Influencers of Excellence
Besides the extraordinary, don’t overlook the ordinary
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Tak C. Poon, MD
January 229, 2021 3 min read
Recently, my millennial kids asked me, “Who had the most positive influence on you as a child?” Thinking about it, I felt extraordinarily lucky. I had many.
They seem to belong to one type – people who were excellent at what they did. Ordinary and extraordinary. From laborers on the street to astronauts on the Moon.
I was about 10, walking down the streets in Hong Kong. It was still a third-world level developing city then. There was this line of coolies along a sidewalk, weathered, dark, very thin but muscular and strong, squatting on their heels as if they were sitting on ergonomic cushions, some shoeless, all waiting for work at rock bottom wages.
Each of them had one piece of basic “equipment” – a 6-foot bamboo shaft cut lengthwise in half. The round part would be balanced on their calloused shoulders, the flat part holding rope-tied objects they were hired to carry, held in place by the bamboo ridges. The better capitalized coolies were also equipped with wicker baskets.
Modified from Vintage 1865-1870 Studio Photograph advertised on eBay. Unidentified photographer.
They would balance the loads perfectly, no matter how bulky or heavy, tilted to one side or levelled on both. They could negotiate their ways up and down narrow and dark stairways and treacherous muddy hillsides, swinging an arm out for balance.
Back then, these laborers were the heavy moving equipment for most people. A weak and skinny kid as I was, I so respected their physical labor. I admired how these hard-working men did the most and the best they could with what little they had, for as long as they could and had to.
Almost all of them had no education and no other skills. They did the only thing they knew, with great competence, for a livelihood. I considered that excellence. I still do.
Apparently, some of them had visions of a different future.
Word on the street has one of these coolies, a Mr. K.S. Lee, becoming the richest real estate tycoons in Hong Kong. He is still one of the wealthiest businessmen and philanthropists in the world. He might have started with wicker baskets. I don’t know.
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“One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.” The astronauts landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969. To me, that was the zenith of human excellence. This teenager had to be a part of that culture, and not just as a spectator.
I came to America later that year to become a doctor—equipped with, figuratively speaking, nothing but half a bamboo shaft and no wicker basket.
I must also pay equal tributes to the numerous sad and dysfunctional souls I encountered as a child. These most negative of examples had just as positive an influence on me. They were my constant reminders of how not to be.
And, after I grew up, limited as my success might be, I tried to help uplift as many people like that as I could—to live between the coolies and the astronauts.
“The apt one saves and does not abandon the inapt…
The inapt is the apt one’s job.”
— Lao Tzu, Dao-De Ching, Verse 27 of 81
All around us is a whole wide wonderful world of excellence, mixed in with unspeakable sorrow and misery. They can all be positive influences. I have been inspired by so many excellent influencers who publish right here, for example.
What matters is not how ordinary or extraordinary others are, but how extraordinary we strive to be.
WRITTEN BY
Tak C. Poon, MD, PharmD, ABHIM, FACC, Preventive Cardiologist, now developer of a non-profit wellness blog and a lifestyle habit-forming app at www.metacardio.org, and confessor of hard lessons I have learned in life.