ANYONE WHO HAS achieved something they are proud of, when revisiting the memory of it later in life, tends to feel a warm and tingling sensation of “Wow, did I do that? Was that me?!”Much can be gleaned about ourselves from this simple common phenomenon. Firstly, one cannot always excel, in the normal sense of the word. Excelling requires a sustained and focused period of investment in attention, energy and time—below the level of excellence, some safe distance away from...
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is the Executive Director of Penang Institute. His recent books include The Eurasian Core and its Edges: Dialogues with Wang Gungwu on the History of the World (ISEAS 2016). Homepage: wikibeng.com