🔤 I flew across the world to answer ONE question... (Pt. 3)
Hey there! I’m Robert. Welcome to a free edition of my newsletter. Every week, I share my story of building my dreams in public with bootstrapping a startup in AI, Alignment, and Longevity. These newsletters include my reflections on the journey, and topics such as growth, leadership, communication, product, and more. Subscribe today to become the person and leader that people love, respect, and follow.
⚠️ Trigger Warning:
This newsletter contains references to child abuse, and emotionally distressing real-life stories that may be upsetting to some readers. Please take care while reading, and feel free to skip this section if you are not in a place to engage with heavy content today.
Today, I share with you part 3 of a reflection series I wrote on leadership from a pro-bono consulting engagement with the Cambodian Children’s Fund that I did years ago.
I eventually got back to my hotel room
ready to decompress and process the day.
I ended up laying awake for hours with the same thought running through my mind:
“Why do I feel so connected to the people here?”
I thought about the cultural similarities, but there was something else I could not put my finger on yet.
As the days passed, I found my answers through some painful self reflection.
Through all of my childhood and into adulthood, my parents never supported any of my endeavors or passions.
I grew up severely abused emotionally and physically.
There were times I couldn’t walk to class because my legs and back were so black and blue, and had to embarrassingly call a friend to bring me my classwork and homework.
It was a typical immigrant Asian family: I was the second, and the least important (culturally), of two sons.
As such, I was never handed anything besides the basic amenities: food, shelter, and rides to school.
Love and affection were foreign concepts in my family. Emotional support was nonexistent.
My brother, James, was always the self-admitted favorite. I don’t hold any grudges, and it’s always a humorous topic between us (seriously James, if you are reading this - we’re cool and I love you so much!).
I mention this dark topic not for pity.
I don’t pity myself and I don’t care for it.
We are handed the cards we get, and I believe it’s how you play that defines you.
I mention this only because it provides important context to explain the depth and immediacy of the connection I felt to the people I was serving.
I realized I find the most fulfillment in life by attempting to fill my childhood gaps of love and care with other people—especially kids.
Because in all of these kids, I see that same little boy I was who just wanted a hug and some support.
That was a key insight, that helped me understand myself so much better.
Additionally, I was also able to place my thumb on a common sensation I always have when traveling but couldn’t quite articulate until now: I was yearning for familiarity amongst the unfamiliar.
I was in a foreign country I had never been to, attempting (poorly) to speak a language I had never spoken, and was constantly introduced to new people, new concepts, new everything every single day.
You know that feeling of instant connection that you get when you’re traveling, and you find something that reminds you of home?
It could be anything from…
meeting another person from your home country,
to finding a coffee shop that smells like the one near your work,
and everything in between.
Familiarity amongst the unfamiliar.
Looking back, I was truly vulnerable.
I was itching for a connection. I desperately wanted to find the familiar amongst the unfamiliar.
I had so many emotions to process, and an ocean and timezone separating me from my typical go-to support group.
Luckily or unluckily, so did everybody else in our cohort of volunteers.
We built a genuine camaraderie almost overnight.
Every day, we faced emotionally demanding situations.
We continually shared our perspectives on what we saw around us and how we were feeling. We fed off of each other, as we learned to come to terms with what we were experiencing.
By hearing and empathizing with every unique perspective, I was able to settle more of my emotional turmoil as the days passed.
Week one flew by.
As we conducted our workshops, we had many first hand experiences that provided much more context to our original goals—our original “Why”.
I learned so much more about CCF and the challenges the community faces regularly.
At the time of this writing (2019), CCF directly impacts 2,000 students and more than 2,500 families in the community.
Without seeing it myself, I could never have even imagined the complexity in getting just one child through the education system.
For example, one barrier to a student making it to the classroom is that their parents may force them into child labor to earn money, to pay for food, to survive.
CCF looked at this problem, deemed it in scope, and created a community powered food network with incentives to keep kids in school.
If the kids attended class—they get to bring home food to the family, making it a win for both parties.
I quickly learned that this is how CCF operated - scrappy and uncompromising in their goals.
Their thinking goes: if there has to be a decision made between education and survival, let’s remove the need for a decision at all.
Their perseverance did not surprise me, as I learned that 97% of the CCF staff were Cambodian.
This was by design—the intention is to empower the community to solve their own problems in case funding ran out or expats were forced to leave.
This was ONE example of a solution specific program that CCF had spun up towards various issues along the chain of simply getting a child through school.
They have 67 solution specific programs.
I heard this all over the phone prior to being in Cambodia, and words just cannot capture the extent of CCF’s involvement in the community, all centered around the goal of getting a child through school.
Seeing it all in person solidified the connection.
As time went on, I learned more about the country, the people,
and myself.
Tune in next week to find out what happened next…
Thank you for reading!
This transformative experience (among others) directly drives my fire for Epistemic Me, to help others shed limiting beliefs with my passion in technology & AI. To do that, one must understand the self.
If you have feedback or anything to share around this story—please reach out!
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