So What's Next?

Today marked the day that I have completed one and a half years of my college life, and I recall that just around after half an hour after the paper ended, sitting there on a bus back to Kent Ridge reflecting the horrible monstrosity that had befallen upon me, I thought to myself So what's next? There and then, I found out I really had no idea. I think it was easy for anyone to want freedom when it was taken away, but once it's served back before him, one may not necessarily know what to do with that much desired freedom. For example, I had been relishing in the idea of watching videos on the Internet about things that I took interest in, but once I had actually the time to do all those things, I realised that I had no clear specifics as to what exactly I wanted to watch. The fantasy always tastes better than does the reality. Indulging in reverie is always better than indulging in the activity itself.

So I went on TED, for whatever reasons-- I had no idea-- but guess it didn't matter since now I had a hellot of time to kill anyway, and I managed to come across some talks that sort of changed my overall idea of living. Here's the thing, there are so many things happening around us that we can participate in, unfortunately, somehow, due to some inertial force of our habit or something, we tend to fixed ourselves to the things that we are familiar with. There's this sense of comfort that we revel in-- a sense of safety, or even an urge for self-protection and self-preservation-- that we get in sticking with things or ideals that we've been holding onto for as long as we can remember. However, if we don't continue to stretch our own boundaries, our perception about living are going to turn inevitably and unnecessarily parochial.

Parochial thinking can be odious and dangerous when we end up not realising there's so much more to life and living, more things in which we can indulge, and perhaps more importantly, more things that we should worry about. Parochial thinking makes us do things irrationally, which may hurt us in the long run. Hope I'm not being preachy here (good god, I hate being preachy), but if you managed to read this post till here, and to stick by it, I guess you don't hate me so much for sounding what I'm sounding now.

So here's my story. In every teenage life, there's always that phase where we want to get a clear identity of who we are in a group, a clique, a community, what have you. In search of that identity, we then to keep it, in one way or another, one dimensional, because otherwise it may become too complex and uncertain, and we ended up not having that thing by which we want to be known as. I was once obsessed to be the class clown. Funny? No. The bad thing about this way of thinking is that we inexorably fixated, and sometimes even against our own better judgment, with that trait we oh-so try to claim. When I felt that I wasn't making a fool of myself, and oftentimes such feeling is pretty much self-imposed, there's that paranoia that I'm not meeting that benchmark that I set for myself. Does this behaviour make any sense? No. Because it's irrational. We often place much importance to things which we either love, or think we can't live without, to an extent that it becomes (almost) self-destructive. I'm a scorpio, so it's a given for me. We forget that we should never feel the need to have a specific identity because we, as determined by our genomes-- by our very own nature-- are complex beings. To water down ourselves to something else is not gonna do us any good. But it's hard, and often such acceptance or realisation doesn't hit us until maturity hits, and maturity is often illusive, too illusive.

This would sound rather juvenile, but picture this. You're in this cold room together with a hundred or so of your peers. In front of you, a couple of booklets, and a question paper. After whispering prayers to the gods of hope, luck and the bell curve, you hear the invigilator says You can start now. You take long, deep breaths. Three questions, choose two. You're flipping through the pages. Your eyes darted around the four corners of the page, parsing every sentence, trying to link this mess before you with something that you've spent the past two weeks studying. Nothing. Nothing pops to mind. Everything is iffy, and fifteen minutes later you realise you're still at square one, if not square negative one because now you're so flabbergasted by the whole quagmire. You turn your head to your side, the brother next to you is scribing something on the paper, rather furiously, with his eyes piercing through both the question paper and the answer booklet with an intensity which you wish you had at that moment.

