Friday, November 07, 2008
I have just had the most horrible night possible. It is interesting, how your own body can defy your own wishes.
I spent the whole night willing myself to sleep, or at least for my eyes to close, so that they won't be so devastatingly dry. I think I fell into a stupor around 4 this morning, and awoke again at 6.
Since then, I've went running and come back and... No yeah, that's all I've done since 7 this morning. I feel uncommonly detached from everything today. I can't seem to really process what's going on around me. I hear music playing, but I can't tell what song it is. I hear people speaking to me, but it takes time for me to process what they say and who is speaking to me. I read a book, and the words enter my mind, but it doesn’t process. In less time than I take to churn out an essay, I've finished an entire new book, without an understanding on what the story is about.
Even now, while I'm sitting in front of my computer, I can't seem to feel. I don't know whether the air conditioner is on, I don't know what's going on outside. I just seem to be in a daze. Is this what not sleeping does to you? I feel so detached.
I tried to cry just now, just to see if I could. I know there are actors out there who can turn on the tears automatically, but that has always been one skill that escaped me. The most that I could do was maybe to make my eyes slightly moist. I can't do that even now.
Acting is an incredible skill. To replicate certain emotions, you turn inside yourself, and you invoke that particular feeling through situations that you have been in before. To be a performer, it is essential to have a passion for life, and to have an abundance of feelings to pull on. Thus naturally, artistes are people who have a flair for life and the dramatics.
I've always been someone who felt a lot. I can sympathize with almost anything. I am what you would call, emotionally receptive. I can't seem to feel anything now. I walk around, I converse, I make jokes, I laugh at the appropriate time, or when people laugh at some joke made. But I am so emotionally detached from everything. I feel slightly numb. Is that normal?
Oh god, I wish I could just get my eyes to close. Sleep is pretty much the thing I need the most right now. Do you know what it's like to go through the whole night not sleeping, and instead looking at your bedspread, the patterns, simply because you cant sleep? When was the last time you sat in bed unable to sleep, and see the light slowly come through your window?
Depressing. Really depressing, especially when all I want to do is sleep.
I feel like I'm blind sometimes, moving along by my sense of intuition alone. It is like I am reaching towards this big confusing whirlpool of lights and colors and sounds, stretching my fingers out as far as they can go. I am boldly yet tentatively feeling around me for another person's hand, just waiting to make a connection with someone. I know it probably sounds so ridiculous and laughable - maybe even pathetic - but I really just want to find that a sanctuary; I want to come home.
Here's a quote which truly sums up what love is.
"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...
You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like "maybe we should be just friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love."
The Sandman- Neil Gaiman (thank you Janice for the quote)
Love is, weakness.
It makes one vulnerable to all kinds of unpleasant scenarios and emotions. Love is an open wound that exposes you to all sorts of germs and bacterium, all ready to attack you. Instead of micro-organisms, it is doubt and uncertainty that attacks you. Bringing you down, down to your knees.
Love, can do the most epic things, at both ends of the spectrum. Immobilize a whole forward-surging army or to move a mountain. It brings us to do great things, or could just lead us on the trail towards nothingness. Nothing but pure heartache and pain.
Love makes people change. Change although being almost inevitable, is not something constant when it comes to human character. It wants to make you dream big, think about the future. Just that these dreams and aspirations aren't selfish and you must share it with that special someone. Selflessness is a total defiance against you. Once again, an act of weakness, brought about by love.
So... love really is a weakness.
I’ll let this city burn as everyone sleeps, so that we could be alone, together.
Labels: Education, Emotions, Life, Love
11:40:00 PM
Monday, October 27, 2008
I am a slave to my books. Its pages dictate my life.
