Maybe-great future quotes by me Draft 1

"When we need a story and don't have it, we push ourselves to the edge. We squeeze, wring our brains dry of any remaining juices so that we can complete production. We do this assuming we are the source from which the story springs. But we're not. Writers are vehicles, vehicles of language and vehicles like any other. They need something to push them forward: fuel, gas, inspiration. To get that gas, they have to do what, in my opinion, is the most effective thing they can actually do in the long run, which is simply to read: Read enjoyable things. Read the things that nourish your soul and fertilize your mind. Good stories add to the "list of ingredients" that makes us who we are, and which we draw on to create new stories." -Lengthy reiteration of what many writers have said or thought in some way or another

For further consideration:

To do something great, you should either have everything, or have nothing.

To do something great, it is optimal that you have either everything or nothing.

Menial Work

Me and Aloysius

Ooi, Yongjie, and Brendan on ORD day

Half of Shift 1 from some Squadron Event; Warren Rama in the center

(There are certainly more "risque" pictures, but I shall decline to put them up for now.)

Initially, upon graduating from BMT, I was really depressed. I'd found out that the unit I had been sent to was the SBAB Field Defense Squadron, a unit of Regimental Policemen (RP) assigned to guard the airbase premises.

Security guards with special titles. It made me feel small. I had graduated from one of the toughest BMT units in my day, Ninja Company. We were supposed to be the best. I was supposed to be one of the best. I had entered it a scrawny and clueless kid who couldn't tie ropes or sign his own name to save his life. I left it... well I left it tougher than I was before. I was hardly what you'd call outstanding, but I felt I could proudly call myself "one of them."

1 year and 7 months later, my perspective on this had changed. I had spent the time doing unglamorous, repetitive things, but in that time I had also met people who changed the direction of my life permanently, and for the better. Aloysius, Brendan, Ooi, Yi Cheng, and so many others... I was a quiet and reserved person, coming from a generally quiet and reserved family. The people in my unit were open, frank, and warm in character. Meeting them changed my approach to people completely. It taught me to be warmer and more open to people, and to be comfortable in basking in the warmth of others. I learned to smile more, and that energy made me more proactive and confident. I think it was a big part of what helped me to do well in the first semester of school.

All that time spent at FDS involved menial work, but it was through that outwardly meaningless routine that I experienced how warm and trusting people can be.

Things haven't been so great, lately. As with all things in life, there have been great successes and terrible failures along the way. For a lot of reasons, there are some once-close friends in university who no longer speak to me. I did my best to fix a lot of these problems, but many times I was misguided, and I made mistakes. I can't believe two years have passed since then. Leaving those most popular, and admittedly genuine, groups of friends, I withdrew from the Sociology community as a whole. I felt like an outsider, like a reject for the first time in my life. Before that, I'd never thought about things like being in or out. It was only after getting in that I could fear the thought of being left out, or experience it for real. It made me lose confidence in myself. Avoiding interaction... avoiding connection and communication became a first instinct.

Looking back, I can't say I regret what has happened. Not because I think I was right in those matters, but because I was immature and had plenty of mistakes to be made.

In spite of all these things, God has been unfailingly good to me. That's something I hesitated to say in the past, but I think I'm just less inhibited now about mentioning it. And I mention this not out of disrespect to my friends of other religions or belief systems, but simply because this is a big part of who I am. I wish we could discuss it more at times, the things that happen that seem serendipitous and out of this world, that may or may not be owed to tides of chance and fortune, that may or may not point to the existence of a being greater than we are capable of imagining.

Things haven't been so great lately, but oddly it is not great revelation or earth-shaking miracle that makes me take heart, but menial work. Recently, I had a project where I had to give out 20 minute surveys to people. This involved me receiving a lot of flak from irate friends forced to take part. It also involved a lot of walking up to strangers and attempts at interacting in a friendly and approachable way.

I ended up doing something I hadn't done in a long time: smiling and bantering with others. It was time-consuming and admittedly low-value work, but in the midst of that I smiled and laughed with a fair number of people. It pulled me just a little bit out of the shell I'd cowered into.

For me, it was a reminder that there is value in many things that we don't immediately see. There's always something to be learnt or gained from all of our detours or daily activities. What helped me best in times like these was keeping an open mind, and trying my best to be clear about the meaning behind what I was doing.

Okay out of brain juice. End of post.

An Open Mind

This picture summed up a lot of the thoughts I'd been having recently about open-mindedness. A life full of assumptions, especially the assumptions we cling to out of compulsions, is empty. Assumptions built on reductive thinking, dismissals, and desperate distortions of thought (thought lacking integrity; hypocritical, incongrous thought) can lead to a world of misery.

