CyberGarden

Not Checked Yet

2009-12-15T00:37:00.004+08:00

Last time I said I'll be going through each of my posts here to check whether they are obsolete or not. But until today, I haven't done it yet, so obsolete posts but aren't marked as obsolete are still there, if there are really any obsolete posts that is.

Lack of time will be my answer. And I know it's a common answer. Lol.

I'll try to do it soon. My holiday is coming.

Anyway, my point here is that if you read any of the posts here, take note of the date of the post. The further away the date is from today, the more likely the post is obsolete. So if you read something you find not that reasonable or weird, perhaps that's my "old self" and is not really me now. Lol.

Reflective Talk: Sex Appeal

2009-05-01T21:18:00.027+08:00

Prediction Accuracy: 0%
Additional Contents?... Yes

Main:
I'm quite surprised to find myself writing a post for my main blog while my final exams are coming next week. I know I've been postponing my next post here for a long, long time. But I've no choice. If the conditions don't meet, they don't meet, and I don't get to write a new post. Having said that, it means that now the conditions have actually met. I have the time (not much but sufficient), the place, and the mood to write this entry. The topic this time has already been drafted more than half a year ago, and now only am I actually completing it.

You may notice some slight changes with the format of this post. The word "General" in purple colour has been changed to "Main" and the section "Mysterious" has been removed since I no longer need it. The word "Comment..." that appears after "Next Entry's Possible Topic" has been italicized.
Bah... You don't need to know this actually. It's mainly for myself to see.

Off we go into the topic.

Sex appeal, the special something that can make guys faint (figuratively) and girls go crazy (figuratively). It's the special something that is much sought-after by many people. Besides money, sex appeal also makes the world go around.

Notice that I said "sex appeal", not "sex". By "sex appeal" I mean sexual attraction, and by "sex" I mean "sexual intercourse" (or, depending on the context, "the sex of a person"). You must get this right before reading further. So, the above paragraph means people seek sexual attraction, whether they attract others or others attract them (they seek both). The above paragraph does not mean people seek sexual intercourse. Make sure you understand. Your understanding of the meaning of things in this post greatly affects the outcome of your reading. Let's proceed.

It was an interesting cause that made me thought of writing this topic. I was walking around in a shopping complex one day more than six months ago. (That was when I started drafting this topic.) I was walking, alone, to a book shop to find some good books to read. As I was going around the place, I was thinking about certain problems in life, and as I was busy thinking, something that I saw seemed to intrude into my chain of thoughts. I did follow the disruption and looked around, examining the appearance and the look of other people around me, and a question then naturally popped into my mind: Why does each person dress themselves in that particular way?

That question was all that was needed to initiate this topic.

By now you should already know where I'm going with this. Yes, think about it. Why, out of so many ways to dress oneself up, does everyone choose a certain way to exhibit their appearance? Why does the boy over there keeps a short haircut and wears a T-shirt and a long pants along with a pair of leather shoes? Why does the girl over there wears a flower hairpin, a short-sleeve shirt, a short skirt, and a pair of sports shoes?
Except in unusual situations, every person tries their best (with their available resources) to appear pleasant to members of the opposite sex. (Consider this entire post talks only in terms of heterosexuality.) This is undeniable. It's natural. We dress ourselves in whatever ways we think are good-looking and nice, and sometimes we do exactly that just to attract the attention of people of the opposite sex.

Why are we like this? It's never too difficult to think of an answer as it's so obvious: it is our nature to get together and reproduce. According to what I've read in some psychology textbook, males are generally more concerned with the sexual aspect of a relationship and females the emotional aspect. I don't remember where I learnt about this, but an evolutionist (if I'm using the right term) once explained that if we look at this in terms of evolution, males are so because they need to find females who are (sexually) healthy and youthful to ensure the survival of their next generations, while females are so because they need males who are loyal to them to protect them when they're weak, especially during pregnancy. This makes lots of sense, if we talk about evolution and the need to reproduce future generations.

Sex appeal exists both in our world and the animal world. In the animal world, sex appeal is about competition, attraction, fighting, and mating. In the human world, it's much more complex than that, given the social, cultural, and religious influences, and many other kinds of influences that affect how our sexual attraction works. We may not realize it, but our culture and social norms have a lot to do with how people of different sexes attract each other.

Observing people is what I naturally do in public. Not that I'm saying I'm observant, but just like researchers go into a village to observe how the villagers live, I go around wherever I like and observe people. All sorts of 5W1H questions (who, what, when, where, why, how) will spring out naturally during then. Now why am I telling you this? Because it has something to do with what I say next.
Every time when I observe other people, especially in public places like the streets, the shopping malls, and so on, I can see something very interesting: while all the men and women are clothed in ways they think are nice (and attractive), their little children are also dressed in ways that are good-looking. It's normal, you may say, but don't you see what's "not that normal"? For children aged 8 and younger, or somewhere around there, do you really think they know what it means to "look good" in our, the grown-ups', terms? Do you think they know why they have to look good? I don't think so. If they do not, where do the ideas of what to wear for those little children come from?

You got it right. Parents. Their parents are the people who teach their children what to wear. It is like this that our cultural and social norms are passed on to the next generation. When children learn from their parents how to dress themselves, they're being exposed to the cultural perception of how boys and girls, men and women should appear to others.
You can try it yourself. Go outside and see what the little boys and little girls wear. Boys aged 8 and younger do not really have any special ways to dress themselves for the purpose of "showing their charms" since their bodies are really still too immature, and a big part of their physical charms come from their bodies. However, little girls of that age wear somewhat differently. You'll notice that, though not all, some little girls wear tight shirts, tight pants, and short skirts to exhibit their cuteness (and attractiveness altogether). Who teach them to wear like this? Their mothers.

Believe it or not, mothers do socialize their little daughters in such a way that their daughters' physical attractiveness is shown, even when those little girls are just as little as 3 years of age. (This information comes from my own observation and some common sense. You can observe it yourself too. But don't quote me and use this in your assignment.) The mothers begin to instil into their daughters, at a very young age, the ways to clothe themselves that are considered attractive by the society, whether directly or indirectly. Regardless of whether they realize it or not, mothers teach their daughters the "tips" to become attractive and introduce to them the standard by which the society uses to judge their attractiveness.
Although this whole thing isn't that emphasized towards little boys, they (boys) are also taught the ways to be attractive by their fathers. Both boys and girls learn this sort of thing actively (their parents teach them) and passively (they learn by observing their parents).

This is what a textbook that I have says about this matter:
"While mothers do not want to see their daughters engage in destructive premarital sex, many mothers apply subtle pressure on their daughters to demonstrate their sexual attractiveness. She outfits her daughter with bras, guides her in selection of clothes, and instructs her in the subtleties of makeup. (O'Connell, A., O'Connell, V., & Kuntz, L.-A. (2005). Choice and change: The psychology of personal growth and interpersonal relationships (7th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.)"

Note though, that the above quote applies to adolescent girls and not little girls since the section from where I took this quote talks about adolescent girls. And, since this is from an American textbook, it may or may not apply to mothers and daughters in other parts of the world.

Anyway, once there was a female friend of mine who told me something I find somewhat funny. She said to me, "You're really special." I asked, "How so?" She replied, "女子全都电不到你！(All the girls couldn't attract your attention!)" The entire conversation was in Chinese actually, but the last sentence here cannot be translated into English due to the way words are used.
So, she said I couldn't be attracted by girls. I laughed. It's true that I've rejected all requests before. (Not without reasons.) And mind you, I've even rejected my own attraction towards some girls. This is not because I'm totally immune to attraction. I also want to find one. I'm also a human alright. It's just because of how I think.
Yes, how I think.

Our principles, or our personal code, and our way of thinking, can greatly affect how immune we are to attraction. Now I'm not saying that we should ignore any attraction that we may have towards anybody or any attempts of others to attract us. That would make us seem cold. It's certainly not the way in interpersonal relationships. I'm just saying that sometimes attraction occurs at the wrong time, or it occurs in a situation that goes against our principles, or it simply occurs when it's unwanted. I'm not sure if I had talked about this before in one of my previous entries, but after such a long time, even if I had, I might as well talk about it again.

So, if an attraction (whether you like someone or someone likes you) occurs when you want it, it's fine. Otherwise, it's not. What are you going to do when it's not? This is interesting, because people have their own ways to deal with this kind of problem.

People may think that I am, in the end, susceptible to my emotions and feelings, that I won't be able to defeat my "true feelings", that I won't be able to fight with "the power of love" when the time comes. Well, I find this funny. You really can control your feelings, you know? It's like a skill of some sort. Maybe some people are not able to stand up to their emotions and feelings because they've always been living under the blanket of social norms. Their mindsets and values towards love are heavily influenced by the society, and it happens that these values and perception about love from the society promote a liking for romantic feelings.
You can see for yourself and determine whether what I said is true. Look at what our parents teach us about romantic love. Look at how advertisers brainwash us into believing certain ideas or concepts. Look at how books about love promote certain ways of thinking that are to be considered "normal".

Again, I'm not saying that sexual attraction is a bad thing, that following our romantic feelings and emotions is wrong. No. I'm merely trying to tell you why most of the people can be greatly influenced by their emotions, while some other people cannot, and think that the values and perception (about romantic love) being promoted by the society seem weird, wrong, or even disgusting.
I, myself, is a good example. I've said many times that my way of thinking is out of the norm. This is not a compliment for myself. I'm not praising myself, because it's nothing special to be praised about. In fact, this has caused some problems for me. Those who have heard me saying a few of my requirements for a girlfriend before will know how "out-of-the-norm" I am and how difficult it is for me to find one. The process of socializing is also not that easy for me, since what others consider "normal" is not normal to me, and what I consider "normal" is not normal to them.

There are other people who are like me in the world, and I happen to be one that was not that greatly influenced by social norms during childhood (something else influenced me more than social norms), resulting in my "higher level of immunity" to romantic feelings (because social norms promote a liking for romantic feelings, and I was not affected much by the norms when growing up).
This gives an advantage: control. You can control your romantic feelings, at will (or at least close to that). The "control" here, however, takes the form of "resistance" more than the "control" in the literal sense. Through the ability to resist, you gain more control of yourself. To do this, we have to change.

