“ALL IN!”

So I finally did it. I finally resigned.

I’m about to leave the safe confines of the corporate world and venture into the great unknown. Let go of my stable paycheck and turn my back on a career that’s as tempting as tempting can be.

There’s been a lot of talk and speculation about my resigning, so I guess I owe it to everyone to set the record straight. What really happened, what’s going on, what I’m really up to.

In Hold ‘em Poker, if you want to win big, at some point you’ll have to bet big. If you have absolute certainty in your hand, and your gut just tells you that this pot is yours to take, you go all in – bet the farm, plunk in all your chips, no regrets - win or lose. I’m there. I’m at that point where I can finally say “All In!”

You see, I’m part of this community called Life’s Directions. And, as the name implies, it’s all about people finding out what they to do with their lives, and then hopefully going ahead and doing it. If I truly wanted to “eat our own dog food”, i.e. walk the talk --- then I have no choice but to follow what I’ve discerned as my own Life’s Direction.

And when you come to the realization that what you’re doing now isn’t going to take you where you want to go, then it’s time to change the course as soon as possible. Which in my case, means resigning from the corporate life.

When I turned 27 last September 2004 I remember writing “What to do with this gift called life? It’s a question 1. Few ever ask, 2. Fewer can honestly answer, and 3. Even fewer still who can truthfully say that they actually got up and did something about it. I’d like to believe I belong to the second group. But I’m trying as damn hard as I can to fall into the third.”

Fast-forward one-and-a-half years later, I’m finally jumping onto the third category. All in.

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If you believe in something so strongly it practically resonates with your gut, you owe it to yourself to go for it. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, calls this his “regret-minimization framework”. Armed with nothing less than an idea and the colossal opportunity which was the Internet, he left his job and went for it. He founded Amazon.

Now, I’m not out to start a multi-billion-dollar company; But like him, I’m just out to pursue my dreams.

“All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dust recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.”
- T.E. Lawrence

I’ve realized that my long-term vision is to help in my own small way to serve our country. This is something that I have been actually doing self-study into these past few months. What became a topic of interest has become a passion. It has crystallized in me that the best way for me to contribute to the country is by directly creating jobs, as an entrepreneur.

As such, I’ve decided that for the decades of my life to come, I will be focusing on three areas that I feel will have whatever small ripple I wish to make :

1. Export services / outsourcing – in my simple understanding, if we just rely on businesses that make money circulate within the country, then our country will not develop as fast as it needs to. Thus, I dream of serving foreign markets.

2. Education – there is really a strong need to build skills of Filipino people in order to prepare them more and more for a globalized world. But there should also be more and more a movement to higher-value skills. If one looks at the spectrum of skills now, we’re providing the brunt, low-value work. We can definitely be more world-class. In the future, I dream of having my own school.

3. Empowerment of the poor – our country still has one of the highest incidences of poverty. From a business point-of-view, they’re a huge market, the so-called “bottom-of-the-pyramid”. From a human being’s point-of-view, we just have to help. Areas in the future I want to enter here are related to microfinancing and skills-building.

In a line, I just want to build skills for Filipinos in order for them to compete in a globalized world. Put simply, my burning platform is to create jobs.

Now, this is something I’m not going to achieve overnight, maybe not even in the next several years, if ever at all. The more I know, the more I realize how much I don’t know. But the good thing is that this cause will probably keep me preoccupied for years and years to come. It’s a whole life’s work.

Now, I believe in thinking big, but starting small. Baby steps towards a grand vision. So in the next few months, I’ll just be focusing on three things : 1. Setting up a small business aligned to #1/2, 2. Volunteer Work, and 3. Self-education/self-training.

On # 3, you see, part of being in Life’s Directions is also a sense of self-awareness through discernment. Strengths and weaknesses, the whole shebang. I’ve looked at stuff I’m not good at, stuff I still need to learn, and these are the things I’ve put on my tasklist.

Some stuff that’s there :

- Discover and get guidance from mentors
- Learn to sell, as in the Electrolux knock-on-your door variety. Be a part-time sales agent.
- Teach an elective part-time
- Travel to other countries
- Network like crazy

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But lest you think that passion is all it takes to go for it, I caution thee my friend. This is something I’ve studied and prepared for with absolute detail. Passion gets you to leap, but it’s careful and dutiful planning which will give you the confidence to enter into execution phase.

I definitely don’t have a romanticized notion of what I’m about to embark on. No dreams that it will be an easy life, nor safe from any failures of any sort. In fact, years down the line this could very well be the stupidest decision I ever made. But I believe in it strongly enough that maybe looking stupid will be well worth it. As I said in my resignation letter, it’s a cause worth going hungry for.

Let’s revisit the practicalities. I’ve analyzed my financial position and computed my budget for the next two years. With a much recalibrated lifestyle, I’ll probably make do assuming I don’t make any money (talk about worst-case scenario). I’m working with people who I believe are very good partners and essentially want the same thing. I’ve psychologically prepared myself to fail and learn, fail and learn, until I get it right. I’m still relatively young and I’m not feeding anyone. I can still afford to make mistakes.

This hand feels good, and if I lose, I can still play a few more rounds.

All in! Why not?

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If there are people out there who believe in this as well, I’d love to hear from you. The more I talk about this to people, the more I discover like-minded individuals. I’d love to meet you and learn from you as well. Alone I’m useless, but together we can probably make a difference in all the years to come.

Please email me ruizmark@gmail.com.

just wanted to post my birthday e-mail last Sept 17, 2004 :

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LOVE TO LIVE, AND LIVE TO LOVE
NAGGING THOUGHTS AS I TURN 27

Today I just turned 27. Actually, it sounds like such a good age to be in. It doesn't sound as roundishly old as, say, 28. But then again, it's not as not-quite-there-yet as 26.

