| At the TED Conference, individuals are given no more than 20 minutes to give a presentation of their life. By that it does not mean your life history (necessarily), but the on a topic that one feels passionate speaking on. It could be about a journey to a developing country, or a thought-provoking insight that came from years of trial-and-error, or an invention you've made, or a performance you've perfected.
I've thought about what it meant to have a life-as-living-proof, to stick to a creed, idea, or action and be known for it (or trapped by it). I'm at an age where I'm just about certain what my role in this world is. That much I am certain. I used to delve into my mother's books on raising a garden ever since elementary school. My earliest memory was probably passing by the plant area of Home Depot, spotting a strawberry plant, and asking my mom to buy it so I can raise strawberries (hey, why buy it when you can grow it?!). Unfortunately I planted it in the ground right by the wall of the house, so barely any sun shone upon it. I think at the time, my rationale was that the little strawberry plant shouldn't be exposed to the harsh sun and rain, that it needed some form of shelter. The plant died in a week or two. I think I was heartbroken. Since then, I started reading books to understand more about plants, and eventually understood that every plant had optimal conditions in which it had to be raised. Mom and I had a lot of indoor plants and outdoor plants, each one unique in their own right. There were two moments of glory that came from being able to apply my knowledge of plants after reading from the books. The first was the potted lemon tree. It often sat in this remote corner of the garden by itself, being watered quite freqently. I mean, a little sun and water are all you need for a healthy lemon plant right? Not quite enough. I learned that citrus plants, especially young ones needed a lot of sun and were prone to frostbite damage. So I moved the plant to the other side of the garden where the morning sun shone, and placed it under a tree so that the plant isn't exposed to open sky where heat loss is greatest. In about a year, the little lemon tree bore me a green lemon! (Yes, I'm pretty sure it was a lemon tree, not a lime tree.) The second plant I applied similarly, which was the bird-of-paradise flower. It never bloomed for many years, probably because its growth was stunted by cold weather, and so I decided to place a plastic "greenhouse" over it to help keep it warmer during winter months. After awhile, the plant grew rather quickly, and I saw the first bloom! I might be wrong on my presumptions looking back now, but it did launch me into a repeated pattern of learning theory, and then testing to see if it worked. To this day, I still read on theories and test it. But my interest has moved from the garden to the community organizing. I think the day I saw VSA Link, one of the predecessors to UVSA of which I am part of, died on my watch, I couldn't help but feel compelled to understand why. To think that a youth organization could die troubled me. And so I embarked on learning how to foster the growth of organizations to prevent its demise. Except, unlike gardening, there were no obvious books to read on how to raise an organization and sustain it. I could only identify problems and figure out potential solutions as it came. Fashioning greenhouses, moving plants around (garden design), and understanding the characteristics and needs of each plant were all things associated with gardening that I learned to do. And in a similar vein, I had to learn a lot about organizations, groups, and individuals; everything from learning about personality types and working styles to the layers of leadership focuses, and so on and so forth. The fact that 4 VSAs died ever since the founding of UVSA told me that I didn't know enough yet. The solutions were also getting tougher. What if one of the solutions was to institute a mentorship program? That would have been a huge undertaking already. So recognizing the limitations of a single body at trying to keep my strawberries (the VSAs) alive, I focused on building leadership capacity by fostering a network. In essence, this group of leaders are the very extensions of my body and mind, not exactly to act according to my wishes, which would sound like a dictatorship, but to function more like the heart, where it beats no matter what I say, and yet I'm glad it does because I can rely on it to keep the blood flowing so I can focus on other things. With 100 VSAs across the nation, one can't help but feel that there are 100 simultaneous laboratories going on at once trying to figure out answers to the common problems of the day, things like how to keep members stay interested, or what to do when an officer breaks a law or school code, or learning about the origins of the Vietnamese people. Now I am presented with a problem again: the declining quality of two of the most important holidays in the Vietnamese culture: Tet and Tet Trung Thu. What scares me is that the San Jose festival associated with Tet Trung Thu was on the verge of total collapse. Even now, its foundations are shaky. I also heard that the Moon Festival of Silicon Valley had also collapsed. And thus, this is the mission on which I am about to embark upon: to restore the vibrancy of an ancient tradition and bringing back its relevance to the modern age. As I continue to organize in the community, I see the same patterns exist as they do in gardening. Every group and individual needs something in order to grow healthily, and I should not be afraid to move them around so that people support each other best (like the lemon tree being sheltered by the bigger tree). It makes me happy when plants don't die (unless it is really old, which I accept as things I cannot change or fight), and similarly when organizations are able to survive by remaining relevant to the people who are part of it, then I feel happy. Of course the greatest joy is being able to see the first bloom of something that has never bloomed before. I guess with people, it is when they become most assured of themselves of who they are. When it is with groups, it is the moment when the group goes from having the mentality "I'm better than you" to "We (the group) are great", and eventually to "Humanity is wonderful!"
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