David Bonifacio

Life is the Piece

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  • Posted on March 3, 2009
  • by David Bonifacio

The Old Painter

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David Bonifacio

Entreprenuer + Writer + Artist
This blog is mainly about my thoughts on life, work, and business but I sometimes throw in some of my art and poetry, reviews of my favorite tools and workflows, and my gaming.

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I remember my friend, @benjomarquez asking me once I remember my friend, @benjomarquez asking me once, after a breakup, “So what did you learn from this latest experience?” I told him, “I now know what I knew.” I’ve been feeling that way a lot lately. It’s like old lessons taught to me as a child, many of which I didn’t think of so much, coming back to me with fresh value. When I feel the joy from giving with ease, when I feel the peace from morning prayer in the midst of a storm, when I feel the excitement from giving my best even without assurances, I realize that all these seemingly new themes were being addressed by ancient wisdom. Creativity, generosity, and contentment as answers to poverty; selflessness, humility, and forgiveness, as answers to inner restlessness; and the list goes on, I keep thinking, “I knew these in my head but now I know them in my heart.” In a time when the necessary information is just a Google away, it’s important to make a distinction between knowing the information and understanding the principle, and to be humble. Just because I’ve read a book or an article, just because I watched a YouTube video or spoke to a successful person, doesn’t mean I understand. It is possible that it is simply data sitting on a hard drive with no application. All of this to say, don’t stop seeking for understanding. You may just find the two things I find over and over, that I really don’t know that much and the things I thought I knew, I’m only really starting to appreciate properly today.
New post nearly done: Think Thrice. Jumping from m New post nearly done: Think Thrice. Jumping from my last article about The Case of the Easily Triggered, The Case of the Constantly Paralyzed, and The Case of the Never-At-Rest, I’m sharing how more mindfulness, more thoughtfulness, more thinking about and thinking through, makes us behave much differently then when we react with our impulses, biases, and appetites. This post is my simple 3-question filter to help an impulsive guy like me think about and through things.
An excerpt from my latest blog post on Thinking. An excerpt from my latest blog post on Thinking. Thanks to everyone who gave feedback (both the positive and negative). I hope the article caused you to think and not just trigger an emotionally positive or negative reaction. 😂 Part 2 drops this weekend. If you want to see more of my business-specific posts, please follow @bridgesoutheast and @theemergentph, where I (and others) share more of our thoughts on creating and capturing value at work.
September 1, 20201 - The One Thing to Know (Writte September 1, 20201 - The One Thing to Know (Written on @elijahbonifacio’s 4th birthday) When my son was younger, I wrote a poem that said, “fast goes the time you can’t have back”. As we celebrate his 4th birthday (his second under pandemic), it’s sad to think that over a 4th of his life has been spent mostly in our apartment. While I’m grateful that he is healthy and developing, I am concerned about a generation of children growing up, asking, “If I go outside will I get sick and die?” And I can’t worry about my son without worrying specifically for the Philippines, for the majority of children, all with amazing potential, who are relying on our government leaders to chart a path out of this pandemic, out of this economic slump, and out of this national downward spiral. The critical time of their development years going to what? How are they going to grow to be competitive and get out of poverty? There remains to be no light at the end of this political tunnel. Fast goes the time you can’t have back.
One more sleep until this boy’s birthday! 4 year One more sleep until this boy’s birthday! 4 years of joy!
Book Recommendation: Dominion by Tom Holland (not Book Recommendation: Dominion by Tom Holland (not Spider-Man). Since I picked this up at @dauntbooks in 2019, I’ve been going back to it quite regularly during my morning prayer to be reminded of the central message best summarized in this passage: “If secular humanism derives not from reason or from science, but from the distinctive course of Christianity’s evolution – a course that, in the opinion of growing numbers in Europe and America, has left God dead—then how are its values anything more than the shadow of a corpse? What are the foundations of its morality, if not a myth? A myth, though, is not a lie. At its most profound—as Tolkien, that devout Catholic, always argued—a myth can be true. To be a Christian is to believe that God became man and suffered a death as terrible as any mortal has ever suffered. This is why the cross, that ancient implement of torture, remains what it has always been: the fitting symbol of the Christian revolution. It is the audacity of it – the audacity of finding in a twisted and defeated corpse the glory of the creator of the universe—that serves to explain, more surely than anything else, the sheer strangeness of Christianity, and of the civilisation to which it gave birth.” Historically, the strangest thing about the Christian belief, what should have remained the distinctive factor, were people who thought it glorious to CARRY A CROSS for love of God and love of others. Throughout history, “great people” and “great thinkers” hated this message because they saw it as weak, and indeed, when you look at religious places like the Philippines, the faith is extremely weak against corruption, against injustice, and against selfish materialism. Too many Christian leaders keep telling their flock to suffer now because there’s a heaven. I hate that message. There are not enough Christian leaders telling their people that the goal is not to simply to suffer but to carry your cross, suffering may be a part of that journey, but the Christian journey isn’t merely one of suffering, but of glory. Christ carried his cross, not to suffer for nothing, but to save. And we are called to do the same.