But you might ask, "Why in the first place do we have to change? What's wrong with being who I am now?" Of course there is absolutely nothing wrong. If there's nothing wrong, why change, right? So if you're comfortable with it, go on. If you're not, if you want to have more control of yourself, then you have to change.
But how to change? As mentioned, our principles, or our personal code, and our way of thinking, can greatly affect how immune we are to attraction. This is what I mean. You have to adopt a set of principles or a way of thinking, be they existing or self-created. When we want to make changes to ourselves, we begin in our minds. This is actually common sense, but somehow many people just forget it, and at the end of the day, they don't know how and where to start.

I think this post is approaching its end. If you've really read from the start until here, I hope there is at least something in this post that you can learn from. I, too, learnt something as I was writing this post.
While this entry is easy-going, the next one will exercise your mind a little bit. So see you next time.

A Few Words...
Realize that everyone is walking their very own path. No matter how close we are to people or how often we get together with people, everyone is in their own world. We came to this world all alone, and we will leave this world all alone.

Next Entry's Possible Topic:
Life (Part XIII - Sex, Beauty, and Love)
Comment...
Now that we've talked about sex appeal, let's explore deeper at a more... thought-provoking level.

I Can't Believe It

2009-02-22T02:48:00.003+08:00

Really.

With such an obvious sentence right below the name of this blog located at the top and with a special section at the left column of this blog mentioning it, there are still people who don't know that I have 2 blogs. =_=

Yes. This is my main blog. I also have a sub-blog. The link is located at the 2 areas I mentioned in the above paragraph. Knowing the nature of this blog, I purposely created a second blog, and it has been a "success". So if what's here isn't your sort of stuff, there is a second blog to go. I'm not all that serious you know...?

Sometimes some of my friends, when talked about blogs, told me that they "don't know what I'm talking about"! I immediately asked them to describe my blog. They said my blog "has a green background with a waterfall at the top-left". Woah... Then only I realized there are still people who thought I only had one blog. I don't know how they got to know this blog without knowing the other one. Weird. I always tell people my sub-blog's URL first instead of this blog's.

One thing I find interesting is that lots of people, when they visit other people's blogs (not just mine), they tend to skip certain things in the blog and not look at them. I find this very strange, for I don't do this. If I visit a person's blog, I always look at everything the blog has to show.

Anyway, so... yea, if you're one of those who didn't know I have 2 blogs, now you know.

Need Reviewing

2009-02-09T03:11:00.003+08:00

I must say this period of time in my life is not really "blogger-friendly". No matter what I planned to do there were (and are) always things getting in my way, ultimately and effectively delaying my blogging attempts.
No. This isn't an excuse. If blogging is more important than my studies, my exams, my family business (not literally "business"), my friends' business (though some sure are unimportant), and my "daily required dose of solitary existence", then I can have the time to do it.

But it's not.

Anyway, what I really want to say in this post is that... I realize how much I've changed throughout these years and how much better (or worse) I've become. I also realize how many years have passed since I began my blogging interest. But, I've yet to go and read my own past entries (those entries listed at the bottom of this blog) to determine how obsolete each of them has become.
And this is exactly what I want to do when I'm free.

So please note that if you read any of the older posts, halt, before you believe that whatever you read is what I'm thinking now, because it really might not be so.
After I've reviewed all of my older entries, I'll make another post about it.

Life (Part XII - Understanding the Types of Suffering)

2008-05-25T19:18:00.006+08:00

Prediction Accuracy: 0%
Additional Contents?... Yes

General:
Alright. So I've been away for quite some time. Things just never seem to calm down. Every time you want to take a rest, something else happens, and you have to entertain it. At a moment when you finally have the time to sit down and write a proper blog entry, your mood just isn't there.
Damn. Never mind that.

Now, after you've finished reading this entry, if you've read or heard about it before, you'll know that the content of this topic comes from Buddhism. However, there is totally, completely, absolutely NO doctrine of any sort. In this post, there is nothing for you to believe in. There is just knowledge. There are no beliefs. You just need to read, and understand. You don't need to be a Buddhist to read this. You only need yourself, your mind, and your common sense (don't talk about a computer, an Internet browser, and a working Internet connection). There is nothing unverifiable in this post. There is only life philosophy that you can understand.

If you don't want to read this now for whatever reason, remember to come back when you think you're suffering. This post will definitely teach you a little bit of what you need to know about suffering.

Okay let's cut the nonsense and start the entry.

(Start)
I've talked about suffering in quite some posts already previously, but each time the focus is different. This time, we're going to learn about the different types of suffering that just keep haunting every single one of us.

We all definitely know what suffering is. All of us must have tasted at least some sort of suffering in our life. But while all of us know something about suffering, most of us don't understand it! We don't know how suffering exists; we don't know what causes suffering; we don't even know where suffering is! Well, at least some people are like that.

Suffering can take place in a tremendous amount of situations (almost everywhere):
- When you're unable to obtain what you desire
- When a loved one leaves you
- When you lose what you like
- When you're sick
- When you're not happy with yourself
- When you're power-hungry
- When you're greedy
- When you're angry
- When you're jealous
- When you're going to d... uh....... go to another "world"
- When you're worried about the people you know
- When you argue with someone
- When you worked hard but gained little
- When you've lost your car key
- When you've missed an important appointment
- When you've not done your homework
- When you break your favourite vase
- When your little sister drops a piece of chocolate cake on your book
- (etc.)

Some of the examples above are general while some are specific, but all of them (where applicable) can happen to just about any one of us. That's right. Suffering is everywhere. Many people don't realize this. They're not aware of their own state of mind. They don't know they're suffering when they're suffering. If you fail to identify suffering, you won't even know that you must do something, let alone solving the problem. The suffering then slowly consumes you until it gains your attention, but at that kind of moment there is a good chance that the problem has become serious. However, that's better than not realizing the problem at all. Sometimes suffering is just too subtle for us to detect. In those situations, suffering can still be felt, but we fail to identify them as suffering thus we just don't know why we're suffering.

Positive-thinking is good, but seeing a glass half-cup full doesn't change the fact that it's half-cup empty. Keep looking at the bad side is pessimistic, but neglecting suffering is unwise. If suffering is there, it's there. You can't run away from it; it will still haunt you (when the time comes). So deal with it. This is not pessimistic (at all) because we identify suffering as suffering for the purpose of liberating ourselves, not just to get worried. We should face our life honestly and accept our suffering before we can take actions against it.

Alright. As you can see, after so long I've still not got into the main thing yet. (Lol!) But whatever mentioned above is necessary (and important). Now, since you already know suffering is everywhere, let us talk about the different types of suffering we experience (almost) everyday.

While there are many situations when we suffer, our suffering can be categorized into 3 types:
- The suffering of suffering (苦苦)
- The suffering of change (坏苦)
- All-pervasive suffering (行苦)

1) The suffering of suffering (苦苦)
This kind of suffering is the easiest to understand and is the most direct type of suffering. When we're hungry, we suffer. When we're sick, we suffer. When we're injured, we suffer. When we're sad, we suffer. It's just the kind of pain and agony we experience directly, whether physically or mentally. This type of suffering (out of the three) is also the most noticeable one and the easiest to identify as suffering.

2) The suffering of change (坏苦)
This suffering is the suffering caused by change. "Change" is the focus here. It's the type of suffering we experience when something good turns bad (or bad turns worse). Nothing is permanent. Who dares to deny this? If something is impermanent, that means there will be a day when the thing changes and becomes something else (or becomes nothing at all). If you have a lovely dog, there will be a day when your dog leaves you. If you have a car, there will be a day when your car is recycled. If you're a cute and pretty girl, there will be a day when your cuteness and beauty disappear. Everything changes (except the law of nature, of which impermanence is also a part). When things change in this way, we suffer. This type of suffering is not that prominent to some people.

3) All-pervasive suffering (行苦)
This suffering is more abstract, if that's the word. It is the suffering we experience always, at all times, at each and every second in the past, in the present, in the future, so long as we're still breathing. You might be wondering by now what sort of suffering is this? Is there even such suffering? Yes there is. We're all suffering from it without realizing it. Sit properly, calm yourself down, close your eyes if you want, then ask yourself, "Is there something that's bothering me right now? Is there anything that just worries me? Is there anything in my life that I'm not that comfortable with?" Please don't tell me you answered "no" to all three questions. So, there are always things that bother us in our life. We're bothered by many things at every moment whether we like it or not. The fact that we need to eat to continue living might bother us. The fact that we'll leave this world someday might bother us. The fact that there exists the potential for us to fall sick at anytime might bother us. This sort of suffering is always there. It's called "all-pervasive" after all. This suffering is the most difficult one to grasp and identify.

In order to let you understand this thing better, let's think of it this way:
- The suffering of suffering is the suffering of the poor.
- The suffering of change is the suffering of the rich.
- All-pervasive suffering is the suffering of everyone.
(Note that this is just an example to make you understand better. It doesn't mean that the poor don't suffer from "the suffering of change" or that the rich don't suffer from "the suffering of suffering". Each and every one of us suffers from all three types of suffering.)

The poor have no money. They have no home to live in and no food to eat. Having no money is already terrible enough. Having no home and being hungry while having no money is even worse. That's the suffering of suffering. (苦苦: 苦上加苦, 很苦.) This suffering is so direct and painful that you just can't fail to notice it.

The rich have lots of money. They have all that they want. A rich man has 3 houses, 5 cars, and 2 swimming pools. One day, all of a sudden, a natural disaster strikes. He literally loses 3 houses, 5 cars, and 2 swimming pools overnight. This is the suffering of change. (坏苦: 无常所带来的痛苦.) This suffering can only be felt when changes occur. Before any changes happen, many people wouldn't even think about it, which just causes the changes to be even more painful when they suddenly happen.

Everyone, regardless of whether you're rich or poor, will always suffer from something. Even when we don't know what it is, we can feel that we're suffering from something. No one is excluded from this suffering. This is the all-pervasive suffering. (行苦: 只要活着就会有的痛苦.) It is so subtle and abstract that we might as well just call it the suffering of life itself, since as long as we're still living, we'll experience this suffering.

Well, after so many explanations, I hope you get what this post wants to tell you. Suffering is just something we can do nothing about other than facing it. This world as it is today is just so harsh and cruel that our pain seems to be never-ending. That's life.

I wish that you can successfully eliminate or (at least) reduce your suffering in your life. Have a good day.
(End)

A Few Words...
The strongest enemy in the world is within yourself.

Next Entry's Possible Topic:
Life (Part XIII - Searching for the Meaning of Life)
Comment...
This one may have pretty much nothing to do with the previous "Meaning of Life" entry.

