Ryu2.mind

"It's been a while, but we're back in style..."
-- the Chipmunks

Yes, faithful readers, the Thoughts are back. I've been a slacker, I have to admit. A real slacker this summer. On the other hand though, these thoughts are about vision, and vision, like clay, is something that is flexible, undergoing constant refinement on its way to being shaped. Today, Sunday October 4th, 1998, I had a very satisfying talk with Paul KisoLA Lee and Dave Chu about a lot of the stuff, and more, and I think that just gave me the impetus, as well as the clarity I needed to reify those last remaining abstract, amorphous wisps of ideas that had been floating in the back of my head. (Ahh... I love imagery.)

I should warn you too that this Deep Thought, having been essentially in production all summer, is a real doozie -- 35K in size, 10K more than my previous largest one. So, hang on!

Sunrise, Sunset

So anyways, this summer has been pretty interesting for me. I've been working in the Data Mining and Visualization Group of Silicon Graphics doing an internship there, researching and implementing various aspects of graphical visualization of data sets. But that's not the least of it, for I am also proud to announce that the SGI intern team throughly trounced the Sun Microsystems interns in our second annual corporate volleyball contest! Sun is a rival company about half a mile away to the west of us in Mountain View who think that having the rights to a slow, interpreted language sharing a name with an Indonesian island as well as a sophomore FiCS sister somehow makes you the coolest thing in the world.

(Of course, no offense to the the three brothers and sisters working there. Hint: their names rhyme with Lephen Stim, Shivan in, and Sorraine Lhih) [NOTE: As of 10/2/1998, two of these people mentioned no longer work at Sun. I wonder why...?]

Booyah!

Anyways, the exact area that I'm working in is called data mining, which is where the software product I am working on (yours for the low low price of $23,000 per copy!) falls under. It's an interesting synthesis of three areas of computer science: databases, artificial intelligence, and graphics/visualization.

Data-mining is poised to become a multi-billion dollar industry in the next century, simply because all these companies are putting everything in big databases, and they need some way to make sense out of all those terabytes of data. Forget about ADSL, digital TV, intelligent agents, or anything else, because data mining is happening NOW. As Simon Yun would say, YEAH BABY YEAH. For instance, data mining is what allows you to take a huge database consisting of a list the products that every customer at, say, Safeway, buys everytime they shop there, and see that people who buy peanut butter often buy jelly, or that the percentage of people aged 25-35 tend to buy fat-free foods is proportional to the longitude of the city they are living. It's pretty dope stuff.

And I think that this -- the information visulization part (I'll leave the databases and AI for others) -- is the first area that I've found which intrigues me, something that I can pour out my research energies towards for a resonably long time, and still feel excited about. It's not like simply implementing Office code in Visual C++ like I did working for the Evil Empire last summer, but my work this summer was really open ended, the kind of thing where I had to spend time in the Math/CS library at Stanford, tracking down research papers. A genuine field with a burgeoning industry attached to it, as well as drawing from multiple academic areas of computer science. And anyways, it excites me because this is an area that I actually feel cool about delving into more, of pursuing, not just abandoning it once my summer internship is over. In other words, I've found a definite direction out of this summer.

So this summer, and I think this upcoming year is one of discovery for me on a variety of different fronts, and of finding direction, vision, of what I want to do with my life, and where I want to do it, not only in terms of academics, or business, but in a deeper sense as well. And so lie these Thoughts. A lot of these ideas I will probably expound and expand upon in future Deep Thoughts. In a way, I hope that this writing is a kernel, a initiator where I hope ideas spring forth and take on life of their own, in my own life, as well as in words.

Onward, ho!

You know, life as a graduate student will be completely different than the regimen that I've underwent the past three years. Well, not completely different in the schedule itself or even my lifestyle, but just in my whole philosophy and outlook of my priorities in life.

In my situation, it's even more interesting because it's my fourth undergrad year, as well as my first year technically as a grad student. So, right now, I am in the precarious, yet interesting state of being BOTH an undergraduate and a graduate student: living in a rocking dorm this year, but at the same time, having words like RA-ship, TA-ship, thesis, Rains, EV, no longer be foreign concepts or far off places, but very real concerns kind of adds a whole new dimension to what up until now, had basically been -- relatively speaking -- ignorant bliss up to now. Whoops, sorry about the run-on there, but then again, I don't think many readers of this page are English majors, anyways.

