Pessimist Pandora’s Myth

Recently I came across the pessimist view of the Pandora’s Box story. If you don’t already know the story, the story goes something like Pandora, a Greek goddess (I think), had a box full of the evils of the world that will plague human beings. In it was sickness, strife, war, and all ugly things. She was told strictly not to open the box. Yet her curiousity took the better of her, and she opened the box one day, unleashing the evils of the world. Knowing what she has done, she promptly shut the box, but it was too late. The evils have escaped and has started to plague the human race. Then she heard a little voice whimpering in the box, asking to be let out. Once bitten, twice shy, Pandora refused. The little voice then told her that he is Hope, and can help the humans feel better. That with all the evils and strife, hope should remain. So she opened the box and let hope out.

That was I suppose the optimist view of this story. That Hope is something to counteract the evils of this world, which is the version I grew up knowing. Recently I read a book that mentioned the pessimist view; Hope is an evil in itself, and it is a greater evil than the rest. How does that work, you’d ask me. Well, we know there’s such a thing called false hope, right? Where we get foolishly convinced of something good that will occur only to realize it will not. Frankly speaking, disappointment only exists because of Hope. When you hope for something and look forward to it, and it doesn’t happen in the way you want it to, you get disappointment. So, isn’t Hope an evil too?

Well, I guess we can argue both ways, as with most things in this world, hence the optimist and pessimist views of the same story.

On plastic surgery

I read this 100-page odd of comments on a fashion forum about how a Singapore blogger has had plastic surgery and refuse to admit it, cooking up all kinds of tales about her good looks being due to her heritage, make-up, etc. These commenters seem to hate her to the core, even talking about legal procedures concerning libel and how to go about suing her into admitting her farce. Before and after photos were rampantly posted on the thread, and let’s just say, so what if she’s had plastic surgery?

My view on plastic surgery - if you have the money and if it really can make you feel better, why not? Isn’t it cruel for us to decide that a particular sad little girl who has no self-esteem should not go for plastic surgery even if it can allow her to live with a bit more dignity and confidence? In chiding people for doing plastic surgery, and yet participating in the same societal behaviour to ostracise ugliness, we are the ones who ought to feel ashamed.

Sure, there are those who undergo too much plastic surgery that they are hooked to it. Well, in Chinese there’s a saying that goes “愿者上钩“ (only the willing shall, and can be hooked). It’s quite like smoking and doing drugs; it is not the responsibility of the people around you to keep you away from it - it is your own responsibility to say No. I guess it applies for these freaks who enjoy repeated facelifts and breast augmentations - they are the willing party, we did not force the knife down their throats.

I’m quite open to this issue, as it seems. Not that I’d want to go for plastic surgery, but I’m definitely not one of those who feels they are superior because they are au naturelle.

Why do people have children?

I still can’t wrap my mind around that issue.

Recently I passed by a parenthood fair at Marina Square, and there were many parenthood related booths around, from expensive baby formulas to immunization, diapers to playthings. What caught my attention was the cord blood banking booth. As we all might know, cord blood contains stem cells from which all cells can be borne, and is hence potentially the cure to immune diseases, and cancers. Cord blood banking is expensive, running into thousands a year. So I was wondering, if parents cannot afford to store their child’s cord blood, and most unfortunately the child might need it in future, then what happens? Whose fault is it? Maybe I shouldn’t talk about “fault”, but who will feel the most guilt? The parents, of course. Just because they did not have the financial ability to provide their child the best.

Is that what parenting is about, then? Providing the best money and time can afford? I’m sure these two sacrifices, time and money are given willingly by these parents out of sheer love for the child. Sending the child to Shicida classes at age 1, teaching  them a third language at age 2, sending them for music classes at age 3 … just so that they can become superior to their not-so-rich peers, isn’t it. The sheer love for the child translates to giving them more than a headstart, more like a false start or steroidal boost in life, so that children can become the adults ideal in the parents’ eyes.

What’s sad is that all these parents have eyes for are the future, far away beyond the horizons, and they forget to look down just before their eyes at the innocence of their child.

Fears

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, especially on my personal development and traits as a person.

Maybe to many people I come across as a person who doesn’t fear anything. I thought I was like that too, but now I realize that I have an avoidance streak for a lot of my fears. I tend to go into denial, try to will the problem away, put it off and just hope that by some stroke of luck it’ll solve itself. I think one of my greatest fear is, in a cliche Harry Potter manner, fear itself. I am afraid that my feeling of fear will affect me, and frankly, I am afraid of that feeling of fear. I really hate that split second before fear sets in - that split second when I lose rational thought and some other things take over. That split second where I mentally go “shit shit shit go away”, knowing that it’s coming. It’s usually that split second when I can pull back and tell myself to stop - but sometimes the fear is too great to ignore.

