2.0.0.7
Thursday, December 27, 2007
♥ Thursday, December 27, 2007
Taking stock, and posting it out for the world to see..
In order of significance, obviously.
1) The birthdays! And stuff we did
Chian Yee- bought a cake from Big O
Torrence- made him a scrap book
Ivan- Was the emcee and made him cry with 'That's what friends are for'
Yiming-Collage? Picture frame?
Desmond- Scrap book
Linus- Karen and i made him a mega humongous collage with photos collected all the way when he was i think 3 years old.
And for mine? Hmmm.. mel and jie made a scrap book too, with notes collected from friends everywhere..and i mean including those overseas too!
2) The interviews, and the subsequent admissions into the schools. Not for a llooooonnnngg time have i felt like i am doing what i am meant to, and enjoying it.
3) US trip. With Linus, Chian Yee and Desmond. Helluva fun...and perhaps most memorable trip i ever had. Las Vegas, Universal Studios, Disneyland and of course...the talking cock. haha.
4)The new friends made, of course. Yvonne, Siew Chi, Rachel, Andre, Rizuan so on and so forth.....and of course not forgetting Krystle.
5) Yeap, the old friends, rekindled. Beginning with the marists, and ending with certain persons in the comm.
6) Rejoining MSC? yea it could stand for one of the greater things of 07. That and becoming teaching ministry head, although as stated in previous posts, how tt came about was via a pathetic excuse of an electoral process.
7) ORD-ing. Getting the hell outta there.
8) Becoming friends with her like i've never had. Bestest BUTTS. Always nice to call someone in the middle of the night, to bitch and to whine and to nag...and to share. :)
9) The movies and books. That took up about... a quarter of my time this year, perhaps? Best author award goes to Khaled Hosseini, supplanting Jodi Picoult, with Kite Runner as top read, and Perfect Match trailing closely behind! Movie of the year? Well to be fair, how about movie-s of the year?
Fracture, Ocean's 13, Hula Girls and alright, Transformers.
With the movies came the blogging, and with that, the free screenings! I am/ was a movie writer! Ha how about that man.
10) And of course, not forgetting the sports camp, pageant...and subsequent activities. The friends made, the Queen, and yeap the good laughs and fond memories that transpired out of sometihng that became a little burdensome.
Well done, 07.
Let's see what 08 has to offer.
D.E.A.T.H
Saturday, December 08, 2007
♥ Saturday, December 08, 2007
I have not blogged for about a month, and i think that there is a prevalent theme across these few weeks and that as sadly or as morbid as it might sound, is this theme of death- the glaring inevitability in life. It started off with an article on euthanasia in which one of the more prominent quotes used was- ' if death is such an intricate part of life, can one so desire death as he might, life?' That was mind blowing. And the perfect way to begin an argument for the use of 'sympathy killing' or 'pulling the plug'. Then, Henri Nouwen's remark about the epidemic of Aids, that 'people so desire love, that they choose death'. Then it went on to a spate of wakes. Yes, a spate. First a platoon mate's asthma attack; then, the dragon boating incident. Subsequently, 30 plus year old church volunteer whom i got acquainted with about 2 years ago in a mission trip. The shock is not with the death, as unreal as that might in itself be, but the age in which this lives were 'revoked', 'returned' or ' extinguished'- the choice of words necessarily boiling down to each person's philosophy of life and death. Their lives and their families' with them, came to an abrupt, screeching and perhaps unceremonious halt at the tender age of 20-30. A young adult, a person exploring the deep recesses of his or her soul in play, work, love, knowledge, games, sex, belief, pain, joy, forgiveness, hate, trust, betrayal. An age where potentials are stretched, characters are built, where a person comes into being. It is an age, where the last thing one could really think of is that this same number used to encapsulate his experiences would be inscribed on a tombstone. And in these wakes, i've come to see an overwhelming reality of how people deal with deaths. There are 3 ways in which a person might come to consolation on another's passing. I shall deal with this in some detail.1) The past- the life in which he or she lived, the memories this person had shared with his or her friends, the treasured moments and special gifts of laugh and joys that could be simply summarised in any eulogy or testimonial beginning with ' i remember'. 2)The moment- how long and how painful was his suffering, to the knowledge of doctors and experts. Families and siblings, friends alike, take a certain comfort in knowing that the deceased did not suffer. That the death was instantaneous. It is a very complex state of thought, i would imagine. The identification of what pain is, the identification of loss (death), the transcendence of that identifcation by the knowledge that although there was loss, there was no pain. And yet, the question really is, is there true comfort in the knowledge of the instanteneity of death? Say one should suffer from cancer all his life only to be relieved from it, in the form of a passing, would a loved one take any less comfort in say a person who died immediately from a head wound? It might be impossible, if not completely inhuman of me, to actually quantify grief. However, one must come to terms with the fact that grief exists as an indisposable element of the human condition. And that is simply because, death is.Thus, one need not quanity grief so much as to understand it. There's no better way to understand it, than to experience and to observe. Points 1 to 3 are observations that might shed light.3) The future- heaven, nirvana, reincarnation, eternal bliss, the meeting of God so on and so forth. Religion becomes imperative at this point in time, as is the need to belief that a person is not 'gone' but merely 'away'. 'Gone' implies permanance, 'away' implies the temporary. 'Gone' implies loss, 'away' implies 'he'll be back' or 'till we meet again'. It is easy to slide into cynicism by viewing points 1 to 3 as mental constructs- that grief is a mere psychological defense mechanism. However, i do not think mental constructs are reasons for cynicism- if anything, it should only lead us to discover more about humanity, and the human in the individual.In all honesty, i hate going for wakes. i feel that i am completely inadequate in either grieving with, or in consoling with the deceased loved ones. More importantly, i feel an overwhelming sense of guilt- that i did not know this person enough ,that i did not like or love this person enough, that i've become cynical of this person all too quickly..so on and so forth. And i fear that one day at my own burial, i'd look around and see the faith in my innocence lost in everyone. There are tonnes of things that surface in a wake. A wake, awake. In a wake, i am also confronted with something that behooves me. The possibility that i will be attending a loved one's passing in due time. Will i then be grieving for the loss of this person, or for the loss of opportuinities i could have had with this person? Would i be grieving because i'll be missing him or her? Or will i be grieving because i've missed out too much on his or her life? In my verbiage, i've forgotten the most primal comfort to loss- the crying. I remember some time back that i experienced an overwhelming relief in crying. That emotions become crystallised in the form of tears and the shedding of those tears a revealing and relieving of such emotions, is in my opinion, a fascinating albeit queer discovery about us. People do that all the time..and its ironic that in my pursuit of being a complete human, i am not able to cry. In my experience, a person is stripped of all need of image when he cries and that being said- he becomes so human. He is neither a student nor a friend, he is neither a soccer player, nor a brother, he is neither an employer nor a father- he is only, solely, evidently, undeniably human. And that is precious, isnt it? When was the last time, someone came to you in the capacity of a human being? Not as a friend trying to seek advice, nor a parent trying to give one, nor an employer with instructions, nor as a sportsman with competition..but as a genuine person whose only intention is to be another raw, vulnerable beating heart whose only and biggest consolation provided is just that.Maybe, i need to be human, after all.