So, I've pretty much decided that I'm not going to pull a Beverly Yang and graduate in four years with my Master's, since to do that, I would have to take 18-20 units of CS each quarter -- to say nothing of DRs.

Then again, if I do it in five years, I will have a lot more freedom and flexibility in terms of my load of required academic courses for my major. And that means that I'll actually have some breathing room in my schedule. Classes in areas like Chinese, economics, industrial engineering, philosophy, sociology, and other disciplines that I've always been fascinated by, but never had time to pursue. After all, the pursuit of knowledge, especially at a place as diverse as Stanford, should not be dicatated by DRs or GERs.

And I think back and remember, THIS was a lot of the reason why I ultimately came here and not somewhere like Caltech or MIT. Yet, I've been an incredible hypocrite in truly taking advantage of the character of our school. I guess many of my fellow School of Engineering brethren also are at least somewhat guilty of this as well. Fortunately, I suppose most people who are reading this page have strived to not be too parochial in their areas of study, but still, it sure feels comfortable to know that you have at least an extra year to explore, to sample the various delicacies from the smorgasbord before they take it away from you forever.

Dude, I love food analogies. I love Esther Lee. She is like the food analogy girl. Right now, I'd say my situation right now is like being George or Davis at Palace Buffet -- you don't know where to start. My philosophy is rather akin to what those two brothers might be expected to do in a situation like that -- find a few good things to take, and then dig in!

And the feeling is that, after always eating rice, kimchee, and other East Asian cuisine (feel free to subsitute your favorite area of the world), sampling fare from other areas always tastes interesting, even if it is not always good. And if you find something good, you can keep on eating it.

But just as with the consumption of food, it's important not to overstuff yourself -- because you won't have room for desert, or in a more extreme case, might get sick altogether. In other words, it's not just the variety of food I consume, but also the quantity.

And I think quantity is an area of my course selections which I am re-examining. First off, I would like to (re-)iterate that I am not a CS whiz like Bev. I work really slow -- whether it is because I just think slowly, or I find distractings like thinking up Deep Thoughts, I can't honestly say. Have I suffered on the CS major fast track? Yes I have. Both in relationships with Christian, and perhaps more importantly, non-Christian friends. I've already sort of related my concerns in previous Deep Thoughts about this. And in a way, coterming is reassuring because you know that you do have breathing room to arrange your courses, and take courses more with a mind towards learning what you what to learn, when you want to learn it, rather than trying to search for the arrangement that will satisfy major requirements and still allow one to graduate on time.

And, I think, the cornerstone of the vision that I'm forming this year is just to be one of those people who isn't overwhelmed with work, but, instead of letting academics be my God, to truly have time to play as well as work. In a sense, it's almost a throwback to freshman year, when all of us were so idyllic. (Play "Voices" from Macross Plus to get the emotional effect....) I know it sounds kind of cheesy, and please don't get me wrong -- I loved junior year, even though I was really (to continue the food motif) pigging out on the coursework, and hanging out with my drawmates (including Davis), but it really didn't do anything to help the non-Christian perception of us as insular people who only interact with the world when we want to convert others.

Anyways, I think my outlook as far as finding time this year to do things can be summarized in a very spicy quote from Frederick Buechner that I learned this summer from a... ummm, friend of a friend:

"Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace."

So, thanks Lord, for grace, and for the life that we have as a testament to that.

And I look to the future as well. For a long time, Silicon Graphics was a dream company for me to work with, and I envisioned working in their R & D after I got my degree to develop the latest eye-dazzling graphics applications, the stuff that gets on the national news media.

How the world has changed since then. SGI -- as is the case with practically every other high tech company not located in Washington state -- has been facing some serious competition in the market. The morale is depressing at times. They even have a internal newsgroup dedicated to whining and complaining. I guess every company has more or less its share of dissenters, but the atitude at SGI just seems to hang over the company at times, like a slight but omnipresent pall of gloom.

Now, I don't blame the company -- I love SGI and always will, and deep within, they still have the combination of a core group of talented people who will stay until the very end, and the drive and motivation to blaze new frontiers on the technological envelope in quite a few areas of computer science and engineering, ideas that are only emulated by other companies later. But on the other hand, just the fact that it's a major company makes it a ripe target and liable to take a beating -- the same way it is for every company, and in such a environment like that, the trailblazing thrill of innovation gets sometimes lost to the hustle bustle of the daily regimen of business competition, restructuring, "reductions in force", and a lot of other administrativia that a small startup wouldn't face.

