘Your Gold Teeth II’ is a gem.‘Chain Lightning’ is the aforementioned Nazi song, a late-nite bluesy shuffle which, if you pay attention to the lyrics and agree with a popular thread among the fans, turns out to be about two old Kameraden revisiting the site of a party rally:Some turnout, a hundred grandGet with it we'll shake his handDon't bother to understandDon't question the little manBe part of the brotherhoodYes it's chain lightningIt feels so goodHush brother, we cross the squareAct natural like you don't careTurn slowly and comb your hairDon't trouble the midnight airWe're standing just where he stoodIt was chain lightningIt feels so goodApparently, an earlier version of the lyrics had the line ‘Thirty years later’ before the second verse. Well, I like this interpretation.‘Kid Charlemagne’ has an awesome funk groove, and let’s hear it for Chuck Rainey on bass and Bernard Purdie on drums, here. As tales of drug dealers go, this is the kind of thing that makes dealing in illicit substances sound not just fun but positively rewarding. And people criticise rap for glorifying crime! Steely Dan couldn’t help but give a dazzling shine to this kind of thing. Donald Fagen was really inhabiting his rather snarky voice, by this point.Which brings us to ‘Peg’, one of those luscious grooves where you didn’t realise that this is where that groove came from (that nine-note sax riff, amirite?)Yet another song sung from the point of a sleazy guy exploiting a young woman, unless my ability to parse lyrics has completely deserted me, and yet it’s so f***ing gorgeous that this listener is utterly seduced. Also, let it be said, one of those songs that really uses Michael McDonald’s backing vocals to their utmost, and I write this as someone who heartily loathed McDonald’s solo 80s hits.After Aja, I have to admit…I tend to lose interest. Gaucho sounds to me like the work of men with too many drugs and too much money and too much time, and not enough ideas about what they want to do. My inner punk, who’s been agreeing with me thus far, rises up and says Come on, this sucks. And I have to agree with him.I reserve judgement on the two last albums, Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go, because I haven’t listened to them.I don’t have any idea about what a typical Steely Dan fan is like. I don’t know anyone else who likes them.But listening to their songs, I have an image of a man. Not a ‘typical’ fan, but a guy conjured up by my imagination.Bear with me, for a moment.I imagine a guy who was young when this music was coming out, say late teens, or early twenties, and liked it because of its tunes, and the virtuosity of the players, and was attracted to the sceptical, yeah-whatever tone of so many of the songs.He was young, but unlike some of his friends, who just wanted to party and get trashed, he didn’t want to feel like he was naive. He wanted to feel like he was on top of things. He smiled at his friends who liked Ted Nugent and Black Oak Arkansas. That stuff was stupid. Steely Dan wasn’t stupid.I imagine that guy getting older, and Steely Dan meaning something for him that other bands didn’t mean. Some ideal of being smart and informed and hip, even if the band he formed with his buddies never got anywhere, because the bass player got married, and the singer went solo but ended up doing lounge gigs, and the lead guitarist left to be a session player but he never quite made it. The drummer stopped playing drums but is still a friend of his. And he himself has about seven guitars, now, and they all mean something to him, because everyone knows that you can never have too many.And he got married, and had kids, and he buckled down and worked for a living.But he was never able to find a job that actually interested him.Because work is what you do to earn enough money to live. It’s not supposed to be interesting in itself. It’s just the hand you get dealt, right? That’s how the world is.Throw out your gold teethAnd see how they rollThe answer they revealLife is unrealSteely Dan knew what was going on. They represented a truth that he knew, but was never able to realise in himself. They meant that he knew what was what, and he wasn’t an idiot like the kids nowadays.Because kids are always stupid, and life isn’t fair, and the sooner they learn that, the better. Someone is always trying to scam you.And as he grew older still, the beauty of Steely Dan’s music confirmed for him the truth of what they were saying in their songs.And he wishes he could persuade the kids these days how naive they are. But he can’t talk to them. Because he doesn’t remember what it was like to be like that. He always wanted to feel like he knew better.And now he’s old.And nobody treats him like he knows anything.And he looks at his own grandchildren, who have little or no time for him.And he goes back to a track that he thought he knew well, and for the first time, he really notices the words:Who are these childrenWho scheme and run wildWho speak with their wingsAnd the way that they smileWhat are the secretsThey trace in the skyAnd why do you trembleEach time they ride byAnd he wonders if things could have worked out differently.Thanks for reading.

