The Biggest Moment in the Life of Jairson Ascencao

How to Win Back the Village for Humanity

Published in

CoalMont

7 min readDec 28, 2019

In Jairson Ascencao’s own words, “high school did a great job of showing me how to complete projects and problems that others set for me, but it did not teach me how to have an internal drive to complete my own personal projects. So I never learned how to act with agency aside from choosing things like my major. That’s why I ended up leaving college, because I figured even if I did a horrible job on my own, it was better to be acting with agency and learn from it than barely have any agency at all.”

Day 94 | 12/27/2019

[2] In his private article Agency, Jairson wrote the above words on the last Friday of 2019 (Day 94), right before he made his first attempt to formally (in writing) compare the differences between the way his mentor Nickantony Quach works and how members of his friend group work. It was around 9:30 PM.

[3] They were working late together on promotion for a concert event. Nick helped Jairson improved its online ticket process by telling Jairson what to do with the web pages he created for the concert. When the work was almost done, they unexpectedly wandered into a mentoring session. In the session, Nick challenged Jairson to compare how they were working together with how several friends of Jairson’s work with him in their activities.

[4] How do Jairson’s friends work? In Jairson’s words, well, most of the time, they don’t. They never realized they could share a collective vision so their work processes never got aligned. They only ever worked together on short term goals, e.g. getting girls, where to party, how to get into a place where we didn’t know anybody, etc.

[5] Whenever they worked together, Jairson had to “lead” everything, and so the project would only be as productive as his single mind could make it. If a project involved approaching people, he was pretty much the only person willing to do it. His friends let him lead those interactions.

[6] The way Nick works is different. When with him, Jairson likes the fact that he’s not the only big decision maker.

“Having someone to shut me down sometimes is actually pretty helpful,” said Jairson to Nick. “We share a vision. You care about the vision tremendously.”

[8] Jairson’s friends didn’t share a vision and he controlled his friend group’s productivity. In contrast, Jairson and Nick as a group share a vision and the management of their productivity goes back and forth. The biggest difference between the two work styles is clear. Jairson and Nick have a stronger relationship than that between Jairson and anyone else in his friend group.

[9] When the comparison was over, Nick proposed the following hypothesis, which is based on the context of his 2017 book, Thumos: Adulthood, Love & Collaboration.

The only two reasons you do what you do are stronger relationship or temporary entertainment. Thumos teaching is all about pushing you away from temporary entertainment and more towards stronger relationships in all you do. Stronger relationship, not temporary entertainment is the teaching of Thumos.

The Three Women

[10] It was past ten o’clock at night but Jairson and his mentor Nick were still talking. Neither remembered why but Jairson brought Nick’s attention to Benvinda Da Rosa, a friend of Jairson’s family. In his own words, she’s a single mom, raising two children, and works 7 days a week to cover everything. Her regular hours are 5 days a week, and then she works the weekends too “because that’s her car payment money”. She works that way for years at a time. She’s had about 3 weeks of break in the whole past two years. That’s the kind of life people live in our current society.

[11] As soon as Nick heard the above story, he paused for a long second. He recalled another story he heard from Jairson a few weeks earlier. In their weekly session for impromptu music and improv activities, Jairson introduced Nick to his other mentor Rebecca. After everyone left, Jairson told Nick more about her. In his own words, she is a busy woman, she runs a venue, she has a 6 year old, and she works a job as well. She’s constantly overworked, and is even considering moving out of state just to have a better support network. That’s how Rhode Island has treated her.

[12] Nick paused for another long second as he recalled the third story he heard from Jairson a couple months earlier. It was about his mother. In his own words, she worked incredibly hard to raise me. At one point she was working 3 separate jobs just to afford to house and feed us, we were basically on our own for an incredibly long time before she found a good man and things got better for us. If she hadn’t found someone to add to her world, who knows where we would have ended up.

Pattern Recognition

[13] It did not take longer than a few seconds for Nick to piece together Jairson’s story of the three women.

[14] From Jairson’s perspective, after Nick saw me mention 3 times how awful I felt at the way our world worked. Every time, it was about a person who was by themselves and how I felt about their situation. The first time, he considered it to just be something I said in passing. The second time, he still didn’t react because he didn’t see a connection to the two sayings. The third time he heard me speak, his words struck to my core. After hearing me talk about Benvinda Da Rosa, he said, “I know what you truly want to do the most.”

[15] Suddenly, right after Nick did the pattern recognition in his mind, he declared out loud: “What Jairson wants to do the most is to win back the __(blank)__ for humanity.”

[16] Jairson immediately tried to fill that blank with 3 different words but he found it hard to believe they made his audience easily understand him. “Family, tribe, home” all passed through his head but none of them sounded right.

“You’re have to cook me a good meal to get the answer to the blank,” said Nick with a smile.

[18] Jairson laughed at him, and pulled out a little of his mom’s cooking.

“You’re lucky I have this because there was no damn way I was cooking a meal for you at 10:30 at night.”

“I believe you,” Nick said smiling.

[21] After a while talking about a few other things, Jairson got the food ready and sat down.

“So what is it?” Jairson asked Nick.

“What was the question again?” Nick responded.

“What Jairson wants to do is win back __(blank)_ for humanity” Jairson said.

“No, that wasn’t it exactly” Nick said to Jairson.

“Yeah it is,” Jairson remarked. “Those were the words.”

“Not exactly,” Nick responded again. “How does an old man remember the words better than you,” he laughed, “go look at it again.”

“What Jairson wants to do the most is win back ___ for humanity.” Jairson shot back from his computer, “It’s basically the same thing.”

“The words make a big difference,” Nick replied, “especially for the word I’m about to say.”

[30] After pausing, Nick spoke.

“What Jairson wants to do the most, is to win back the village for humanity.”

[32] Here is how Jairson recounted the moment:

The moment Nick said the words, my body went into shock. Goosebumps trailed up and down my back. It’s a crazy moment when someone knows how to express what’s been sitting deep within you for a long time better than you can.

[33] Within 48 hours after the biggest moment of his life took place, Jairson made a video about it.

Day 96 | 12/29/2019

[34] Four days before he rolls out his business YoutubePVD at Haven Cave, Jairson wants to make a video about the biggest moment of his life. Why not use YoutubePVD, which is the YouTube Content Creation Facility for the people of Providence?

“I’m making this video to describe the biggest moment of my life, the moment I realized what my mission is, and has always been,” wrote Jairson at the start of his video script.

[36] In the video The Biggest Moment, which is Episode 19 in Season 10 of the YouTube series NDBaker93, Jairson works as the host for his group’s daily show. He opens and ends the episode with the sting from Reggie and the Dubwisemen, the instrumental music by Jingle Punks. | Watch the video

[37] At the end of his video script, Jairson wrote:

This video is important because it is my proclamation of dedication (Caption Dedication, that means, Determined public affection) to my mission. Dedication means, determined public affection. To dedicate yourself means to publicly announce your determination to do what you love. This, right here, right now, is my invitation for all who see this to join me and help make a place for us to become the people we truly want to become.

Easy Way Back

For a quick return to this article, remember of the following web address:

Ri4CTV.com/Win

The “4C” stands for foreseeing. Thus it means foresight. The extended name for Ri4CTV is Rhode Island Foresight Television. It’s the YouTube channel in support of this Coalmont Online Magazine. The web address Ri4CTV.com/Win should give you access to the story How to Win Back the Village for Humanity.