Mysterious:
(None)

Obsolete Posts

2008-03-13T19:56:00.003+08:00

Good day.
After blogging for so long, I notice something that some people usually won't do: scroll the page down to the bottom and view everything.

Please note that at the bottom of this blog there is something down there. The one I want to talk about is the section where all the links for "Special Entries" are located. Do take note of the yellow colour words that mark certain entries "obsolete".

Well, I believe you know that we are always changing. This applies to every single person in the world. You change as you grow...
...so do I.

My way of thinking changes pretty fast. Perhaps I won't say "change". I would say "improve". Everyone's way of thinking is constantly improving, unless of course you destroy yourself on purpose. So, now the thing is, while I do change, my posts don't. They remain the same, and I have no plan to modify them, because they serve as a record for me to see how I've changed. (This is one of the reasons I like blogging.)
However, while I know which posts no longer show how I think now, visitors don't. This is what the "Content Obsolete" label does.

So, if you want to read those posts, please access them through the links down there.
Thank you.

Life (Part XI - Habitual Tendencies)

2007-11-26T17:59:00.000+08:00

Prediction Accuracy: (Not Available)
Additional Contents?... (Not Available)

General:
I know it has been a long time already since my last update but let's not talk about that. Lol.

This time, what you're going to read will be very abstract and intangible. It's something that exists in each and everyone of us, but it cannot be touched, seen, or heard. Even to feel it is not that easy.

If you're someone who often thinks a lot in abstract terms, you might enjoy this post.

(Start)
What's "habitual tendencies" you ask?
By saying "habitual" it means something that we typically do often without thinking. It is, exactly like what the word suggests, a habit.
The meaning of "tendency" is that if we have the tendency to do something, we're likely to do that or behave or act in certain ways.
By combining the 2 words you'll get "habitual tendency" (or its plural form), which is our unmonitored and often uncontrolled behaviour or actions or thoughts.

Do you know what your habitual tendencies are?
I can mention a few that all humans are born with: greed, jealousy, anger, attachment, desires, etc. All these things...... You don't have to think about them to do them or have them. You just have them, and they function according to their nature whether you like it or not.

Not all habitual tendencies are bad, though. If you're compassionate, it's one good habitual tendency. If you're empathetic, it's another good habitual tendency. In other words, habitual tendencies are just different states of mind that we often experience whether knowingly or unknowingly, and are often difficult or impossible to change in a short time or immediately.
Take a piece of paper for example. If you roll up one of the corners of it and hold it in that position for a minute and then release it, you'll see that it'll remain rolled up for quite some time before returning to its original position again.
That's what I mean by "habitual tendency".

We're born with habitual tendencies. In fact, habitual tendencies are already in us at the moment of conception. (I say this without proof, but it's extremely likely to be true.) And that is why even babies can just experience everything that we can experience.

Habitual tendencies aren't really "habits". Habits are actions and behaviour (that we can see with our naked eyes) that are usually done or shown without thinking. But habitual tendencies are the "habits" of the mind. All these mind "habits" are floating around in our minds waiting for the right time to become active.

Changing our habits is already difficult enough. Changing our habitual tendencies is even more difficult.
If we want to get rid of our bad habits, smoking or biting fingernails for instance, the various methods we use to do that often involve physical activities and some determination.
However when it comes to anger, we find that even suppressing it is already so difficult, let alone getting rid of it!

That's how we become so troubled in life.
When something good happens to someone else, we tend to be jealous of them. Hey, do we want jealousy in the first place? I don't think so. Jealousy is not a nice feeling. Can we choose not to be born with it? No. We can't. However, we can choose not to be jealous.
Just like anger. When someone makes you angry, before the person "makes" you angry, you must allow yourself to be angry first in order to be angry! If you don't allow it, how could you be angry?
Vengeance. You feel so eager to avenge yourself on someone that has done something to you that you could never forgive. The vengeance you feel is just another habitual tendency.

Now we know what habitual tendencies are, we should take some of our time and look into ourselves to see what has gone wrong. Everyone of us has something inside us that is problematic and troublesome. It's our responsibility to observe and change ourselves. If we've neglected our own minds, we should really feel sorry for ourselves, because not knowing what's inside our minds is as bad as not knowing who we are.
(End)

A Few Words...
We're born selfish. Everyone thinks they're the centre of the universe. But things don't really have to go that way. When everyone is selfless, everyone is a winner, everyone is a friend.
Go ahead. Make a change.

Next Entry's Possible Topic:
Reflective Talk: Emptiness
Comment...
Another big thing. Might or might not be this topic though.

Mysterious:
(None)

Reflective Talk: Knowledge & Wisdom

2007-07-31T17:56:00.000+08:00

Prediction Accuracy: (Not Available)
Additional Contents?... (Not Available)

General:
It has been a long time since I last write an entry for this blog. No, don't ask me why. If the time has yet to come, you can do nothing but wait. Of course, I can just ignore the lack of conditions needed, but I most probably wouldn't write as good as when the time has come. Lol.

This is the first time I write an entry here on Blogspot. The feel sure is different.
Okay. Enough of that.

Before I begin I want to say first that this entry is written based on how I understand "knowledge" and "wisdom". As such, with my... uh... limited understanding of these two terms, I wouldn't say whatever I say below is all correct. So if you disagree with me about anything, feel free to express yourself, if you want.

According to the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (6th Edition) that I have in my hands now, "knowledge" means:
- "the information, understanding, and skills that you gain through education or experience".
- "the state of knowing about a particular fact or situation".

And from the same source, "wisdom" means "the ability to make sensible decisions and give good advice because of the experience and knowledge that you have".
There are a few other meanings as well for this word, but since they're irrelevant, I don't want to mention them here.

Okay. Let us talk about "knowledge".

One of the most easily seen facts about knowledge is that knowledge is everywhere. We're now living in a modern world where everything can be anywhere, particularly information. With the Internet, the potential to obtain information (and to do virtually anything) is limitless. Thus, the explosion of information is simply amazing.

And now, when we say we want to gain knowledge, we don't even have to walk out of our houses to do it. In fact, we don't even need to go anywhere as long as we're in front of our computers.

Now, after saying so much, it's not difficult to know what "knowledge" is. It's simply what we know. That's all. Regardless of whether it's some information that we know and can use (1st meaning) or it's the state of knowing a particular something or situation (2nd meaning), we still know something.
What did we learn in school? What do children learn in school? Knowledge! Although some teachers do help children to cultivate wisdom, most of them do not, and they'll only teach what children should learn, which is knowledge.
The information about how to repair a car is knowledge. The skills to treat illnesses are knowledge. The skills to cook a wonderful meal are knowledge. All this can be obtained and learnt.

Alright. Now let's talk about wisdom.

In my opinion, wisdom is not only "the ability to make sensible decisions and give good advice because of the experience and knowledge that you have", but also the ability to analyse something or a situation thoroughly. Well, if you can't even analyse, how are you going to make sensible decisions?
Experience and knowledge are essential, but those aren't enough for us to make good decisions and to give good advice. Tell me, how are you going to make good decisions and to give good advice when you're faced with something you've never seen or experienced before? The ability to analyse will be crucial then.

Wisdom is not directly and prominently visible. Just like knowledge, wisdom is also everywhere. However, although wisdom is everywhere, it's hidden.
When we come in contact with knowledge, we can easily recognize that it's knowledge and we can decide whether we want to accept and learn it or not. But that's not the case for wisdom.

Most of the time for most of the people, when they come in contact with wisdom, they fail to recognize that it's wisdom, or that something contains wisdom, thus they fail to obtain that wisdom.
Sadly, we often fail to recognize wisdom when we see it. If we were able to, we would find that behind all knowledge there is wisdom. It only depends on whether or not we know how to "receive" the wisdom when wisdom appears.

Now, what's the difference between knowledge and wisdom?

While knowledge is the ship, wisdom is the compass.
While knowledge is the machine, wisdom is the instruction manual.
While knowledge is the information, understanding, and skills to do something, wisdom tells you how to use your knowledge.

A doctor who has no wisdom could use his medical knowledge to kill someone. A computer expert who has no wisdom could use his expertise to wreak havoc on the Internet. Wisdom is simply a very crucial part of our minds that contributes to our mental well-being.

I would also like to make a point here.
We can have knowledge without having wisdom, but we can't have wisdom without having knowledge. Knowledge is always easier to gain than wisdom, because knowledge comes first before wisdom. It's as if wisdom is the "upgraded" version of knowledge, though this isn't a very suitable way of saying.
So, if we don't even know something, how are we going to know anything more about that something?

Because of this, many, many people while striving for knowledge, are neglecting wisdom. Some don't even realize that there is this thing called "wisdom", or that wisdom is very important. The word "wisdom" is simply non-existent in their heads. That could explain all the horrible and terrible things people do all over the world.

It's imperative to develop wisdom. Really. Trust me, life wouldn't be as wonderful if you lack wisdom. If you haven't yet got a taste of how wisdom is like, you should really start to pay more attention to it. When you know what wisdom is, you'll treasure it.

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Welcome to the NEW Main Blog!

2007-07-15T15:12:00.001+08:00

So...
I said I didn't know anything about CSS. And I said the shifting process is difficult. And I said it's very troublesome.

All of what I said are still true. The entire process from creating a new blog to putting everything here was painstakingly difficult, at least for me.
However...... This is what you see now. Yes it's true I did not and do not know CSS, but after some "searching and touching" and hours and hours and lots and lots of work, I somehow managed to shape the blog in the way I wanted, although not everything I wanted could be done with my current knowledge of CSS.

I'm using the new blogger layout system (XML) for this blog. So things are a little bit different from my sub-blog.

Oh, about the waterfall picture on the top-left corner, I actually wanted to fix it there just like what I did on my old main blog. But that will cause the things on the left column hard to see. So, I added a little something into the layout HTML to exclude that line (to fix the background there) from functioning, for now.

The Special Entries section down there looks pretty much exactly like the one on my old main blog. Of course, all of the links have been changed to the entries on this blog. Oh that took me hours to do. And the process of copy-pasting the entries from there to here wasn't all that easy. All formatting in the entries was gone the moment I paste them here. So I had to format them 1 by 1 for all of them again. Heck.

Anyway, the old main blog will no longer be updated. All future posts will be posted here. So please update your bookmark.
If you're using a feed reader you will need to change the feed URL if you did not previously subscribe to my FB feed. Or else, you don't have to do anything because the feed URL "http://feeds.feedburner.com/cybergarden" remains the same. I've changed the feed source of this feed URL to this blog.
In short, if you did subscribe to the feed underlined above, you don't have to do anything. If you did not subscribe to it, you will have to change it to this one.

