Death and swimming

How is it possible to talk to 10 different people in a day, and yet still feel alone?

Is there something missing in online conversation, or am I just too self-absorbed? I think there is a bit of both (okay, perhaps a lot more of the latter).

I've been having a class on Death.
Death class --> makes me think about life, because all we know about death is from the perspective of the living -->makes me depressed about life but not want to die because now I have learnt that we ESSENTIALLY know NOTHING about what comes after. And that is scary. I don't even book a flight ticket without getting accommodation first. Who will accommodate me in the hereafter? That became a much more philosophical question that I intended it to.

Perhaps, in the end, we should not be left alone for these particular reasons - falling into moodiness and deep depths of thinking, when we should be paddling in the bright sunny waters. But then, how would we know what life truly is if we don't dare confront its edges?

There comes a time...

I have always wondered why people, when writing autobiographies, seem to write in terms of months passing, years and of the changes that they face then. For me, it has always seemed that so much emotion can be lived in a day, so much drama and change and mood swings, that it is insufficient to only paint one's changes, particularly in moods (eg. he was depressed, she was jubilant, they were purposeful) only in months and years and not days and minutes and sun-hours. Because a life can be lived in a day, and months can follow on end of nothing.

A misty state of mind

Makes me feel that all is possible, that all worlds are half-shadow and half-solid, that all emotions are multi-faceted, shining like sapphires.

I see in the past the paths that have brought me here and the ghosts of roads not taken. I look at the ground and see the vines that are strewn all over the way. This road, and every road I have walked whether deliberately or just as the result of the passage of time, have changed me.

It is a wonder that we can connect at all, human beings walking separate paths and brimming with destiny.

The irony...

I traveled to a foreign country alone to begin a new chapter of life.

I have been riding on competitive academic scholarships for the last three years.

As a university freshman, I am applying for a research grant that's usually given to sophomores and juniors.

I dance in public spaces, I sing without embarrassment, I make lame jokes.

I speak up in class. I voice my opinions when I think they are intelligent. I voice them even when they're not.

I participate in clubs, and when there isn't one that caters to a need, I form one.

I can do so many things I never thought I was capable of.


~


But I can't muster the courage to ask you out.

The bitter pill of discontent...

Rancours, bubbles to the surface when you least expect it.

The feeling that you aren't appreciated, that you could do so much better, that you are not achieving everything you are capable of. That you made wrong choices, you heedlessly stepped on a green path and you're not sure if you're ever going to reach the sunlight as you trudge beneath the monotonous canopy of expectations and unfulfilled dreams and the susurrus of time as it flows by - if you listen closely you can hear the grains falling in the hourglass that holds your earthly hours.

You tell assuring stories to yourself about individuality and different definitions of success until you can't be sure where reality ends and your dreams begin. Or were they intertwined from the very beginning?

But there is light, there is meaning, there is hope: lift your eyes from the crunching dead leaves you step on, and with filmy eyes envision the road to come. While your feet have strength, walk straight, walk upright, walk forward.

Maybe we are getting this lifeline thing wrong

Maybe writing should not be so easy. A few dashes on the keyboard, a click of the keypad and instant publishing. Maybe writing should reflect the hard work of thinking and translating that complex inner landscape into a form that everyone can understand. Each word should shine like a diamond in an engagement ring, each phrase as perfectly formed and iridescent as a soap bubble. (I am writing like a thesaurus enthusiast right now, but I assure you I am thesaurus free. I must be unconsciously imitating some stream-of-consciousness author now in my word-drunk, thought-seeped state.)

Lately today I've been wondering about the conflict between our biological and our intellectual imperative. As a biological, evolutionary (or created, depending on your beliefs, I think that they are both true) being, I recognize that I don't have very many years on this planet and I am driven by my body to accomplish certain things: mate, raise children, age and die. So morose, but it is true! I am 20 years old. My body runs well, but from here on everything declines: organ function, sensory apparatus, coordination, memory, brain function, speed, parts of the body that beauty is measured by gradually decreases as cells die and don't regenerate, as hormones decrease, as bone density shrinks. For the rest of my life I will have to reconcile with the fact that I am no longer 20.

And all this knowledge (put into perspective by an excellent holiday-reading book titled "The thing about life is that one day you'll be dead" by David Shields) makes me react with wonderstruck panic: I need to get some living done! Why should I be sitting and studying and enriching my mind when I am at my physical peak of life? Can't sitting and studying and philosophic meditations be done when I'm 60?"

