Lincoln Lee Is More Careful Now
Inside a Boston Pizza at Downtown Vancouver on an April noon, I wore a pair of aviator sunglasses (the Joe Biden kind) while I was going to town on the lasagna I ordered. I thought that I looked like the shit. Back then, I was in my skinny legend phase, so I looked better than ever.
Then Lincoln, who I have never spoken to before, came up to me and said, “Why are you wearing sunglasses indoors? It makes you look like a douche.”
There are other parts of the story that shed Lincoln in a slightly more forgiving light, but who’s got time to go through the gunky details? I certainly don’t, so giving you the abridged version will save you (the reader) and me (the writer) more time. But despite how long the tale is, to tell someone you’ve never met that their look is reductive is rather insulting. The cheek, the nerve, the gall, the audacity and the gumption for him to shun my statement shades — it’s all horrible.
All was forgiven when we walked back to the MUN conference we attended. Using his phone, he showed me his favourite memes at the time. I personally don’t find memes to be that funny (since to me, sending someone a meme is a lazy way of telling a joke), but I remember appreciating the irreverence of the whole situation.
Our relationship never grew to be anything fruitful since we didn’t have many ways to connect with each other. We didn’t go to the same high school and our extracurriculars aren’t the same aside from MUN. We might be in the same room or chat (which is a rare occurrence) since we knew the same people, but there was nothing that really bound us together.
This is what was on Lincoln’s mind: “Damn, I shouldn’t have run over that squirrel. May he rest in peace...and may he have a great Christmas?”
Nevertheless, I still find myself allured to the concept of having a conversation with him. When I was compiling a list of people who’d be good subjects for my articles, Lincoln was probably the 6th out of the 50 people I thought of. I couldn’t, and still can’t, exactly pinpoint any reason why I put him on my list. He’s quite smart, but I know other people who are smarter; he’s pretty cool, but I know other people who are cooler; he’s rather funny, but I’ve heard funnier jokes from other people. I thought he’s a dime a dozen.
Lincoln is quite aware of this too. When I texted Lincoln about possibly interviewing him, he replied, “Reading some of your articles, all I can say is that I’m concerned that I won’t have anything interesting to tell you.” He reiterated that sentiment when I asked why he doesn’t think he’s interesting. “I don’t think I’m necessarily a boring person, but after seeing your website and the features on there like Owen [Ebose], who hangs out with Jagmeet Singh, I don’t know. Just comparing myself to the features on there, it seems to me that I’m not that interesting.”
It must be noted that he’s comparing himself to his MUN friends, who tend to be wealthy, private-school snobs who dole out thousands of dollars to go to some Ivy League summer program. The juxtaposition of Lincoln, a teenager from the middle class, and his MUN friends is identical to the one with apples and airplanes. If you were to force me into comparing the two, then his rich connections will run the score if we’re going to mainly look at various kinds of achievements and successes. There’s no denying that, frankly.
But although his MUN friends are scholastic masterminds and game-changing leaders (among other words of praise), they don’t necessarily excel at everything. To be specific, they underperform in one thing: having a unique story. I, too, have MUN friends, and their lives all sound the same. They do every extracurricular imaginable; they’re perfectionists to the point of excruciating pain; they seem like they’ve never made a mistake in their lives, which makes them unrelatable; and they’re publicly humble to conceal their extreme ambitions. I’ve seen it all before. To me, they are all the same.
Lincoln said to the photographer, “Hey man, can we accentuate the legs for this next photo?”
On the other hand, Lincoln floors the competition with his story, which is centred around the idea of shredding past parts of himself. He had to do some growing up when he was in high school, and that often led to self-reflection that intensely cringes him to this day. “I know for sure, at least in Grade 9 and 10, that I’m not proud [of myself back then],” he admitted to me. “I could get cocky at times, and I think I didn’t recognize it. I regret a lot of it because just looking back and thinking now, I wouldn’t want to be around Grade 9 Lincoln. So I’m trying my best to steer as far away from that as possible.”
I gave Lincoln the opportunity to describe his Grade 9-10 self. “First is that he’s arrogant,” Lincoln said. “I remember reading the chat history between me and someone else, and it sounded like I was trying to brag about some MUN accomplishments that I had. I don’t know if that was my intent or not, but at least it reads like it. So that’s not good.”
