My Blog

My friend Vince Fazari passed away on March 25, 2004. It happened three months before his 22nd birthday, after a long and difficult battle with cancer.

In the end, his body failed but his spirit didn’t. He was always positive and upbeat, and when he found out he had three months left to live, he made the strongest effort he could to make the most of the time he had left.

One of the things he did in that time was write a goodbye message, of sorts, to his family and friends. He called it his “basic life philosophy”, and it sums up nicely the kind of person that he was. He posted it, along with a lot of other writings, to a website he kept on Geocities. Unfortunately, Geocities was recently shut down, so I don’t know how much – if any – of that writing still remains.

Luckily, I saved Vince’s goodbye message, and so I’m reprinting it here on my blog in both an effort not to lose it, and to share it with you. Whether or not you knew Vince, he was a wonderful person, and wherever he is right now, I bet he wishes the best for you.

My Basic Life Philosophy

Hi All,

Now a number of you have been asking these “What is you’re view on life”, “How do you cope”, etc… and so what you are about to read is basically an email concerning my some core aspects to my basic life philosophy. These ideas did not appear over night, nor were they the result of simply my recent cancer experiences. My life philosophy, quite frankly, has been forged by life itself. I have always explored, thought about and challenge life to its limits. I have had many ’successes’ AND many ‘failures’. But most importantly, I have learned how to get on with life.

Now as for my outlook on life… what I am about to write about concerns the matter of figuring out what things in life are worth stressing over…

Core to my general life philosophy is this:

If there is some situation in life that I feel ’sucks’ I always have AT LEAST 1 of 3 things I can do.

1. Change the situation
2. Accept the situation
3. Exit the situation

The simple realisation that I have at least one of these options available to me makes things a whole lot simpler. The situation can now be addressed in a straightforward manner. Of course, figuring out which of the three is possible / the best solution is the tricky part .

Take for example, “My job sucks”….

First, I can try to identify things in my job that I can change (improve relationships with boss & coworkers, ask for more meaningful tasks, proactively find better things to do at the company, etc…)

But there may come a point where I (a) can’t think of anything I can actually change, or (b) can identify things I ‘could’ change, but the effort required just isn’t worth it. As I mentioned in my earlier email, we can act and change many things in our lives, but our influence does have limits. When our attempts to change things face resistance, we encounter stress. With (b) we realise that not everything is worth the time or stress.

At this point, I look at the situation as ask myself, should I accept this “sucky job” or should I exit (i.e. quit)?

- There are many reasons to accept (some better than others)
- Perhaps the job market is really horrible, I need the money, I’m learning more here than I could anywhere else, I believe in what I am doing, I still get to serve fries to this cute girl who comes in every Tuesday etc.

But if I figure there’s no point in accepting the situation, the I’d quit! (why waste my time at a joint like this???)

Now this Change/Accept/Exit philosophy is very general and can work at all levels (from the smallest situation – say a small dilemma at work, to the ultimate situation of all – life itself).

For example, you can have a small problem at work which you decide you can’t change… but that doesn’t mean you have to quit your job (which could still be quite cool).

Anyway, my ultimatum that I decided long ago is this: that ONLY in the ultimate situation, life itself, will I NOT EXIT voluntarily (i.e. commit suicide).

Once I put things in this perspective, it simplifies things. What can I change, what can I get out of, and what do I have to accept.

There are some things that I have to accept. Accepting them might not always be easy. But in the end, accepting them brings peace of mind. And by looking at the three options, it more readily allows one to come to the conclusion about what must be accepted.

Some people may think that my current situation is particularly difficult to deal with. However, I usually find it fairly easy to act on the Change/Accept/Exit options with “bigger problems”, like those that I’ve been facing lately with regard to my health. (It usually is the smaller things that are tougher to decide if they can be changed…. and this is when all our internal stress gets generated.)

Now I honestly feel that tough relationship situations are some of the toughest situations to figure out:

Change things? you really can’t simply choose to change another person…

Accept things? you don’t want to just get walked over

Exit? do you really want to give up on the romance or deep relation with another person?

These are tough questions… I think for me, I’ve found that I’ve accepted a lot in some relationships… disappointments can occur, mistakes are made, misunderstanding happen… but I accept and forgive… and try to love and communicate to the best of my abilities. However, there is only so much I can do to influence another person and I really don’t want to *try everything* to influence another person, for they are their own person. At best, I think one can only “do unto the other, what that other would like done unto them”… we can advise, help in manners that are asked, and hope the person can grow, but not take things personally if things don’t change. Personally, I find in relationships, often the more one tries to directly change the other person, the worse the situation gets…

It is a slippery slope though. At what point does one stop accepting and simply exit? A very tough question. And of course this is why couples can sometime oscillate between the together and apart states. But I guess, if the relationship finally ends, then why should we burden ourselves with the past… accept it. It can’t be changed and we’ve already exited the situation. Perhaps we can analyze it and learn from it. But in the end, what’s done is done, and we just have to get on with our lives….

Again I generalise these notions to other aspects of life.

Take another C?A?E? situation

We’re outside and it starts pouring rain! We’re getting soaked!

1. We don’t have the ability “right now” to change the situation of “pouring rain” (our influence has its limits) – although science and technology may be making some progress in this field

2. We are getting wet. Is there something we can do about this?

Umbrella? aww shucks! it’s leaky! can we improvise something? doesn’t look like it.

Run for shelter? aww shucks! we’re in a big grass field now we could get mad! we could start crying “it’s not fair!” we could curse whatever god we choose… but for me, I don’t see much point.

…(I never try to let my feelings get the best of me. I’m of the opinion that feelings are there to help guide decisions & actions, but it is inevitably up to “me” and not my emotions to choose my response to any situation.)…

Or we could accept that we’re gonna get really wet, and make the best of things… you know, roll around in the mud, have some fun, perhaps set up an irrigation network or something… learn something from the situation so that next time it won’t be as bad for us (or others) – i.e. let’s build a shed so when it rains no one will get wet… lets make sure to carry a better umbrella when the skies are cloudy and dark… and perhaps one day, we’ll actually be able to figure out how to control the weather

But until then, all we can do is accept what we must. We’re gonna get soaked.

So, as I explained to some friends already, right now I’m getting soaked. And all I can do is this: Do my best at making the best of it.

Anyway, hope that gives you some insight into me and perhaps helps you out in someway.  I’d love to talk / chat / email / etc…but also understand that you’re all busy with your own lives. Hopefully we’ll be able to meet up again sometime in person. Until then…

Stay safe and have fun!

Vince =D

p.s…. hope this philosophy seems fairly straightforward to ya. And yeah, I didn’t develop this philosophy all by myself… over the years I’ve done my share of thinking AND reading AND living AND learning.

“God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
- Reinhold Niebuhr

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”
- Albert Camus