Then it dawned on me, I was alone. There was nothing and no one to help me but myself. Nobody. I knew at the back of my head that this two and a half hours may alter the course of my life pretty drastically, not like in the 'I want a get an A, otherwise I'm a worthless lowlife' kinda way, but really, there were important things at stake here. I am one of those people who are forced to grow up at a very early age. I can elaborate and dwell on that, but pretty much it's none of anyone else's business. But trust me, it's pretty traumatic and dramatic, more so than your usual growing up story. I'm one of those kids that are so well brought up, that being bad or reckless is not something that comes easy. Most kids do bad things, and get scolded. End of story. Clean and simple. Me? I'm one of those kids who know that my parents will not justly reprimand me, so the thought of having to see their disappointed faces, as subtle and poorly hidden as their expressions will be, makes me kick myself in the tail. And perhaps undeservingly so. I have to punish me because no one else does.

This is another point that I think most people are rather misled. Often people assume that being bad is easy, that being good is hard. I think this is misconceived. When was the last time you wanted to wear something which you knew made you look like an a-hole-- but you like-- something that you knew would make people talk, but decided to wear it? When was the last time you went to buy a book, or a thing you knew you didn't need, or a cup of bubble tea that cost three to four times its inferior substitute without feeling the guilt of squandering your (parents') money. I'm sure you've done all those things before, but did and could you do it without a smidge of guilt? And when was the last time you decided not to do things that you wanted to do for reasons that are not quite you? Being bad is harder than it seems.

So back to that cold execution chamber, I mean, examination room, I had my reasons for suddenly realising there and then that I was screwing up. After around half an hour of being stuck in square (negative) one, what I was doing was yelling at myself in my head Calvin Magnus, just goddamn write something. What you write now it's not gonna be worse or better than that which you're gonna write five minutes from now. Just start. Now. The problem here is that why didn't I feel it like two weeks, one week, three days before, where there was still time to change things? Why didn't I have the fixation or obsession with this thing which clearly can and will change my life-- the thing that really, as a matter of fact, matters? Why were my reverie, my mind and my aspirations diverted to something else?

This is irrational. And I've been so for the longest time. It's easy to say that irrationality is part and parcel of what passion entails. Passion is irrational, or at least it makes us behave irrationally. This is pretty much so because I've been sort of dwelling within that inertial boundary of comfort, that I made excuses for my studies because why? Because I dance. Dance was the main dish, and school is just the sauce that I can do without. So, so-to-speak it was almost tantamount to me indoctrinating myself, creating a reality based on that parochial ideology. And as a result I fell so hard for it-- dance, of course-- perhaps too hard. Some people will argue with me that you do not dispute your sacrifices that you've made for your passion. Otherwise it's not your passion. However, I think it's ok to love something so much, but you cannot let your love blind you from other things that are happening in life. I cannot let myself to be so. In other words, that passion cannot make me one dimensional, well at least not anymore. I once was enthralled with the idea of reading law in university. My parents wanted me to do engineering, but I went against their wishes, and chose what I wanted to do-- and I worked hard for it. I cannot now relinquish that tight grip that I've worked hard to establish just because I found a new love for something else. Yeah, yeah I know, when I chose to enter law school, I knew no shit about the law or how boring it could be, but nonetheless, there was something in me that was drawn to it, and I have to revisit that feeling.

Two and a half years from now, upon graduation, I would not be dancing anymore. Correction, I would not be able to dance anymore. It's not something that I want to happen, but at the end of it, it's something that's unavoidable. Yeah, this should therefore give me the drive to make the most of the time I now have to revel in that passion, knowing that my dance days are numbered. But that's exactly the reason why I can't let it take over me. It's not who I am. I'm not one of the people who trod in the path of those who end up making it their living. I wasn't born in that situation. And it's unwise for me to even try to make it more than it is, especially at the expense of other things which make my life my life. It's easy, fun and exciting to throw yourself into something that you love. It's hard to contain yourself within a boundary that you draw for yourself. I mean, where and how do you draw the line? Where and how do you start?