My entire life, I’ve always heard the same advice getting thrown around when someone’s asking for reassurance, whether it’s before a job interview or a first date. It’s the same thing, all over again: “Just be yourself.” If the person is truly satisfied and happy with who they are, then maybe that will work. But then again, anyone who is confident with themselves won’t be asking for validation.You see, there’s a danger in advising people to just be themselves and be accepting for who they are when they aren’t happy with it, or when it’s getting in the way of their growth. And if you follow this advice, it just means you’re giving up on yourself. If all you do is accept and not do anything about your bad qualities, you’re passing on the chance to improve yourself and grow as a person. It’s the same mentality that makes miserable and unsuccessful people the way they are.“I’m a shy person. I’ve always been that way and I can’t change it.”“I didn’t do what I was supposed to do again! I’m so lazy! Eh, but what can I do? It’s in my nature.”People tend to spend effort and time convincing themselves that they’re perfect just the way they are, flaws and all, than actually doing something about it and stepping out of their comfort zone because it’s easier that way. It’s easier to justify flaws and mistakes by convincing yourself those bad qualities will always be in your nature and you’re hardwired to do certain things, but that’s not true. We develop habits as we grow, we didn’t acquire them when we were born.It’s not enough to accept who you are, regardless of what others say – especially if you’re not happy with it. Determine who you really want to be and find out how you can become that person. Don’t just settle for the version of yourself that you’ve been comfortable with all your life1. You cannot always rely on friends.You will need certain life skills when nobody else is around. In this way you can rely on yourself to get out of trouble. It is a sad fact of life that we cannot count on other people most of the time. Make sure you have the following skills:You can cookYou can driveYou know about the power switches in your homeYou have a spare set of keys in a secret place for when you get locked outYou can manage your timeYou learn something new about information technology every day to become computerate.2. Make time for your passion.Whatever you love doing, make sure you do it at a set time. This is important because you find that friends, family, your boss, and your pet will be constantly yapping at your heels trying to steal your time. You have to build in the following defense mechanisms to stop people making unreasonable demands at the wrong moment:Switch off your phoneTurn off the computerGo out and do it or lock yourself inLeave Post-its to remind these intruders. (Yes, I know your pet can’t read but the others can!)3. You accept challenges.In order to grow in being sociable, stronger both physically and mentally, you have to accept challenges on a regular basis. You are pushing yourself to get better and stronger.4. You like being alone but you are not a loner.“If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.” – Jean-Paul SartreIt is impossible to exist without social contact. You can be as strong and self-sufficient as you like, but at the end of the day you need to interact in a real, personal and meaningful way, which is neither Facebook nor Twitter. You need to be in contact with real people for this. The health benefits range from increased creativity, less depression and improved memory.5. Lower your expectations.“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.” – Bruce LeeDon’t think that people will always be there when you fall or fail. The phone will go silent. Many friends will suddenly be very busy with their own problems. When I was recovering from a fall, not one person in my condo offered to help me with carrying the shopping!6. Prepare for bad times.Stuff happens and it can get nasty! You will have to learn to be stronger and not give up. But the good news is that adversity and suffering will make you appreciate life afterwards. Those who endured hardships, like being homeless, divorced or ill, found that they been able to develop better coping strategies and were more socially active.“Hope for the best and cope with the rest.” – Anon7. You cannot be popular with everybody.It’s just chemistry. There are people who will rub you up the wrong way, will be bitchy, and will be downright unhelpful in the workplace. You can adopt a few avoidance strategies to reduce the fallout. Get over it and enjoy the company of the real friends you have.8. You learn from failure.Everybody screws up. You know that perfection is impossible. Every time you have a disaster, do not beat yourself up. Just ask yourself how you could have avoided the trap or planned it better. In this way you can learn a few life lessons from failure.9. Nobody else will praise you.Time to give yourself a pat on the back for all your achievements. Don’t be afraid to list them in your head when you get discouraged. Give yourself a score for each finished task. This keeps you strong when facing life’s harsh realities.10. Toxic company is bad for you.You know the people I mean. These are the whiners, the pessimists, the miserable ones, the cheap ones, the nasty types, and the prejudiced. They make a lousy team. Try to gravitate towards the optimistic and passionate people who will help you see the brighter side of life.11. Money is tight.Nobody wants to be stalked by debt or creditors. You have to work out how best to stay within your budget. Think of ways to save, like having packed lunches. Never go shopping without a list. Avoid impulsive buys. Use cash as much as you can. Leave the credit cards at home as they tend to lull you into a fantasy world.12. Invest in kindness.Doing acts of kindness every day to people at work or those in difficulty will pay handsome dividends. People will return the kindness. Investing in kindness is like having savings in the bank. They will always earn a little interest. What goes around comes around. There is also an added bonus in that it makes you feel good for a while.13. Be accountable for your behavior.If you behave badly, rudely or take unnecessary risks, then you have to be totally accountable for what you have done. You have to take the responsibility for your behavior. Another harsh lesson from the life arena! Taking the consequences, not blaming others and apologizing for harm done have to be on your to do list.14. Look forward.There is no escape. Life is wonderful but it is really hard work. Now is the time to start afresh.