In the midst of books, I have decided to blog.

Let's talk about love. What is love? (And no, it's not a song by Haddaway...)

Love is a force governed not by ourselves. We may fall easily in and out of love and we may give a host of reasons to explain for that phenomenon but in the end, if you really ask yourself "why", you may not be able to answer it. Physical qualities (such as "I like his hair" or "I like her because she is kind-hearted") explain only part of the phenomenon. I guess the other part is based on feelings.

Feelings. What an ambiguous word.

You feel sad when the person you love leaves you; you feel happy when your lover gives you a call in the middle of the night and says that you are the most important thing in his/her life. Love is never stagnant; it is akin to a flowing river. Both of you start at a source, where the water is still pure and fresh and clear. The love you all started flows; it flows through obstacles; sometimes the river gets narrower, sometimes when there's rain, the river expands. It will get dirtied along the way; muddy shoes trudging through your river will try to contaminate the water. But still you flow. And with time, the river purges itself of all impurities once again. The river may flow through rapids, waterfalls but eventually, like all other rivers in the world, it aims to reach the sea, where there are rumours of unlimited space and freedom. The sea is a vast body of bountiful love; it is supposed to be wild, untamed and passionate. But can your river reach such a stage of nirvana?

Yes it could. But like attaining enlightenment, it is not easy. Love should never be allowed to wane, in the same way a river should never allow it's water to fall below a certain level. Such a situation is dangerous, and the river might just break into two distributaries upon an obstacle and never be reunited again.

Let the river of love flood its bank. Let it bring hope and relief to the fields along the river. Let it fertilise the soils around it. Let it provide not just for the two of you, but also for people around you. Only then will people point you in the right direction. Only then will your river reach the sea.

Well, I just finished reading my book and its funny how the ending, just a short ending, affected me so much. In a way I was pretty much sad and "disturbed" by the "happy ending"(shall explain later) and its been a while since I felt like that after reading something.

The plot revolves around a writer who abandoned his normal way of living in search of his wife, who left him with nothing and no warning suddenly. Along the way, he learned and re-learned things about himself that he did not know previously, and saw the reason for his wife's departure. He also met a person, another man, whom it was rumored that his wife had intimate relationships with. He hated that man at first, and the more he knew about him, the more he respected that man for he was on a mission to spread the message of love and had taught him a lot about the writer himself. That man told him where to find his wife, and went along with him (both of them were separated with her for different periods of time) to his native country. After separating for more than 2 years, he finally reunited with her happily. She told him that she was waiting for him all along to come and find her.

She agreed to follow the writer back to France, where they lived.

Then she said that she was pregnant. The baby belonged to the man who had guided the writer there in the first place.

I guessed this is the point I grew disturbed. No doubt this is a happy ending (reunion), but from the way the writer reacted, "I laughed, even though my heart was breaking", I could sense an overwhelming sense of disappointment. It got me thinking of what I would do if I were the writer.

Guess I am still rather conservative after all.

On the other hand, for my friend who had kept asking me what Zahir meant, this is it.

The all-powerful Zahir seemed to be born with every human being and to gain full strength in childhood, imposing rules that would thereafter always be respected:
People who are different are dangerous; they belong to another tribe; they want our lands and our women.
We must marry, have children, reproduce the species.
Love is only a small thing, enough for one person, and any suggestion that the heart might be larger than this is considered perverse.
When we marry, we are authorised to take possession of the other person, body and soul.
We must do jobs we detest because we are part of an organised society, and if everyone did what they wanted to do, the world would come to a standstill.
We must be amusing at all times and sneer at those who express their real feelings; it's dangerous for a tribe to allow its members to show their feelings.
What other people think is more important than what we feel.
Never make a fuss, it might attract the attention of an enemy tribe.
If you behave differently, you will be expelled from the tribe because you could infect others and destroy something that was extremely difficult to organise in the first place.
We must eat three meals a day, even if we're not hungry, and when we fail to fit the current ideal of beauty we must fast, even if we're starving.
We must dress according to the dictates of fashion, make love whether we feel like it or not, kill in the name of our country's frontiers, wish time away so that retirement comes more quickly, elect politicians, complain about the cost of living, change our hairstyle, criticise anyone who is different, go to a religious service on Sunday, Saturday or Friday, depending on our religion, and there beg forgiveness for our sins and puff ourselves up with pride because we know the truth and despise the other tribe, who worship a false god.
We must have a university degree even if we never get a job in the area of knowledge we were forced to study.
We must study things that we will never use, but which someone told us was important to know: algebra, trigonometry, the code of Hammurabi.
We must never make our parents sad, even if this means giving up everything that makes us happy.

Guess its a pretty long list the way the book described it. Look at it carefully and see how many of those things do we adhere in our lives. Life seems mundane when you put it down in black and white. Are we just doing insignificant things every day, without even realizing their insignificance?

Think about it.

Just an experiment that I read about in my book that I thought was pretty true...

Cordon off a small portion of a narrow pavement using tapes (to make it look like a construction site). You do not have to put anything inside the area. Make sure that there is no way to cross the pavement other than to bypass the"construction site" by going down to the road. Now, sit yourself across the road and observe.

How many people will actually go down onto the road without asking or even looking, bypass the site and then continue on the pavement after the obstacle?

Lots. Maybe nobody will dare to tear apart your tapes and go right the area.

Even though there is evidently nothing under construction within that area, people will just avoid that obstacle and rather risk their life momentarily by going down onto the road. In actual fact, I think I would do that as well. But why?

Why do we not question anymore? Why do we just accept things as they are and always try to go for the easier (though more dangerous) route? Are we really so pressed for time that we don't pay attention to details anymore?