This change in perception is important for me because I want to stave off the fear of not knowing what I will become when I graduate. I always imagine myself upon graduation, I put on that black blazer, the black tie, the black court shoes, waking up at 8 a.m. to go to the firm I'm working for; my superior hands over this stack of files for me to read and analyse, asks me to pass up a 3000-word memorandum at the end of the week; and I then go What? How?-- plus the stupid expression. We think that upon graduation we will be reasonably equipped to do the job that we are prepared for, but at the rate that I'm going right now, it's not gonna happen. The mentality of studying just to pass the exams is stupid. I have to internalise, as much as my human capacity and drive allows, to internalise the idea behind what I'm tasked to do. I want to be ready at the end of it all.

So, like I said at the beginning, what's next? No, I'm not suddenly gonna throw my passion off the window, and change my life 180 degrees. That's never going to happen. I think the change that's happening to me now is that within this short-lived period in which I can do what I love, I would do it to make me happy. Right now, being happy is to know that I'm not jeopardising my future squandering an opportunity that I've worked my tail off for the past years. Being happy is to do things that I want to do, simply because I want to do it, and to not do things, simply because I don't want to do it. I do not want to do something for the reasons that are not quite me. I have to be a good enough reason for my decisions. I may disappoint others in the course of doing so, but here's the thing, I can disappoint others either way, so let me disappoint in the way that allows me to be happy. It's selfish, but ain't that the point about living?

I mean, whom do you live for?

Ole!

Elizabeth Gilbert is an incredible human person. I wanted to say 'incredible writer', but she is more than just a writer. She is a genius, the woman behind the book-turned-movie sensation Eat, Pray, Love. The memoir sort of reads like how Hermann Hesse would have written Siddhartha, has he been born a woman in contemporary American society. Anyway, I'm not here to talk about the book. I am writing to talk about Gilbert. She is a person who has gone through a lot, and after the freakish success of her book, people are giving this suicidal vibes to her, insinuating the terror that what if her biggest success in her life is behind her. On defence of the fragile human psyche-- her fragile human psyche-- she talks about how she cope and maintain her sanity on TED:

It's like this. Centuries ago, in the deserts of North Africa, people used to gather for this moonlight dances-- sacred dances with moonlight and music-- that would go on for hours and hours until dawn. And they're always magnificent because the dancers are professionals, and they were terrific. But once in a while, very rarely, something will happen, where one of these performers would become transcendent. And I know you know what I'm talking about, because I know you've all seen, at some point in your life, a performance like this. It's like this: time would stop, and the dancer would step into some kind of portal, and he wasn't doing anything different than what he had ever done a thousand nights before. But everything would align. All of the sudden, he would appear to be no longer merely human, you know, he would be lit from within, lit from below, and all lit up on fire with divinity. And when this happen back then, people knew it for what it was, and they called by its name. They would put their hands together, and they would start to chant Alla! Alla! Alla! God, god, god.

That's god.

Curious historical footnote: when the Moors invaded Southern Spain, they took this custom with them, and the pronunciation changed over the centuries from Alla! Alla! Alla! to Ole! Ole! Ole! which you still hear in bullfights and flamingo dancing in Spain when a performer has done something impossible, and magic. Alla, Ole, Ole, Alla, magnificent, bravo, incomprehensible, there it is: a glimpse of god.

Which is great, because we need that. The tricky bit comes the next morning, right, for the dancer himself, when he woke up and realised that it was Tuesday morning, 11 a.m., and he's no longer a glimpse of god. He's just an aging mortal with really bad knees. And may be he's never going to ascend to that height again. And may be nobody will never chant god's name again when he spins. What is he then to do with his life?

This is hard. This is the most painful reconciliation to make in a creative life.

But may be it doesn't have to be so full of anguish, if you never happen to believe in the first place, that the most extraordinary aspects of your being came from you, that may be if you just believed that they were on loan to you from some unimaginable source for some exquisite portion of your life to be passed along when you're finished to somebody else. And if we think of it this way, it starts to change everything.