He then theorized that it may have been “a mix of arrogance plus a bit of social awkwardness and ineptitude” that caused his braggadocio. He said he also “dwelled at the extremes of self-confidence instead of finding a good medium. I would, at times, be very self-conscious and be too attached to certain things. If something bad happens, I’ll be like, ‘Oh my God, my life is over.’ At times, I’ll be like that. Other times, I’ll be like, ‘I’m the greatest person ever.’ That kind of attitude. I’ve had some arrogance, so that’s something I really didn’t like.”
“Hints were dropped” around Lincoln to make him recognize his flaws, but there wasn’t one that compelled him to remove the hubris. “I feel like it’s been a pretty natural transition that I didn’t put a deliberate effort into. Maybe I subconsciously decided that people didn’t like it or that maybe it was a product of maturity and meeting more people.”
However, he holds firm to the fact that the arrogance came with the gift of confidence and a “huge feeling of ambition” he never had before. “That part of me back then, I’m very glad that I still have it.” He then joked that the combination of both his cockiness and aspiration was like a “cesspool with some flowers sprinkled on top of it.”
The added ambition was the impetus behind his decision to take on more rigid (and painful) endeavours such as the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program (also known as the reason why anti-anxiety medication exists). “Now, I’m thinking, ‘Maybe it wasn’t the best choice.’ But at the time, I thought it was a way for me to try myself to get to an unfamiliar and potentially helpful ground that is a step above what is considered normal.” IB was certainly a by-product of Lincoln’s ambition, which is either a positive or negative — depending on the day.
Lincoln’s adolescent impulses eventually petered out in favour of acquiring a more reserved and self-aware mindset; he is hesitant in taking any steps that might turn into missteps. In several answers, he was conscious about the possibility of sounding “too pretentious” or saying something that might make him “sound stupid” or “like a TED Talk”. He may think that there are relics of his old self still around.
Personally, I didn’t notice any remnants.
“I don’t like risk. For example, if I were to invest money, I wouldn’t invest any money beyond what I’m okay losing.” When pressed on where that fear of risk comes from, he wasn’t sure how to answer it, but one of his best guesses was his contentedness of his current state in life.; he’s fine with his current trajectory.
Another reason he could think of was the influence of his Korean family’s traditional, conservative values; their advice consists of the usual messaging like “don’t try drugs” and “don’t go gambling”. He said that those sentiments of being careful might have carried over to how he grew up, leading to realizing his risk-averse attitude after a few years of pretentiousness in Grades 9 and 10.
There are several intricate facets of his newfound cautiousness — it’s perhaps innumerable to count. One of the major benefits was the meaningful consideration he puts into everything he does. Every decision he makes heavily appraises other people’s feelings. That’s not to suggest that he was oblivious to other people’s feelings. It’s just that the quality of consideration has been heightened during and after his evolution.
Sometimes, his consideration can be used by others as playful cudgels.
A few articles ago, I shared a story about Jeremy Fang’s successful attempt to trick Lincoln. Jeremy pretended that he was going to attend a university in the African country of Chad. Spoiler alert: he didn’t — but Lincoln believed it. I highly suggest that you read the feature on Jeremy before continuing this one, but I digress.
I simply wanted to know Lincoln’s side of the story.
It’s definitely not obvious that Owen was definitely on the beach that day, wearing a full-on suit and tie.
“If I have the chance to defend myself in a court of law,” Lincoln joked, “then my defence is that when Jeremy told me that he was going to Chad for university, I was shocked. But then again, if there was anyone and any people in the world that might do that, it might be this group.”
The group he was referring to was the CAHSMUN team, which he was a part of as its Deputy Secretary-General of Internal Affairs. The CAHSMUN team consisted of people with the highest possible accolades. “In our group, we have people going off to exotic places. At a certain point in time, we thought Peter [Zhang] might have gone to Oxford. (He ultimately chose Yale.) We also have people going to all parts of the USA, and we have someone going to France. So if it was someone in my life, it would have been someone from this group.”
