Millennial Fieldnotes #10: Greatness is Boring
In 2017, Kishore Mahbubani in his book, ASEAN: The Catalyst For Peace argued that ASEAN's success in ensuring collective peace. economic and socio-political progress in the world's most heterogeneous region deserved a Nobel Peace Prize. Yet, despite 50 years of existence, it has not clinched the award.
Why? Because peace is a non-event. It's banal and boring for the theatre of international politics.
ASEAN countries wanted economic growth for themselves so where it was mutually beneficial they co-operated and where it wasn't, they just minded their own business. What is worth noting is that this peace was earned with hard but boring work.
For this reason, I truly believe that how much of a good life we get to live, depends on how well we nail the boring stuff.
For Arnold to win Mr Universe and Mr Olympia - he had to stick to a regime of eating chicken breast and training heavy.
For Michael Jordan to become a 6x NBA Champion - he had to stick to shooting shots at the same spot for hours.
For Richard Feynman to work out the Parton Model in Quantum Particle Physics, he had to go for hours on end parsing through proofs.
The list can go and on -we can choose our pantheon of heroes (or villains).
May we all choose boredom and catch greatness.