These days, the allure of a startup where, just like Scott Underwood sings, you are in control, seems more and more attractive to me now. About the only thing that's been preventing me from going on the fast track to graduation and then entering the world of business is that I haven't found a idea that I can truly set my heart towards.

And I want to make sure that any company that I'm associated with has a lot of coolness factor. You know what I mean? As an example, SGI was at the peak of its coolness around late 1993 to early 1994. Riding on the heels of Jurassic Park, the company did pretty well, with its name, and those funky blue, green, and purple machines. Just a company that will stand above the tide, and make in one way or another, a bold statement, just like SGI does with their cases of their workstations. This explains which I have yet to stumble on a cool premise which would be able to make a statement to the rest of the industry like that.

On a side note, there are currently three graduate students in Computer Science in FiCS: Danny, Bev, and myself. And it turns out that our areas of specializations are, respective, AI, databases, and graphics! Yup, you guessed it -- as I said before, data-mining is basically a mixture of those three areas!

So one time, I was talking to Danny Chai, and we sort of came to the conclusion that we should start a company in the field of data mining. Hey -- it's more down to earth than Christian video games! Myself, Danny, and Bev will be the technical core. Keith and CH can do the finance bit. Justin Chang and/or Jocelyn Yeh will head up our legal department. Clara will write the documentation.

For the others, well, a lot of biotech/pharmaceutical companies -- Roche, Bayer AG, Merck, Genetech, etc, are acutally using a lot of data mining stuff as well, for DNA sequencing and stuff. So all you bio/chem/premed people... keep us in mind, and MAYBE we'll find something for you all... =)

I think we'll call our company... FICS. Firm Involved in Computer Science. Yeah, that's it! (To avoid confusion with any other entity, that abbreviation's FICS, not FiCS.) So, if anyone wants to be a part of this, please email me, before we IPO, cash in our riches, and things really start to get hectic. Thanks. Yeah, baby. Don't be let out!

But then again, I wouldn't do a startup unless I found something that I could really set my heart towards. Something that would basically become my passion in life, after God. Seriously. And I'm not sure if I did get in to it, I would be willing to let go of it. Something that you've worked hard for, it's very hard to leave it, and rest assured that it is in good hands, making usre that it doesn't get bogged down in internal politcal quibbles, or mere mismanagement, or simply people who lose their acuity in keeping up with the market. In a way, you're almost paranoid about passing on the torch because you don't know what they'll do with it in terms of future direction.

So even if I did work on a startup, it would be hard for me to leave it. to build, and then leaving it, and that I can look back on, and say, that's our baby we helped build, it's still growing strong, and we're mighty proud of it. It just seems like other people might have other visions of where to take a company, or other project. Take my high school's web page. I have to say that they have, well, really sanitized it since the days back in the spring of 1994 when I first started it up, when I wrote all the HTML myself using Windows Notepad, and pico. Sure, it might look more "professional" now, but at the same time, it's devoid of personality and identity -- something which www.mvhs.fuhsd.org definitely had when my comrades and myself were at its helm. And of course, there is the saga Apple computer after the first era of Steve Jobs, which I won't repeat what every other piece of media has done ad infinitum.

In short, we would definitely have to make sure that FICS is headed somewhere with an astute core group of people at the helm, and quite possibily, we may never really leave the company, but just get retained as "consultants" or another. Again, just one more thing to keep in mind as entrepreneurs, underscoring the fact that working at a startup would be in a way, a lifelong committment.

As I look beyond the Silicon Valley mega-corporation rat race, I also look beyond the vally itself in terms of the geographical location where I want to establish a foothold.

And this summer, I think that my eyes have turned beyond California, indeed, beyond the US -- to the Middle Kingdom.

Enter the Dragon

The first and last time I went to China, in the summer of 1991, I honestly have to admit that I sort of disliked the whole experience. Having just flew in from from the consumer-electronics mecca of Hong Kong, I didn't see a single video game store ANYWHERE! To add to my depression, it was heavily raining in Beijing, in addition to being hot and humid, all at the same time! I think that the combination of these factors immediately caused my emotions to go into "sad mode" for the remainder of my stay =(. Plus, I got sort of sick while eating something I had in a little noodle restaurant near the Great Wall. Especially, once we got outside certain districts of Beijing, I was hating it, with all the squat toilet action, and everything. Ugh. Anyways, I was actually sort of elated when I left China.