What I have to keep telling myself whenever I get psyched up about that is: Don't be afraid. Don't be daunted. Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be. If your job is to dance, do your dance. If the divine, cock-eyed genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed for just one moment through your efforts, then Ole! and if not, then do your dance anyhow-- and Ole! to you nonetheless. I believe this, and I feel that we must teach it.

Ole! to you nonetheless just for having the same sheer human love-- and stubbornness-- to keep showing up.

An extraordinary statement. The length to which she goes to craft this protective psychological construct is mind-boggling, and the way she puts everything so elegantly, I think, is incredible. Anyway, for me, watching other people dance has had this sort of paranormal impact on me, and I see it as an honour and a privilege to have been able to be moved so deeply by the way other people dance. Some people never have been, and perhaps would never be. However, what's incredible and at the same time humbling is to be told that I've made an impact on others in a remotely similar fashion. Perhaps they said it in passing as something to fill up the conversation, perhaps they never meant it, which would then make it ludicrous for me to now be so affected by it. But anyhoo, for my sanity, if I really did so, I thank you. I know it's not about the technique or anything along that line. It's about that fleeting moment that Gilbert said to be 'exquisite' where the connection is formed, and the artistry is conveyed. I may never have that ever again, so thank you.

No Right Answer

If there's anything they teach you in law school, it's that there's no such thing as a right answer. The answer to everything is simply It depends. On what? Well, all the professors concurred that It depends on who's paying you and how much. This post could have and should have been a thousand-word post about my seemingly fruitless struggle to overcome this Everest piled up before me, but I remember what my mummy always says A picture is worth a thousand words. Well, may be she didn't really say those words exactly. Anyhoo, I think this picture sums up what I want to say pretty stylistically-- and I think it's worth a thousand words, and a good laugh. I give it an A+.

Fill In The Blanks: I Am ______ .

Yeah, I am.

We Are Dancers

We are dancers. Our body means to us more than anything we'll ever acquire in our lifetime. To us, it is not simply a hollow shell in which the soul reside. It is the sole instrument through which that soul is fed and fulfilled. Our body, of course, is ours. We've lived in our body our whole life. You would think that we had total control over it, wouldn't you?

Unfortunately, as we dance more, we learn that our body has its limits— and we learn that the hard way. That our body doesn't work in the way that we think we can have it work. And as dancers, we try to go against these limits. We hurt ourselves, rather ruthlessly. We put ourselves in uncomfortable positions. We abuse our body. All that just so that we can hit that split second where we look "perfect". Sad to say, "perfect" at times doesn't really come by and say hello. It may never come by even after the hours— long hours— the sweat, the pain. We realise that no matter how hard we tell our body to do something, it seems to act with a mind of its own. There are things which we simply cannot do. The irony icing all these things on top is that: the more we know that we can't do it, the more we want to do it. We feel the hurt, on and off, and we resolve that hurt, on and off.

We start to comfort ourselves that: no worries, time is on our side. We tell ourselves that someday, whatever that means, we will be "perfect". Under that delusion, pretext, or hope— depending on how you want to look at it— we press on. We put in more hours. We sweat more. We endure more pain. All that because deep deep down, we know as dancers, that a split second, as fleeting and illusive it may be, at which we are "perfect", will give us a feeling that is just extraordinary. It's not about others and what they think. It's about the relationship between us and our body. A love-hate relationship: torrid, private, almost sacrilegious. We covet to give ourselves that extraordinary feeling.

That's why, we don't mind the hours. That's why we don't mind the pain. That's why, we are dancers.

Watch Out

Sometimes I wonder what it is about words that arrests me in the most unexpected way. It's almost supernatural, that by simply stringing a handful of them together, you can turn a person's life inside out. No, I'm not talking about the brilliant words of famous poets and lyricists, those who have been alleged and credited as the brightest minds of their (or even our) time. Those honourable words often have nothing on me. They don't move me. They don't keep me wanting more. In fact, they often left me cold and lonesome in perplexity. Guess what? I'm talking about TV.