That's all for now. If you find any error, any at all, on this blog, I thank you if you could tell me about it.

P.S.
Firefox and IE interpret the HTML of this blog slightly differently. But I think Firefox works better and is smarter. Try visiting this blog using both of them. You'll see some slight differences.

P.P.S.
Actually I wanted to use "cybergarden.blogspot.com" as this blog's URL. But I've no idea which idiot created a blog and took that URL! That's okay. But that idiot abandoned that blog!! (At least it seems so to me.) If he wanted to abandon it why didn't he delete it and release the URL? Dammit.

Life (Part X - The Meaning of Life)

2007-07-15T03:43:00.002+08:00

[Originally posted on the old main blog on 27 June 2007]

Prediction Accuracy: 100%
Additional Contents?... No

General:
Well, I must say it's nice to have this "Life" topic written up to part 10. Although each part doesn't seem to connect with each other sometimes, all of them are important, at least for me. Of course those older Life entries might be obsolete, but they can still generally be accepted.

Sometimes there was just something I had never thought about. However just because I wrote those entries, I thought about the things I otherwise wouldn't have thought about. This is one of the many reasons I like blogs.

Anyway, let's begin today's topic. Due to the way this entry is written, it has been split into a few parts.

(Start)
Introduction
So... I'm going to talk about the meaning of life huh? Hahaha...... You might want to ask me, "Who are you to talk about this?" Lol! Really, I'm not special. I'm just a normal person like everyone else. However, I just happen to like to think. Thus, I have a lot to talk about. If you don't mind reading something written by such a "nobody" like me, you may proceed.

Before I say anything, please familiarize yourself with these words:
Subjective - Based on your own ideas or opinions rather than facts.
Objective - Based on facts and not your own feelings or opinions.
Universal - True at all times in all places while involving all of the people in the world.
These words are important for this topic. Make sure you understand them.

Generally, we think that the meaning of life is very subjective. Each individual has different opinions about the meaning of life. However, there is a pretty strange phenomenon going on. People constantly seek the meaning of life despite the fact that the meaning of life is given by them. Don't understand what I'm saying?
I'm saying you all shouldn't keep asking what the meaning of life is, but instead, give a meaning to your life! It's your life! You give a meaning to your own life is logically what you should do, isn't it?
But, beware of how you give a meaning to your life.

Do you think killing people is the meaning of life? Do you think being a bad guy is the meaning of life? Determining the meaning of life requires common sense, lots of it. Nobody can teach you common sense, nor can anyone teach you how to use common sense. You just have to learn it yourself. But when you think you have "enough common sense" to determine the meaning of life, you can try to do that.

The process often involves the questions, "What should I truly do in my life? What should actually be done before I go?" We are humans. We have lots of desires, and we can't deny that. We want to enjoy life, buy lots of things, play a lot, and do whatever that we want to do. But when we ask ourselves the questions above, we will need to reflect on what we have been thinking so far.

About Enjoying Life
Is enjoying life the meaning of life? Lots of people would like to think so, because they think life is short. I can point out one assumption in that thinking of theirs: they assume when they're gone, they're gone. Is that really the case? Well I don't want to go into religions here, so I'll leave that out. But I want to say that if they want to know whether when they're gone they're really gone, they will have to think about lots of profound questions concerning life and death, and they just wouldn't want do that! They say it takes too much of their mental energy and that they don't want to waste their time on it.

Well, for those who are willing to think about this big question, I want to tell you, enjoying life is not the meaning of life. You can think that this is just my opinion and it's subjective. I won't force you to accept it either. But, I'm going to tell you why I say it isn't the meaning of life. In my explanation below, I'll also introduce you to the not only objective, but also universal meaning of life. Of course, I'll explain why I call it universal.

The Question
Before I start, I want to ask you this question: how much of your life do you think you can enjoy?
Please sit down (if you're standing for some reason), grab a cup of coffee or tea in your hands, take a few deep breaths, close your eyes if you want, and think thoroughly about this. Come back and continue reading after a while. There will be some mind-twisting questions after this.

.....................
.........................
............................ So, have you thought about it seriously? What is your answer?
Do you think you can enjoy a lot? Do you think there is a lot for you to enjoy? Do you think that the things you enjoy doing are forever? Have you calculated the possibility of losing what you like? Do you think that the things you enjoy doing are really the things you enjoy doing (and would cause you no further problems)? In short, are you really sure you're enjoying life?

I hope the above questions are not too difficult to answer. By now you might be thinking what on earth I was trying to imply. Lol! Yes, I indeed wanted to imply something, but what I can do is only to imply. I can't say it in a direct way because it will most likely be misunderstood, and you might think I was asking you to think negatively and pessimistically (while that's not the case at all). So, take your time. You'll understand it someday.

The Universal Meaning of Life
Okay. Now we've all agreed that the meaning of life is subjective. But do you think it's possible for an objective, universal meaning of life to exist? I seriously think there is such a meaning of life; the meaning of life that applies to everyone in the world regardless of age, location, skin colour, or whatever you can think of.

When a baby is born, what is the first thing they do? They cry. Why do they cry? Because they're exposed to the air outside, leaving the warmth and protection of the womb for the first time. Are they feeling comfortable? I guess not. So babies can just cry to indicate that they want attention from us.
Children do the same too sometimes. They cry when they want something, and when they have what they want, they stop crying. When children touch something hot, they withdraw their hands in response to the pain.
So do us. When we injure our bodies, we quickly do whatever we must for our bodies to heal. The same thing goes to our mind. When we feel sad, we aren't happy and wish for it to disappear. When we feel troubled, we want to find someone to talk to.
What do all these signify?

We want the good but not the bad. We want good feelings but not bad feelings. We want what we like but not what we dislike. It's our nature! It applies to all of us. From the moment we were born until the moment we die, we're constantly avoiding bad things and trying to catch the good things. You can see it for yourself. People say the meaning of life is to enjoy life, right? It's shown clearly that they want what is good for themselves! Nobody wants anything bad.

Who likes to suffer? No one! It's okay to say we want to enjoy life. But would enjoying life get rid of our suffering? No! We still suffer.
Thus, I can safely deduce that the meaning of life is: to eliminate suffering.
It's the other way around. (Focusing on the elimination of suffering instead of on our big plans to enjoy life.) Well, you don't like to suffer do you? So when you're suffering from something, what do you do? You think of whatever ways you can think of and try to eliminate it. Who on this earth isn't like that? Everyone is like that.

Now we know this is our nature. But do you think it's possible to eliminate all suffering? Some people might not think so. There are just too much suffering in our life, so much so that it's impossible for us to totally eliminate them, don't you agree? But does that mean we don't have to eliminate our suffering anymore? No. I don't think so. Would you think so? Even if suffering cannot be totally eliminated, we still have to do it, right?
Are you telling me when you're hungry you can just ignore it and continue living? Are you saying when you feel hurt you can just ignore the feeling and continue to enjoy life? I really don't think so. So even if it doesn't seem possible for us to totally eliminate all suffering, we just have to do it every time we suffer.
Thus, the meaning of life should be: to eliminate all suffering.

Well, if you're satisfied with that, you can just leave it at that.
Or else, think about this. Why are there firemen and doctors in the world? (I mean doctors who want to help people, not just with a "$" in the eyes.) Why? Are they needed? Oh of course they're needed!! When we have problems, we go to them. So are they important? They're very important. Imagine a world without them. That kind of world is terrible!
When we were young, we were taught to help other people. Helping each other is crucial. That's what we have learnt.
Do you like to help people? I do! Do you feel good when you see a smile on another person's face? I do! Do you? If you do, then the meaning of life is: to eliminate all suffering for all sentient beings.

That, is the real, true meaning of life. Again, I'm a nobody to tell you what the meaning of life is, but I strongly suggest that this is the universal meaning of life. If everyone's meaning of life is this, this world will be another heaven.

Conclusion
By now you might be asking, "Eliminating suffering? How the heck can I possibly do that?" This I can't teach you. In fact you have to find your own way. Religious teachings may be attractive to some people. Others, who are free-thinkers, use their own methods. It's all up to you.

However, remember this: whatever your meaning of life is, you're now still a human, with a human body, in the human world. The human world is a harsh place. There are truths, and there are lies. Make sure you know what you're holding in your hands.
(End)

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(This section is no longer needed, for now. But I will still keep it here in case I ever need it again.)

Life (Part IX - Be Grateful)

2007-07-15T03:28:00.000+08:00

[Originally posted on the old main blog on 18 June 2007]

Prediction Accuracy: 0%
Additional Contents?... Yes

General:
I remember I said that I would be more active in blogging once I'm on holiday. Hmph... Now I don't think I could.
Every time when I wanted to sit down and type, my body was there but my mind wasn’t. It always has something to worry about, even now. Even if I have a brilliant idea and topic to talk about, the moment my mood is gone, that’s it. The whole “will” to write an entry is gone.

I like holidays but at the same time I don’t. I like them because I can do what I can only do during holidays. But holidays drag my momentum to work, down. “Work” can be studying, getting a job, or anything that has a fixed period of time for you to do what you must do. I call that “working”.
For that reason I don’t like holidays, unless I know I don’t have to work anymore forever. But that’s so not likely to happen.

I wonder if anyone out there is as paradoxical as I am…

(Start)
A small girl wanted a new and beautiful pen after she saw her friends who had one. But her family was poor. They did not have the money to buy it for her. At such a young age she couldn't understand why she could not have what she asked for, so she kept complaining about having no pen, until... she walked down the streets and noticed a girl who had no hands......

Of course, the above story is made-up, but we clearly know this kind of thing is highly possible and is certainly happening all around the world. While people living in established countries have better lives, poverty has always been an issue to a colossal amount of people in the world.

Now think about all these questions:
When the tsunami struck, many people died, but why weren’t you one of them?
When a series of devastating earthquakes took place, many people died, but why weren’t you one of them?
During an outbreak of a deadly epidemic, many people died, but why weren’t you one of them?
Because, you’re so, d*mn, very, very lucky!!! Call it good karma or God’s plan or whatever you want, but “you are alive” is a fact.

Do you know how much “luck” you need just to live for another minute? The world is a harsh place with all kinds of things that can easily kill you! Yet, you’re here, reading this entry, alive!
If you think I’m exaggerating here, you have not yet looked at the big picture. Go and learn about the experiences of those people who had survived a major disaster, or even think about the situations those who had died had gone through. Well, don’t think too much about them, but be sure that you know how lucky you are today.