Over seven years later, things have changed. Both over there in China, the country having adopted more and more Western elements, and here, myself having grown infinitely, my outlook is starting to shift. Seriously, I'm starting to contemplate the possibility of going to China next year and spend some time in the land. And I don't mean Hong Kong either, I mean the mainland -- either on short term missions, or doing Princeton in Beijing.

The option of PiB, and talking with people like Spice Lee and Jocelyn, is quite enticing. Chinese is probably my funnest class this quarter, and there is just no subsitute for getting immersed in a country where you are forced to use the language, and being part of the culture as well, just to get a feel of a country where one might spend several years of one's life or more.

As for missions -- in a previous Deep Thought, I had said that international missions was not for me. Again, this changed this summer as well. Hearing Paul Lee's emails from Japan, and talking with him, as well as Keith, on the phone during the summer, Asia is a culture in which the pace of material gain is far outstripping the pace of its spiritual gain. Even when I was there, names like KFC, Pizza Hut, and McDonalds had already established a foothold. (My stomach and intenstines were forever thankful for this.)

And yet, even as China westernizes even more, the moral and spiritual framework could not be more different. For instance, the "unchurched" in America have in general, at least, attended church at least a few times in their life. And many people here of course, attend churches during Christmas, Easter, and other "holidays." The fathers of our nation at least saw fit to include religious language, in the Declaration of Independence for instance, or the Great Seal -- "In God We Trust". You won't find anything like that in China.

The stats are something like 1-2% of the population in China are Christian, without any significant church-attending body outside of the body of professed Christians. Furthermore, 80% of those believers are in rural areas, outside from the political, economic, and social centers of China, apart from having any bit of influence as the Pacific Rim enters the 21st century.

Talking with people like Keith, Danny Chai, Tim Dalyrmple, Grace Hsiao, and others who went to China this summer has really been a blessing. Really. China is just a spiritual vacuum, I have heard from much more than one source. And even though I too saw that CCC video multiple times last year, I had always thought that the part of the Body that I belonged to wasn't the part that was sent on missions. But my bold claim is that missions is not a particular talent, and that rather, missions is an end to which we are called, and as it us up to us to discover our particular talents, it is up to us to discover our particular mission field -- the calling of missions is not necessarily coupled to any specific spiritual gifts.

But of course, my summer plans is all in His hands. And even as missions begin to come more and more into my heart, I realize even more brutally that I am truly imperfect. and this summer, I have come to realize my own weaknesses in my walk with Him -- in my own impatience, my judgmentalness, in my complancency in living in my comfort zone. Besides that, I can't swing, like Yang2 Hua2 Li4, Yongil Lee and Lee Gan Loon. So that avenue of ministry -- very liu2 xing2 in Beijing -- is denied for me for the time being. May I be transformed in a way that is pleasing to Him, by God, and by Richard Powers as well. =)

Anyways, in any case, after I finish, I can go visit Korea, Taiwan, and, of course... Singapore, because David Tay, aka Ditty will be getting married. He graduated this year, and he was Dave Hong's roommate junior year, which was how I got to know him. [You know, 1999 is shaping up to be a bumper-crop year for weddings. Four waiting in the pipeline and counting! DUDE, EVERYONE, HOLD OFF ON GETTING MARRIED THIS YEAR, OK?!? MY AIRFARE BILL IS HATING IT.]

Ahhh... Singapore. I remember in 1988, when I last went there, they had this spicy thing called TeleText. Many TVs in Singapore could recieve this information. This was WELL before the Internet became commercialized. [Say, if any Singaporean reads this page, can you let me know if they still have it?]

[Y'know, I tend to remember my various trips to Asia by what video games/other goodies I manage to pick up there. For instance, the 1988 trip to Singapore was when I picked up Super Mario Brothers 3, and Zelda 2, a year before the US release.]