“All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.” – Helen Keller“Yesterday ended last night.” – John Maxwell15. Nobody Thinks About You as Often as You Do – Or as harshly. We are our biggest, most unforgiving critics. We’re also blessed with a comically detailed memory that allows us to bring up regrets and mistakes we feel we made from years ago. When you hesitate before taking action because you worry what others might think, remember it won’t make a lick of difference to them by the following week – maybe even the following day! We all make up stories about how we think other people see us.If you really want to see how critical you are of yourself, write down the names of some of your friends and coworkers and how you think they view you on one sheet of paper. On a second sheet, write those same names, but actually ask them how they see you. Compare those answers and see just how judgmental you are to yourself. I’m willing to bet you’re tougher on you than you expected.16. Some People Will Love You… Others Will Not – You cannot please everyone. Read that one again. If you set out to please everyone you come in contact with, you’re going to find your life is much, much harder than you could ever have imagined. Expectations are frivolously high at times, and there truly isn’t anything you can do to satisfy everyone all the time. If someone doesn’t love you, it doesn’t mean you’re a terrible person or unlovable; it means that person doesn’t love you. That 1 of 7,000,000,000 people on Earth doesn’t love you. That’s billion, my friend. In the popularity contest we call life, you’re still a contender for the best guy to play you in your made-for-TV movie.17. You Cannot Control Other People – It is none of your business how trees grow, how the sun rises and sets, or which way the wind blows. You’d feel pretty silly arguing with nature, right? Yet many feel completely justified telling people (both those they know, and those they don’t) what he or she should and shouldn’t do with their lives. The reality is that people and nature are going to carry on with or without your input. What purpose does it serve to spin your wheels trying to change everyone and everything around you?The greatest thing you can do for yourself is to let go of the things you cannot change – that includes the people in your life that you wish were better or different. You can’t stand it when people try to change you, so stop tying to change others. When you get out of other people’s business, you’ll be able to focus more on your own. And really, isn’t that what you should be paying attention to in the first place?17. The perfect relationship or the perfect marriage does not exist: There is no such thing as a perfect match, and no relationship is perfect either. Every single person has flaws, and being in a relationship means understanding, appreciating and loving that person, flaws and all.Flaws are what makes a person who they are. If a person can overcome those flaws and learn from them, they can grow. Relationships take work. They will not always be daisies and rainbows and butterflies. Work together with your partner to get through those hard times, and understand that nothing in life is ever easy or perfect, including relationships.18. Rely on yourself, and only yourself: There will come a point in your life that the only person who can do anything to further you in your life is yourself. You will not always be able to rely on your friends or your family.Learn how to overcome situations on your own. Learn how to turn to yourself in times of need. Because one day, your friends and family might not be there.19. Even when it seems impossible, do not give up: This is extremely important. The most successful people in this world did not pave their way to success by giving up when things got tough. They overcame obstacles and persevered even through the toughest of circumstances.Resilience and determination will go a long way in life. Don’t let obstacles overcome or defeat you. We learn the most about ourselves and also grow the most when we face and overcome challenges.20. Only you can give your life meaning. If you feel you are living a meaningless life, it is your fault. If you feel like you have no purpose, do something to change it. Make your life as meaningful as you can. Find a passion or a talent, and work on that passion. Always remember, though, that talent doesn’t always equal success: Just because you have an extraordinary talent or gift doesn’t mean that you will always be successful.To succeed, talented people need to know how to push themselves, overcome challenges, and have what it takes to succeed in this world. If you don’t have the drive, will, and motivation, your talent will only get you so far. Just like Yoda so eloquently put it: do or do not. There is no try.21. You’re a lot better off than a majority of the world: Always remember that while your problems may sometimes seem like the only problems in the world, they’re not.There are millions of people in the world suffering from poverty, abuse, war, punishment, violence and more. Never take what you have for granted, as “small” as it may seem.“Heaven is not a republic.”“We are moved by self-interest, even when we seek to do good to others.”Sources: 14 Harsh Life Truths You Need To Know To Be Stronger, 10 Hard Truths in Life You Need to Hear, 8 Hard Truths About Life That You Should Know(Girish Palariya )

Adrian Tan, speaking in 2008 to NTU, SingaporeI must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.You’ve probably been told the big lie that "Learning is a lifelong process" and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.The good news is that they’re wrong.The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy. After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over. Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.The most important is this: do not work.Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the true worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.Source: http://halfhalf.posterous.com/dont-work-be-hated-love-someone