If anyone would take a closer look at the "construction site", he would have realized that it is a hoax. There was no construction been carried out in the cordoned area and he could jolly well walk right through the pavement through the tapes without going down to the road.

That would be the person you are waiting for. The one who observes and executes his actions wisely and boldly. The one who doesn't just follow.

Will you be the one?

Guess I've been a little philosophical lately.

Alright, time to snap back.

A moment to revert. A moment to appreciate the dark.

Its amazing how different things look in the day (light) and in the night (dark). Don't believe me? Just open your eyes and look.

Tense times are over for me, at least temporarily.

The past few weeks had been hell and I am not just talking about me only. The WORLD is getting screwed over and over again. There is Mother Nature to deal with, whom in the last few months had been having symptoms as if she was undergoing menopauses; there was terrorists to deal with, whose sole purpose in the world was to help reduce the world population (hey thanks...*sardonically*) and then I heard on the news then there was another earthquake somewhere in India and Pakistan.

Lots of people had died.

Even more had been left homeless, parentless, friendless. Hopeless.

I wondered if the end of days is coming, if what we are experiencing are symptoms of the sick world. She coughed, puked, complained but yet we ignored her totally. A few days ago, I was just thinking: how many people in the world are actually aware of what is going on in the world?

My conclusion: Less than 5 percent of people will actually give a damn about what goes on in the world.

Have you ever stop and ask, "Why are there so many tragedies over the last few years?"

For a start, people must stop fighting themselves. Why do they concentrate so much energy and resources to fight others when all that could be channeled towards the complaints of Mother Earth? Or is it just a random phenomenon, as described when "everything tends towards chaos when a society is developing faster than its people"?

I don't know.

What I do know is that when there are really no fights, wars, natural disasters and epidemics around the world, we should not celebrate.

It could be the silence before the storm.

I recalled...

playing a game, a computer game, before. I was pretty much engrossed in it the whole day at that time. It was about a man looking for revenge after some baddies had killed his wife and baby. Gameplay's pretty simple, and there's one great time your character can do: he could freeze time and move in slow motion, while firing dual berratas at some idiot who just shouted your character's name. This is much like the "Matrix" effect, which happened to be very popular at that time.

Well, there was this stage in which your character gets hit from behind (by a baseball bat I think) and gets injured in the head pretty seriously (There's no way to avoid this anyway, its part of the plot). And then I found myself staring at a black screen in the next stage. There, in the centre, stood my character, all gungho and full of gusto, his hands miraculously free of weapons. There was a thin trail of blood in the black space (and it looks damn real) on which he was standing on and nothing else. A baby was wailing awfully loud in the background. Then I recalled that my character was still unconscious.

Maybe this was his dream.

And so I played on. I followed the red trail of blood, and as I turned left and right, I realized something. That wailing of the baby seemed louder when my character faced some direction and softer at others. Then it hit me that I was supposed to trace the sound of the baby in order for my character to "wake" up. While I was doing that, I encountered crossroads where I had to judge (by turning my character to one side and hearing one speaker, then vice versa. It helps when you have good speakers) the direction I have to take. My character "died in his sleep" a couple of times as well when he fell off the trail of blood that served as his path. I made my character jump from heights, run, pause and think where the sound was coming from. All the while, the crying of the baby haunted me. When I felt like giving up, my sis came in and asked me what the hell I was doing. I told her about the game and she took over the controls after convincing me she could do a better job. She did eventually, and my character managed out of the horrible black space into a.... maze. A labyrinth. She cleared that for me as well eventually. No doubt, I felt quite amazed by her ability of hearing and logic.

What's the morale of this game then? It occured to me that the developer of the game was trying to create the sense of hopelessness and "direction-less" my character was supposed to be feeling. Or so it seemed.

I didn't know why I suddenly recalled this game, especially this scene. My morale of the story for you will be: Don't play games that fxxk with your head.

"Don't play games that fxxk with your head."

I like the sound of that. Apply it to the world you are living in and you will get what I am trying to say.




(Anyway, for those who are interested, that game is called "Max Payne" and I still think it is a hellova good game. Given a chance again, I think I might be able to complete the game myself this time.)

Just a random picture I got off www.deviantart.com. Thought it looks pretty meaningful if you can see the words by the side of the picture...

"Hiding... from what's on the inside."

Aren't we all doing that?

This is just a random muse.

One of the most powerful forces that one could have is willpower.

Though it may not physically bend a spoon (except for some people) or lift weights, willpower can make or break any human being in the world.

Positive willpower enhances your resolution and prepares you for success. Even when you fall or fail, it will encourage you to stand up, dust yourself and prepare for the next race. It smiles at you when you are tired and says, "Com'on, you can do better." And so you did, and like a good friend, it will always be there beside you when times are rough.

Negative willpower is the fallen angel equivalent of positive willpower. Instead of propelling you to success, it tempts you with shortcuts and stairways to immediate results. Once you believe him, you will feel lazy, unmotivated and thoroughly wasted. When you feel like escaping, he will grin and say, "Why not just sleep? You will feel better."

Tough times are approaching people, so gather all the positive willpower you can muster in order to cross that barrier of yours. Only in this manner will you attain true ecstasy when you break that finishing line. Only in this manner will you look back at your life and not feel wasted.

"Com'on, you can do better."

This is just a random muse.

Mr Black is a current undergraduate who resides in Singapore. This blog is a non-whimsical reflection of his life and the society in which he lives in at large.

- Confidental -

Music, Love and Freedom

May the One who Reins the World keep his fingers out of the bowels and holes. Okay, World Peace.

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