Remember, no matter how smart and strong humans claim to be, we cannot cheat death. Even if we have everything there is in the world, we won’t be able to have another minute to live if our time is up. Even if we can defeat all disasters and adversities in the world, defeating death is pure nonsense. So if you somehow think that you’re very important and very great, please humble yourself. You’re still going to share the same fate as every other human being.

Although we can be strong mentally, we’re physically very weak against the world around us. Even the slightest effect of Mother Nature on us is able to wipe us out, without warning.
Talking on a smaller scale, how do you know you’ll be safe to live for one more day to see the next day’s morning sun? Anything can happen, you know? Anything can happen…
Be grateful that you’re not one of the people who had lost their lives. Always remember to be grateful that you’re able to continue breathing.

We should also be grateful that we have a fully functional body. Is there anyone of you who are grateful for having a pair of eyes to see? Anyone? Haha. Think of the inconvenience and ordeal of not being able to see, you’ll learn to be grateful.
You should know that while we’re very lucky to stay alive, we’re also very lucky to have all these organs we need. Plenty of children out there were and are being born with something “missing”. If you aren’t one of them, be grateful that you aren’t!

People often keep thinking about what they lack instead of what they have. This is not very good. It makes a person feel not satisfied all the time. In fact this is not the way to live. We can set higher goals in life, but we should at least be content with what we have. Do not ever think that you “of course” should have what you have. Wrong! That’s very wrong.
People know this too. But knowing it isn’t enough because they aren’t applying it in their thinking. So it’s almost the same as not knowing it. What’s the point?

I’ve been mentioning “be grateful” for so many times. But what do I mean by that? Literally it means the feeling of wanting to thank somebody for doing something for us. But in this case, I particularly mean that feeling. Thank who? Of course besides our parents, our friends, and whoever that have given us help and services before, if you believe in God you might want to thank God, or if you believe in karma you might want to thank “your past self”, but whatever it is as long as you thank somebody, something, and appreciate what you have, that’s what I mean by “be grateful”.

The amount of people today who are being grateful for every little thing in life is very little, even decreasing. Being grateful reminds us that every single little thing we have from houses, cars, computers, to food, water, and air, is “not given to us for free” (some of you might know what this means), or in other words from another perspective, is not easy to gain, and you might lose any of them at anytime.

So, treasure all of the things you have while you have them, and be grateful.
(End)

A Few Words...
非真思真实，真实见非真，彼不达真实；真实思真实，非真知非真，彼能达真实。

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Life (Part X - The Meaning of Life)
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Life (Part VIII - The Suffering From Desires)

2007-07-15T02:03:00.000+08:00

[Originally posted on the old main blog on 6 May 2007]

Prediction Accuracy: 0%
Additional Contents?... Yes

General:
You might be asking why isn't this entry about the meaning of life. My apology but I don't think I want to talk about that anymore, for now. Perhaps it's not yet time to talk about it, but whatever it is I would like to delay it for an unknown period of time.

And what inspired me to talk about this topic? This topic is about suffering as well. Lol! No I'm not being pessimistic, but I don't want to deny the suffering that I... no, all of us have in life. If there is pain, there is. Why cheat myself and pretend it doesn't exist? Agree?

Okay. Let's start this topic. Oh wait, don't forget that anonymous comments are now enabled. You can just leave a comment directly on this blog already from now on.

(Start)
Have you ever wondered what "suffering" really is? Do you even realize you're suffering when you're suffering? There are people who just don't know what's happening to them, and silently suffer without knowing what to do. Strangely enough, they don't even know that they should ask for help!
Basically there are many kinds of suffering, but I'm not going to talk about all of them. Here, I'm only going to talk about the suffering caused by our desires.

Needless to say, we're living in a world which not all desires can be fulfilled. Why? Is this some kind of fate? Is this God's plan? Is this our karma? Whatever you say, this already and always is the reality. So face it. The more you run away, the more you suffer.

Our mind is like a spoilt brat. You must give it whatever it asks for, or it'll cry and you'll be in trouble! But we know that spoiling a child is very unwise. So is spoiling our mind.
Our mind is very demanding. You must know this. Inside the mind there is this thing called "greed". Greed cannot be tamed. The nature of greed is that it cannot be satisfied. It's the poison in our mind that demands anything pleasing to the mind. This really is poisonous. Imagine a black hole with the kind of gravity so strong even light cannot escape. Put this together with our mind and you'll get "pure greed".

After greed appears, the next poison that continues to kill is jealousy. Jealousy is even worse than greed, a lot worse.
Greed will keep satisfying itself and that's it. Jealousy will satisfy itself but prevent other people to do the same! How horrible! If the jealousy is strong enough to motivate a person to destroy others, then this jealousy has achieved its purpose. But if it's not strong enough, then good (as in the person doesn't go and disrupt other people), but the person possessing this jealousy suffers!

It all comes back to our mind. How we train our mind is a real big deal. Are you in control of your mind or the other way around? You should check on your mind right away, and always be mindful.

If someone asks you "What is your greatest enemy?" How would you answer?
Saying money, beauty, big houses, handsome boys, pretty girls, computer games, and all those things are not the correct answer. You're not pointing at the root, which means you're not seeing the big picture.
The greatest enemy we ever have to face is our own ignorance; our foolishness, unwise-ness, lack-of-wisdom-ness.
In "Reflective Talk: Dreams? Desires?" I mentioned that "We're often the slaves of our own desires. We're often the slaves of our own worries. 'We' are our greatest problem ever."
What do you think?

Don't be the slave of your desires. You should be in control of your desires instead. Don't let your desires drive you around. You won't even realize your desires are making you suffer. This is where mindfulness comes in.
You should know what your mind is doing at any time. Without mindfulness, our words are faster than our mind, our anger surfaces faster than we can catch, our foolish actions are done before we realize them. How troublesome.

There is this saying that desires are like salt water. If you drink it, you'll get more thirsty. The more thirsty you're, the more you drink. The more you drink, the more you get thirsty. The more you get thirsty, the more you drink. And it goes on.
So you should know which desire you should entertain. Not all desires are good. Not all desires are useful. Some do more harm then good. You must be able to tell them apart, and most importantly, gain control of them and don't let them run loose. Of course this isn't something we can do overnight, but that doesn't mean we don't have to do it. Well, if you don't do it, then face the suffering! Lol!

There are many people who don't even realize that they're suffering, as such they just continue to suffer without finding a cure. Some of them say that we need desires to continue living. But they don't realize the price they pay is far more than what they gain.
Some people really do know that their craving for so many things makes them suffer, but they don't know how to deal with it.

Honestly, I'm not someone so great who can teach you how to deal with this. So I'm not going to tell you any solid way to settle it. You can try anything you want to try to solve it.
However, if, one day, you have tried everything you can think of and everything just doesn't seem to work, remember this:
Things that give sensuous pleasure are like a rainbow. A rainbow can be seen from afar, but this impermanent, fragile illusion cannot be touched and cannot be owned. When we reach the rainbow, it disappears, and we realize it is merely air. Now the rainbow is no longer a rainbow, but air. Thus so be it. Put it down, let it go.
(End)

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Life (Part VI - The Inevitable)

2007-07-15T01:06:00.001+08:00

[Originally posted on the old main blog on 27 January 2007]

Prediction Accuracy: (Not Available)
Additional Contents?... (Not Available)

General:
Finally... a new entry. It has been quite some time since I last posted one here. And this entry appears to be my first one for this year! Lol.

Without much nonsense, let's begin.

(Start)
It was a rainy day. Dark sky, wet ground. I, together with my family, were walking into a building where a talk would be held. It was a talk on health. I proceeded into the hall. This was all happening 2 years ago.

The hall was packed with people. Seats were scarce (compared to the amount of people). But I still managed to find a few, so I sat down. I looked around, saw all kinds of people attending the talk. The young, the old, all were in the same place at the same time. Since the talk hadn't started, I scanned around for no particular reason. And then.....

I saw a little girl on a seat behind me, together with her parents. "Is she 12? 11? No... younger than that," I thought.
There was nothing wrong with her basically, except one thing. Her expression caught my attention. For a little kid, going outdoor should be a stimulus for their behaviour. However, this little girl's face didn't seem to wear any expression. I couldn't see a happy or a sad face. It was as if nothing special happened. I thought it might be just the girl's natural personality, so I ignored it.

Then, when I turned around for the second time, I saw something.
"Hey... What's she doing?"
Her hand was digging into her pocket, frantically searching for something. Then she found it, and took it out. It was a container. She immediately aim the head of the container at her mouth, and sprayed.
At that moment only I realised she was an asthmatic. She coughed weakly a few times, then everything was back to normal.

Seeing this reminded me of how weak we actually are. In normal days when nothing special happens, we feel like nothing will happen to us. In fact, we're very vulnerable to many, many things, are we not? Viruses, bacteria, sometimes we can hardly protect ourselves from something that is smaller than us. Earthquakes, tornados, we can hardly protect ourselves from those which are bigger than us either. In other words, it seems we can easily die at anytime anywhere in any way.

There are many things in this world that we cannot avoid. We have to eat. We have to drink. We have to breathe. And, we will all have to die someday. It's inevitable!
Are you afraid of death? Have you ever contemplated death? Do you even know what death is? Or do you not bother it at all? If something exists, it will definitely cease to exist someday. If we live, we will surely die sometime later.
Older people usually would have thought about death since they realise their remaining time is getting more and more limited. However, youngsters these days don't even bother to think about this sort of thing because they think they still have a long, long way to go.

They're wrong.

How can you guarantee when you walk on the road tomorrow you wouldn't get hit? How do you know the next minute you wouldn't be infected by a deadly disease? How can you be certain that you could even wake up the next morning?
In this world everything changes. Whether you like it or not things will continue to change. Yes, we can change from "rich" to "poor". We can change from "healthy" to "sick". And we will change from "alive" to "dead". The flower you planted today might wither next week. The car you bought today might end up being recycled a few years later. There is nothing permanent. Even the water you just drank won't stay in your body forever. Everything changes.

But, it's also good that things will change. Imagine if things wouldn't change, a poor family was going to be poor forever! An ill person was going to be ill forever! It's because things will change that the poor can be rich, and those who are ill can be healthy again. Impermanence is inevitable.

