[MUSIC] Well, in fact Mother Nature has never been good to us. That's how I put it. And we have trouble on the first day, when your father's sperm tried to fertilize your mother's egg, he was having trouble. He was swimming and swimming and swimming and there's the acidity, and also there are other competing sperm with them, and they're fighting each other and finally one get into it. So they're having the trouble, they fertilize it. And once they fertilize it, you are stepping into the process of, the DNA is taking over. Now it's going to the point of death. And you have maybe 50, 60, 70, 80 years in-between going from this, this piece of DNA trying to in the process make more DNA. Maybe it would go around and try to fertilize a lot of female and make more DNA out there. And then at the end, what happens is that everybody die. So this is a process, but when this process takes place, is there a way that you can make choices? Some of it, you can, some of it, you can't. But whenever you have a chance, I think we all make choices. So when you go to the canteen, do you pick one particular dish, or the other dish? You can make a choice. But you can also choose not to make a choice. But being able to make a choice or not, to make a choice is already a choice, right? So therefore, actually you are making choices all the time. So you need to make the choice. And the choice is the following. And I often see the world in a slightly different way, in a very binary version. It's, well, we can always go for a version which is going for the fast track. The fast track that I would call is that basically I simply want to pass on the DNA, all the time. I don't care what it is. So therefore the approach you take is, exactly the bacteria. I keep on dividing and dividing and dividing, alright? So I make mistakes but, okay, if I make enough mistakes, I die. But I have enough individual to survive, and continue to divide and all this. I make more and more DNA. So in fact do you think that you can eliminate bacteria on earth? Almost impossible, alright? But on the other hand, you can also go the other way, I call that, so when you do it very effectively, you produce a lot of DNA, it seems to define that actually you're very successful. But you can also go through a process I call the slow track. The slow track is, well, basically, when the resources are ample, I don't need to worry about having food or nutrients and all that much. So what I do is that I want to develop some unique features that can be a little bit entertaining. For me, now that's the meaning start to come in. And they would explore whatever possibility that allow them to conquer Mother Nature and they can develop their mind and the soul. So interestingly, so if you look at human being, what it is is say, well, life takes on a very different kind of direction. The trajectory goes into the way that now we eat. I doubt that many of you go to eat because you want to get nutrient. You simply, you feel hungry. And you find I like that dish so you order it. And sometimes we simply do it for the sensual satisfaction. We go around, we look for space. I think in the university, we always say the space is very limited. We want to have more space. What do you really want to have? And are you really don't have a seat? Yes, you do have a seat, but then I want to have two seats, right? Can you sit on two seats? No, but I still want to have two seats. I feel satisfied that I have two seats. I have a bigger room, right? And some of it is for entertainment, to show authority. We work, what do you work for? We make a living, we got a paycheck. That's part of it. But on the other hand, I think a lot of us coming here to work because we want to feel that we're achieving something. We want to make a difference. And sometimes we fight for resources but then sometimes we fight not because of resources. I simply think that this is the wrong thing to do. I want to insist that something need to be like that, I'm willing to fight you to death in order to uphold some belief that I have. And do we live for today? I don't think that anyone of you are living for today. Most of you are thinking about my kids, my future, and what my career. You're thinking about the days after today. And what happens is that we die. In the past, we died because we have a disease. But now, why do you die? You must have seen that in the Vietnam war, all these monks, they put kerosene on themselves. They burned themselves. They died because they had a cause. They go for justice. They go for freedom. So, with that, so are we the winners? Or are we putting ourselves in trouble? We're doing things which is not really for the purpose of our survival. We're doing it because we believe in something which is so abstract and we don't know what it is, but then we're willing to sacrifice our life to make it happen. So that's what we're doing, we're trying to create some meaning in it. And creating meaning knowing that that can bring frustration. In fact, life is full of danger, surprise, unpredictable. And so, in the process, we simply go along with it because we can't do anything, or we go along with it because we believe that if we do it enough that something is going to happen. Now, that's essentially what that's meaning is about, and that's also a dilemma. A lot of the students here, a lot of the staff here, they may not feel very happy about it, because they find that I want to do something but it's not under my control. And when something is not under your control, you always feel disappointed. I'm not being recognized, I do all this work and it seems that is doing nothing, it all goes down the drain. So we are not happy. But when we are in control, we are happy. When we are not in control, everything seems to fall apart and you simply think that actually, the world is not made for you. But ask yourself, do you know that when you make mistakes as a piece of DNA replicating, do