"To deride the hopes of progress is the ultimate fatuity, the last word in poverty of spirit and meanness of mind" - Sir Peter Medawar, 1960 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
One's graduation is a time to reflect upon life, and upon one's education. And I hear this term being bundled around a lot these days, of how people are settling into quarter-life crises. Of how people have no idea of what they want to do.
An article I read by a talented young writer set me thinking. In it, she talked about a friend who was the archetypal model student - straight As student, talented athlete, officer in the army and scholarship holder in the civil service. But when he was discussing his personal statement for admission into an American university, he came up with this statement.
“I have a feeling that education has taught me all about this world, but nothing about myself.”
And this statement is the crux of why we feel quarter-life crisises. An education is supposed to teach us everything that we need to function as grown-ups. At least, that is its premise, and it is something we buy into unconsciously.
Never mind the countless warning bells along the way that tell us that maybe, just maybe, education does not really prepare you for everything in life, or how little it actually does for you as a person.
For me, the warning bells came early. When I was in primary school, I was often bullied by three bigger boys for being a small kid. But because much of the abuse took place during recesses or in between breaks, none of the teachers were aware of it. One day during recess, one of them took my file and I snapped. I gave it to them as best as I could, and of course that landed me in suspension because one of them needed medical treatment. At the age of 8. And I was to get two suspensions before the year was out.
My parents came to school and scolded me for being a bad kid, but I wondered why nobody ever noticed that maybe I was a victim of bullying. It was then I realised that maybe, my teachers and my parents, people who were supposedly better educated, they did not know everything.
In secondary school, I got a lesson into the inequalities of life, and the systems that perpetuated it. A scion of a powerful family in Singapore was admitted into my class, despite being less than qualified for the school. And the teachers virtually bent over backwards to let him promote to the next year although he failed every single subject and showed no interest in doing anything other than disrupting our classes. It made me wonder why I even worked hard at all. Was it because I did not come from a distinguished background?
Now, decades on, I see that like any institution, education is not without its flaws. The purpose of education often trumpeted as an ideal has its foundations in democratic forms of government, where the emphasis is on developing rational and enlightened individuals able to collectively decide the best course for their country in the future. The focus is on developing well-rounded individuals, healthy in body and spirit, while filled with a burgeoning curiosity about life.
However, the purpose of education that is the reality here is often more harsh and unforgiving. It is focused solely on grades and other benchmarks of success, so as to funnel people into different stratums of ability. It purports to do as the fairest way to ensure that everyone gets what they deserve, that the most capable get the best jobs and hence the best lives, without recognising that many times, it is not just the most capable but the most well-connected and privileged that have the tools to fast-track themselves into those lives.
Education here is a tool to feed the economic machinery, to keep it running, and to sift out the populace into the different roles within that machinery. It takes little into account who you are as a person, it is more interested in making you into a cog within a large whirring and clicking system of gears and crankshafts. It is why upon graduation many of us are quickly funneled into large soulless bureaucracies, where we find little emotional satisfaction.
But we are humans, we are many things apart from a cog. We have hopes, aspirations and dreams, many of which cannot be fulfilled simply by being a part of someone else's blueprint for the future. But, many times, our circumstances dictate whether we ever get to break free and seek out these dreams.
I've spent much of my educational life seeing less qualified peers leapfrog over me because their parents had more money to buy better degrees for them. I've survived a less than intellectually stimulating education, mostly by pursuing my own education outside of the curriculum picking up skills and reading.
When people ask me why I didn't choose a scholarship, I simply tell them that selling oneself into an organisation should not be the only way one can get a good education. You have no idea what you are selling away, those four or more years of your life. The time and freedom you give away is often a greater price than you imagine.
Many of us are aware of what we are signing ourselves into when we decide to embark on scholarships. But we are not sure if we are ready to give up our dreams and hopes, because once we go into these organisations and become part of the machinery, it becomes that much harder to escape. We think that these organisations will help us fulfill our dreams. But years later, many find that apart from money, they grew little as people.
But if we do not choose the security and privileges that the iron rice bowl provides, we face disapproval from society in general, for being unemployed, for being jobless, for studying in less famous schools, for trying to find ourselves before others take even that away from us.