And then there are the things that invoke fear. I think I am a coward when it comes to non-resolution; in books, in movies, in life. I cannot stand not knowing how things go from a certain point. That’s probably why I say I don’t like TV serials because they go on and I don’t like cliffhangers and knowing I have to wait till the next episode. It kills a part of me. So that’s why I like shows like CSI, Bones, Numb3rs where issues get solved, and resolved in one episode. So, I guess that’s where my avoidance streak comes in - I avoid things I fear and I claim I don’t like them.

Maybe I can’t deal with ignorance. I fear not knowing things, be it scholarly knowledge or general knowledge. I used to fear telling people “I don’t know” because somehow I thought I should know. But over these recent couple of years, I’ve begun to finally realize I can’t possibly know everything there is to know in this world. So I haven’t been so afraid of telling people “I don’t know” and asking people for help. But this gives rise to another fear - I now fear that “I don’t know” will become my excuse for ignorance and not attempting to learn. While it is all right to not know things, I just don’t like it too much.

Another one of my fear is the fear of underachieving and regrets. I fear that I wouldn’t become who I should be - not like there is a preordained path for my life, but the achievable position in life for me. I fear regrets in life, they haunt me and that’s why I try hard to lead life with no regrets nowadays. For some strange reason, I know for a matter of fact I will not leave this world fully satisfied in what I will have had achieved, and yet I don’t seem to be doing very much to change that. So there’s a conflict in what I fear and what I am driven to do, and it drives me insane at times.

Yet it seems that I’ve been pretty good at managing my fears, be it fear of physical things like insects and birds, or non-physical things like those mentioned above. Few friends know that I actually fear things, lack alone know that I fear fear itself. Perhaps I can hide my fears pretty well, and appear unfazed. Yet I struggle within myself. A lot. Forcing myself to overcome them, to overcome whatever problems come my way. A friend once questioned why I never seem to tell people my problems, or whether I don’t have problems at all. I think my response was along the lines of how if I can solve them myself, why tell people about it. I guess it’s precisely this habit for self-reliance that gives me more fear - even though I know I can possibly rely on the people around me, but I myself am my first and last defence, which means ultimately I have everything to fear.

I used to hate admitting my fears, because obviously I saw it as a sign of weakness. But then again, who is without weaknesses? I guess only those who do not admit their own weaknesses are the real cowards. I am likely to continue to be self-reliant and try to handle and vanquish my fears before they take over my rational self.

Post-exam musing

Exams are over, and thus concludes my third year in university. One more year to go.

—–

That day Sulz wrote a post on what she might want a 27-year-old Sulz to tell her 22-year-old self, crossing time boundaries (and sounding eerily like The Lake House, but no matter). I responded to that post by saying that I would like my 27-year-old self to tell me that whatever choices I make regarding my academic and career life now will not come to naught. And possibly all the love I am holding back now will go to someone who deserves it.

Sounds terribly unlike the usually confident (and obnoxious) me?
But you can’t fault me when people around me create doubt in me. Children only learn to doubt after they have been doubted first. So, in a way, it’s because of how people keep asking me what I intend to do with an English Language degree that opens the Pandora’s Box. And how everyone seems to be in pursuit of the One true love, or simply, True Love, that makes me wonder if that’s something everyone should aim for in life. So I guess the best way is combat this doubt is to have an older wiser me tell me to screw them all and lead my own life the way I want it to be. Like the song lyrics I posted a few days ago, each birthday we’re just getting closer to who we’re going to be. I like that idea that somehow someday I’d just get on form, and be my destiny.

Maybe you’d ask me, how does a person who doesn’t acknowledge any divine powers believe in destiny? Good question. I guess destiny to me it’s a personal and subjective categorisation; no one can tell you what your destiny is except yourself. It’s when you feel the best about yourself, and feel as though that’s what you’re meant to do/be, and that you’d have no regrets. Then I guess that’s your destiny. We don’t know for sure when we’ll feel it, or what it’ll be, but I’m dead certain we know it when it comes.

Fakin it

A simple greeting dearth of true regard is nothing but an act of hypocrisy
based on the predominant societal obligations that I have no eyes for.
“How are you” is just fakin’ it as much as the wayward whore
just that she doesn’t shroud her ware with embellishments.

Eeyore and his melancholy

That day I was watching My Friends, Tigger and Pooh on Playhouse Disney with the niece when I caught this really interesting conversation between Piglet and Eeyore:

Piglet: Eeyore, why are you so sad? Is it because something bad happened?
Eeyore: No. I am sad because nothing good happened.

(This reminded me eerily of NSM.)