I realize then, how our current way of life in the more-developed parts of the world is so conflicted with our biological timeline. We spend ages 5-24 (for me, due to Malaysia's late-starting and long education system of which material I have retained little) studying up to a degree level, start working, maybe get married at 28-30 (don't want to jeopardize your career, need to get downpayment on house/car/etc) if you find the right person who has roughly the same life goals as you do. Childbirth after age 35 greatly increases the chance of birth defects. For most of history women had their first child by age 20. The anthropologist Suzanne Frayser found from studying 454 traditional cultures that the average age for brides was 12 to 15, and for grooms 18. Growing up I always found this fact (early marriage) terrifying and was so glad I lived in the modern enlightened age of equality. Now, I wonder if this is a lie. I wonder if by prolonging years through medicine and better healthcare and quality of life, by postponing the inevitable; I am just wasting more of my naturally-healthy years preparing for the rituals of adulthood and survival and find out later that either a) it didn't require all that much effort or b) that it wasn't worth it.

So what would I do if I chose to abandon my intellectual-fulfillment, career-ladder goals and seek happiness and a good life through biological means? I would start living a more balanced life, cook my own meals, run and exercise a lot, start looking for a mate to have children (10 more years till 30!), travel. Worry less about saving the world or solving our problems and be more focused on fulfilling evolutionary criteria. Immerse myself in small household tasks like cleaning. Get a cat. Drink and party more (not to the point of destruction, of course) since my liver still has amazing capabilities. Only old people tell you to be cautious, ever notice that? Keep staying in North America by any means, where making a living just seems so much easier. The middle-class enjoy a standard of living comparable to the upper-middle class at home, and with more security. Spend a lot more time with friends (while doing sports of course) - we can sit around and drink tea when we're 40 and have bad backs.

Things I would not worry/spend so much time laboring over: whether I will get a good job. World problems. Exams. Facebook. Wondering if I am intelligent. Trying to be intelligent. (I can be intelligent when I'm old. Old age=wisdom. Wisdom at young age = too much time sitting around on butt)

You may notice I am fusing traditional ways of living with the modern world to make a melange of what I consider the perfect young life. My earlier years should be about making experiences and making friends, my later years about reminiscing about said experiences with said friends. And enjoying this God-given body and capabilities, not overtaxing the mind at the expense of the body. Eating badly, sleeping spottily, not exercising enough, too much sitting around without enough action - that is the condition of college students. Where is the spirit of revolution, the passion that burns stronger than the urge to get wasted on a Saturday night, the joy of discovery and falling in love with ideas and people and ideas of people?

"Fight, fight, against the dying of the light..." but if noonday sun does not shine with life, what else is there to fight for at sunset?

The problem of learning

Through reading I gained the ability to immerse myself in a different world or see my own through different lenses. So much wisdom and wonder has been gained through this activity, and yet...

at times I wonder whether knowledge is all that worth it.

I've been reading Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse".

You can tell the mark of a great writer when, hours or days afterwards, her voice is still speaking to you and echoing in the chambers of your brain, affecting your moods, weaving its patterns into your dreams and waking time. That's how I feel about Woolf.

Her subject matter, human relationships and time and thwarted desires and ultimately, the purpose of life, cannot be ignored. The piercing clarity by which she indicts the very human, very flawed (yet beautiful) characters she creates nudges me uncomfortably. Yet by her speaking the truth, I begin to believe her. And when she writes, towards the end, about middle-age life - when Lily Briscoe (aged 44) is amazed at how even then, she cannot piece together a coherent philosophy of life and discern its meaning, but only see it as glimpses, still moments in time, the present - it filled me with despair. Like a vision shattered. Maybe, no one has found a satisfactory answer because there isn't one that stands up to close examination, that resonates with all of humanity.

I don't want to end on this morose note. I have a moral obligation to you, the reader. So now let me tell you how I feel: I feel like one thread in a large tapestry, a thread intricately connected to others that form patterns and weaves and bundles, but I am only one. I am only one and I am weak. I can be cut off easily from my path and obliterated by sickness, by loss, by mental impairment, by poor life decisions, by death - so many ways you can cut a thin thread. And yet - when I am connected to others, I am no longer just myself but am connected to all the rest. I will feel the pain when others for one reason or another are cut off. But I can support them as well. And they in tug and pull and stretch, will do the same for me. And when I fray, and eventually become dissolute...the pattern will go on. And it was not for nothing that I was there.