Yourself?

Just knew from Yanwei that her grandma's in hospital. Some urinary tract infection gone bad. I've been thinking about her... worrying more like it, from the lack of news, but there really isn't much that I can do to stop the worrying, and even more, I don't think I should pester Yanwei for updates, don't want her to think too much about it, and don't want her to be bothered as well by a bunch of nosey parkers. Can't imagine how tough it must be for Yanwei. Revisions, schoolwork and a family crisis.

I think that's one of the things I hate in the world. Illness, even though it is such a necessary part of nature, part of the mechanism of death and rebirth. Why do only some illnesses give the dignity to die well, and others don't? Cancer and Aids are much better illnesses to suffer from than SARS or Ebola. There is dignity in death, to prioritize the things you really want to accomplish, and to help other people come to terms with your impending departure than a sudden vanishing trick, leaving a void in the hearts of many, those who knew you, and those who knew you indirectly.

The second is of course, blackmail. I hate manipulation, the hold over someone in order to make him or her do your bidding. In a sense, it's the way people achieve what they want. It's how the teachers and society make us do what society wants. The use of marks to threaten students to study hard, and the withholding of marks if students misbehave or cheat, when marks have no intrinsic value whatsoever, except low marks are a reason for your friends and relatives to look down on you, or your parents to believe you should be studying harder or something. Blackmail takes advantage of the individual concerns of what society thinks of them, and individuals have this impression that they need society to form beautiful images of them and accept them. But this also shackles them to the will of the manipulator, and thus they are not in control of their own fate. And even worse, may be forced into prostitution etc. etc. which society looks down upon.

Life then is also blackmail. It's a choice between two unappealing alternatives. Death and misery, or hard work, after that, old and wasted, only death remains. How many of us gave up our youth willingly, as though we had a choice, but in reality we did not? It's detestable because what we're giving up is life itself, our most valuable asset. And the material benefits that we get, the money, the reputation, the respect, mean nothing when we're dead. I'd rather live a fufilling life and share it with others, tell them about the big big world that exists around us, that the corporations would rather take away, and imprison you in that 2m X 2m cubicle, a jail for your youth.

posted by Downhere. @ 8:46 pm