A blog about the travels and adventures of a global nomad sharing stories and causes, saving the world by being a half-minute hero using social media, and volunteer work, chronicled through blogging, vlogging, pictures, and more
I haven’t posted much in the project blog lately because video editing work back in Bangkok has become a black vortex devouring my time every day, including weekends, as deadlines start creeping in. Worse, I no longer had India on my agenda of mission to deploy to, so it would be another month without travel, even if the good news is, I now have extended my contract with their approval to June 19. No travel on a monthly basis makes me suffocate, but thankfully, Songkran (Thai New Year) and Khmer New Year came in, and I decided on a spontaneous trip to Cambodia for the long weekend to breathe.
My college history professor Donald Campbell once made a bold statement: “The youth are the empire builders and the empire breakers, for they are the ones who historically started and fought revolutions or built the monuments and served in the military of empires.” It got me thinking, because in this day and age, despite protests worldwide against injustices during the Cold War, and now the New Media generation using Twitter, blogging, Facebook, and YouTube, they are a lot more vocal about issues that mean something to them, or being introduced to what is not readily familiar. Continue reading →
You’ve all heard of the game with the scenario where your life will end in one year, six months, one month, one week, three days, or one day, whatever time it is. What would you do?
Here’s my challenge: instead of doing all that hedonism and consuming everything you can because you don’t care about what will happen to the world since you’re on your way out, think about it this way: everyone is ALREADY living this fatalistic approach to life, consuming as much as they can because they don’t care about anyone else and/or they know it will be gone one day and don’t think anything can be done about it.
BULL-FAWKIN-SHIIII-YET.
Here’s Johnny C’s fatalistic philanthropy game: pick a time frame, of one year, six months, one month, one week, three days, or one day. The difficulty is extreme in both the shortest (one day) and the longest (one year) time frames, because you have to act more and very little time to think for one day, and you have to do a hell of a lot for the one year challenge. When you’ve made the choice for time, write that down (you will need a journal for this, and you will want one after you finish, trust me).
In that time frame, how much of a difference can you make in giving back to the world? To society? To the planet and environment? What would you do? How would you do it? I challenge you all to act on this and do as much as you can for society and the planet, whether it’s volunteering for beach clean-up, soup kitchens, recycling everything you have, giving half your clothes in the closet to charity, farming, or spending time with the elderly in a retirement home. Whatever you do, just remember that you will remember everything you have done in your final moments before you give everyone a high five and walk through Heaven’s Door to see the party waiting for you, a party directly correlated to your good karma.
You may or may not leave a legacy behind, you may or may not even be remembered, you may just be a drop in the ocean (“Yet what is the ocean but a multitude of drops?”). So if you play the game, keep a journal of what you think you will do and what you actually do, the end result, how it makes you feel, and on your official “dying day” (the last day or hour of the game), see what you’ve learned and ask yourself if you’re willing to keep doing that for the rest of your life. I guarantee it will make some changes in the way you think.
Never underestimate the power of love. It is the one truth in the universe: love conquers all, and transcends time and space. No gun can do what love does, no master’s degree and expertise can match the small gestures of the heart with pure intent, no amount of money or possessions can equal even a drop of water to the endless ocean that is love. This is the truth that has been taught through the ages by the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Laozi, Gandhi, Krishnamurti, the Dalai Lama, John Lennon, and many, many more. Today in the northern part of Sri Lanka, ravaged by war, I have shown people just what power there is with love. Continue reading →
As of this writing, I am now sitting in a cafe in Manila, where I have been for the past three days since leaving Indonesia. The video above is the summation of my talents in one piece of work: my filming and video editing, my humanitarian aid and development knowledge and effort, my writing, language skills, and photography, and voice over work.
For over 100 business cards I’ve given out in Indonesia, only ONE person responds and that’s to ask a technical question for their computer. Similar to what I experience in America and the Philippines, especially in entertainment.
