Do you have a perspective?

A book once read, ‘When does a story truly begin?’

In life, there is never a clear cut moment where we can turn back and say for certain that that is when our story actually started. Despite having arranging for important appointments or merely attending a ceremony, most of the time we aren’t conscious if it marks the beginning of a story. However, sometimes when fate intersects with daily events, it is inevitable for us to not ponder why; or ask when did it all begin. No matter how small or big the story may be.

Do you believe that everyone who enters our life has a unique lesson to teach us?

When someone lies to you, steals from you, inflicts injury upon you, mocks you, breaks your heart, holds a grudge against you, betrays you, ridicules you, do you learn from these people to be a better person? Accept these people for who they are and don’t even for a moment wish that you would have not known them instead?

During my younger days (don’t you just hate that phrase), there was time when I was hooked on the news of UFOs and X-Files and was genuinely concerned about visitors from the outer space. I totally believed in extrasensory powers and worshipped bioengineering and life science, and was sure that gene therapy and advanced computers would bring about the perfect human being.

And so my mother believed her child was beyond cure.

It was not until a certain age, that I begin to lose interest in issues of UFOs. I realized to an extent, that there are many things in life that cannot be deciphered easily and decided best to leave them in peace. You can say maybe I was not persistent enough, and gave up easily on my interest, but I guess I didn’t really care about it anyway.

Life had so many things going on, and while I met more and more people, I changed. People somehow always affected the way I looked at things, though I have learnt to be less malleable and consistent now. I mean, with the ever growing environment we live in, it is difficult for anyone to remain constant. Just take a look at the weather outside, even god is volatile.

Makes me wonder, does it rain in June?

…I am loosing my point here.

I guess what I am trying to say is; I need a perspective.

I need somewhere to begin; something to hold on to; someone to follow.

I NEED A PERSPECTIVE.

Don't move. Decide.

From the moment you wake up every morning until the moment you fall asleep again at night, your life is filled with choices. Your first choice is when to get up, will you start running the moment the alarm goes off, or will you zonk for a few minutes and pretend you are still unconscious? What will you wear? What will you have for breakfast? Will you drive to campus or take the bus? Which assignments do you choose to complete? What will you have for lunch? Will you play tennis, basketball or swim today? How will you spend your evening? Will you study, relax at home to watch Hallmark or hang out with your friends?

You face these decisions everyday. But on some days, you face choices that are bigger than these. You make choices that can change the entire direction of your life.

What will you study? In which degree will you enroll? Will you enroll in a double degree program or not? Will you live at home with your family or will you move out? Who will you get engaged with? When do you decide to get married?

While you are making your decisions, other people are making theirs. And some of the decisions that other people make will have an impact on your own subsequent decisions.

When we are faced with major decisions, we usually go through a process of weighing out options, looking at the pros and cons, and trying to evaluate the best course of action. Of course you can choose to act impulsively, which is another kind of decision that shapes your life, for better or for worse. The problem is, sometimes you will not be given sufficient time to evaluate your options; or to avoid making up your mind.

Would you make the right decisions? Would you have the courage to even choose one of the others? If you make the decision today, would you wake up tomorrow and change your mind?

It is a sympathetic sight, don’t you think; as we see our choices lying there waiting, waiting to be chosen.

Cows and economics

Here is just a friendly post for all of you who thought my previous post was complicated. I can tell from the silent feedback, you see. I will try to be less self-indulgent and more communicative from now on. Until then, cheers and enjoy this post :)

TRADITIONAL ECONOMICS
You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies and the economy grows. You retire on the income.


AMERICAN ECONOMICS
You have two cows. You sell one and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. You profess surprise when the cow drops dead. You put the blame on some nation with cows & naturally that nation will be a danger to mankind. You wage a war to save the world and grab the cows.

CHINESE ECONOMICS
You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment, high bovine productivity and arrest anyone reporting the actual numbers.

RUSSIAN ECONOMICS
You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 17 cows. You give up counting and open another bottle of vodka.

INDIAN ECONOMICS
You have two cows. You worship them.

PAKISTAN ECONOMICS
You don't have any cows. You claim that the Indian cows belong to you. You ask the US for financial aid, China for military aid, Britain for warplanes, Italy for machines, Germany for technology, France for submarines, Switzerland for loans, Russia for drugs and Japan for equipment. You buy the cows with all this and claim of exploitation by the world.

FRENCH ECONOMICS
You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows.

GERMAN ECONOMICS
You have two cows. You reengineer them so that they live for 100 years, eat once a month and milk themselves.

BRITISH ECONOMICS
You have two cows. They are both mad.

ITALIAN ECONOMICS
You have two cows. You don't know where they are. You break for lunch.

SWISS ECONOMICS
You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you. You charge others for storing them.

JAPANESE ECONOMICS
You have two cows. You redesign them so that they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create cute cartoon cow images called Cowkimon and market them worldwide

Over the edge

May --, 2002

I rose from the dream with a prolonged silence. I simply did not know what to say. However now I was out of the dream and walking down the room with a new kind of energy. I had lots to do, and I couldn’t wait to get started. Something inside of me had blossomed or rebloomed, or maybe just found its way out of the morass of ordinary. Certainly, before Sarah had come into my life, it had been conventionally mediocre. And boring. And shallow.

