The Dream and the Plan
Earlier this week I wrote about 小快灵. Small, fast, flexible. Supposedly China’s approach to AI regulation.
I thought it needed a fourth word 贯, as small fast flexible, when it comes to policy, is just patch after patch without something coherent running through it. “How” without “why” is useless.
A dinner with old friends and ex-colleagues from more than 2 decades ago the same week led me back to an essay I had read years ago. It also asked the same question. Not how. But for what ends.
The familiar. 6 ex-colleagues from my first job, at the Ministry of Information and the Arts (which no longer exists). An ex-colleague from MAS, chatting on potential collaborations.
The new. The host and producer from MoneyFM for an interview about AI in finance. Folks from a ministry, who also wanted to find out more about AI in finance. Panellists for the opening session of the module I am doing for the Cambridge Center of Alternative Finance. Two undergrads running a programme on AI safety for youths.
What does 小快灵 have to do with the dream and plan?
The Dinner
The dinner with six ex-colleagues from more than 2 decades ago made me realize how much time had passed. Back in 2003, all of us had started on our first jobs at the ministry.
Only one is still in the public service, on the path that we started back then. I was the second longest serving among the six.
The rest have led fairly varied lives outside of the public service. One left to join advertising and travel around the world. Now taking a break from work in Mexico City. Another was a museum director who left to travel and write books about cities. The other has been through more bars and startups then I have pivoted. And the last left senior roles in the social sector to run his own coaching and training outfit. Even the one friend still in the public service has had a varied path.
The Essay
The dinner reminded me of an essay “Paved with Good Intentions” I had read back then. Colin Goh and Woo Yen Yen wrote it in 2001, right around the time we were all just starting out. They had left stable careers in Singapore for New York, and from that distance they saw something else. The essay had inspired the film “Singapore Dreaming”.
The Singaporean Dream and the Singaporean Plan.
The Dream is the original aspiration. The liberty to pursue what makes you alive. The Plan is what happens when people canonise the steps they took to get there. What worked for someone, at their specific moment, becomes the template everyone is supposed to follow.
The road to hell, they noted, is paved with good intentions. Dreams become Plans when success gets mistaken for a blueprint.
The Two Stories
The essay ends with two pictures of a life. They asked, which is closer to yours?
The first is the Plan. You wake up Monday to Friday, often Saturday too. If you finish early, you make it to your parents for dinner and catch the kids for a few hours. If you work late, you pick up dinner from the hawker centre but eat it at home because it’s too warm outside. You’re not passionate about the job but you know that staying means a car in three years, a condo near the right primary school in five. Your conversations are mostly for networking, work, or family obligations you can’t avoid. Weekends are golf at the country club or a movie. Once a year, ten days in London or Paris.
The second is the Dream. You wake up not knowing what today will bring, or tomorrow, or six months from now. Because of that uncertainty, every possibility is open. Your conversations set your mind on fire. Your weekday is barely different from your weekend because every day you are thinking, creating, imagining.
The Plan imposes a conclusion. You work to make all the pieces fit. The Dream carries you somewhere your heart and mind have never been.
I read it, but still spent most of my twenties and thirties living the first story.
I realized that some of us are now trying to live the second. And that living the Plan or Dream has nothing to do with where we are, or what we work as.
But For What Ends
When I read 小快灵, small, fast, flexible, I thought it was a great description of “how” I was spending my last 5 months of being an independent. Take the radio interview at MoneyFM. I got the message inviting me just 24 hours before the interview. That would never have worked when I was in an institution.
The essay on the Singapore Dream and Plan asks what the “how” is in service of.
Once you leave the Plan, once you stop working to make all the pieces fit, what are the ends you’re working toward instead?
Going with the “how” of 小快灵 without the “why” may just be Plan all over again.
Breaking away from the Plan is the beginning. Not the answer.