I am giving away a Samsung 27” TV. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the TV. It works perfectly. It comes with the remote, which also works fine. I bought the TV new in Fall ’02.
Since I don’t have a bunch of these like DVDs, I’m not just going to give it away to the first person that responds. You don’t need to write me a memoir of your life, but just explain to me in like 30 words or something about why you would want the TV. There are wrong answers, like “I already have a 60″ plasma hanging in the living room, but I want a 27″ for me to put in the bathroom so that I can do my business while watching Oprah.”
The BIG catch is this:
1) You cannot immediately sell the TV to someone else.
2) I have a car we can use, but you should try to help me transport it to your place, and
3) You must either: a) donate to the church or charity of your choice of what you believe the TV is worth; b) give it to someone else after you’re done with it for free; or c) pay it forward, by giving away some things that you would otherwise sell or just by doing good deeds to people that you know or don’t know.
That’s it. Feel free to email me back. If you have some time and wanna know why I’m giving it away, you can keep reading.
Elliott Kim
562-xxx-XXXX
elkim@berkeley.edu
WHY?
Selling it would have had one reason: monetary income. Instead, giving it away has more implications than one. For the simplest reason, it’s the easiest. I have better things to do than to try and research where price should be set based on supply and demand. It includes the possibility of good deeds being paid forward; I believe FiCB has become more of a social group than before only to be more secluded from society, and perhaps this will spark something. It’s also something that maximizes the total ‘utility.’ As in, extra cash in my wallet means a lot less to me than it is for someone that can’t afford to have a decent TV to receive one. But believe it or not, the main reason is complicated and more selfish than unselfish: it helps me keep things in perspective.
My brother and I weren’t supposed to be born. My mother had two miscarriages prior to our birth and she took a chance with both of us, even though the chance of successful births was in the teens. My mother, brother, and I immigrated here to the States following my parents’ divorce. My mother gave up everything she had in Korea, friends and family she knew and the ability to make a decent income. All for a chance to give my brother and me a better life. Just for a chance. It all started with digging out our first desks out of the trash one night. Now my brother’s a Captain in the US Army, and I’ve served my dues to the country that’s given so much to me by serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom. We both attend(ed) UC Berkeley, and I’ve been offered a full time job at IBM’s finance division.
There were several times in my college years when I didn’t think I’d make it. Rent was high, I was barely getting by with my GI Bill, I had lower back and jaw problems, and I had outside work as well as Army obligations. I was low on cash and couldn’t afford a car. Financially supporting myself after high school in an environment I’ve never been in was tough. Along the way, though, I have been given opportunities that I initially believed were curses. And so every good or bad situation became a challenge that I learned to embrace.
And there are several reasons why I believe I need to optimistically look at every new situation as an opportunity, why I believe I should discipline myself. Few months after the immigration, I busted my intestines in a bicycle accident. Although I was only a green card holder, this country provided free surgery. When I was 17, I joined the Army Reserves as a Junior in High School, for many reasons including getting paid to shoot guns, follow what my brother had already done, and to simply do something different than what other high schoolers were doing with their summers. I was too young to think about how to pay for college, so I certainly didn’t enlist for that. But the one of the main reasons was because I had always felt indebted to the country for the surgery that saved my life. Spring semester of my freshman year, February 7th, 2003, 3:30PM, I was given 72 hours to report to duty for Operation Iraqi Freedom. When I came back a year and a half later when I was 20 and had lived in the Middle East and Africa, it was a lot easier for me to prove that I’m financially independent from my parents. When it came time to transfer from community college to Haas School of Business, my GPA certainly helped, but I have no doubt that my military experience set me apart. 88 of us out of 1176 transfer applicants got in. When I applied for the internship with IBM last year, I have no doubt that coming out of the third ranked Business school in the country gave me an edge. 18 out of 257 applicants were chosen. All of this, out of busted intestines…
The point is, there have always been a reason for why an occurrence, whether I liked it or not, has happened in my life. The Bible says knock, and the door will be opened for you. I knocked on the wrong doors, but the right ones opened for me. And I do not believe that it was all luck or solely due to hard work. Take for example Camp Lemonier, Djibouti. I was more than distraught over having lost my promotion to Sergeant. But within months, we had a Soldier of the Quarter board, where I would have been disqualified to compete if I was a Sergeant. I won that board, out of 1600 soldiers in the camp. Now, that award means so much more to me than what a few chevrons on my collars would have meant. That is just one of the doors that I didn’t know I was being led through. There is an undeniable force that is beyond my comprehension which insists my attention.
