a moment

From: Grace Choong
To: ******** ****** <**********@gmail.com>
Date: Feb 21, 2006 1:23 AM
Subject: Re: ok..

it's amazing isn't it how people can get so caught up in fervour and passion and be totally blinded by ignorance. again this just sums up the reality of the world we live in doesn't it? everything is teetering in a delicate balance.. in some ways we don't know what to expect anymore. maybe we never did. forces from every direction, pulling and constraining and fighting for our affections and ultimately, our souls. sometimes i feel lost in all the ideas and opinions that i'm exposed to over here. every other person proclaiming the latest fashionable ideology in my face. i'm torn into a million pieces. my world is constantly being deconstructed and when that happens at too fast a pace i feel as though i'm hurtling through the universe at top speed, into an abyss.. unsure of what lies at the end of the fall.

(yet in the end, there are always arms of love to catch me.. and i think in the past few days i've been repeatedly reassured of that. and perhaps this knowledge is the one thing that keeps me going)

i'm pressed into a position to make up my mind. in the midst of the conflicting forces that yell for my attention, i am pressured to get off the fence. To make a stand and squeeze out: what the hell is it that i truly believe in? i think in some ways i'm experimenting with a whole lot of ideas and theories.. and now more than ever, there is much need for truth.. to serve as a sword to piece the darkness and confusion that cloud our thinking and outlook, to navigate and fight through the bullshit and to get to the core of it all: the one thing that makes life worth living. What is the one passion that underlies our being, the essence that gives meaning to the dust that we are, that exposes superficial thoughts and actions for what they are, and that brings us closer to truth.

(Queue "x-files" theme song.. doo doo doo doo dooo dooooo)

:)

so today we went to watch jeremy irons do a quasi-monologue in this play called "embers". it's pretty good i hope you'll get to watch it as well. in some ways it was more terrifying than a horror movie, because the themes it explored were basic and fundamental to the human heart: love, passion, betrayal, friendship, revenge, bringing the existential us to our knees. One thing he mentioned which i remembered was, this question that he put forward: if you really love someone, can you bind them to the promise of fidelity? Because the fact that they engage in infidelity means that your love was not enough to make them happy.. and so if you really love them and want them to be happy, you would not bind them to such promises. (paraphrase mine)

scary.

i think i'm finding it more and more necessary to love. K, (one of my floormates) tells me that i'm too sincere and trusting for my own good. Apparently i can't live in the real world full of dogs and rats. I should find some place idealistic and fine and dandies to live and "do my own thing" there.. Like mars, i suggested. And he said, yea.. like mars. Mars would be a good idea, he thinks.

we were kinda dissecting the play and he was saying how it's a really sad play but it's stuff which he already knows about.. that life is empty and we are all animals and all we live for is to survive. And me, of course, trying to convince him otherwise, that we are more than animals.. that we have to live inspired.. and that we are not here to merely survive.. but there is something great worth living for.

and after a while he just said (we were on msn chat. he was upstairs and i was downstairs in the basement), "i'm coming down. i can't type anymore" and he came down and i think he wanted to talk further but there were people in the room and we couldn't..

but i'm more and more convinced that there is really no other way to live and to counter the evil in this world. I'm committed to a life of non-violence. i'm a christian pacifist. i condemn the war in iraq and the (real or imagined) war in malaysia. i do not support the rights of particular indigenous peoples.. i support freedom in the widest possible sense of the word for ALL. I hate ethnic divisions. I particularly dislike putting people in a box attached with labels. I still want to believe the best in people.

I think I'm at that stage when i'm really really sorting out for myself what i truly believe in after all the constant construction, deconstruction and restructuring of my cosmology. I've got miles to go. lol.

But.. i gotta start somewhere.

Waking up is the word. Hibernation's over.

love,
g.