But I guess it’s all a matter of perspectives, right? If we are happy for something good that happened, then the implication is that the status quo is always something sad. If we are sad for something bad that happened, then the status quo is always something happy. Kinda reminds me of one of those “there’s no light without darkness” (or was it the other way around?) thingy.

Raindrops batting on the window

I sat on the bus home
and saw raindrops batting on the window
the sky was weeping
finally. after days of sunshine.

Seems like what goes up must come down.
Water vapour rises and falls
back to earth as rain
like all things that go around.

The trees and umbrellas bent from the storm
as though the last line of defence went down.
The people yelp when rain hit them,
but isn’t it just water?

Strange dream

Well, the Chinese have a saying, 日有所思，夜有所梦 (what you think of in the day, you will dream about at night). And I can’t emphasize how true that is. Yesterday afternoon I had this sudden revelation that I don’t know my birds and fishes (I hate using plural “fish” because I think it doesn’t make sense, unless you do the dish and make many wish). Like, I can’t tell a tilapia apart from a trout. Neither do I know what’s the difference between an eagle and a hawk. I can tell you all about mammals, but not birds and fishes (and least insects and reptiles).

And so anyway, I had a strange dream at night. I dreamt that I was in pragmatics class, and we were playing an animal guessing game, and it was all about birds and fishes. I couldn’t make out the clues, and I seriously guessed, and this particular guy, who is usually humble and quiet, kept correcting me and kept showing his superior knowledge of the birds and fishes. How disgusting.

Liver-intestine inch-break

So I’m writing this 2800-word essay on “The Chinese Obsession with Innards: An NSM approach to Chinese set phrases”. I picked out 3 set phrases (chengyu) to analyze, all involving the innards, such as the intestines or the liver or both.

The one above is a gloss of 肝肠寸断, which literally means the liver and intestines breaking off at inch-pieces. Quite the gruesome imagery, I know. Yet this constitutes one of the deepest emotions - the feel of devastation, extreme sorrow and grief. It is usually used in the contexts of death, and lost love.

I was trying to look for actual examples of this phrase in use from Google, and I was brought to this really interesting page where someone tries to compile a list of 100 most 肝肠寸断 forum signatures (but this list was entirely subjective). I picked out a few interesting ones (translations provided below each entry):

1. 你在做什么？我在仰望天空。30度的仰望是什么？是我想念她的角度。为什么要把头抬到30度？为了不让我的眼泪掉下来……
   Q: What are you doing?
   A: I’m looking at the sky.
   Q: What’s with the 30 deg angle of elevation?
   A: It’s the angle which I think of her.
   Q: But why 30 degrees?
   A: So that my tears wouldn’t fall.
2. 爱情就像乘法，其中一项为零，其结果永远为零
   Love is like multiplication, if one of the variable equals to zero, the result will always be zero.
3. 走的最急的是最美的景色，伤的最深的是最真的感情
   The most beautiful sights often leave the fastest, just has the deepest love often hurt the most.
4. 都说牛郎和织女是最痛苦的，一年只会一天；我说他们其实是最幸福的——有谁364天都被思念着呢？
   Everyone says that the Cowherd and the Weaver are pitiful because they meet only once a year, but I say they are the most fortunate because whoever else is being pined after by someone for 364 days a year?
5. 知道吗，男孩站在女孩的左边是因为那样可以离她的心更近一些
   You know, a guy should stand to the left of the girl so that he’ll be closer to her heart. (Aww.)
6. 地球之所以是圆的，是因为上帝想让那些走失或者迷路的人能够重新相遇……
   The Earth is round because God wants those who have lost their way to be able to meet again.
7. 爱情就像两个人在拉猴皮筋，疼的永远是后撒手的那个
   Love is like two people tugging hard on a rubber band; the last to let go hurts the most.
8. 如果你看到你自己的影子，别怕，那是因为你的背后有阳光！
   If you see your shadow, do not fear, for that means the sun is behind you.
9. 结婚那天你一定要来做我的伴郞，因为我们承诺过要一起走进婚姻的殿堂.
   Please be my Best Man at my wedding because we once made a promise to enter the matrimonial church together. (Aw.)
10. 我颠倒了整个世界，只为摆正你的倒影.
    I turned the whole world around just to put your shadow the right side up.
    

(I apologize for the really strange translations; I just randomly did it.)

I really like 5 and 7. One’s so sweet and one’s so real, I guess they both appeal to different sides of me.

PS: Ok, I’m thinking that 9 is weird. “伴郞” refers to the Best Man, but that usually is on the groom’s side, right? A bride does not usually have a Best Man, right? So if it’s “my” best man … then … (please draw your own conclusions) Man, that just made it sadder.