When we die, we die. We can't take our money with us. We can't take our fame with us. We can't take our possessions with us. We came to this world empty-handed, and we leave this world empty-handed.
Many people know this. They know it! But their knowledge of this doesn't make a big difference. We can see this for ourselves.
People want money that they harm other people for it. People enjoy pride that their eyes "grow so high on their heads that they can't see who is below them".
Sad.

The moment we die, everything goes! Everything we possess will be gone. It's like we come to this world, take whatever we want in our hands, then throw them away when we leave. It's very clear that everything we have doesn't belong to us. When we grab a paper in our hands, we only seem to own it. But in fact, we don't. That piece of paper doesn't originally belong to us. (If it does, why can't we take it with us when we die?) It is false to say we own it. Therefore we don't possess anything. There is nothing for us to possess. This even includes our own bodies. (Hey, your body is made of mud do you know that? That's why when you go, your body goes back to the ground.) Am I making sense?

They say the moment you're born, you're heading towards your death. It's true.
So since we're going to die anyway, does that mean we don't have to do anything and wait for our demise? I don't think so. There is always something for us to do; something important, something very crucial, so crucial it can even affect when we die, and how we die...
Don't ask me what it is, for I am not you, you are not me. I cannot answer this in your place. Of course there is something I deem crucial for me to do as well. I know exactly what it is, and why I do it. You should, too, know what yours is, and why you do it.
Time is ticking away...
(End)

A Few Words...
A mirror doesn't reflect its own image. What about you?

Next Entry's Possible Topic:
Life (Part VII - Topic Undisclosed)
Comment...
My apology but this entry is not going to be publicly accessible. When the entry is uploaded, visitors won't see any changes. I might consider making this entry public some time in the future.

Mysterious:
Strive. You have to. And do "that" everyday. "That", as said, is your source of many things, somewhat everything.

Life (Part V - Attachment)

2007-07-15T00:48:00.000+08:00

[Originally posted on the old main blog on 1 August 2006]

Prediction Accuracy: 100%
Additional Contents?... Yes

General:
So... The long-awaited (well, I was waiting for this to come) entry is finally here. I finally have the chance to type it out. Why "finally"? Uh....... It's a long story, and I don't think I have to mention it.

By the way, before I start, let me say something.

To "some" people:
The contents in this entry are what we'd discussed before, a year or two ago. But then was then, now is now. Though they're the same things with exactly the same core and concepts, well... over time I might have discovered and "realized" (you know what I mean) something..... new.

To everyone:
Well, whatever that will be discussed here is very abstract. In the process of trying to understand it, you might feel that this is nonsense, or feel that it seems to be true and seems to be not, or feel that this makes perfect sense. At the end of the day, you might end up agreeing with me, or disagreeing with me, or might even think I'm insane, but it's really up to you. You control what you think and I definitely can't do that for you. Without wasting time, let's begin.

(Start)
What is "attachment" you ask...
This word, althought it can be explained, I don't think it has a fixed definition. So I would prefer to explain it.

We have senses. We use these senses to communicate with the world around us. We can see colourful things, hear soothing music, smell sweet fragrances, taste delicious food, and feel the softness of a bed. When we come in contact with these things outside of us, an impression will be collected through these senses. This is how we perceive a flower as pretty, a cotton as soft, and a game as fun. Now, when the impression has been created, our mind will react towards the impression, and decide whether or not to accept or decline such impression. Do take note, the word "accept" and "decline" here are not really as what they mean, but "accept" means to "take-in", and "decline" means to "disregard".
For example:
- You see a picture, and your mind "accepts" the impression and perceives it as beautiful.
- You see an elephant, and your mind "accepts" the impression and perceives it as large.
- You see a knife, and your mind "accepts" the impression and perceives it as dangerous.
- You see a show-off (a person who likes to show off), and your mind "accepts" the impression but perceives it as dislike.
- You see a person walking down the road while you're driving, but your mind is occupied and so it "declines" the impression because your mind is uninterested in it and perceives it to be unimportant.

Can you see what do "accept" and "decline" here mean already? Okay. So when your mind "accepts" an impression, it means your mind is "attaching" itself on it. It's only when something is "accepted" only your mind will "attach" on that thing. If your mind "declines" something, your mind releases itself from that thing and it's not "attached" on it.
Get what I mean? I hope you do. Because if you don't, you very likely wouldn't understand many things later on as well.

So, now, basically, our mind is doing this all the while and all day long. As long as you're still conscious, you're doing this. Again, "this is the very normal case". Lol!
Okay. In our life, it's either your mind affects the surroundings, or the surroundings affect your mind. When your mind is affecting the surroundings, good, you're doing good. (Of course, only when you're doing something correct that you're doing good. Not when you're doing something wrong.) But if it's the surroundings that are affecting you, you're most likely in trouble. It simply means you are not in control of your own mind but being controlled by the things around you. When this happens, your mind is, like what I mentioned in one of my entries before, "where the wind blows, where it goes"!

As we travel through the "timeline" of our life, there're lots and lots and lots and...... too "much" things that our mind can attach on. When something attracts us, or successfully caught our attention, and if we like it, our mind will grab the thing along and bring it with us. So if you've come across a person that attracts you, your mind attaches on them, and you'll find yourself keep thinking about them, especially when you feel like you want to be his or her friend.

The same thing goes to dislike and hatred. When you dislike something, your mind holds on to that thing and you'll forever dislike that thing, until your mind releases itself from it.

The so-called "release", is the same as "let go", as mentioned in the previous entry of "Life".
Yes, the word "let go" means to have your mind loosened its grip on something and let the thing goes away. In other words, you aren't "attached" on it anymore. That, is what "attachment" is mainly about.

Now here's a story. But because of some term problems I'll have to modify it before I can type it out in English, but the meaning will be the same. The story below will further explain the main topic today.

Long time ago, there was an old man with a very loonnggggg white beard, so long that it could cover his belly. Everyday the old man was living a calm and peaceful life. One day, he went out for a walk with someone much younger than him. They talked.
Suddenly, the young man noticed the old man's long beard, so he asked the old man this question: "Em... That's a very long beard you have. I wonder, when you sleep would you put your beard outside or under the blanket?"
That's it. For the first time there was someone who actually asked the old man this question, and the old man had become aware of his beard whenever he was sleeping. So at night, when he tried to sleep, he put his beard outside of the blanket, but feeling uncomfortable. Then he put his beard under the blanket, but he still felt uncomfortable. So no matter where he placed his beard, he could hardly have a nice sleep since then. However, he never had any problem sleeping before the very moment the young man asked him that question!

Lol! What have you understood? Well I think I should leave it to youself to find out. This story can be a test to see if you've understood whatever that is explained above.

So, our mind tends to "attach" on things that attract its attention, and grabs them up along the way. This will cause lots and lots of worries and...... just lots of problems (so many it's beyond what words can describe). Therefore in our life, we'll need to "let go" of a lot of things. We must learn to "let go" of our hands. It's very important.

Our mind is like a clear pool. When there're a lot of fishes swimming, together with all the wind blowing and rain splashing, the surface of water will be very messy and chaotic. But when we remove the fishes, and there's no wind or rain, the water surface will be very still and serene; so crystal-clear that you'll be able to see the bottom of the pool. What a wonderful, peaceful condition that is...
(End)

A Few Words...
"_____________"

Next Entry's Possible Topic:
(Unknown)
Comment...
Can't foresee. Things are changing...

Mysterious:
(None)

Life (Part IV - After Birth; Before Death)

2007-07-15T00:34:00.000+08:00

[Originally posted on the old main blog on 28 July 2006]

Prediction Accuracy: 100%
Additional Contents?... Yes

General:
Some of my friends have been saying it again, "It's so difficult to find someone who I can talk to, heart-to-heart.". Well, there's little I can say about this. Whether you can find "someone you can talk to" or not, (part of it) depends on:
- your mind (type)
- your location
- your personality
- your "time"
- et cetera...

For the "time" thingy, it doesn't completely mean "chance" or "the time in your life", but a little bit of both.
By saying "mind (type)", I mean the type of mind you have. There's a usual type of mind that most people in general have. If your mind type suits them, it's easier for you to find "someone you can talk to". This is (one of the) important (things) because your mind determines your everything. Depending on how rare your mind type is, your chance to find one varies.

Okay enough of this. Let's start the main thing.

(Start)
Interesting...
How many of you actually do not afraid of death? I really don't know the figure, but people afraid or not afraid of death have their own various reasons, as below.

Not afraid:
- "Death? So what? It's going to come one day anyway. I won't worry about something I can't avoid."
- "Death? Hah! It motivates me. It reminds me of what I've been doing so I won't waste too much time doing useless things..."
- "Huh? What.....? Death? I don't know! I've seen too many already. I don't really have any fear anymore..."
- "That's a good thing. I can go to heaven and leave this pathetic world..."
- "Lok (look)! Loketme (look at me)!! I'n sooo fenesh (finished)... I enup (end up) bein som useless rubbish beggin fer money dow de streets. I dowanna lef (live) anymoar..... I wanna die!!!"

So, there're all kinds of reasons you can find. Some think positively, some have no feeling towards death somehow, some even want death to come.
Now let us see some of the reasons of those who afraid...

Afraid:
- "Death? Noh.... No...!! I've family, I've money, I've fame, I've status! I dowanna die! I dowanna lose everything!"
- "I dowan! If I die I can't see my boyfriend anymore!"
- "This is a fantastic world! Why would I want to leave such a nice place?!"
- "Death... Noo....... Is it painful?"
- "uuuhh (the sound when a kid is going to cry)..... Death's so scaaaarryyyyyy..........."

All sorts of reasons.
Talking about death can lead us to some questions concerning beliefs and religions.

Do you think there is this thing call "ghost"? Do "spirits" exist? Is there "life-after-death"?
I've asked people a question like this: "After we die where do we go?"
And the answers that I've heard of before are as below:
- "Either heaven or hell."
- "Wander around?"
- "Nowhere. That's it!"
- "Reborn as a human again?"
- "Live a ghost life!"
- "Stay in the spiritual realm."
- "I don noe!!"

Okay. About where we'll go after we die I won't say anything here since everyone has their own belief (or beliefs). So I guess I'll just go to the next point.

Before this we talked about you yourself facing death. Now what about you witnessing other people's death? (Well if we ourselves die there's virtually nothing more to talk about.) Particularly, someone you love... They can be your parents, your friends, your lover, your pets, anyone!

