It's been a long time since I felt such a sense of loss. Or I should say, it's probably the first time I ever felt so lost.
Reality feels unreal. There is a lack of texture to its entire makeup. A big gap is waiting to be filled in my heart. Never in my life have I felt so deeply immersed in self-denied acceptance of who I feel I am.
Staring into blank space, I am compelled to keep my thoughts going. Friendship first comes to mind. Where have my old friends gone? Why does it feel so difficult to sustain a proper 2-hr conversation with close friends whom I meet up with? And how much worth is there in investing so much time on new-found relationships that might not even withstand the test of time anyway?
There is nothing to fear in the sense of solitude, since I know even a lone soul can bask in rejoice. But when memory fails me - when I look at words written in the past years and find myself not being able to remember those episodes, or not being able to experience those intense emotions at the critical moments, that's when I really feel alarmed. Life cannot and ought not simply proceed forward in a continuous, linear fashion. Without reminiscence, or the ability to do so, where is the value in life lived? Where does one find the confidence for self-assertion?
Moreover, how can I become a competent teacher if I have nothing left to fall back on? Moving forward, I ask myself, what is it I want for my future generation? Surprisingly I find no answer - at least, I am not strongly convinced by any of the responses that come to mind. Those convictions that determine a well-lived life for my own existence cannot be easily extrapolated to fit the younger ones, for the simple reason that I am neither totally pragmatic or eclectic - definitive values that is commonly seen as characteristic of mainstream Singapore. I mean, it is scary when you see two toddlers playing with each other, and the first thought that surfaces is not hope or cuteness but how they are going to end up as competitors for money, scholarships, social mobility, resources and any other factors that underlie notions of success in the globalized market economy. Yet I know that this is the reality we face as young Singaporeans. I am thus perplexed by what has always been in the evolution of our species, and what constitute novelty in the 21st-century context. As such, I have no idea if we are really going the right direction in the way we are framing our responses and policies to the civic, moral, ethical and ontological needs of our era. Am I even asking the right questions - that is the question.
Old networks awaiting renewal, new relationships in need of strengthening; Old memories disintegrating, new memories unrecorded and unaccounted for; Insufficient faith in old convictions meeting the expectations of a new brand of modernism transcending cultural and national borders - how can I not feel bothered? How do I find myself?
I am seriously lost, in my own thoughts, in my own world.
2011年1月30日星期日
2011年1月15日星期六
Musings of the day
1) I was reading a report on education reforms as Dad kept asking, 'what do you want to have for dinner tonight'. Suddenly I was jolted out of a hazy dream.
The epiphany: At the end of the day, policies are never just intellectual arguments. It is about the welfare of millions of Singaporeans, like having a good job to put food on the table. So it becomes a matter of life and death.
2) The younger generations, particularly the post-2000, often make me apprehensive about the gap between our style of education and their everyday realities. But as I thought back of my own experiences, I saw a great connection between what I had and wanted to have, with what the kids have today. It then dawned on me that my job wasn't really managing a new breed of unfamiliar human species at all. Rather, it is re-thinking what I would consider fundamental lessons from the past collective experience, and coming to terms with long-held dreams turned into reality.
The epiphany: At the end of the day, policies are never just intellectual arguments. It is about the welfare of millions of Singaporeans, like having a good job to put food on the table. So it becomes a matter of life and death.
2) The younger generations, particularly the post-2000, often make me apprehensive about the gap between our style of education and their everyday realities. But as I thought back of my own experiences, I saw a great connection between what I had and wanted to have, with what the kids have today. It then dawned on me that my job wasn't really managing a new breed of unfamiliar human species at all. Rather, it is re-thinking what I would consider fundamental lessons from the past collective experience, and coming to terms with long-held dreams turned into reality.
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