Bio was terrible terrible terrible. Had stupid confusion over the instructions, there was NO proper erratum issued, I had no readings, confusion reigned, and we all got so freaked out. Especially me. At one point I forgot to breathe and got really dizzy. But lets all have faith in the Education System eh? Lets all have faith in the teaching profession, even though I had two really annoying invigilators who took it upon themselves to just mark us all down, and keep us away from our teachers.
Anyway, the serious stuff.
I have REAL issues with a God that obtains his authority on fear. In my mind, it is incongruous to have a saviour that tells us to fear him, and to abstain from sin, yet telling us all that we are ALL sinners, and that the only salvation comes through him. The issue is fear, and that the best way to free souls is not through the replacement of the fear of sinning, with the fear of God. Sin itself, is a very abstract concept linked with the mores of the time. Everything, to everyone can be considered a sin in itself. It all depends on your perspective and point of view. For example, most of the world are sinners in the eyes of Islam for their women do not cover themselves up upon reaching the age of puberty, they eat pork, and some even rear or keep in contact with dogs. Christianity promotes monogamy, which makes every single Chinese emperor in history sinners, and every Muslim taking up his right to four wives a sinner, no matter how virtuous or kind he is. Sin, is a very very abstract concept, which can only be said to be derivative of right and wrong, rather than demarcative of right and wrong. That is, sin is a result of what man now consider right and wrong, rather than sin being a very concrete concept that actually defines for us what is right and wrong.
Fear is no way to rule a populace towards happiness. It is ironic and contradictory. A good metaphor would be a murderer holding an axe above your head and saying, "Be thankful for me, for in your impending death, you finally get to see your entire life flash before you, and appreciate the beauty of every moment alive." Do the ends justify the means is what I'm saying here. Is the happiness of miracles and being with God worth living like an unclean being, and all the emotional baggage that comes with it? I think not.
Although everyone has an advantage to be moral creatures, would it be easier commiting moral crimes if you knew you'd be forgiven anyway, because "the flesh is weak", and everyone's a sinner?
If an angel were to fall into your life tomorrow, would you notice her?
I guess part of the problem of living lies with the various influences people can be in your life. Some may teach you certain things, some may gradually and subtly corrupt you. Others lead by example, and others lead by being the unappetizing example. There are just so many myriad roles people around you could play, and so many subtle and marked ways they could influence and change you.
Back to Justina again. Somehow, I felt that she was the absolute most closest person I've got to know in the shortest amount of time. But then, it sort of fizzled out. Once you know a person so well, at least you think, there really isn't much more to think or say or do. I guess the only lesson I've learnt was that friends are like kueh lapis.. You've got to make an effort to peel off layer by layer by layer. Even though you know that it probably tastes pretty much the same all the way down, you've got to try anyway, otherwise that piece of kueh lapis would not be any different from all the kueh lapises you've eaten in the past, and definitely not as memorable.
I guess what she taught me, was that there is always more to a person. That you may think you know the person next to you, or even your closest bestest friend well. But characters are complex, and the model we have in our minds may not correspond to reality. That model is always changing, always evolving to reflect the experiences of the person as time passes. Look deep, and keep looking, otherwise that friendship will be like any other. Just a plain, meaningless mush of tidbits of information. Things you once thought you knew, but now doesn't hold true, or never held true anyway.
How then do we meet people, and treat people? We can't just dig deep into every person in our lives. How do we know we're digging into the right people anyway? And some people are really private persons. How can we get to know them and understand them on a deeper level, when perhaps, they're uncomfortable about being so exposed? Again, I must remind myself of the first law. Your experiences and reflections are not shared by the majority of people around you. Each person experiences life from a different perspective, and draws different conclusions to the same events.
The world is a complex place. To me, I see it as an equilibria of forces, of good, bad and neutrals. Some people take a guarded pose, others take a neutral pose, and others are more forthcoming and open. I've been through all three poses. The forthcoming one really hurts. But it's also the most memorable. When you open yourself up to people, people do the same to you, and all the right people are attracted to people like themselves. But then people start questioning your motives. The bad elements get stronger as you get more popular. The rumours get wilder, every sentence gets taken as fact, and made into fiction. Then people decide to mellow, decide to become more neutral, and life starts to get boring for them. And when things don't improve, certain people may fall into a negative state, and withdraw from society altogether, deciding that this can never be the world for them.
But life really isn't worth living if you have to continuously guard against people. Just because you do not want to be the target of bad people doesn't mean you have to join them. It's your life. Ultimately, in the end you are accountable to only yourself. Whether you throw your lot with the neutrals or the goods or the bads depends on your own decisions. And your choice, can tip the balance either way.
I believe being open to others, and being neutral for a while to take a breather is ultimately the most successful strategy. The negative people may stab you, may hurt you, may spread things about you. But you will have a group of friends with you, supporting you. And they'll be so close to you you'll forget about all the negative things. You'll even forget those people exist. And life will be that pure memorable experience.
If an angel were to fall into your life tomorrow, would you notice her?
Hmm strange strange life.
I'm continually amazed at the number of people who've called me pervert. I wonder why. Is it because my behaviour's strange? Or am I really that perverted. I don't know...