This is why I challenge that your socioeconomic status actually determines more than any one factor whether you get to live a fulfilling life, have a fulfilling education. The rush for upward social mobility is really to escape this machinery, to finally find a life that is your own. It is the reason why education is often the means to an end, rather than the end in itself.
The phrase I often hear from my friends is "I wish to be my own boss." The reason that is so is, people who do that are able to live out their dreams. Work in something they are passionate about, take time off to do things they are interested in. The rest of us, we are just tools to fulfill others' dreams.
Even in our schools, we are made acutely aware that some of us are destined for greater things, and some of us are just cogs. Look at our clubs and societies. How many are the presidents, and how many are just members. We are socialised into our future roles in society. I'm not arguing that it is impossible to make something of yourself despite your circumstances. I'm just saying that it is a lot harder to. Access to the right education determines if you will develop the right skills or meet the right people so you can do that.
As individuals, there is often little we can do about circumstances. As Mills once said, we live life feeling as though we are trapped, and by what, we are often seldom aware of. But I challenge that no matter what, it is most important to find yourself first, what you want out of life, what you really want to do. It will not be easy, it is a path fraught with failure, difficulty and probably even social disapproval.
But once you do, and you know what you want out of life, no one can take that away from you. You will seek out a life that gives you satisfaction, and the rest of that life will be filled with the meaning that all before it lacked.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Décembre.
As the end of the year comes around, one looks back at how much has passed, and how quickly. It is as though one has turned another corner in life, like many before it. Before one can flip the page to the next chapter, it is inevitable that one has to close the page on a previous one. And perhaps, that is what December is.
At this time last year, I was about to embark on an internship. And now, that same internship is a faded memory, a yellowed news photograph sitting atop a pile of books, a few news clippings carefully pressed into an old file. I go through that file sometimes, and I laugh at all the silly things I had to do to get some of those stories. What was I thinking, I say to myself. And then I laugh again.
Once in a while, I take a journey down memory lane, the product of a lively mind that enjoys a leisurely stroll through verdant green lawns filled with life's moments, recollecting sights, smells and sounds according to how I remember them. I slow down as I relive the little joys of those days, the displays of mirth that coloured my days with laughter, the tacky jokes cracked over lunch that made the girls cringe, their annoyed protestations that I now sorely miss.
However, as with many things in life, I recognise that these are all but phases, points in time, and I am happy that they happened, but I also accept that they are past, and in those fleeting moments, I feel a palpable sense of loss.
In some of those moments I truly lived, in some of those moments I wished time to stop. But although time stops for no one, I am not perturbed. I know that I will have more of these moments, and every day is a gift, a blessing, a new lease to discover new things. Things to hold dear, things to hold near, things to reminisce about over cups of tea.
And I am reminded that the next time I look back on this month, I would have graduated from university. I would be in a different place yet again, and this year would become yet another trail in the garden of the mind, one that I can wander off into on a lazy afternoon, another rabbit hole to run into, to explore till its end, where the recollection stops.
And I know that I'm getting older. The legs don't run as fast as they used to, I sleep a bit more than I used to, and I have more trouble keeping the weight off. I'm also starting to get used to the fact that I don't look like a student anymore, because no one mistakes me for one these days. The first question people pose to me now is inevitably "where do you work, and how long have you been there", when it used to be "are you still studying? what course?" I've become so used to it that when a Caucasian girl told me recently that she thought I was 15, I got so happy a grin broke out from ear to ear and I could not wipe that stupid grin off my face for the better part of ten minutes after that. The joy of being deluded, if only for awhile.
And when I see my younger friends laugh and joke about their freshman year, I'm reminded of what it was like when I was one myself. Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't wish to be a freshman again because I'm in a better place now, but their innocence and naivete does get to me at times.
How they laugh at simple things, how they make the silliest mistakes that would be funny as hell if they weren't so bothered about it, like forgetting not to print lecture slides as handouts, and landing up with 80 pages of single slide printouts, jamming the whole printing queue in school and earning the ire of just about everyone in the lab.
