Year 2008: Retrospection and Introspection

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

and wisdom to know the difference.

Oh what a year 2008 has been, and how it will go down in history!!! I am still amazed by the drastic turn of events, and I still catch myself wondering out aloud – can you believe this?! -- months after the Lehman bankruptcy and Obama becoming the president-elect.

Not trying to be a megalomaniac here, but I have been living in the midst of historical events this year. 2008 is such a roller coaster that I will never forget.

I remember January 3, 2008. I returned from my London trip and heard that Barack Obama won the Iowa primary at O’hare. I thought, cool, that’s awesome but it’s still a long shot. Hope of this campaign was so remote and so fragile that I dared not even spell out its goal in fear of jinxing it. If you ask me how I spent my spare time this year, I tell you, I glued to the Internet tubes, quoting Alaskan senator Ted Stevens, and cable TV, gradually becoming exclusively MSNBC, for every tidbits of campaign news with such want, as if I were my soft-shelled turtle yearning for sunshine. I am not exaggerating. Despite, or maybe because of, being a superstitious non-believer, I was an ardent supporter, a fanatic fan. I donated every month; I made phone calls; I went to the Rust Belt to knock on doors and caucus; I defended his positions and debated with anyone who disagreed, left and right; I even reinforced the opinions of those who do agree, hoping they could be better at explaining to others. Remember New Hampshire? I was convinced we had to try harder and not be complacent. Henceforth, the day before every primary, I superstitiously made additional donations and phone calls, and what a long primary it was! I would schedule my time around every primary night to make sure I was glued to the TV when the results came out. I would not even dare to verbalize this hope in my mind, and was content to leave that concept as an elusive fairy tale. If he won another round, I would say to myself, this is cool but it is still a long shot. It just seemed too good to be true. At this moment of retrospection and introspection, I am still shaking my head and saying, can you believe this? Can you believe a first-term junior senator from my neighborhood with exotic skin color like me and an even more exotic name, Barack Hussein Obama, that rhymes with Iraq Hussein Osama, is going to be the next president of the United States of America, the most powerful job in the world?! Quoting Jon Stewart, another hopeful non-believer, how is he going to break our heart?!

Life’s a Bitch. It taunts and bewitches and bewilders me. Certain things are indeed too good to be true. When my friends and family ask me about my job at Lehman, I would say, it is perfect. I like my group; I get to do what I want to do; the company takes the money issue off the table so we can focus; and the young people there are entertaining. I could not ask for more, and indeed, it was a fairy tale. Lehman’s fall was like a spectacular firework – I am simultaneously in awe and disbelief. I received in my mail some paperwork sent by a claims agency called “Epiq Bankruptcy Claims”. Get it? How appropriate. I feel partially vindicated by the economic depression we are heading into – Lehman was too big to fall. More often, though, my heart aches. I am still rubbing my eyes and saying, with utter disbelief and profound bewilderment, can you believe this? Can you believe Lehman, such a reputable bank, went bankrupt, whereas many moronic ones, not to mention the Big Three automakers, are still surviving? Can you believe that only three months before their retirement, this administration, a walking breathing monstrous Plague, has a chance to bring down such an enterprise like Lehman?! No bank, however solvent, can survive governmental public admonition; naked short sell and bank run like that. This administration, whatever its intentions are, does everything upside down. They turn gold into ashes and raise zombies from the dead. Again, quoting Jon Stewart, I know I am getting a bike for Christmas; I do not want to wait till Christmas; I want my bike now!

I can rant on forever about the Lehman bankruptcy and find many creative variations to describe and complain, but that is for another time. The two spectacular history-book-worthy events shaped my life in 2008 and hence I conclude my retrospection. Let me move onto introspection.

The Serenity Prayer that I quoted above is my favorite prayer. I think about it every year around the holiday season and I truthfully think I will be perfect if I can live up to that prayer. Courage, Serenity and Wisdom. I do not know about courage – that is for others to judge. I am a bit lacking in serenity, as I often find it hard to let things go. But I always thought myself to be somewhat wise. Year 2008 has posed an interesting challenge to my self-proclaimed wisdom.

Wisdom. Year 2008. An unlikely victory and an improbable fall. I am disoriented. What are the things that I can change and what are the things I cannot? When should I have faith and hammer on and when should I quit and do something else? Despite all my campaign trail activities, I never really believed this would work and mocked myself an idle fool. I would have given up if Obama were not such a good cheerleader. Even though Lehman declared Chapter 11 and my group got disbanded, I still wondered, privately, whether Lehman could come back from the bankruptcy proceedings and whether our group’s work could be resurrected. Now I understand why life is described as mischief by so many literary figures, across culture and time. I obviously do not have the wisdom to distinguish the difference. But the question is, should we even aim to achieve this wisdom? I remember somewhere along the Bible, someone said something like playing God is blasphemy. Paraphrasing, humans, through our divination, are offending the divine. Maybe we should just be happy-go-lucky.

Serenity and Wisdom. I have been watching too much MSNBC. The hosts are all going on vacation right now so they are just playing clips of the past. I have been pondering, quite a bit, now that this administration has come to an end, why we invaded Iraq. Books have been written on this but honestly we still do not know. Bush is an easy guess – he is not wise. His inner circle, however, is harder to interpret. Are they not wise enough or not tolerant towards a different political culture enough that they invaded? It really is a question of wisdom or serenity. Lack of wisdom is unfortunate but more excusable, but lack of serenity has a sinister tone to it. The Bush Doctrine of forced democracy does have an idealistic appeal. But when you really think about it, when Dick Cheney was asked what he thought about their low approval ratings, he answered, “So?” It

basically indicates that he values more of his own opinion than those of the popular mass, which means he does not really believe in democracy. It seems to invalidate the Bush Doctrine with which he shields criticism on the war. To me, it is his lack of serenity that was the root of his decision and this is sinister.

Back to my introspection: pondering why certain things happened could be not constructive in the short-term and an indication of my lack of serenity. What’s done cannot be undone. What is the use of wondering the true motivation of the war, or Treasury’s lack of support towards Lehman? Two trillion dollars have already been spent on the war and the bailout; Lehman is already bankrupt; more American soldiers have already died in this war than casualty on 9/11 not to mention the death toll of Iraqis. Time to move on and realize facts are facts and they are irreversible. I do think, over the long run however, it is still important to discern the true cause of certain events because otherwise we do not learn from the past and do not get wiser. However, for the time being, for the sake of a New Year, it is time for me to be serene and accept things that I cannot change. It is time to move on. Tonight, off to Florida I will go, with a feverish body and introspective soul.

Blogging is intimate and immediate, quoting Adrianna Huffington. It is not about perfect verses and intricately constructed thoughts. It is about bloggers jotting down their shifting thoughts. I will blog more in 2009.

Happy New Year.