I need to study. Really hard. The crunch is here. My stomach churns every time I realise how important my 'A' Levels are. It is really, the whole embodiment of my academic journey. Plus, having me wasted a year already, this counts even more and "You better not screw up after all these years ah!" just rings in my head constantly. I must admit that I have backslide throughout these last two years at school, I entered being really fiery about my studies and I set myself high standards. I guess it was through my performance in the first few months that I managed to get to Cambridge. It's ironic because I think Cambridge broke my momentum but I don't want to blame anything or anybody, it really does boil down to me anyway. However, I'm feeling the drive coming back to me. Can't wait for it to be over, then it'll be the Canadian ski trip and flying to Indonesia in Singapore colours to compete (I'm currently placed 6th in the Under-21 category, in S.E.A Hooray!) before enlistment. Okay, I'm not looking forward to army life. How regimented and mundane; I'm infamous for always getting into trouble with authority.
Right now, I hate being unoccupied because having nothing to do only causes me to think. Although I don't think as intensely as the previous times, it's still there and it tightens the immediate peripheral area surrounding my heart and making it constricted.
My heart can't beat the way it wants to. I have found myself trying to make myself happy lately, finding various ways to amuse myself. I have not done this in awhile, I've realized. This is because I had a constant source of ever flowing happiness, like a well dug into an artesian aquifer. At least, the happiness is on a hiatus.
I'm relieved, but what worries me, is that I would lose it. Losing it would cause the sky to go bleak, for birds to lose their bearings, to fall out of my sky and on to the pavement to serve as reminders. Reminders of how flight can be taken away from them like how everything else could be taken away from us if we're careless. I mustn't be careless; I must not let my guard down. I have constantly said and even promised to become a better person, to rectify my faults.
I must admit, I have said this on a whim, while looking for a quick solution. That's me- always looking for the quick fix-it and not looking at the real root. This time, I want to be committed to change; I can't make her angry anymore. I have got to be sensitive towards how other people feel. This is ridiculous; it's like pulling stones from out of mid air and just tripping over them after they fall onto the ground. I am creating my own problem. I am ridiculous and all these nonsense has got to stop. I have to be patient, for time is of the essence. Every minute that passes by, I hope has a remedying effect. Please Lord, I hope this time is not wasted and that I think really very hard, about the person I want to be.
Oh no, I've said too much. Just needed the reprieve.Labels: Education, Life, Love, Random Ruminations
3:59:00 PM
Saturday, September 06, 2008
I read an interesting article in The Straits Times a while back, and it has always been at the back of my head ever since. It seems that, not just in Singapore but also everywhere in the world, people are thumbing their noses at Plato and thumbing through books by Planck.
Do you think that, in today’s society, we do not really have to care what the humanities (philosophy, sociology, political science, literature etc…) have to tell us? Rather, we should care about what the sciences can tell us because they help us to get rich? Yep, no one gets rich studying philosophy…
A constant question that I ask when talking about education is ‘What is the purpose of education?’ No doubt, studying useful subjects like engineering and medicine will help us to make tons of money. However, without the study of humanities, we lose what makes us human.
A lot of the sciences we study today originated from the study of humanities. One of the examples I love to quote is Rene Descartes (he of the “I think, therefore, I am” quotation). It was in his writings on the topic of rationality and the need for pure reasoning that the branch of mathematics - Cartesian coordinates, came from. Adam Smith, the famous author of the ‘Wealth of Nations’ which most of our modern economic theories come from, was first and foremost a philosopher, not an economist. His book “Wealth of Nations” was written to address the lack of inequality in society and how society can solve it. If we are to discard the study of humanities, won’t we also be discarding the potential insights that some thinker will come up with about the world?
However, Man being ever so practical, seems to treat the study of humanities as 2nd-rate. In Singapore, we are no better. Based on anecdotal evidence, it would seem that the NUS Arts Faculty is attracting top students to the faculty in recent years. Not that suddenly these straight-A students like to know what Shakespeare said, but because the Department of Economics is there. It seems that parents want their Ah Huay and Ah Huats to become the next chairman of Citicorp.. Practical bunch of people they are, our parents.
The study of sciences tells us what the world is like. The study of humanities tells us what we are. We can’t do without either of them.
“Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil.” said Plato. Tell me what you people think.
Labels: Education
6:58:00 PM