I keep trying to identify that force for the longest time, looking at different people, religions, and my own works. And my father alone can be the reason why no matter how many times I falter from my faith, I cannot deny that God believes in me, even if I don’t want to believe in Him. My father calls me every once in a while, and reminds me to give all glory to God. And he cries, so thankful that although I may have spent less time with him than I have with my step father, his prayers are being answered. There is something greater than myself here. Every one of us is an instrument of God, whether we realize it or like it or not. I cannot take any of this for granted.
Because of what my parents have done for me, it would now be too easy for me strive for personal success. And I do not mean that in an arrogant way. I mean that in the sincerest way to express how I feel about what I’ve been given, and I feel that it would be the most selfish act to simply ‘bury my talents’ and default on the risks that others have made in my regard. Sure, I invested my own share of blood and tears, but I wouldn’t be here without some key people and key interventions and key experiences. My challenge is to keep myself motivated, no matter what I’m doing; because most of the time, I’m still blindly knocking on the wrong doors, still unsure of where I’m going, still unsure of where I’ll end up. Sometimes, I wish I could give up and just be a fireman like I always wanted to. I haven’t had more than 2 weeks of vacation at one time since summer of ‘98. I’m tired, and worn out. But my experience tells me that it’s foolish to give up when things aren’t going the way you want it to. Just because I’m blind, doesn’t mean that the One who is leading me doesn’t know where I’m going.
I’m not the most religious person you’ll meet or hear of at FiCB. In fact, I’m probably close to being the least religious, even though my father and my step-father are both pastors. I don’t want to force my passion, and I do believe everyone has a calling to serve God in their own way. For some, it’s being directly involved by becoming a pastor or a missionary. Right now, I believe what makes the most sense for me personally is to pursue what is more interesting to me while using the byproduct to indirectly help spread and instill the Good News to religious and not so religious individuals and groups.
I used to hate the question, what do you want to do in life? But now I would shoot back and say that the better question would be what don’t I want to do? There are so many things I want to do, and so little time. A fellow IBM intern from Harvard told me over the summer that he’s got an agenda for the first half of his life as well as the second half. First half, work your butt off to make as much money as possible. Second half, pursue philanthropic work. I used to want to do everything all at once: assist missionaries in South America, travel back to Africa to help establish a better educational infrastructure, become a high school counselor, all the while getting an early start in the business world and quickly climbing the corporate ladder. But now, I’m excited about the fact that all those things and more can be done in due time.
So this is not to say that selling the TV never crossed my mind. It did, but doing this helps keeps everything in perspective. Most of you were probably thinking ‘what defines second half of your life? How will you know when enough is enough and learn to make that transition?’ And I’m worried about the same thing. I’m not afraid of the slim possibility of being in a position to help others. But what I am afraid of is IF I ever get there and my parents are gone, will I ever forget the prayers of those that I know and don’t know only to bask in my own glory? So I need to start somewhere, and now is as good of a time as they come. And if by law of probability I don’t become wealthy, then at least I am giving more of the little I do have, which I believe means more than waiting to give little of the lot that I may have. Because I just may end up waiting forever.
Perhaps I’ll be my own biggest flop. But Ted Childs, Jr., a retired Workforce Diversity Group Vice President of IBM, spoke to 18 of us interns this summer, and he said something that I kept with me. Don’t reach for the mountaintop, he said. Because if you fail and fall, you’ll land on the ground, right where you started from. Instead, reach for the stars. Because if you fail and fall, you’ll land on the mountaintop.