Infinite Permutation | brandon hoe's blog

My wife and I spent our New Year’s Eve at a friend’s place last night, playing Mexican bingo (both fun and frustrating!), sipping Krupnikas from “Brothers Vilgalys Spirits” and munching on a variety of yummy snacks. The bubbly flowed as the clock crept past the midnight hour, and as we clinked glasses and exchanged hugs, it occurred to me that 2014 brought many amazing things into my life. Getting married, selling my house and traveling for 6 weeks, first, with my family, then with my wife, were definitely the major highlights of the year. They were the obvious things to stand out, of course, because of their magnitude on the scale of what’s important to humans, and the amount of time and energy that went into them. But there were other equally important developments in my life that lived mostly out of the reach of immediate memory, and capturing them here is my way of preserving them as points of reflection and learning in my growth.

Simple Coffee Art

I launched a (almost) daily creative/art exercise called “Simple Coffee Art” as a reaction to my situation at the time, where I wasn’t creating anything because I was so paralyzed by the need to create things that were perfect. Overcoming that need to align everything up “just right” so I could create liberated me. The expectation was purely my own, I later discovered, because people were quite happy to be entertained by some simple line drawings and a few coffee beans.

Moral of this experience? Don’t wait to create. Don’t be crippled by the need to be perfect. Don’t be afraid to express yourself; nobody can deny you that right, and if they try, bollocks to them.

Evolution of my career

From engineer to marketer to artist, the outward appearance of my career has gone through a rather circuitous and unpredictable path. All of them are expressions of who I fundamentally am, and I’ve finally become comfortable with the meandering nature of my journey and what it means to me as a person. At my core, I want to create beautiful things that touch and improve lives.

Sometimes, simple beauty is hard to express because we lack the media and the tools to shape its form. I now understand that those things are gifted to us through experience. Some people have those experiences in a short span of time, while others take a little longer to get there. Time is not the measure of experience, but rather, the number and size of the risks we take, the uncomfortable situations we place ourselves in, and the openness to learning that we derive from those places of discomfort.

The story here? Fuck fear. Explore the things you love and are curious about, even if they force you to navigate through stuff that makes you feel queasy and unstable. You’ll figure it out, and the new scars and bruises you sport are the enablers for an incredible life.

Growth as a person

While I’m continually evolving as a human being, I’ve learned some major lessons on what it means to be a better person. The lessons themselves aren’t terribly difficult, but the implementation is challenging. While I’ve learned many lessons over the last year, the biggest obstacle to my continual improvement as a person is that good ol’ shortcoming we all know well but refuse to acknowledge, pride.

Pride causes all sorts of rubbish to emerge in human relationships, whether romantic, professional or platonic. Introspection helped me realize that pride is merely a mask for a lack of self-esteem, so I sought to diminish its presence in my life. The process is ongoing, and it’s not easy, but I’ve chanced upon some ideas that have helped me significantly.

Practical tips for combating pride: Don’t shoot your mouth when someone says something that you disagree with, but instead, think before replying. Try to consider the other person’s perspective and where they come from, and why they might act/speak the way they do. A simple “How’s your day going?’ or “Would you mind sharing why you think that?” helps to unearth insights that feed empathy and eradicate pride. In doing this, you improve the resilience of your character, and may even adopt a new stance based on what you’ve learned.

The passing of one of my heroes

A couple of weeks ago, one of my heroes left us to embark on his new journey in the afterlife. I knew him to be a great man, but the reach and scope of his influence only became truly evident after his passing. Tributes and accolades for him poured in through various channels, from all across the globe. Media mentions were heavy in number. People of every stripe paid him homage. His life was celebrated with great aplomb.

While his accomplishments were numerous, he exercised an immense amount of humility throughout his life. He was also a highly ethical man, who always believed in doing the right thing. There’s no better example of this than the fact that as the executive chairman of the largest electric utility in Malaysia,  he refused to sign off on an agreement that would have made a handful of people (presumably, even himself) extremely rich at a significant cost to millions of others. His stand cost him his job and his position in society, and resulted in a terrible smear campaign against him, but he was resolute in his belief in what is right.

His lessons to me – 1. Few things are more valuable than standing up for what is just, fair and right. 2. True greatness comes not from tooting your own horn, but from the praises of those who were enriched by your life.

I learned many more lessons this year than I’ll ever be able to remember and share. I hope that if you read this, that some of these lessons inspire thought, and hopefully, motivate you. I’d love to hear what you’ve learned and how you’ve changed over the past year, so please share them with me in the comments section.