While my own inner realizations were secondary, they were also profound. My denials, transformed into belief in Sarah, had pulled me out of that morass of superficial and insignificant. I began to see that life around me was more than a piece of successful result and unnecessary anger at father for past neglects. Sarah – indeed, had changed my life.

April --, 2005

The evening sea curled and splintered the shore in three-foot sheets. Beyond the waves are a wing-shaped formation of pelicans skimmed about a foot above the surface of the sea, their heavy bellies and powerful wings acting as counterpoint to the aerodynamic lift of their bodies. I ran across the sand until my legs cramped like stone. With a stray piece of bottle glass I etched a three inch cut into my arm and washed the wound in saltwater. I didn’t cry nor did I grit my teeth. I felt nothing.

I sat on the wide stretch of empty beach and watched a tide form. The sand beneath me was moist from the storm the night before and near the horizon the clouds blazed red and gold above the drowning sun. Sarah had been away for more than a month. Everyday her presence grew dimmer. At times I could no longer visualize the simple things; how she talked, her cynicisms through conversations, the look on her face when she moved to embrace me. I could not animate her to movement or remember sequential images, only stills – a glance, the play of light, a mischievous turn to her lips.

You were right; memory eventually would fade into the image until nothing else remained. I guess I regretted her going but couldn’t really miss her. I couldn’t miss what I never properly had. Maybe that’s what I truly missed, the chance to have ~

My flesh seemed to contract when I first dived into the sea. The tide was so strong I could barely hold my feet to the sand. I dived again and let it take me. The current flowed me out to the sea swiftly. The urge to suicide didn’t move me. Far from it. I just didn’t care.

The memories that had sustained me through the years burned me hollow and cold. I had always believed my life would truly begin when I got through the next big thing before me, whatever the thing was.

First, the thing was to get through high school and get out of the house, then to get a job, get married, get ahead. My emotions drove me forward, most of the time the engine of my actions. In my youth those who thought they knew me believed I was a good girl, I wasn’t. I was full of fear and anger. I drank because I was afraid and angry. Fury wrenched apart relationships – father, mother, Sarah – and fear lashed them together again. I hurt people because inside I raged and clung to those same people again. I had always believed that being alone by choice was better than being left alone.

Without all this, I was empty. Nothing filled me up. I was nothing but an empty bottle bobbed along the surface of the sea.

One by one I noticed the pelicans lanced into the water, shook, swallowed and yanked themselves up again at the sky with much pride and satisfaction. The sea beneath me now was a living thing and so was the sky and I was not apart from it I was a part of it.

Perhaps that was enough.

The suicidal post

Have you ever thought about suicide; maybe not about self suicide, but just maybe, suicide in general…have you?

Yesterday morning I read an article about a study of suicide (what a good topic to start the day with, eh). Though I was overwhelmed by how this article was written, I am not sure if I totally agree with it. But who am I to judge, since at no time in my life have I ever felt the urge or courage or temptation to commit such an act? Of course, like anybody else, I have my own good and bad days, but I have always felt that to be able to be alive itself, is already a blessing. It would be most ungrateful of me, if I decide to end my life, the extraordinary lucky life that I have had so far. This doesn’t mean I want to live forever, though.

In a section of the article, the author wrote that suicide is a solution to a practical problem. This, I do not agree much with. Because when we face a problem, all we want from others is understanding and tolerance. For example in the case of physical pain, we can all sympathize; feel with someone else’s toothache. We can also share happiness, when we are all happy to the same degree. It is unless when we are unhappy, for each of us is unhappy in our own unique way, and that we can never imagine exactly what another is suffering. Even when two people are experiencing the same situation, feels the same suicidal feelings, both may not completely understand each others grievances.

I was quite surprised when I discovered the author was only 31 years of age. His concluding paragraph was about his own unsuccessful suicidal attempt. He wrote that, as a child, he kept repeating endlessly to himself, ‘I wish I were dead,’ but he cannot tell just why he felt this way. At this time I was almost certain that he is crazy, but I went on to finish reading his article anyway.

His attempt to suicide was by swallowing 44 sleeping pills but was found by his wife just in time to save him. To an outsider, an attempt to suicide will always appear to be a sick joke; but the author’s reaction to his own failure is fascinating and cheers my heart.

He wrote:

“The truth is, in some way, I had died. The over intensity, the tiresome excess of sensitivity and self-consciousness, of arrogance and idealism, which came in adolescence and stayed on beyond their due time, like some visiting bore, had not survived the coma…I was disappointed. Somehow, I felt, death had let me down; I had expected more of it. I had looked for something overwhelming; an experience which would clarify all my confusions. But it turned out to be simply a denial of experience…Months later I began to understand that I had had my answer after all… Once I had accepted that there weren’t ever going to be any answers, even in death, I found to my surprise that I didn’t much care whether I was happy or unhappy; problems and the problem of problems no longer existed. And that in itself is already the beginning of happiness.”

I congratulated him there and then. Very well written.