He continued to defend himself, “The second thing: what response could I have given? I can’t really say ‘Haha, you’re lying to me! You’re kidding!’” Right before he texted his response to what Jeremy said, he thought about how he would feel if someone proclaimed that his choice was a farce. “Because [going to a university in Chad] is such an exotic choice, they must have had people [telling] them, ‘That’s not a good choice’. Maybe they even doubted themselves if it was a good idea or not. So I was really concerned that if I said ‘You’re kidding’, then that would probably be hurtful to Jeremy, who [might have] made a very difficult choice to go through such a high risk. I didn’t want to risk being hurtful.”
Under that viewpoint was also a feeling of trust for Jeremy; there was nothing about Jeremy that seemed untrustworthy or worth worrying about at the time. With this thought in mind, alongside “the feeling of not being hurtful, I think I may have convinced myself that he’s actually going to Chad University, and I just didn’t question it.”
“Umm, sir. The bath’s two blocks from here,” the police told Lincoln.
Eventually, Jeremy and the team behind him (which included most of the CAHSMUN secretariat) had to cease their operation and tell Lincoln the truth. “Jeremy and I went on a call with some people from other MUN secretariat teams. One of the people in that call asked Jeremy, ‘Hey Jeremy, where are you going to for university?’ I answer on Jeremy’s behalf. I answered for him because to me, at the time, it was shocking news. I was like, ‘Oh! He’s going to Chad University! Isn’t that amazing, right?’ I think the three people on that call believed me at the time, or at least they pretended to believe me if they knew [the truth] already.”
“After the call ended, I think the CAHSMUN team started getting more daring with the dropping of hints at the fact that it was false.” They kept alluding to the fact that it was “Chad” university. (Note: For those still living in 1873, “chad” is — to borrow from Wikipedia— internet slang for a “sexually active ‘alpha male’") “So I was like, ‘Hold on. What’s going on here?’ And then eventually, they explicitly told me.”
I asked Lincoln if Jeremy was a “chad”; he couldn’t say anything for sure since he didn’t know “how much Jeremy benches.”
I guess Jeremy can’t be a chad since he can’t even lift up two legs.
Then I asked about his reaction to the team telling him the truth — he seemed to be a bit nonchalant with his response to them. “I was like, ‘Cool. [Georgetown’s] a good university. Smart guy going to a good university, so that’s good news.’”
He told me he’s fine with people pranking him, but many people made fun of him too much for being gullible. “I think they tried to make me believe that somebody else was going to a different university. But at that point, I had known about the Chad University thing. I was like, ‘No, no, no, no. No, no more. By that time, I knew they were pranking me so I was more resilient.”
When putting the Chad story in isolation and without sharing any other evidence that either corroborates or dispels the themes and ideas ingrained in it, one would come to the conclusion that Lincoln is indeed a gullible guy. In fact, one would think that every other persuadable person must surrender for all shall hail Lincoln as the Grand Poobah of gullibility.
It’s a very reasonable thought if your only account of Lincoln is the Chad story. Is Lincoln, however, actually gullible? Lincoln responded to the question with a question of his own. “If I was a gullible person and claimed that I wasn’t, would that really be credible?” He said he’ll leave it to other people to decide whether he is or not. “But in my unbiased, professional opinion, I think it was reasonable to believe certain things in Jeremy’s story.”
One can say that his gullibility is just a mere quirk about Lincoln. Every good comes with its bad. In Lincoln’s case, his unconscious uncoupling from his juvenile immodesty came with a defect of believing the unbelievable. In the grand scheme of things, the susceptibility to weird jokes about African colleges cannot supersede his profound personal growth.
If possible, his story of maturity may be a good cautionary tale for those that come after him. “I know someone who’s younger than me who’s been criticized for being arrogant at times. When they talk to me, I see myself in them. I see my Grade 9 self in them, so I try not to be as harsh as maybe some other people are.”
Given the fact that Lincoln used to be the same kid a few years ago, does he feel responsible to guide the same kids out of their immaturity? “If I could, I would love to,” Lincoln said, “But the problem is that — again, assuming and hoping that I have changed — I have no idea how the transition happened between the arrogant Lincoln and not-as-stupid Lincoln. I don’t know how it happened. If I knew how it happened, I could use that to guide someone that’s younger. But I don’t, so that’s that.”
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