Constraints

At what point do you start writing genuinely, with much recklessness and abandon? I struggle with genuine writing every day. With the looming notion that I have to specialize in a specific form of journalism or even a career niche to become good enough to make a career out of anything, it is impervious to become cynical and jaded – this coming from a free spirit. What does it mean to be a free spirit whom has amassed and is amassing multifarious, (in)compatible  interests? I don’t know – the term of being “free” and having the ability to choose is a dramatic irony itself. Every day, our choices and subsequent actions are framed and driven in a causal interplay of relationships among our environment, circumstance and character. To be free, in its popularized denotation, is to suggest that your choices are willed purely from your character’s instinct and intuition.  Character has always been partly influenced by the environment and circumstance so the conventional notion of choice is somewhat fallaciously incomplete and deductively simplistic.

Aside, I like to be free in my choices to write about what interest and disinterest me, even if they may be incompatible or not. Ideally, I would like to write about social activism, while dabbling in consumerism fashion and exclusive, high-brow or avant garde art. I like to believe that the tapestry of human experiences is so expansive that writing about anything and everything, even financial journalism illuminates aspects of the human condition. Naïve to believe so, I know, but one has to believe greatly and strongly so that in the course of life and aging, and in the course of being tamed, a great fire will still blaze and not die out in to nothingness.

When I read, when I glean through the thoughts and words of dead, past authors, I find a place where I could belong. This place is of limited spatial dimension, of transiency: those thoughts icily printed and frozen in time: alive in those finite moments of contemplation but a mere cadaver in action, in present and living. The desire to seek companionship, to seek solace, wisdom and guidance from these people is impossible and improbable. They have left the world of the speaking. This is the tragedy of finding physical real companionship – (1) they may have left, (2) you might never meet them, even if you do (3) you would eventually lose them to Death, Circumstances, Life, Time, Yourself. Maybe, this is why I have you.  You, who is always there from childhood hours to the dusk of girlhood, evolving and metamorphosing along with I.

Diaries and thoughts

I just completed What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murukami. Nothing extraordinary but I guess with thoughts, nothing extraordinary comes. Most or all thoughts are cyclical and spun from banal dust. What is banal dust? I too do not understand, but I visualize bottles of magic fairy dusts popping in and out, and banal dust is just dust; nothing of that magic quality that characterizes fairy dust and unicorn. Nothing of the mysticism that enchants and enthralls  This must sound really weird, I must sound really weird. Speaking of thoughts, I like Murukami though. Clichéd, but he resonates with the clammy hands, panic-stricken existentialist generation of our youth. Trapped in our bubble of thought and cloistered in our monasteries for the mind becomes the prison of our monasteries. We are so out of touch and reality solely because we are the imprudent sparrows and birds of flight stuck in our little Midas cages. Self-absorbed.

Fly. I want to experience life. I want to experience the adventures that come with unfettered flight and the risks of freedom. I want to experience. The world, brimming with her vitality, age, rigour and (im)mortality. What good is all the worldly, temporal, spiritual knowledge of the world when it is unaccompanied by action? I will always be a frog in the well with a tunnel vision, if I stay. I must go. Someday (soon) I shall go.

4:11pm I am not a focused writer. I get distracted very easily – I am not sure if it is my suspected ADHD* or just my nature and lack of will.  I started on C.S. Lewis’ Diaries “All My Road Before Me” *. I have been periodically reading the journals of authors, writers, poets, artists (…) and I suspect my interests for journals belie my inability to forge my future. “What do you want to become?” I get sad when people tell me they have dreams of becoming this and that, of grand dreams and ambition but when the question bounces back to me, I am stumped. I don’t know. The future looks so misty and foggy, not because I have no idea of what I want to do, but because I have too much ideas and lofty dreams. I want to write a book, I want to draw and paint, I want to design, I want to learn, I want to play football, I want to become a detective, I want to travel, interact with people from all walks of life, and I want to discover and read and read… I want to do something that can embody all I can and would become (eventually, as with the vicissitudes of time) . I will always be changing, manipulating and shaping to become another me, another I – the sums of a whole making an unfixed, imperfect whole. And no job, career or vocation seems to be able to fit the demands of my or any changing nature. To choose, I would have to compromise. Question is, am I willing to compromise?

But it helps, reading the journals of giants, of past people and their thoughts make me less lonely in my own thoughts, makes me remember that people under their pieces of masks are all essentially the same, looking, wondering, and contemplating. And in the process of reading, I steal and glean insights of these people for my own, adapt and put them into action, into my own life. Hoping that with these little tips and insights, gradually and tenderly curated, would forge a clearer path even amidst all that fog. 

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* I am still waiting for my report

* I am struck by the poignancy and timing of the book. I like to believe I am in the same spiritual vacuum that he is facing during his undergraduate years. But point is, we know where he is headed but I still can't see. 

University education for the body or the mind?

People have been telling me that a Liberal Arts education is useless because dozens of liberal arts graduates from USA comes out with no jobs. And moreover, for a conservative and traditional society such as Singapore, a liberal arts degree seems hopelessly futile.

But you know what’s wrong with today's education?

People don't chart their own education. They don't think and question.

They only think within the spheres and confines of the boundaries set by their society.

Let’s share the common basis that education is an investment, you may get greater returns and you may not. But throughout history, there have been a pretty good indication of reaping larger marginal returns from being educated, that’s why the pattern of ‘greater marginal returns’ have led people to erroneously assume that ‘If you get into college, you will be guaranteed a job.’ It’s true to some extent, because a degree used to reflect your intelligence and critical thinking.

But in our generation today, there are the unemployed, degree holders, dozens of them, What happened? The mindset of the people.

It's presumption. It's almost bordering on arrogance and superficiality but the people that undergoes the college process are what’s wrong. People come into college with the assumption that college would guarantee a job. But the reality is, at the end of the day, college is a tool. An university is supposedly meant to educate the people to become thinking global citizens and not guarantee high paying careers. University is not meant to make careers, it is meant to shape you to become a better, serving citizen and individual to the community. The high-paying career is not the true purpose of higher education, it is only an additional reward and incentive.

The problem is people take up degrees with such misconceptions and assumptions in their mind. A liberal arts education, or in fact any education, can only benefit the user when the learner knows how to apply the teachings in his or her life. Liberal arts (studying about Aristotle, Socrates, Renaissance etc.) educates the mind and the soul only if it is internalized. A Medicine discipline supposedly trains and equips the students with the specialized medical skills and the right aptitude for moral reasoning. The discourse and tackling of ethical issues are part and parcel to a Law student. All these disciplines demands rigorous and intellectual exercise of the mind.

Education is essentially all about internalization, assessment and reflection. Never study for the sake of acing your examinations or even passing it. . When you hold this belief in your mind, you limit yourself and subsequently diminish the value of the education because you are no longer studying for the joy and pleasure of learning. You no longer learn and improve your mind.

Being educated is questioning, challenging your opinions, world views and then synthesizing these lessons into your life. An university education is for the mind.

So if you go to a college having the wrong assumptions, any college degree and education would essentially be worthless. My advice? Don’t study for a sake of a degree: learn, educate yourself. The German word ‘bildung’ encompass the philosophy of a life long search and pursuit for self-improvement . See college as another station in your life long discovery and improvement and the magic will happen. You will eventually reap the greater returns.

Make the most out of your education.