Why Nunavut

Why am I going to Nunavut?

While it is not easy to give a crap-free answer to casual acquaintances, it's even tougher to convince people who think they know me well that 1. no I am not crazy and 2. seriously, I am not crazy! For the past how many weeks I have found myself loving those who right off the bat simply say that they are happy for me and they wish me well. Even if some of them are just saying it because they really don't care where I am going or they have no idea where Nunavut is, they have made my life a lot easier by not letting me have to explain myself. That's one reason why I chose not to talk about my plan (except to my family and very few close friends) - I don't want the noise of other people's opinions and questions drown out that little voice that's telling me to take this major leap of faith towards the north. I know, I'm trying too hard to sound Steve Jobish like with my musings - I just finished reading his biography and am still having little hang over from that.

Yes the pay is good and the work experience is great but if that's all there is to it, it wouldn't justify at all my having to extract myself from my just recently built comfort zone. Although I would be a hypocrite if I say that the practical aspect was not a part of the equation but it merely served as additional nourishment to a seed that has already been planted. A lot of people may not know it but I have always relied on my intuition when having to make major decisions. I agree with the late Steve Jobs when he said that "intuition is greater than intelligence". There is some check and balance, however, between who I really am, in essence and my upbringing that keeps me grounded. So when my interest on venturing up north was aroused, the often ignored practical and reality bound part of me told me that I was crazy. And that could have been the end of it. But then earlier this year I faced a sort of financial bump and team intuition grabbed the chance to use this unfortunate, though not necessarily earth shattering event, as a strong argument for their cause. That I should go north. Again, like all my intuition based decisions, as soon as I took the first tiny step to making it happen, things just started to fall into place.

But again, why?

Maybe I need to be somewhere that would lead me towards the core of who I really am. When I find myself stripped of all the trivial and nonsensical concerns, the dramas and all the other trappings of life and where layered clothing's the only layering I'll ever need, when I have to go back to the basics and rely on my survival instinct and when I am in a place so vast that I am confronted by how small I really am in the greater scheme of things...maybe, just maybe, the north can bring me a step closer to understanding who I am and my purpose for being. And isn't that what life is really all about in the first place?

I know that I sound like I am romanticizing something that requires a lot of planning, strategy and sound judgment. I know that it is naive and even foolish of me to talk about this when I am not even in Nunavut yet. But at this point in my life, my intuition has already attained a track record that I am willing to trust. For the longest time and through every different phases of my life it has gently whispered to me that I should not be afraid of starting over. Always. And that has been the recurring theme of my life - starting all over. Because of this I've had the opportunity to experience a lot of things I would never have experienced if I stuck with a single, safe formula. I may never know what it feels like to reach the top of the ladder but I get to run in a vast open field! I may have my limitations as a person but I make sure that my life experiences are not limited.

Countdown Begins!

I told myself I won't post anything until I finally have an exact departure date. So far whenever somebody asks me when I am leaving I'd have no choice but give a vague reply like, maybe first week of November. I told myself maybe I am jinxing things by talking or writing too much about it. Although I have signed all the forms, submitted all the paperworks and whatnots and have a definite start date for my job, everything still seemed unreal without the exact departure date. Well finally today I received my itinerary and at last I can have my countdown! Thirteen days to go! What can I say? This is it! This is really it!

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

I am paying tribute to a great man. As I embark on this journey justified by my intuition, motivated by my foolishness, fueled by my hunger to know what else is out there..his words will be my compass..the story of his life, my inspiration.

_____

Text of Steve Jobs' Commencement Address At Stanford (2005)

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

The Art of Letting Go

I am such a hoarder. I should be in that Hoarders reality TV show. I guess I've known this for a long time but when it comes to defense mechanisms, I specialize in denial. Now here I am being confronted with the awful truth - I am such a hoarder. Yes I should be on TV.


For the past few days I have been in the sorting, packing, throwing away phase of my journey. Let it be known that this is the part I like the least. No, that's putting it mildly. It's the part that I truly detest. The packing part I have subdivided into 3 - stuff to bring, stuff to send back home (yes, Philippines) and stuff to give to people who might find my stuff useful enough. The stuff to bring part is easy - if I could bring everything I would! But I have to remind myself that I am going to Iqaluit. Like, do I really need to bring this swim suit that I haven't even dared to wear here in Calgary? My heart was bleeding when a favorite fluffy blouse had to go to either the send home or give away box.  I remember when I was little there was this heart tugging, tear jerker of a movie called, "All Mine to Give", where a mom had to give away her (I forgot how many) kids because (again I forgot) she was either dying or very poor. Anyway, that's sort of how I am feeling right now. So with much effort I had to turn off my emotional and sentimental button.


Don't even get me started with the throwing away part. I could not believe and I have to repeat that, I could not believe that despite the four address changes in three years I have managed to bring along with me garbage dating back from when I first arrived! No, that's a lie. The truth is I have even managed to bring along garbage dating back from when I was still in the Philippines! No kidding! I have three full big garbage bags in my room right now that I need to throw away! Enough said.


When I was reading  the blogs of people who chose to go up north, most of them agreed that it is a life changing experience. I haven't even left Calgary yet but I already understand what they mean. I know there seems to be a lot of drama involved in my throwing and packing phase but I am also thinking what a liberating experience this is . . to just let go - throw or give away..to just go back to the basics - what do I really need to bring? Life simplified. For the first time I am actually going to travel light! And I am not talking about luggage weight..I just mean, I'll be leaving minus all the trappings! If anything, Nunavut's my cure from an imminent bad case of hoarding addiction!


So much for that. There's work to be done.

The Curse of Saying Never

Still on the paper works slash getting things organized phase of my Northern pre-adventure.

I was thinking of testing a theory that "never say never" is not just an oft repeated cliche but actually a powerful curse. That the moment you say never, the opposite happens.

Case in point: when I finished nursing school more than a decade ago, I declared to anybody who cared to listen that I'll be burning my books and I will never study again. Of course, two years after I found myself in medical school doing even more studying.

And there was that time when most of my friends have migrated abroad and I made a patriotic declaration that I will never leave the country. Then the universe conspired to transport me to Alberta.


I don't even want to get started on the trivial day to day stuff where I would with all conviction say, I would never do this or that..and somehow find myself doing the this or that I swore I will never do.

Anyway, the reason why I think this never say never thing is a curse is that a year ago, while in the process of packing, moving into a new house and then unpacking, I realized that it was my fourth change of address after being only in Canada for two and a half years! I love change but all the technical aspects of moving I truly detest ( as I said, packing and unpacking) so last year I said . . that's it, no more packing and unpacking for me . . I will never move out again. And true to form..just over a year after I said the "N" word..here I am packing my bags again. I think I must have uttered a more potent spell this time because I am not just moving anywhere..I am actually leaving the province and fly to the arctic region! How about that? 

And this is why I feel I have a solid basis for my "never say never is a curse and not a cliche" theory. Maybe I'll put that theory to the test by saying something like... I will never find the love of my life or I will never be a millionaire. Then we'll see what happens.