I think life's a silly thing to get all hung up over on pervertness or morality. Besides, don't understand what's so nice about girls anyway. Okay, this point must be clarified. As in I don't see people as Guys or Girls, as much as I see different personalities and interests. It just happens sometimes that a particular group of people of the same gender tends to have the same interests which I am personally interested in, and also tend to be more acceptable partly due to their gender. It's a little hard to explain, and I guess I'll sound a little homophobic here. But sometimes, there are stereotypes about guys and girls that I just cannot forget in my head. Like how guys should be more practical, and girls be a little more artistic. And it doesn't really help that the people who are most artistic are females, or that give me the best critiques be female. It happens, especially when you explore a world that's essentially intangible and subjective. Girls are more likely to give you an emotional and subjective response, rather than guys who'd give you a more concrete and specific comment on what they like or dislike.
Guys on the other hand, are perfect for judging the fitness of a structure, or the efficiency of your programme, or the quality of a certain object. I'm sure I'll have lots to say to guys on that sort of line. It's just that perhaps now, I'm more interested in the artistic region of space, now that I've sort of really really immersed myself in the silly sciences.
Does it really matter? Isn't it nice if someone's nice to you? Why complicate things by assuming, guessing, casting suspicions? If a person cannot accept spontaneous goodwill, that person probably also cannot produce spontaneous goodwill. And that's a sad thing for everyone, guys or girls.
Justina
I guess Justina never really left me. She calls to me from time to time, and my mind just replays her, replays all that she's done, what she represents, what she tells me.
Was just thinking about the impermanence of life, the RJ that I know is going to be pulled down soon, rebuilt somewhere else, the friends that I know, gone overseas, some strange foreign place, with strange foreign tales. And thought about the big wide world, and how the world not only has a huge huge area, it also has a past and a future.
Justina lies in the past now, and we will sooner or later join her. But what was really amazing about her, was that she lived all 18 years of her life fruitfully, with purpose, and enriched us all in the process. She gave me a slice of her limited time. Almost a full year of her entire existence. 1/18. Would you give that large a slice of your life to any single person? Would you give 4/18ths of your life helping the poor elderly, the unloved, the forgotten?
I dread living my life knowing full well, that by my very own existence, I devalue the gift that I have given others. Huge chunks of my time dwindle to bits and pieces of caked dust lining the shelves of memory. What I used to love, used to be obsessed over becoming only footnotes in a long book. A long monotonous story, like the others who lived long monotonous lives.
I want to give more of myself to people. But people tend to only accept so much before they feel suspicious, before they feel conflict, jealousy, before they start to leave you because you gave them too much, and you gave others too much, and you left none for yourself.
I don't want to live aimlessly. I want to give as much as I can to everyone I meet. I want to tell them, that someone out there appreciates all that you've done, that they will be remembered, that they deserve a significant chunk of my life.
But my life, with it's length, is essentially devoid of value. And human existence, and the struggle against death, but only dilutes what makes us human. She could bear to give slices of her life to us. I only hope people would accept a small slice of mine.
Anyway for the sake of the detail oriented, the keyboard I'm using now is a Siemens keyboard, made in Germany, with beautiful keys, and laser printed characters that have been worn off with use. But still, posessing of wonderful spring, if a little bit flimsy I must say, and rattling keys. I want a keyboard that types faster than me. I want a keyboard that functions like an extension of my mind, always waiting to express my next though, my next carefully crafted sentence, my next whimsical mental connection. But even if I had such a keyboard, would I have time to use it? Would I even have time to use everything I already have?
One of the greatest tragedies in life is to have everything you ever wanted, but not the time to really explore and know them all, and incomporate them into your life. After all, we live only once, and a single lifetime is still a single lifetime is still a single lifetime. We could have multiple lifetimes, if one day we managed to invent such a thing. But in the end, could it be, that lifetime after lifetime after lifetime, our choices would be so similar that that one lifetime that we experience is representative of them ALL?
Afterall, there are many paths through life, but only one result. There are choices, chances, events in life that swing us off the path from life to death, but no matter how much we diverge from the path, we are bound to cross back, for we start with life, and end with death. What then is life? What then is death? When we can not see where we came from, nor where we're going towards? How far are we from the end of our journey, and how much more there is to go?
I sort of like the keyboard I'm typing on now. I feel plenty fast on it, even though it clacks and clack and clacks like an old typewriter. It's the sound of speed. Perhaps a percussive rhythm that I never knew I had, beating beating beating away under my fingertips, hushed by the cheap keyboards I've been using, and smothered by my lack of blogging.
Blogging's fun. Typing's fun. Even though there doesn't seem much to be said. It's English practice. Like how watching chinese dramas is Chinese practice, and watching Japanese dramas is Japanese practice. We practice strange things strangely, trying to make sure they're kept in use, even though because of their lack of use, they've fallen into disuse. But who knows you see, someday in the future, sometime in the future, they may come back into use. What you use defines you as much as what you've once used, and what you've stopped using. Why did you learn that in the first place if you're never going to use it again? Why did you stop using it? Why did you start using it.
My life is littered with the carcasses of things I've thought wonderful and are now dead and lifeless. My life is littered with the seeds that I once thought promising, which grew up to produce beautiful buds, promising beauty within. But I haven't had the time to see my flowers. I haven't had time to water them and nuture them, I haven't had time to spend with them, in watchful anticipation, of their growth.
Then again, I'm also spared the sentimentality of their demise. Who knows? Once they bear fruit and die, perhaps the next time I go back, they'll be seeds once more, promises of a future.