Dang, seriously, everyone from Singapore I know is cool. There are only a few other geographical regions that I can make this claim Among the Singapoareans I know are Joseph Gan, dicta--, err, I mean, director of Testimony; his SO, Li-Ping, one of Des' drawmates; they

Heck, it would be pretty spicy to live in Singapore, at least for a few years on a job assignment, before coming back to the states. Like what Tammy Wang's family did. Anyways, _______ and I, we'll send our two kids to Raffles Junior College. They will be one of the dozens that place sends to Stanford each year. And of course, they will kick everyone else pretty soundly academically.

Dude, other than China proper, either Singapore, Hong Kong or even merry old England itself (I've never been to Europe, after all) would be extremely interesting for me to really spend a few years in. You know, there's just something cool about the British, the land itself, as well as their former colonies like Singapore and HK, the fusion of East and West, the funky British/Asian accent. The cosmopolitan mix of those places, while having the populace retaining a distinct ethnic and cultural identity, not just an amalalgamation of them, like, say, NYC, is just totally cool, you know? The coolest people I know largely hail from one of those places. Props to the British Empire!

Spice, yah?

Calvinist theology for computer scientists

During this summer, I've been hanging out a lot in Mirrielees, and among the many people who came over to visit us, I've been chilling with Phil Wang a lot, and every Wednesday night, I've been getting a dose of hard-core Calvinist theology. It's all about TULIP, baby: Total depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistable Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints. Theology is just a really dope subject, I as a analytical CS major, has come to realize that this is just really cool stuff, to think about religion, for up to how has been mainly an emotional subject for me, in a analytical, comparative sense. I love Phil Wang. I love Adrian Pei. I love Tim Dalrymple. (Don't worry, Joyce, not in THAT sense... =) )

And for me, Calvinism is a bit unnerving. Not wrong, but unnerving. Then again, the Gospel message itself is, as someone I heard put it, is offensive to all sinners. But even though it's really heavy stuff, I just find it so cool. And recently, I just realized that CS154 -- Automata Theory -- just kind of go hand in hand with helping me to understand some of it! Bold, eh?

Anyways, I seriously loved that class. I have never gotten a CS grade as high as I did (other than in computer graphics) in 154. Of course, I do not mean to brag, but just to tell you that, man, there's just something about the subject that draws me to it.

So, one of the spicy things we learned was that there are things that cannot be computed -- no matter how fast your computer is, how much time you have on your hands: you will never, never get an answer in a finite amount of time! Bold, eh? For instance, you can't tell if a arbitrary program will ever halt if you run it! It's undecidable -- because the only way you know if it will stop is to actually simulate a computer running the program, and you won't know if the program runs forever unless it -- ta da! -- runs forever!

It's the same with the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. In a sense, we can think of ourselves and the undecidable question of whether each one of us will be elected, as being Turing machines, running a program, and not knowing if some of us will end up in a halting state or not before the end of time -- hence, undecidable. Pretty bold, huh?

Anyways, if you want me to explain this more, please invite me out to dinner (at somewhere other than Stern dining). Thanks.

Similarly, another interesting work that I've been going through this summer is Desiring God, by John Piper. Piper's bold claim is that we exist for the purpose of giving pleasure to God, "to glorify Him by enjoying Him forever", and even bolder, "The chief end of God is to glorfy God and enjoy himself forever."

In the human realm, we call such an atitude narcissism. But my Piper-inspired bold claim is that it is not narcissism if there is no other option -- if there is nothing else to glorify, or if there is an not an option of non-glorification. In other words, we can only apply the negative term narcissistic if we have a yardstick which exemplifies the what would be considered something "positive."

To formulate it precisely: if we assume axioms that say everyone must glorfy someone, and God is the be all and end all, then what can He glorify? Nothing except Himself, for to glorify anything else would be to glorify something below Him, and thus contradict the definition of glorification. To put it another way, God is like the base case in a recursive relationship of glorification.

Thus, as glorification of anyone else is unacceptable for Him, God is not a narcissistic snob. Say, am I being heretical?

Unity Revisited

Anyways, I know that not everyone who professes their beliefs in Jesus Christ subscribes exactly to these fine points, and that's another thing that's been on my mind lately.

The motif of unity in the Christian community, is like a fractal pattern: one that repeats itself on different scales. Unity within the church, among the different fellowships on campus, among the different campuses that frequent a church like KCPC, and among the schools across the country as well. The notion of unity is something else that I've dealt with in my Deep Thoughts and otherwise, and it's another component of the vision I am developing for how I want to serve the Body here, hopefully being able to help address at least some of these levels. For if others view Christians as just a fragmented group of people, divisive amongst fellowships and schools, and not really helping one another out, despite the calling in the Bible to do so, how will that aid our outreach, our ministry?