you know actually what the outcome is? You don't know, you just do it, alright? Because that's a process. You know that down the road in long term, it is going to lead to somewhere. So therefore, don't be disappointed so much when things falling apart. And sometimes you simply take it in your own hand, whatever belief that you have, and you continue embarking on it. And so this is follow your dream. And when you find all these, when you're getting ready, you finally understand actually where you're getting to. Usually we would say that when people get to their 40s or 50, they know actually what they want. They're ready to die. So, it takes a long time. It takes a long time to recognize actually what you want. If you don't, trouble, that means you are no different from an animal. You're simply the DNA taking over you and making more DNA, you don't know what you want. And so therefore by the time you know, you're dead. So that's what it is. So what I would urge you to start thinking about is that, well, things seems to be very deterministic, but in the process, there's a lot of choices you can make. The question is that, do you, are you satisfied with this animalistic type of behavior or you'd want to build into it some meaning so that you can find a purpose along the way? So therefore life can be very deterministic, but you're determined to be non-deterministic. You don't follow what the DNA is telling you, and that is the way to go, and that's what I would advocate for you to think about. Okay, and sometimes to define that, this is essentially what we are talking about. How you define actually what you believe, what's your calling. I'm not religious, but then I would say that I can use this term, calling, and what the humanity means to you. What do you want to achieve in your life? And that's the force. It will keep you going. And that would give the meaning for the rest of it. And even though when things fall apart, you don't let go of it, and that's what it is. So what I suggest is that people will start thinking about, in a deterministic, physical, chemical, and biological world, you can make something happen which is non-deterministic, as long as you're determined to go into it so that you don't follow whatever others' expectation is. Not your kids' expectation, not your parents' expectation, not your peers' expectation, but take things into your own hand, that would be it. And at the same time, you need to recognize that we are constantly making mistakes. The mistake allow us to generate a lot of variations. The variations makes it beautiful so that we know that you make the best use of whatever you have, and that I can call that, it may be fate. But it can also be your endowment, because of that variation, that allowed you to do a lot of things which others cannot do. Alright, so what we do, so this, I take it out from a genetics text. Essentially we say that, hey, life, we are controlled by all this genetic material. And we have, follow a normal distribution of all this variation. So what we can do in fact is we know that gene has certain control of us, this is variance controlled by genes. In fact, we know that every single individual, whatever the outcome is and what they’re going to be, will be determined by the variance caused by the environment. This spot, you can’t really do too much. Once your father and mother give it to you, you have no control unless you want to change all your DNA. Then you're no longer the son or daughter of your father and mother. But this part, you can do a lot. So what we can do in fact is along the way in our life, we're just trying to push it depending on what direction you want to push, which is working on this part, the experience. Your surrounding environment. That's the most important part of it. So you seize the moment, and you keep going. Another part, in this process, a lot of time people feel very unhappy. Why? Because they are constantly talking about what their peer are expecting them. Their parents expecting them. Or their kids are expecting them. And they always like to look back and say, in the past I should have done this, and I should have done that. But can you repeat it? No way, you only have one life. You cannot repeat it. So when you have no chance to really repeat it, so the only thing is that you need to keep going. And the more you look back, you feel sorry, you feel more sorry you are. And so what we have now is that, then you go forward and keep going and keep engaging, and that's something that I will put on my window. Full engagement, the simple practice to create sustainable happiness at work and in life. That's what you do. And after all you can ask yourself what you're looking for in your life. What you're looking for in your life is to live a happy life, a healthy and happy life, so the moral of this story is not talking about human being. I tried to dismiss that we are not living in a deterministic world, it is totally non-deterministic. A small part of it can be embedded in your DNA which controls quite a bit of it, but you can live out of it and you can move ahead. And if in this case, you can live as a human being with a very purposeful objective, then I would say that you don't let your DNA run the show so that you're simply totally become passive. So that's what it is, a meaningful life. And I would say that for those who would be able to live a fulfilled life, then, I will say it doesn't matter whether it's deterministic or not deterministic. It's fine, you have a good life. And so I think at the end, in whatever setting you are, no matter you're in university, no matter you're at work. That's what you're looking for. You want to have a wonderful life. So, I would stop at this point and I would like to thank all of you to be here so that we can like have a little bit more chat on somewhat philosophical, but then actually it's very biological context. Alright, okay. Thanks. [APPLAUSE]