Now building a strong foundation to handle death (regardless of whose) is very important. We may live an energetic, hopeful, enthusiastic, promising, and happy life. But one shot of death (in this case, the death of someone you love) through your body is more than enough for you to suffer the entire life. Not more, just once. This kind of agony is the same as losing something you've gained, and you suffer over the loss of it. In this case, the "something" you've gained is your love towards the person, or the person's love towards you, or anything you deem precious.

Okay. I'll cut all the nonsense and only focus on the main point.
So, as mentioned, you can be such a happy boy or happy girl during normal days, but when that happens, just once, the impact is unspeakable, enough to blast a person unconscious (a little exaggerated).

How should we handle this kind of reality so that...... we won't faint or something...?
I think many people in the world have heard of this: "You must learn to let go..."
Yes, "...to let go."
Now here comes a fact. Those people who know they should "let go", failed to "let go". They aren't able to loosen their grip on the person who has left them. Now ask yourself, when you're in such a situation, will you be able to "let it go"?

Actually there's still a lot about this that I can talk about, but I'll leave it for the next part since it's a lot better and easier to understand if I put the points together.
It's almost time that this part ends anyway... But before I end it, let us remind each other:
Life is short. Life is weak. We may go at any second. We may go under any condition. Treasure our lives, while we're still here. Do something truly meaningful. Do what we should actually do, before it's our turn to go. Time is running out...
(End)

I wonder if you did gain anything from this entry. I feel like this topic has not much things to talk about since death is certain. We'll all face it one day. Maybe it's just because I didn't have the mood to talk about it. Anyway, that is all for this time. If you're still interested, then you should come back for the next part. Yes, there is still another part.

A Few Words...
Take a mirror and look into it. What do you see?

Next Entry's Possible Topic:
Life [Part V - Attachment]
Comment...
For "some" of my friends, I know they already know what I'm going to talk about. But if you aren't so-called "some" of my friends, you might need to prepare before you read the next part of the "Life" entries. This Part V can be said to be the core of all "Life" entries that I've written so far, and if you aren't prepared, you may not understand anything. Have fun reading my friends.

Mysterious:
Don't get messup up!! The order of them is important!

Life (Part III - Replacing the Shadow of Happiness)

2007-07-15T00:01:00.000+08:00

[Originally posted on the old main blog on 13 May 2006]

Prediction Accuracy: 100%
Additional Contents?... No

General:
Well, today comes another entry. But because I don't want to waste space and time, I don't think I'll type anything more than the main topic. So, let's begin...

(Start)
Note:
The two main words ("Happiness", "Peacefulness") in this entry do not fully carry their literal meanings as defined in a dictionary. In the context, each of them has its own unique meaning, to some extent. Proceed and you may understand the meanings of these two terms used here.

It seems that "Happiness" is something almost as difficult to interpret as "Life". Both of these words are too general and don't have a standard, after all. So what on earth is "Happiness"? While everyone has their own saying, the general idea is that something, anything, that we can feel good about. Correct?

Okay. What are we? We're humans. We have senses. We communicate with everything through those senses. So in this case, we feel happiness. It is because we can feel both positive and negative feelings that we only desire the positives and reject the negatives. With this, we tend to keep "Happiness" alive as long and as much as we can.

However...
There is a price to pay for happiness.
It's true that we all only want the good and don't want the bad. Now, let me ask you this, "What should we live in for happiness?".

I'm sure there are a good amount of people in this world will say "living in money can obtain happiness", although most of us know money isn't everything. Yes, with money we can buy what we want. We can buy both services and products. And, those people who think "living in money can obtain happiness" actually mean "if we get what we want, we will be happy".
But, as we all know, money can't buy friendship, relationship, trust, happiness, wisdom, and a lot more things that we can't directly see with our eyes. Besides, there is a fact about people's thinking towards money. People who have less will want more. People who have more will afraid of losing it (in other words, don't feel comfortable seeing their money become less, for any reason). So, there is no lasting happiness.

Another thing people will say is "living in love (relationship) can obtain happiness". Love...
Love is doom at the same time, you know? People are motivated because of the love they have towards the one they love. But people can also be killed because of the "devastation" of love they have towards the one they love. When we are in love, we have no freedom over ourselves, do you realize? We're bound to what the "Love" we generated ourselves wants us to do, while at least a portion of our thinking is affected by it. So, there is no lasting happiness.

There're also people saying "living in possessions can obtain happiness". Please, this sentence is pretty well understood that it's not true. The things we possess are never forever. So when they leave us, we'll be suffering over the loss of them. So, there is no lasting happiness.

Some also say "living in friends can obtain happiness". This is pretty disagree-able. We're happy when we're around our friends. We're happy when we're living together with our friends. Then what will happen when they leave us? We all know that we'll eventually depart and will have to leave everyone, at certain times of our life. So, there is no lasting happiness.

In short, whenever we want happiness, there'll always be something that we'll have to suffer over, and it's just a matter of time and sequence. So, is there really nothing we can do?

...........Yes. There is really nothing we can do if "Happiness" is our only aim. Now, you might think that whether I have something special to tell you.
Indeed, I do have something special to tell you, provided you can successfully understand what I want to say. Because, what I'm going to say, if you can't manage to fully understand it, you might even think I'm insane. However, if you can truly understand it, I congratulate you, you'll have understood something not everyone can understand. (I've tried testingly telling some people, but some of them asked "Is there something wrong with you?". Lol!)

So, allow me to start...

In general, there're two types of "states of mind" in this world that people usually try hard to achieve (in their own way):
- "Happy"
- "Peaceful"
When we get what we want (in general, particularly something we desire very much), we feel happy.When we are relaxing ourselves, we feel peaceful.

However, while there are some other situations that we feel peaceful, I want to point out that when we understand something we previously don't, we also feel peaceful. (It's natural for you to feel more relaxed when you understand why something is so right? It's when we don't understand something that we're confused and lost. Well, sentences like "It's better to stay not known than knowing it" and "Ignorance is bliss" are not always useable. Anyway, ultimately, these sentences only depict the surface of things.)

(Please take note, "know" and "understand" are practically two different terms with different meaning in this context that I'm typing here.
Examples:
- "I know that he will hurt me if I don't comply."
- "I understand that he will hurt me if I don't comply."
Note that "understanding" goes deeper than just "knowing" something. "Knowing" is just like looking at the skin while "understanding" is like looking through it. We can "know" something without "understanding" it but we can't "understand" something without "knowing" it.)

So...
"Through understanding of things, we can stay peaceful, lastingly peaceful, till the moment we stop breathing."

A simple example:
Tom had good feelings towards Jenny. One day, he tried to confess his feelings to her. However, Jenny rejected him. He was very sad that he cried out. Sitting at a place crying alone, an old man (who seemed wise) saw him. That old man then approached him and asked him what happened. After he explained his situation, the old man said, "It's foolish for you to feel sad about such thing. You shouldn't be the one crying. Instead, she should be crying. She has lost one chance of being loved, and you know clearly how precious every chance is to be loved by someone. However, you've lost nothing... Abandon this kind of feeling. She isn't the only one in the world that can attract you." Tom was liberated the moment he heard this. He cried out even louder than before, not because of feeling sad, but because of seeing through something he couldn't have seen through, and that was a wonderful feeling.

I believe some of you might have heard of this example before somewhere. So this is what I mean by understanding things. When we see through something we suffer over, we can have more control over ourselves because we aren't lost, and we can be released from our agony. And I'm saying "released from our agony", which means no suffering.

Happiness can bring us joy, but take note, it brings more agony than joy. You can see it for yourself. Take one situation you have experienced before, and recall the entire process. You shall find that at the end of the day, you suffered more than you enjoyed. (Although there are exceptions, but this is the normal case.) So, the price of happiness isn't something we can neglect or ignore.
However, "Peacefulness", on the other hand, will never cause you any agony. You can obtain it without having to suffer, and since it is obtained through "understanding", it will last, until the final day of our life. That "state of mind", can be used to replace happiness.

So, as a person who thinks, which type of joy would you choose?
(End)

A Few Words...
Do not allow emotions to control you.

Next Entry's Possible Topic:
Life (Part IV - After Birth, Before Death)
Comment...
You might have already known what's going to appear. Lol...

Mysterious:
(none)

Life (Part II - Socializing, Dreams, Agonies)

2007-07-14T23:44:00.000+08:00

[Originally posted on the old main blog on 8 May 2006]

Prediction Accuracy: 100%
Additional Contents?... Yes

General:
A warm welcome to all of you... And welcome back to this place.
Be prepared! This entry is crazily long! But first, I'll just have to amend something optional.
Remember that in the previous entry I mentioned about anime? Well, I'd like to re-rate one of the anime I've listed.

"Yume Tsukai" (Dream Users)
Rating: (changed to) 3
Comment: I give it one more mark after I watched the second episode. From just the first episode I couldn't tell much, but now I see how the anime wants to express its story. As you can see from its title, its story plays around with dreams and desires. And so if you can't understand the story very well, you might feel like there're some parts left unexplained. Although the parts where the characters fighting the dream monsters are somewhat childish, the main skeleton of the story is satisfactory (to me) since I like weird (and interesting) stuff at times. Anyway, this anime is really weird... If it continues to get more (philosophically) interesting, I'll give it a 4 for sure. (By the way, I like its OP because they twist and turn its tune, and I just like it, especially the ending of it. Oh, and one of the main characters is funny and very creative - he put a small container with water and goldfish swimming inside, on his head.)

Okay. I'm done with all these "additional" things, and I shall start the main thing today.

(Start)
In "Life (Part I)" I talked about some general stuff, but now I'm going to touch only certain specific areas since the word "Life" is undescribably wide and might be scary for a person who usually doesn't think much of it.
Again, this time the topic is "Socializing, Dreams, Agonies". I'll touch each and every one of them one by one so that it's easier to understand.

Socializing... By the time you saw this word, pictures of people in the society should have already appeared in your mind. Now, we all know we aren't living isolated. We're living all together in one place - the Earth. And since we're stepping on the same piece of land, it's pretty not possible for us to live alone as we will bump into someone everyday. (Well unless for some reasons you want to live in the jungle or something...) So, since this is the case, we must learn how to live together.
Living together means establishing contacts. Establishing contacts means to form orthodoxies. To form orthodoxies means to establish more contacts. To establish more contacts means to know more friends. And to know more friends comes more sufferings!
(The word "means" above actually means "leads to", but I use that word just to make it sounds more natural. Oh, and about knowing more friends we'll suffer more, this is just from certain perspectives only. We still need friends anyhow.)