One of the things that I've learned is that one should not be get caught up in differences "of the second order" as Paster Peter Wilkes said during the 1998 Stanford All-Campus Retreat, caught up to the point of alienating others.

We all know that we have been oft-criticized for being closed and insular, both Christians as a whole, and FiCS in general. A freshman in our dorm, who is Christian, related to me how she had "a very bad impression" of FiCS when she came as a profro, because it was so "cliquish". Yikes! At least she was brutally honest, but still it kind of hits home, with this coming from a fellow believer! Of course, the "cliquishness" of FiCS probably doesn't stem directly from our theological beliefs, but I suppose it's conceivable that that's how other Christians might feel about our cliqueness and tendency not to associate with "outsiders" that much which would seem to communicate an atitude of self-righteousness, that we're right, and they're not.

I had a pretty stimulating discussion with Jimmy Ahn when I visited him late summer. God will save those who believe the basic tenets, of course -- justification through grace alone, the fact that Jesus died for the elect, and so on. But just knowing the finer aspects just increases your experience, the joy of salvation. Kind of like knowing how everything in your computer works -- how your full-clock-speed internal L2 cache in your Pentium II Xeon beats the pants off the half-speed one in your PowerPC G3 -- increases your enjoyment of computing. =)

And it's not even those minor differences as well that we should accept, but even if we have more substantial, fundamental differences with others, we mustn't merely brush those people off to the side, unwilling to deal with them, but rather actively address them in a engaging, stimulating manner.

I mean, take someone Catholic, like, say, Pam Tsai. Would she feel comfortable in FiCS? Now, I should emphasize that I don't really have an answer to this. Then again, I've never seen Pam at FiCS before. Hmmmm....

But to me, it would be interesting to go to a Catholic church service and just see what it's like. I'm not claiming that Catholicism is right. But it's interesting just flipping through the Catholic song books and seeing how many songs that I have know because I have sung them in Protestant churches. In a way, it's actually sort of amazing that we do share such a high degree of similarity even though we have a few fundamental differences, and it leads me to wonder how millions of people could have died over the differences in religious faiths that share such a large common set of beliefs.

Today, Pastor Eugene related a few tidbits of the illustrious history of the San Francisco Korean Central Presbyterian Church, such as how we occupied a Jewish synagogue in San Francisco until it was damaged by the 1989 earthquake, and how the facility we had afterwards, up until now was actually the Jim Jones temple!!! And now, we'll be worshiping in a Catholic church, and the Father of that church actually came out and spoke to us during the first service, about the common love that our Father shares, a love that both bodies believe in.

Now, the believers of Catholicism occupies an interesting area, between the totally unsaved, and us. Of course, Catholicism contradicts the tenet of justification through faith alone that we adhere to. But then you have the book of James, chapter 5 of Galatians, and others, about the role of works in a life of faith, which is why I assume Rich Mullins is not being heretical when he sings Screen Door. So while Catholicism may be directly contrary to what we have been taught, I suppose, it is not some totally evil cult, something that we should look upon with total disregard at, lest those who have no religious faith at all, just decide that all these divisions are just too much for them.

So, while the Gospel message is offensive to sinners, the messenger should not be. Be bold, be gentle, and to embrace unity, while keeping our own distinct spiritual identity. And keeping with the theme of vision here, our vision for FiCS, which I am just excited beyond words about is that we would be a kinder, gentler fellowship, reaching out to those who do not believe in Christ, and also, those whose beliefs just differ somewhat. Praise God that Pastor Harold is back -- it will just be cool talking to him as well as hearing him talk, and it's just really cool how he'll engage those who are seeking, as well as we ourselves.

In the very end, tt all boils down to one thing -- vision for this year, this summer, and the future.

So, one thing that I truly desire now to just always keep and build upon a vision for what I want to do. Go on missions, work at a startup, or whatever, all keeping His purpose for me at the forefront of it all.

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
Thou my best thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise,
Thou mine inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of heaven, my Treasure Thou art.

High King of heaven, my victory won,
May I reach heaven's joys, O bright heaven's Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

Repeat Chorus.