Project Metanoia

The word "metanoia" is composed of two Greek words "meta" meaning "after" and "noia" meaning "thought". Interestingly, the term "meta" was made into vogue in Greek antiquity by Aristotle when he used the word as a prefix to the word "physics" in his book Metaphysics to explore "the basic nature and cause of things" in the physical world. In this tradition, the word is used to describe a subject in a way that transcends its original limits, considering the subject itself as an object of reflection. Later the Christians hijacked the word and gave the word a religious connotation, associating it with the kind of spiritual awaking that comes as an aftereffect of an act of penitence or atonement. The literal translation into English will give metanoia the equivalent of "afterthought" and that is precisely how I want to use this word as the title of my life project: a state of mental and functional renewal of self as a product of deep contemplation and shift in perspectives, a paradigm shift.

Now, this brings us to the question of what a life project is all about. Well, this question, unlike the etymological rabbit hole I just climbed up for metanoia, isn't that deep. In an era littered with self-help books, life-hack cheat sheets, and ruled by CEO-building life coaches, it is not really that difficult to suspect the fishy meaning of the term life project. But, as Max Payne said, nothing is a cliche when it's happening to you. Hence, in the same line of thought, I do not feel any shame in the act of conjuring up a so-called improvement idea for life... of what Gilles Deleuze categorized with contempt as "How must one live" in his book What Is Philosophy. Yes, this means I'm still swimming in the same old sea of self-improvement and blah, blah, blahs but like the book of Atomic Habit, which tried to implement the philosophy of Kaizen into functional reality to improve life, I am also interested, not in a transcendental awakening, but in a functional improvement in overall life's experiences. And to row the boat of my life in this harrowing troubled water I have chosen Project Management as my divine guide.

Now, let me tell you why I chose Peter Drucker over the monk who sold whatever he was not using anymore. I have gradually realized over some years while managing projects that there is a similarity between a human being and a corporation. They both have survival imperatives, such as financial solvency, and social imperatives, such as maintaining healthy relationships with others surrounding her. Both of them are governed by the laws of the land and non-coded ethical judgments and face reward or penalty in accordance with them. Both of them are part of a larger community we call society where their relationship can be defined in a transactional way. Most counter-intuitively, both of these entities, a person and a corporation, are managed by smaller units. While a corporation is managed by people with individual interests a person is driven by many emotional/psychological and incentive-seeking constructs existing as various facades of a "self".

It is the realization of this last point that I'd like to call my "a-ha" moment. It all fell into place when I realized that one individual is not really one entity. There are various selves at play within the one that the outside world sees as one person. One of the reasons why it is difficult to manage one's own self can be attributed to the management or rather mismanagement of a corporation, of lack or absence of governance. If both are structurally similar, a lack of effective governance should impact both of them the same way.

To be continued...