Personally, it's an age I never imagined I would be in - especially way back when things were much, much simpler - back when all I concerned myself with were cramming for long tests, getting high over U2 songs, skipping lunch to save money for my car audio system, and hanging out and yet hanging out again with friends. When things that I deemed then to be absolutely complex were actually just part and parcel of this lifestage they call `growing up'.

So now that I'm here, what does it feel like? How is it like to be at this yet-again juncture in my life? Am I the person that I imagined I would be?

Push the rewind button on the past 26 years, and there's just so much to ponder and reminisce on - like seeing a full-line buffet where you don't even know where to start picking and nibbling, weary that you won't have enough of the good stuff to put onto your plate. My family upbringing, my friends and relationships, and 16 full years of Jesuit education have of course played such a great and lasting imprint-slash-influence on who and what I am. And of course, my work and work environment have definitely shaped me - arguably, even hardened me. But if you're a friend, then I guess you'd know that my most recent experiences has been the most transformative - as if everything in my history before that just bled into these past two years, when I woke up and discovered this wonderful gift called life.

Life. If we had the time to talk about it, we'd probably need the rest of our … well, lives. People argue that we tend to overanalyze it, overcomplicate it - all understandably with good reason of course. After all, how can it not be complicated? How can it not be confusing when it's often filled with so many questions that zip and zang at you from all the oddest places, like potholes from a government-implemented highway project six months after the ribbon-cutting?

Questions, turning points, and decisions. Critical points when the roads turn twisted and bending; when decisions become neither black nor white - just different shades of grey; when life itself seems to have transformed into an amalgam of past, present, and future all rolled into the ever-fleeting now-ness of now. Ahhh, life questions.

What to do with this gift called life? It's a question 1. few ever ask, 2. fewer can honestly answer, and 3. even fewer still who can truthfully say that they actually got up and did something about it. I'd like to believe I belong to the second group. But I'm trying as damn hard as I can to get myself into the third.

Sometimes the answers come unconsciously from within. I was talking to a friend who had a "relationship" concern. She was asking for advice, and the answer I gave surprised even me. I told her to go "kung saan ka talagang masaya" - to go where you will be truly happy. It's not rocket science to know that everybody wants to be happy. But putting that qualifier truly radically changes the perspective. Just think about it - how many people do you know have actually found true happiness, as opposed to just … (ho-hum, adjective-less) happiness? Now, doesn't that make things a little bit more interesting? After all, true happiness - the kind that makes you wake up every morning ready to jump out of bed - it's absolutely as elusive as absolutely elusive can get.

It's actually a question worth spending so much of your time and energy on - if only because discovering true happiness is intrinsically linked to the question of "what do I do with my life?". It's sort of like a McDo Value meal wherein you've got the burger the fries the drink all in one neat unbundable package, and absolutely rightfully so because having them all together just makes so much damn sense. So much damn sense that it riddles me so much why people don't give enough of themselves searching for it.

What makes me truly happy?

Simple joys and experiences. The enveloping embrace of waves upon water when I hit the beach. Singing out loudly in my car while hopelessly stuck in yet another traffic jam. The transportative magic of watching movies. Practical jokes that work - without backfiring (hehehe!). Killer hands during poker games. Strawberry ice cream laced with good conversation. Listening to and making music that just inexplicably connects. Living life, and loving every minute of it.

Meaningful relationships - the kind that great movie scripts are made of. Family. Friends. Mentors. People who touched my life and people whose lives I've hopefully touched. People I love.

A sense of meaning, of purpose. The idea that I'm actually living for something greater than me. Remembering man's oft-forgotten truth : that this life is not ours, it's just borrowed. And that we don't pay the rent on our lives with cash or bonds or hard assets, we can only pay back with love.

Love, love, love. It always - no matter how hard we try to negotiate around it - boils down to Love. And I'm not referring to the Mills & Boon or Harlequin Romance variety, the off-the-shelf corny kind of love. I'm talking about love in the broader sense - love as passion, love as energy, love as heart, and love as spirit. (The other kind of love a.k.a. soulmate a.k.a. lifepartner a.k.a. passionate other - still remains to be elusive, hehehe [Mark to God : hint, hint …])

But if life = happiness = love, then where do i go from here?

This morning I had breakfast with a really good friend. And one question kept ringing in my head in between slices of omelette and sausages - In this life, How much more love can I give? How much more?

There are days i feel like there's a sun inside of me waiting to explode, and today is one of those days. When there's so much of me and in me that wants to expand, to reach out, to literally burst. I feel like I'm at the cusp of something, as if the best years of my life are still ahead of me. I'm convinced that I'm at 20% of where I want to be, and it's the going through the other 80% that stokes so much the fire in me.

And so as i turn 27, as I ponder my life and try to discover what makes me truly happy, I end up with a catchphrase, a mindset, a paradigm : I will love to live, and live to love.

And so, my friend, let's be Nike and just do it. Dream. Work. Live. Laugh. Be stupid. Play. Sing. Dance. Feel. Draw. Touch. Sense. Breathe. Listen. Talk. Whisper. Hug. Kiss. Call. Jump. Fly. Experience. Give give give, and love love love as much as you possibly, possibly can. Imagine every day as your last - and then just give it all you've got. After all, when all is said is done, there will only be two questions asked of your life : How much love are you capable of? And just how much, just how much love did you give?

MARK RUIZ
SEPTEMBER 17, 2004

"why not? "

it's a blog about

my life
my thoughts and ideas
my dreams and going for them
my successes and my failures

it's about possibilities
and trying to make them real