Thoughts from a soggy mind - best served Cold

I’ve decided to stop writing anymore blogs for the moment…i’m just not up to it. Maybe life is just too cruel- to the point where i feel i wana enclose myself in a cocoon and shield myself from its realities : that sometimes effort, determination,and dedication are just plain obstinacy and stubbornness in disguise. If you’re not good enough, you’re not. Period.

I don’t grudge the circumstances or nature of every failure i’ve faced. But when u’ve fallen just one time too many, and too hard at that, u dun wana get up just for the sake of walking a few steps before falling again. Or maybe…..well, forget it.

Life is cruel, life is brutal. And i’m sick of writing down my thoughts - the world is dark enough without them.

The last week has been a revelation of sorts. Thinking hard over the past 7days, i realised that my resolve really wasnt as hard as i thought it would be. In the past i had no problem deciding on a course of action and then gritting my teeth through it no matter how tough. But things change. And people bring change. So much so that about 2 months from when i first made a stern resolve, i’ve now decided to do a U-turn. Maybe sometimes u just can’t fight against urself.

Perhaps the biggest mistake i made wasnt to dream but to tell myself to fight against dreaming. I now realise that allowing my dreams to go on (with a healthy dose of reality) is actually far less painful than forcing myself not to dream. After all, given that the result will be the same either way,i choose not to fight the voice within me and save the extra energy for the inevitable hurt in the end.

Given that i basically flop most aspects of my life, the search for something in which i’m actually good at is actually quite intense. Well… studies were a plus point. Sort of. But getting back the chem quiz results this week (the lecturer leaked it out), was quite a damper. Maybe by my own standards i didnt do well enuf. But in the past i would have been satisfied wif a 40/41. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that when some parts of ur life that u value the most aren’t there, or won’t b there regardless of how hard u try, there’s an increasing desire (or desperation?) for other parts of ur life to bring u more joy.

By the end of the day i know grades and scores are just mere figures assigned to u,rankings mere numbers to place u somewhere along a long line entering university. That’s why i wasn’t satisfied with the slightly imperfect score - even full marks cant compare to a real person, alive, breathing, bringing real joy- what more an imperfect one?

Some will probably think i’m a nutter. But i’d rather try to chase perfection in one part of my life than to totally drown in despair. Sure, finally realising that i was wrong (or couldnt) to stop dreaming was a big step in the right direction. But i need something to lessen the day-to-day, as well as nightly, pain of seeing and thinking things i’d rather hope were not reality. Given my natural gift(or curse) to remember like an elephant, studies seem to be the best painkiller.

Will i succeed in attaining perfection in one of the last parts of my life that hasn’t crumbled yet? Or will i die trying? Well, who cares?

After all, with one big chunk of ur soul already missing, u can’t claim to be alive despite the "no one is perfect" mantra. 

It’s kinda funny to suddenly go online again after 7 days’ absence, especially since i was used to goin on9 practically everyday in Taylor’s. Not that it’s been a dreary 7 days though, plenty of action throughout the Chinese New Year to keep my mind from straying to ‘dark’ territories….well, plenty, but not enuf. Some things just dragged my mind back there.

The first thing that was significant was a Conversation that involved a friend and I, that took place after the reunion dinner. It was dull and pretty one-sided in the sense that i did most of the talking, nevertheless it held much significance due to the content. Well, i can’t write wat i said (that would b a breach of privacy), but let’s just say i advised my friend to "back off", or, simply put, ignore his supporters and just shut up. No malice intended though, the ’shut up’ advice was for his own good. In the course of advising him, i used arguments like success-failure ratio, low probability of success, high probability of failure, and the consequences of actually babbling too much. All in all, i advised him to be realistic in deciding whether or not to go ahead with a highly risky action in which failure is not a probability but a certainty.

It was in the aftermath of that conversation that i took a hard look at myself. All i said to him, about not dreaming, sticking to reality, assesing actual probabilities of success…well, they’re my views and they’re wat i’ve bin talking about in my blogs such as in Wake UP!!!. But do i practise wat i preach? Am i really, really, doing what i said i should do? Am i really doin wat i’m telling ppl to do? Recently i came up with the slogan "Dream is dream, reality is reality" to express my views and outline my  guidelines in any future undertakings. But does it remain just a slogan? I’m afraid it does. Maybe it’s just not easy to do as you say you should, particularly when deep in your heart you know that’t not what u wana do.

The second event…that happened last nite. I went to a lantern exhibition touted to feature 15000 lanterns at a village off Banting. The traffic jam was awful and the time i had in the car, i used for personal reflection. I seriously asked myself why am I not giving in to reality despite being confronted with an insurmountable barrier? Have i really become I slave to my emotions, so much so that i cannot b rational anymore? Why fight a war i cannot win? It certainly makes no sense. But then again, nothing seems to make much sense nowadays. I did realize, though, as my car crawled through the jam, that sometimes the feeling of wanting something( a dream, a goal, whatever) can b so overwhelming that you’re powerless to stop it. Give in to my hopelessness? Maybe it’s the best solution rather than trying to convince myself to do otherwise.

And the third thing…happened this morning. It was with a great effort that i roused myself to wakeup at 4am to watch MU’s match against Blackburn. It was depressing to see MU go 4-1 down, but when RVN scored twice with 22minutes still to play for, i sat up with just a tiny spark of hope inside me. Surely, surely they can get another goal? Just one more to grab something out of nothing? Alas, hope turned to despair once again as the clock ticked away and at last, resignation of defeat took over. It was a familiar feeling, of course, having experienced it before. Wat set me thinking was this: having lost after a brave fightback which, ultimately, wasn’t enough, which was more important? The battle for pride, in clawing away for a share of the spoils? Or the stark, cold reality that regardless of the effort and passion, a defeat is a defeat? You get no points for being losers, nevermind the manner in which you lost. In a way MU’s defeat was rather similar to my own experiences : the clumsy errors under almost no pressure, and plenty of passion but in the end the quality just wasn’t good enough. So….should i take pride in the effort, or be just plain unimpressed at the lack of quality (or results)?

There’s still 3 more days to the end of the holidays. Plenty of time to chew on my thoughts and decide wat i really want. It’s been a topsy-turvy chinse new year : plenty of fun and laughter as well as moments when i’d rather rip my heart out and cry myself blind. So far, as i’m writing this piece, all i know is….well, i dun wana do wat i’m telling myself to.

Happy Chinese New Year all the same….to all my friends, wish all of you a good year ahead.