The peers my age, everyone's changing so fast. The topics we converse about have changed. They have started talking about jobs, about investments, about where they want to be in 10 years, married, with kids, a car and a nice flat. I miss the days when we would talk about games, soccer, girls, but I accept that my friends have grown up and so have I. Now they talk about girlfriend trouble, office politics, about old classmates that have gone different ways. Sometimes, the gloominess and angst of their lives gets to me. I don't know, is it age that brings forth their cynicism? Perhaps it's the uncertainty of youth, where the world is at your feet, but you have not found your place in it. Perhaps, your destiny is already fixed, and you don't like where you see yourself going.
Perhaps, it is all of these, or none, but it really is little of my concern. Maybe it is all just a show of hubris, a facade to mask the fact that we are all really scared little children that have been forced to grow up against our will, and that some of us have done it better than others, as some always will.
It's really so scary, being grown up. You know that you're about to enter a phase in your life where it will be more of the same, every day, a lifetime of work and commitments. And you wonder if you've lived enough, you wonder if you can still live.
You wonder if you've done enough, you wonder if that's it. You look at your dreams, and you wonder why they are still dreams. You wonder if they'll ever be anything, but dreams. You wonder if it's too late for them. Actually, you know it's already too late for some of them. You've always known. You wonder why you were once told that you could do anything you set your mind to, when you know that its not true. It doesn't look like it will happen.
Right now, some people tell me that I'm so many things, but I don't know what I am. And because of that, I don't know what to be. I don't know where I'm supposed to be, and because of that when I look in front of me, its nothing but a thick fog of uncertainty, into which I stumble, feel my way around, but I am no more sure of where I'm going in its midst than I was before. I ask the walls around me, is that it? And then I feel silly for talking. I ask my friends, but they have no answers for me, because they are looking for some themselves.
And you look at where you're expected to be in a few years, a husband, a spouse, welcoming a new little life into this world, and you get scared, because that's so far away from where you are now. You don't see yourself in it.
I'm not ready, I'm not done living for me. I'm not ready to settle, because I haven't found me.
All throughout history, people have asked about what life is. They want certainty. They want to know many things. They want to know if whatever will be, will be. Life, it's really funny. It's more than you could ever imagine, but it's also simpler than you think. As you live, you find that you change. Your dreams change. Everything that you thought important, they change. Some things become less important, others more so. But some things don't change. There is one thing that I ask myself often.
If I were 80, and about to die, what would I hope that I would be able to do.
The simplicity of that answer often surprises me. I would play my favourite songs on the piano. I would write letters and address them to all the people who matter. I would meet up with long-lost friends, to close those chapters of my life. I would eat my favourite foods. I would revisit the places that mean something to me.
If I'm lucky enough to have a wife and kids, I would tell them that I love them, and I would ask that they love themselves, and those around them. I would ask that they forgive their father for being imperfect, because there is a certain beauty and dignity in being fallible, in being just simply, human. I would ask that they never forget to laugh and smile, because life isn't ever really that hard when you do.
I would ask that someone takes a last photograph of me, with my family, smiling, happy that I was given a gift, the gift of living, of having witnessed life's ups and downs, and I would give thanks that I'd made it thus far. And I would ask that when people think of me, they remember me that way.
I would then make peace with myself, have a good laugh at the life I've had, and go.
And suddenly, I realise that everything I'm doing, it's just the journey on the way to getting there. When I'm 80, I will not remember all of the little things that I used to lose sleep over, all the silly little distractions that were really potholes on the road to self-discovery. I might then realise, that at the end of that road, maybe I've always known who I was all along, it was just about making sure.
At this time last year, I was about to embark on an internship. And now, that same internship is a faded memory, a yellowed news photograph sitting atop a pile of books, a few news clippings carefully pressed into an old file. I go through that file sometimes, and I laugh at all the silly things I had to do to get some of those stories. What was I thinking, I say to myself. And then I laugh again.