The magic about TV is not really in the acting, or the topsy-turvy story line, or even the drop-dead gorgeous cast. Ok, may be the last one helps (a lot). But to me, the magic of TV that is so addictive, is that in the way that we don't think when we watch TV. It sort of does the thinking for you. You just lie there, whisked into a this world of artificial reality where everyone's good-looking, and even though there's always a mess that crops up halfway that simply drives you crazy, by the end of the forty minutes, you know for sure that things are gonna end. It may end badly. It may end well. But you know that it will end no matter what, and you have one week to resume that horror, or experience new horrors.

Nonetheless, after the forty five minutes are up, we are (well, I am) left wanting more. We wished that it didn't end so soon. And we start thinking about it, refusing to let go because the true reality is just too cruel and unbearable to face. One of my favorite parts about watching TV is in listening to the first thirty seconds worth of narration that sets out the theme or mood of the entire episode. I think this is one of the most brilliant ways that words are ever used to convey a message. Forget Shakespeare. Forget Poe. Forget Dickinson. The thing about TV is that they are there to keep you at the edge of their seat; what they show you on the screen are such that they are hynotising. They're clear, relatable-- to construct a reality that we can enter without feeling too alien toward it. Sure, we will never become doctors, lawyers, crime scene investigators, rich heirs living on the Upper East Side, but we never really feel too alien toward these things we see on TV, or too alien to relate to them.

These short intro to the episode, they often make us feel something, think about things, and that is the true mark of brilliant use of words. They arrest you, in an almost supernatural kind of way. So I just want to share some that practically gave birth to this post.

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A couple of hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success. Never leave that till tomorrow, he said, which you can do today. This is the man who discovered electricity. You think more people would listen to what he had to say. I don't know why we put things off, but if I had to guess, I'd have to say it has a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, sometimes the fear is just of making a decision, because what if you're wrong? What if you're making a mistake you can't undo? There early worm catches the worm. A stitch in lime saves nine. He who hesitates is lost. We can't pretend we hadn't been told. We've all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasting time, heard the damn poets urging us to seize the day. Still sometimes we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore. Until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin really meant. That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping, and even the biggest failure, even the worst, beat the hell out of never trying.

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Irony is rich:

May be we like the pain. May be we're wired that way. Because without it, I don't know: may be we just wouldn't feel real. What's that saying? Why do I keep hitting myself with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop.

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When we say things like 'people don't change', it drives scientists crazy because change is literally the only constant in all of science. Energy. Matter. It's always changing, morphing, merging, growing, dying. It's they way people try not to change that's unnatural. The way we cling to what things were instead of letting things be what they are. The way we cling to old memories instead of forming new ones. The way we insist of forming new ones. The way we insist on believing despite every scientific indication that anything in this lifetime is permanent. Change in constant. How we experience change that's up to us. It can feel like death, or it can feel like a second chance at life. If we open our fingers, loosen our grips, go with it, it can feel like pure adrenaline. Like at any moment, we can have another chance at life. Like at any moment, we can be born all over again.

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Nobody chooses to be a freak. Most people don't realise they're a freak until it's way too late to change it. No matter how much of a freak you end up being, chances are there's still someone out there for you. Unless of course, they've already moved on. Because when it comes to love, even freaks can't wait forever.

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My pick:

Biology says that we are who we are from birth, that our DNA is set in stone. Unchangeable. Our DNA doesn't account for all of us though, we're human. Life changes us. We develop new traits. Become less territorial. We start competing. We learn from our mistakes. We face our greatest fears. For better or worse, we find ways to become more than our biology. The risk, of course, is that we can change too much to the point where we don't recognise ourselves. Finding our way back can be difficult. There's no compass, no map. We just have to close our eyes, take a step and hope to God, we get there.

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Luxury

"He covered page after page with wild words of sorrow and wilder words of pain. There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us ablution."

- The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde