Communality

Kitchen Confidential

Recipes, tips and more from writer’s personal experience

    Last week had been an exciting week for basketball fans. Hoopheads watched one of the gutsiest, dramatic, and most entertaining first-round playoff series between the Phoenix Suns and L.A. Lakers. The Lakers had the upper hand, winning 3-1 in the best-of-seven series, but the Suns persisted and tied the series 3-3 before finishing up Kobe Bryant and co. in Game 7.

    Phoenix fired up fans and stunned skeptics after the Classic-worthy Game 6. How come the Suns, outsized and undermanned, facing elimination on the road, pull together such an effort and come out victorious?

    Definitely there is something admirable about that. And it’s not even about basketball.

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    So what is it all about? The Japanese word gaman, which Nicholas Kristof used quite frequently in his book Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia, seems to sums up best what I mean to say. Gaman signifies “persistence and endurance through hardships” – a prerequisite to survival.

    We have seen gaman throughout the history of humanity. There is that spirit of survival, resilience, and fierce determination. It’s the spirit that drove many immigrants out of their poverty-stricken villages to pursue the American dream. Auschwitz survivors, Darfur refugees and the Chinese guy before the tank in Tiananmen Square certainly had it too.

    Another wonder of survival is the power of cooperation. When it comes down to life or death, a species has better chances to prevail when they help one another. It’s heartening to see how many helping hands reach out after the tsunami that swept Aceh and other regions, after Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans.

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    This year’s Phoenix Suns is a prime example of these qualities – determination and collaboration. Surely we could use more of those. No matter what adversities each of us is challenging right now, it gives us hope to know we all have this fire inside.

        Someone I know recently confessed about his struggle at work, how he tries to make this small firm – that’s not even his – work for the sake of the young employees who look up to him. He himself is young and hard-working, his parents are well off. He could have easily walked out, went to school abroad or get a better job at a bigger firm. But he stays on, loyal to his people, meanwhile putting up with – I imagine – occasional pity or sneer for living off his parents’ money. But the hardest part is perhaps to endure his own self-doubting in the whole process.

    Another person I know just gave up a superb job offer in a beautiful northern country. After long and hard deliberation, he chose to stay where he is. The reason? He wants to be close to the woman he loves, and he wants her to keep her career – something they can only accomplish if he gives up the offer.

    Oh, the things we do for love. There’s something beautiful about selfless acts … Thinking about someone else rather than worrying about what others think about us, or about what people hopefully might think when they see your overseas pictures on Friendster (sorry … I can’t help digressing on this pet peeve of mine).

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   We all have things that are dear to us … even if sometimes we don’t act like they are important. It’s easy to forget what’s important, and remember when it’s only too late.

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Today I found out that I got promoted. It wasn’t the promotion itself that made my day … but it was the fact that my colleague and I shared a great laugh because I was so clueless and was genuinely bewildered by the announcement.

    Hey, I too am learning about the more important things in life, if not slower than the two friends I told you about. But it’s a liberating lesson.                                                                                                    

com·mu·nal·i·ty (kom"yu-nal’i-tē) - n.

    One can define communality as the proportion of a variable’s variance explained by a factor structure. But I suppose all of us – including statisticians – associate this word more with a community than factor analysis.

    Communality, according to Encarta World English dictionary on MSN.com, means the spirit of togetherness, the spirit of cooperation and solidarity.

    In our lifetime we have witnessed the collapse of boundaries, the intermingling and emergence of races and subcultures … the fragmentation of our world seems just as finite as the formation of fractal arms in iterations. Sadly and incomprehensibly to the naïves, diversity often leads to exclusivity, misunderstanding, and even tragedies.

    But shouldn’t diversity be a wonderful thing? Doesn’t it show how rich and colourful the human race is? And aren’t we created in many different tribes and nations such that we can learn about each other?

    I believe we should cherish our particularities … but also look beyond them. Let’s speak in the language of what you and I and they share in common.

    I hope Communality would do just that.