Once in a while, I take a journey down memory lane, the product of a lively mind that enjoys a leisurely stroll through verdant green lawns filled with life's moments, recollecting sights, smells and sounds according to how I remember them. I slow down as I relive the little joys of those days, the displays of mirth that coloured my days with laughter, the tacky jokes cracked over lunch that made the girls cringe, their annoyed protestations that I now sorely miss.
However, as with many things in life, I recognise that these are all but phases, points in time, and I am happy that they happened, but I also accept that they are past, and in those fleeting moments, I feel a palpable sense of loss.
In some of those moments I truly lived, in some of those moments I wished time to stop. But although time stops for no one, I am not perturbed. I know that I will have more of these moments, and every day is a gift, a blessing, a new lease to discover new things. Things to hold dear, things to hold near, things to reminisce about over cups of tea.
And I am reminded that the next time I look back on this month, I would have graduated from university. I would be in a different place yet again, and this year would become yet another trail in the garden of the mind, one that I can wander off into on a lazy afternoon, another rabbit hole to run into, to explore till its end, where the recollection stops.
And I know that I'm getting older. The legs don't run as fast as they used to, I sleep a bit more than I used to, and I have more trouble keeping the weight off. I'm also starting to get used to the fact that I don't look like a student anymore, because no one mistakes me for one these days. The first question people pose to me now is inevitably "where do you work, and how long have you been there", when it used to be "are you still studying? what course?" I've become so used to it that when a Caucasian girl told me recently that she thought I was 15, I got so happy a grin broke out from ear to ear and I could not wipe that stupid grin off my face for the better part of ten minutes after that. The joy of being deluded, if only for awhile.
And when I see my younger friends laugh and joke about their freshman year, I'm reminded of what it was like when I was one myself. Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't wish to be a freshman again because I'm in a better place now, but their innocence and naivete does get to me at times.
How they laugh at simple things, how they make the silliest mistakes that would be funny as hell if they weren't so bothered about it, like forgetting not to print lecture slides as handouts, and landing up with 80 pages of single slide printouts, jamming the whole printing queue in school and earning the ire of just about everyone in the lab.
The peers my age, everyone's changing so fast. The topics we converse about have changed. They have started talking about jobs, about investments, about where they want to be in 10 years, married, with kids, a car and a nice flat. I miss the days when we would talk about games, soccer, girls, but I accept that my friends have grown up and so have I. Now they talk about girlfriend trouble, office politics, about old classmates that have gone different ways. Sometimes, the gloominess and angst of their lives gets to me. I don't know, is it age that brings forth their cynicism? Perhaps it's the uncertainty of youth, where the world is at your feet, but you have not found your place in it. Perhaps, your destiny is already fixed, and you don't like where you see yourself going.
Perhaps, it is all of these, or none, but it really is little of my concern. Maybe it is all just a show of hubris, a facade to mask the fact that we are all really scared little children that have been forced to grow up against our will, and that some of us have done it better than others, as some always will.
It's really so scary, being grown up. You know that you're about to enter a phase in your life where it will be more of the same, every day, a lifetime of work and commitments. And you wonder if you've lived enough, you wonder if you can still live.
You wonder if you've done enough, you wonder if that's it. You look at your dreams, and you wonder why they are still dreams. You wonder if they'll ever be anything, but dreams. You wonder if it's too late for them. Actually, you know it's already too late for some of them. You've always known. You wonder why you were once told that you could do anything you set your mind to, when you know that its not true. It doesn't look like it will happen.
Right now, some people tell me that I'm so many things, but I don't know what I am. And because of that, I don't know what to be. I don't know where I'm supposed to be, and because of that when I look in front of me, its nothing but a thick fog of uncertainty, into which I stumble, feel my way around, but I am no more sure of where I'm going in its midst than I was before. I ask the walls around me, is that it? And then I feel silly for talking. I ask my friends, but they have no answers for me, because they are looking for some themselves.
And you look at where you're expected to be in a few years, a husband, a spouse, welcoming a new little life into this world, and you get scared, because that's so far away from where you are now. You don't see yourself in it.
I'm not ready, I'm not done living for me. I'm not ready to settle, because I haven't found me.