This is the 4th book I read this month. It’s int This is the 4th book I read this month. It’s interesting but more a collection of somehow connected stories. My favorite Smil book is still Energy & Civilization. There are 4 important things every Smil book reminds me about: 1. That all of life is deeply impacted by energy generation, energy storage, energy utilization, and entropy. 2. That the actual numbers usually tell a very very different story from the press release, such as majority of e-vehicles, which are supposed to get us off fossil fuels are powered by fossil-fuel generated electricity. 3. Our generally unmindful ultra materialistic life is what leads to lack, climate issues, and much of our social ills. While we like to blame the evil corporations, it is mostly our own over consumption that powers the drive for more and more resources. 4. The best solutions are simple and unglamorous but ultra effective. Consume less, whether that’s calories or kilowatts, or liters. Replace less, repair more. True progress should not be measured by high levels of consumption but high levels of contentment - and they’re not the same thing.
Hope is the silver lining on a dark cloud, the dre Hope is the silver lining on a dark cloud, the dream in a child’s heart, the vision in an artist’s mind, and the great tree inside a seed. It’s a soul anchored, not on the “reality” of a proven past, but on the beauty of a creative future.
Reading Recommendations! Here are three amazing r Reading Recommendations! Here are three amazing reads about nature and cultivating nature that have given me so much leadership, management, investment, and even parenting insights! The Hidden Life of Trees is what inspired me to focus our teams on growing strong roots that are Anchored strongly on the ground, Allied with others in a root system, and that effectively Absorb as much nutrients from its environment as possible. This was theme for us throughout of last year’s turbulence. The Seed is incredibly fascinating, because it’s about how this tiny thing has been immensely influential and life giving. Sowing the Right Seeds has been the theme of our teams this year. Finally, the Carpenter and Gardener has completely changed my approach to leadership, parenting, and my own self-development, paying more attention to creating environment of success, resource runways of success, and pruning and grafting to success (like a gardener), more than hammering, sawing, and building to exact measurements (like a carpenter). When the future is unknown (as it is) knowing the exact specifications to build to is impossible. But what is possible is to daily cultivate your garden, the plot of space that is yours, making it more and more conducive for amazing things to grow.
Just did some reading on @discord. It’s an app t Just did some reading on @discord. It’s an app that, I think, less than 30% of my connections here have used or even know about. It’s an app I don’t use that often, other than on rare occasions to join some interesting @minecraft discussion or play a multiplayer game with friends. It’s the type of thing someone outside looking in would describe as “a chat app for gamers” and comment “Who needs another chat app?” But it isn’t just a chat app for gamers and it’s not just another chat app. Discord has over 150M users (some say over 200M), which means its population is bigger than the Philippines. It made over $100M in 2020, and was in talks to be acquired by Microsoft for $10B, though still being largely unprofitable. I always get asked, “Why buy or invest in something that’s not making money?” or “Why buy or invest in something no one needs?” My take: There are an infinite amount of worlds out there. There are servers running millions of Minecraft gamers, or millions of influencers, or millions of gig workers, or millions of online tutors, of people who want to build a mountain bike, of people who want to bake a cake, or learn how to fix a flat tire, or craft a deck. Just because you don’t need something in your world doesn’t mean another world doesn’t highly value it. The old world had one primary score: Money, and so they ask, “How much money is this worth?” The new world has a new score: Value, and so they ask, “What does this MEAN? Both are still trying to evaluate the worth of something, though one understands worth as money and the other understands worth as impact. I’m not only talking about “social impact” but more particularly asking, “What is the effect of this on the customers we serve, the industries we interface with, and ultimately, the economic realities we play in?” When investing in the future, when evaluating the future, one of the biggest mistakes we make is to judge the value of the future by the present, and worse by the monetary value and financial valuation of the present. Instead, we should be looking for this: Who are operating themselves and their teams in such effective ways that have put them on the right side of change?
What are the chances we’ll discover more Covid v What are the chances we’ll discover more Covid variants? 100%. What are the chances we’ll discover more killer viruses? 100%. What are the chances we’ll die someday? 100%. But what are the chances that we will live? If you’re reading this, it means you’re alive, so in this moment, you are 100% alive - so be 100% alive. And what does it mean to be alive? Someone asked me, “What’s the point of living if we’re just living in a pandemic?” For many, they feel like the pandemic paused their lives, and the only way to move move forward is to get out of the pandemic alive. I love what Aristotle shared about Eudaimonia, about how to achieve human flourishing (becoming a great soul) by acting or functioning virtuously according to purpose, which I see as my chosen purpose and calling to follow. The purpose of life in a pandemic is the same as in a war time, in peace time, and all other times: is to become a great soul. Note: I highly recommend Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. It’s definitely a must read.
“You create the world of the dream. You bring th “You create the world of the dream. You bring the subject into that dream and they fill it with their subconcious.” - Inception
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