Dare

Think about the last time you watched an action thriller drama about someone being taken hostage, scissors on her throat, close to being stabbed to death. You probably agree that a psychologist is better than tear gas under such circumstances.

To call the psychologist's job difficult at this turn of harrowing event is a serious understatement. Removing the threat of a violent guy is as ghastly as a dental check for crocodiles. If I told you George is a psychologist asked to take up this job when he had just come out of graduate school, would that pique your interest? Perhaps you'd be interested to know how he handled such high-stakes situation. That's the anecdote I read in the first chapter of Care to Dare by George Kohlrieser.

Read the book and you'll see how George's boss unleashed his potential through secure base leadership. In short, it's a fine balance between caring and daring. Too much caring and there will be overprotection; too much daring will then lose sight of building trust. In fact, I was preparing for the appraisal by my hospital chief yesterday when I read about those who have been "taken hostage" by a boss to achieve results in the form of numbers, targets or key performance indicators. For that matter, I am to this day in gratitude to having a leader who cares to dare (me).

Organized

We have information overload. So much so that we forget things like the password to our Facebook account, the PIN for our credit card, the digital door code of the loo at workplace - for goodness' sake, no laughing matter when there is a pressing need.

The need for taking charge of our memory cabinet has never been greater. My brain seems to be shrinking inversely proportional to the explosion of job items. In short, I'm forgetting more things than I remember.

One good explanation is that our brain's memory system, according to neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin, resembles a big, old house with piecemeal renovation. We simply add things one thing at a time, as and when we need them. A haphazard hodgepodge of different things, each one solving a problem at a different time.

That's what I learned after picking up the reserved book The Organized Mind at the public library today. An obvious take-away, after reading its first chapter, is to think of better filing systems to retrieve information. By the time I entered this book in the Goodreads - my cabinet system - I then realized that I have already finished reading it over two years ago.

As I reflected on the ridiculously disorganized memory cabinet of mine, it is hard not to be struck by the irony.

Tree

“Daddy, I don't quite understand this story,” my daughter looked nonplussed after reading Britta Teckentrup's The Memory Tree.

The story seems so very, very surreal and metaphorical.

Set in a snowy winter, the book's beginning has the death scene of Fox. One by one, Fox's animal friends in the forest came to recall the precious moments with him. Owl talked about how they raced to see who could catch more falling leaves. Bear reminisced the day when Fox looked after her cubs. And, in the morning, a small tree grew in the clearing where Fox took his last breath.

“Oh yes. That's an obituary (and this was the first time she heard this big word), and the tree is a symbol of leaving a legacy behind when we die.”

The tree is as much as it is part of the forest, as much connected to the animals, in celebration of life and the memories that live on, as it is to do with sheltering all the animals and giving strength to the branches that hold the birds' nests.

While I don't think the topic is easy for an eight-year-old to grasp, I have to say it's also the first time for me to write obituary today. When I think back about my friend who died 19 years after receiving his heart transplant, I see a similar tree left behind, going to grow higher and higher, buzzing more and more with life. To those who like philosophy, this is the reverse of asking the clichéd question: if a tree falls in the forest and no one is present to hear it, does it make a sound? You could spend hours arguing for the riddle of toppling tree, but my obvious answer to someone whose work was anchored, his tree will be heard forever.