All throughout history, people have asked about what life is. They want certainty. They want to know many things. They want to know if whatever will be, will be. Life, it's really funny. It's more than you could ever imagine, but it's also simpler than you think. As you live, you find that you change. Your dreams change. Everything that you thought important, they change. Some things become less important, others more so. But some things don't change. There is one thing that I ask myself often.
If I were 80, and about to die, what would I hope that I would be able to do.
The simplicity of that answer often surprises me. I would play my favourite songs on the piano. I would write letters and address them to all the people who matter. I would meet up with long-lost friends, to close those chapters of my life. I would eat my favourite foods. I would revisit the places that mean something to me.
If I'm lucky enough to have a wife and kids, I would tell them that I love them, and I would ask that they love themselves, and those around them. I would ask that they forgive their father for being imperfect, because there is a certain beauty and dignity in being fallible, in being just simply, human. I would ask that they never forget to laugh and smile, because life isn't ever really that hard when you do.
I would ask that someone takes a last photograph of me, with my family, smiling, happy that I was given a gift, the gift of living, of having witnessed life's ups and downs, and I would give thanks that I'd made it thus far. And I would ask that when people think of me, they remember me that way.
I would then make peace with myself, have a good laugh at the life I've had, and go.
And suddenly, I realise that everything I'm doing, it's just the journey on the way to getting there. When I'm 80, I will not remember all of the little things that I used to lose sleep over, all the silly little distractions that were really potholes on the road to self-discovery. I might then realise, that at the end of that road, maybe I've always known who I was all along, it was just about making sure.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Some cool audio stuff
I really like this mashup because its so creative, but so many copies of his face rather freaks me out. But he sings well, he doesn't autotune, which already makes him better than a lot of people out there.
And, if you want to hear a time waster that is really cool, visit this link and click on the listen button
Monday, December 06, 2010
You know you stirred some shit once when...
You know you stirred some major shit once when mrbrown tweets about you. Even if the news is 6 months old, an eternity for a medium like twitter.
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Dirty Laundry
Dirty Laundry from lamebook.comThere is a wall, and there is private messaging. The perils when your parents don't know the difference.
Too many jumping in front of trains these days
The MRT train. A mode of transport, a part of the local landscape, and a modified anti-personnel weaponHas anyone realised the number of train disruptions recently due to people jumping in front of trains. Recently there was just another one at Queenstown MRT, which had the headline "Man dies after being hit."
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_608842.html
Definitely one of the stupidest and most "duh" headlines ever. One of the comments made a point - Of course the man died after being hit la, why is this news. If he got hit and didn't die, then THAT is news.
This incident really makes me wonder why people would want to go in such an antisocial way. Don't get me wrong, I'm not for people taking their own lives, but if you have decided to opt out of living, please pick a less antisocial way to do it instead of disrupting the lives of thousands, and causing trauma to those who have to witness it.
I've personally witnessed one before, and although it has no effect on me now, I would say its not a pleasant experience for those who have to see such things. I still remember the exact day it happened, and that was 8 years ago.
As for the headline, it would rival the ones that are usually put up like "Man falls onto tracks", which actually try to suggest it was an accident, when everybody knows people don't just go falling in front of oncoming trains.
One of the best studies of the phenomenon of suicides, unsurprisingly called "Suicide" by Emile Durkheim, actually suggests that its impossible to prevent them, and that the number of such cases is an indicator of structural strain in a social system. In other words, the less people feel connected to each other and the more difficult it is for people to achieve the kind of success they want in their lives, the more the rates will increase, and vice versa. As personal as the decision seems, it's really a social phenomenon.
But you know, we have a very ruthlessly efficient system here, calculated to maximise economic gain at the expense of social health. Not a bad thing, if it means we all get rich, but we'll just be inconvenienced once in awhile.
So, the only real function of putting up those barriers is not to prevent suicides, it's just to prevent disruptions to the train service, which cost a lot of money. They just want to route the suicides elsewhere. So, now it's a case of such cases coming to a neighbourhood near you.
Next time when you are walking under HDB flats, watch out for killer litter falling from the skies above.
Saturday, December 04, 2010
This is damn funny
Oprah Invites Hundreds Of Lucky Fans To Be Buried With Her In Massive Tomb
You gotta love the Onion. Especially their version of Oprah at 0:20 and the segment of her minions building the tomb.