Assuming things about others that aren't true, and assuming preconceived things about ourselves, can lead to a lot of pain. For me, that pain takes the shape of paranoia and depression. I feel frightened by my imagination of what others think of me. I feel mortified to see how far away I am from becoming what others expect of me. I despise them, and in doing so I despise myself for taking that seat of judgment, for hating others based on what a part of me knows are false assumptions about their character.

Recently, I went through a period where my automatic reaction to the works of others (and other people, more generally) was dismissive, or excessively critical and belittling. I would look at an article or piece of written work and feel nothing positive toward it: no feeling of engagement, no sense of wonder, no joy. Nothing. Instead, I often shifted into this cold, critical mindset. I would look at these works of others dispassionately, look down on them haughtily. I would only see the flaws. I didn't care at all for the content of what was written; none of it stimulated my thoughts or my imagination. When I saw these written works, my eyes were fixed on the way they were written, how well the words and sentences held up when read.

I became fixated, reading the words out aloud compulsively to the point that my voice would go raw from overuse. I would see words I did not know, and I would search for their meanings, not out of a sense of curiosity, but out of a desire to cover to a gap, to have no flaws.

I was obsessed with how the writing held up... and I was obsessed with myself, how well I measured up against those works. How much I was worth, compared to those people.

Dismissing. Belittling. Writing off. Ignoring. I was doing a lot of it. At the time I had no idea why. I would feel critical or judgmental easily if I heard comments that sounded false or prejudiced to my ears. It was also harder than usual for me to accept the criticisms or differing views of others...

I don't know when I started to snap out of that reductive and narrow frame of mind, but I do remember some of the things that happened that coincided with this change:

1) I had a realization that there is no one who has wiser ways than God, and that true wisdom on our part begins with acknowledging the fact of God's superior wisdom... Accepting this helped me a lot in areas of my life where I had been struggling to obey him for some time. By extension, it helped me to be more open to learning from people here on earth as well.

2) I told my Mom how I was honestly feeling about the future and my prospects.

3) I came to a feeling of peace within myself, admitting to myself (and to God) that I simply "did not know." I did not know what my plan for the future. I did not know if I would score well for this final semester. I did not know if I would be able to write a good play. I did not know what the future had in store for me.

4) I accepted that whatever happens with job searching, happens. I realized that my life didn't end or begin with a job, and that I couldn't keep avoiding my friends forever. I started talking with others again.

As far as I can tell, I was rejecting and criticizing others out of a self-imagined feeling of being criticized and rejected. I wanted to be sure of things; I was desperate to be correct...

I used to think that open-mindedness was an innate character trait possessed by some and lacking in others, but now I see that it also has to do with how confident you are in yourself (it reminds me of something Chris mentioned before. We need to be confident enough in ourselves if we want to feel good without having to make others small. When we have that confidence, we can recognize the true value of others and their ideas with unbiased eyes.

Beyond that, we also have to keep connected with others, honestly connected on emotional and intellectual levels. The hurried life is always threatening, pressuring us constantly to place things and people in tiny, convenient boxes. It tells us to do this to maximize on-demand, practical value, to treat one thing in one way to achieve one kind of task. But the truth of any one thing is always bigger than what we need it to be, and engaging unlike-minded others with frankness helps us to confront this problem head-on. We need their perspective as a counter-force against the reductive and thought-narrowing effects of isolation and acquisition-oriented, linear thinking. Real togetherness (as opposed to agreeableness) fosters a vitality-infusing mental biodiversity.

I also think we need to have the courage to face our problems and fears, and in doing so, maintain our mental integrity. We need to be willing to challenge our own suppositions and honestly question ourselves on the ethics, rigor, and truthfulness of our thought processes. We need to be bold, to not be frightened by thoughts of what is 'necessary' for survival. We need to be disciplined, to not be tempted by thoughts of what is 'easier'.

I went down a road of intellectual dishonesty once when I did my FYP. I didn't tell any outright lies, but I looked away from a lot of things. I decided to ignore a lot of questions that I shouldn't have. I never lied to any of my respondents in a literal sense, but I did take up their time for a project which I increasingly began to feel was not meaningful in the least. I was desperate. I caved in, intellectually and spiritually. The knowledge of that nearly killed me, nearly killed a living and very real part of me forever. (Post-edit: That sounds terribly dramatic, eh? But I guess what I was trying to say was that after that, it became hard for me to think clearly or truthfully because I had gotten so used to forcing my thoughts to agree with some kind of preconceived, shallow proposition.)

Being able to admit to myself that I was wrong saved me from that. Knowing that my God was a God of forgiveness and mercy saved me from that, and I just hope that whenever I forget, He will be there to remind me to choose to be honest for as far as it is right to do so...