A ridiculous facebook campaign
Recently, there has been this campaign going around on facebook that I find really ridiculous
"
I might be called a cynic for saying this, but let me highlight the reasons why this campaign is ridiculous.
1) There is more than sufficient awareness that children are being abused. It's like saying people don't know that women are being raped, old people are being robbed, wheelchair bound people are being thrown from HDB flats, actually there was just one case like that recently. The question is not whether people know about it, its whether people care enough to do something about it that actually changes things.
2) What does changing a facebook picture and invoking memories do for all these children? Raise awareness? Look at point one. Do we really need more awareness? We need action. You might argue that people will be moved by childhood memories to treat children better, but you have to realise that children can be abused in a lot of ways.
They can be abused by neglect, a lack of love and care, a lack of respect and recognition for their achievements, a misguided belief that violence is the way to discipline, none of which are causes that are likely to be helped anyway by this meaningless campaign. And the people who are likely to be moved by such a plea are not the ones abusing children. It's like preaching to the converted.
Changing a display picture is not action. Signing up and volunteering at an advocacy group is. Donating money is. So is caring for and loving your own children. If you really cared for the cause, you would do one of the above instead of trying to appear socially conscious in a misguided attempt to shore up your social image. Everyone wants to look like they care about social issues, but seriously I'm not impressed. The day it becomes more about the cause and less about your image, talk to me again.
3) If you really cared about the cause, why should this last till just Dec 6? Because children stopped getting abused after that? Because after that people don't need awareness any more? Why not keep the picture there for good? Because you can never spread enough awareness if that's your point isn't it?
4) You know what, maybe I'm going to start liking the pages of all these advocacy groups so people can see that I'm like really socially conscious. Like I love the environment, I love children so much I can't bear to see them being abused, I love cats, dogs, pandas, cheetahs, random critters from the games I play that I sometimes blow up with bombs and missiles but I love them anyway.
Yup, it's a hollow gesture. Maybe that's why I'm not in advertising.
"
I might be called a cynic for saying this, but let me highlight the reasons why this campaign is ridiculous.
1) There is more than sufficient awareness that children are being abused. It's like saying people don't know that women are being raped, old people are being robbed, wheelchair bound people are being thrown from HDB flats, actually there was just one case like that recently. The question is not whether people know about it, its whether people care enough to do something about it that actually changes things.
2) What does changing a facebook picture and invoking memories do for all these children? Raise awareness? Look at point one. Do we really need more awareness? We need action. You might argue that people will be moved by childhood memories to treat children better, but you have to realise that children can be abused in a lot of ways.
They can be abused by neglect, a lack of love and care, a lack of respect and recognition for their achievements, a misguided belief that violence is the way to discipline, none of which are causes that are likely to be helped anyway by this meaningless campaign. And the people who are likely to be moved by such a plea are not the ones abusing children. It's like preaching to the converted.
Changing a display picture is not action. Signing up and volunteering at an advocacy group is. Donating money is. So is caring for and loving your own children. If you really cared for the cause, you would do one of the above instead of trying to appear socially conscious in a misguided attempt to shore up your social image. Everyone wants to look like they care about social issues, but seriously I'm not impressed. The day it becomes more about the cause and less about your image, talk to me again.
3) If you really cared about the cause, why should this last till just Dec 6? Because children stopped getting abused after that? Because after that people don't need awareness any more? Why not keep the picture there for good? Because you can never spread enough awareness if that's your point isn't it?
4) You know what, maybe I'm going to start liking the pages of all these advocacy groups so people can see that I'm like really socially conscious. Like I love the environment, I love children so much I can't bear to see them being abused, I love cats, dogs, pandas, cheetahs, random critters from the games I play that I sometimes blow up with bombs and missiles but I love them anyway.
Yup, it's a hollow gesture. Maybe that's why I'm not in advertising.
Friday, December 03, 2010
I knew somebody was going to spoof this.
Thanks Mr Brown, for giving this rubbish commercial the treatment it deserves.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)