If we were to live alone, there is nothing much for you to suffer (other than loneliness, perhaps). But when we live in a group, we have to take care of more things. And when we live in this world, there comes fame, wealth, status, possessions, relationships, friendships, partnerships, ownerships, championships, ...cargo ships....., uh..... well, whatever -ships you can think of. Now all those -ships cannot be formed with you alone. So you're working together with someone to form a -ship. And it is then that we start to learn how to mingle with the society. Some people are born "blender". They can just blend themselves into the society no matter how the situations are (as long as it doesn't violate their "socializing values", which are something like their principles of making friends). There're also people who are born the opposite. Timid and introverted, they just can't get along that easily (but they can at the end of the day).
Now while these are the normal ones, there're people who are in the two ends of the "bell-shaped graph". One side is handicapped in some way, the other side is equiped with something... extra.

I'm more concern about people who are in these two groups. Since the population consists mostly of people in the middle of the graph, those who have "something extra" will be seen as strange or weird, causing them to have problems mixing with the society. Unless they're physically handicapped, they usually suffer psychologically more than physically. Their thoughts aren't that easy to be deciphered by others simply because others don't think the same way. Thus, their pace of making friends is often subtly slower and more passive. What's worse, some even often face rejection of friendships.

I ask you one question: have you ever heard anyone telling you, "If you have problems and need someone to talk to, you're welcome to find me, and we shall solve it together...", this sentence?
Unless they're your very very very close friends, normal people very usually wouldn't say such a heart-soothing sentence to you, am I correct? Well, that's reality. It's d*mn (this expression is just to show its gravity) difficult to find someone that will say such sentences in the world today. So if you meet someone who genuinely possesses this kind of personality, please, treasure them. You probably need another miracle to find a second person like this. Even adults rarely exude this personality. Sad.

I think I should continue to the second part since it's already this long for the first.

So, dreams. The "dreams" here aren't the dreams we see when we sleep, but our desires. We all have desires. And "it will take whatever we've got to get what we want", a person once told me this. True enough, for some people they're really like this. Their desires won't die as long as they still find hope around.

However, beware...
Dreams can be great motivators, but once twisted, can be great murderers.
When we want something so much we will work hard for it to achieve it. The closer we get to our dreams, the drive to obtain the dreams grows stronger. This is the usual case.
But when twisted, our dreams mutate and become something else. We will be wanting something abnormal, or even something only exists in the fantasy world. Then comes our doom. The theory is the same, "the more something, the more something else". The higher we jump, the more painful we fall. So the more we desire something twisted, the more we suffer. This is what I want to say. We suffer because those dreams are not approachable. We can't even start the first step, there is no first step towards fantasy anyway...

You might not have seen people like this, but I have. And, for your information, I was one of those people myself. That is why I understand this very well since I'd experienced it.
I've seen people "melted" into the (online) gaming world and stayed there for as long as possible before they left the computer. Why? While others are maybe just hardcore gamers, some are suffering from this kind pain. They might be failing most of the things in their life and they unconsciously try to run away from reality by joining the gaming world, or the fantasy world, which doesn't exist. Once they score a great deal of wealth and fame in the gaming world, they don't want to return anymore, and stay in their own fantasy world. So the longer they stay, the worse things become, and at the end of the day, ........sigh... I don't want to talk about it.

Therefore, please monitor your mind and see what on earth it's thinking. Dreams can take control of us if we don't take control of them. So you would better be checking your desires now and then to make sure nothing goes wrong. Corrupted dreams do grow. It's something like a virus spreading through a system. The earlier you clean it, the better, for your own sake.

And now comes agonies. In the process of socializing we will have dreams. And when we have dreams we have agonies.
Well, there's actually not much things for me to tell you about agonies. But the general thing is, agonies exist as long as we, exist. (I say this doesn't mean I want you to die okay?! -_-" )
So, since committing suicide is completely not the solution, how should we deal with agonies? When we're in agony, whether physically or mentally, (if the situation allows) we tend to find someone to talk to. Psychologically it heals, a bit, but the problems are still there. (But if the person he or she chooses to talk to give some really good advice, then it heals even more, and might help settle the problems.)
Another way people do is to seek supernatural help. Religions. Beliefs. All these are also popularly practised.
There are so many ways for us to deal with agonies, but it's up to us to choose the way we feel is the best. We can also try many ways at one time, which is exactly what I've been doing all these while.

Whatever it is, since we're all humans, we all suffer. It's just so very not possible to find a person who never suffers before. But, you should know that "adversities are our best teachers"! We learn because of mistakes. We learn because of problems. We learn because we suffer!
So face them properly. Seek genuine help if for any reason you can't handle them alone.
(Well, for those who're having problems even to seek other people's help, seek spiritual help. If you can't get physical support, get spiritual support. Don't forget, although spiritual support can be given by others, we can also create it ourselves. It's spiritual, after all. It just depends on how you think. Get stronger!)
(End)

A Few Words...
During a fight with problems, when we do not give up, we have already won the battle 50%.

Next Entry's Possible Topic:
Life (Part III - Replacing the Shadow of Happiness)
Comment...
You might not understand what's coming just by looking at this title. But you will when you read the next entry. And... be prepared to absorb abstract information.

Mysterious:
You seem to be averangely stable. I have nothing to say for now.

Life (Part I - General)

2007-07-14T23:40:00.001+08:00

[Originally posted on the old main blog on 17 April 2006]

Prediction Accuracy: 93%
Additional Contents?... Yes

General:
Really, I don't know how I should explain the reasons of this long delay (of this entry), but in conclusion, my college life is the main thing. Lol!
Anyway, expect great length for this entry since I'll be talking about "Life" and before that I'll even touch a bit on some miscellaneous thoughts of mine, just a little bit things to share.

Well, I'm feeling better and better day by day. Remember I said my mood was way down some time ago? Now I'm fine! Hah! However, I still do have some (quite) unnecessary worries, worries concerning my workload. O.o
But on the other hand, I'm thinking, "Hey, you're way more 'free' than those who're taking A-level or SAM! You should be happy that when you aren't assigned to do projects you have only little homework.", but at the same time I'm also thinking, "...but when projects start rolling down the hill, what will happen to me?". Lol... Unnecessary worries huh? I suppose they are. Anyway, this so-called "next stage of education" does has its style, and in some sense I like how some of its things work.

Whatever! Now let's start the main topic shall we?

(Start)
"Where truly is this place?", "What am I supposed to do?", "Why am I here?", "How am I here?", "Why are there so many things I can't understand?", "How did this world form?", "Why am I on Earth and not some other planets?", "Who am I?", (or rather) "What... am I?"..........

I wonder, has any of these questions ever flashed through people's mind? It's sooooooooo easy to see other people, even to see other people's heart, but people usually failed to see themselves. Why? Between one person and another there is a physical range, physical distance, but why can't people see themselves better than seeing others while there is no physical distance between themselves and themselves? Weird.....

Now, talk about life-and-death things mostly involve religions. However, since most religions possess similar pattern of concept - God, I shall talk about it for a little while.
Since we're humans, we have a mind that can think, and can also feel curious. Thus, I believe there are people in this world that have thought about questions like these before:
- What truly is God?
- How does God exists?
- Why am I even believing in God?
- Is there really a God?
Questioning is a very important thing to do, and is never wrong. If something is completely correct and true, there is nothing to hide when being questioned.

So, why are there so many people believing in God? (Now I'm talking about this from a neutral perspective, not siding any religion.) Try catching some people walking down the streets and ask them if they believe in God. If they say "yes", then ask them, "Why do you believe in God?", I think (I just think) most people will say "I don't know!" I've already done this a few times, and all of the answers I got were this. They were people of my age though. Well when a newborn baby joins our world, they will be exposed to the beliefs of the people around them, and they will just follow what these people believe, without knowing why they are beliving and have to believe in that. This is what I think is happening.
In some places (or countries) on Earth, children are being indoctrinated with their parents' beliefs, often without the children's own understanding and interpretation of those beliefs, neither are they provided the chance to make some sense out of those beliefs.
However, for some people there will be a time when they start thinking why they believe or not believe in God.

We humans like to perceive things certain ways, especially when it comes to something supernatural. We like to perceive things according to what we think they're that cannot be explained scientifically. There're so many religions in this world and each one has its own explanation for many things science cannot prove. Since humans like to perceive things they can't directly see, and there're so many versions of explanation for one version of this world, which one explanation is (or is closest to) the truth then? (Some might think that there is none.)

Enough of religions now, let's talk about this thing called "happiness".
Who, exactly who on Earth, does not like "happiness"? Please refer me to that particular special person. I have a lot to ask him. I bet no one can find such a person anyway. Well we all want to be happy. Happiness seems to be a compulsory part of our life. Some would even say without happiness there is no meaning in life.
Now everyone in this world defines "happiness" their own way. One's way of being happy might not be the same for the next. The definition of "happiness" plays a crucial role in our life, as it can affect how we live and what we do. It is up to us to shape this rule. So, what is your definition of "happiness"?

The opposite of "happiness" is "grief", and obviously no one wants "grief".
However one day back then I was thinking, "If 'grief' is a bad thing, is 'happiness' surely a good thing? Is it that in this world there are only "grief" and "happiness" at the two ends of the scale and nothing else? Might there be something beyond this scale that we can't see, yet?".
(End)

A Few Words...
Nothing is permanent, my friend, everything changes. We must know how to change according to the situations we are in. If we cannot change ourselves, the situations change us! And we cannot let that happen...

Next Entry's Possible Topic:
A simple update concerning what is happening around me then.
Comment...
I don't know if I'll really put that up, I just feel like that's what I'll be posting.

Mysterious:
Besides the current path, also pay attention to "That". It is supposed to be a must, after all.

Reflective Talk: Worlds

2007-07-14T23:34:00.000+08:00

[Originally posted on the old main blog on 9 March 2007]

Prediction Accuracy: (Not Available)
Additional Contents?... (Not Available)

General:
Good day! I know it has been like... a month since I last posted an entry here. But what to do? I don't know how to explain why nowadays I'm taking such a long time to type a new entry. But anyway, a blogger is free to choose when, where, as well as what to type for a new entry, isn't it?

By the way, if you're wondering what the "Reflective Talk" in the topic mean, it's just the category name. If you (even bother to) scroll down the page to the bottom of this blog, in the "Special Entries" section I've categorized the entries into a few groups. "Reflective Talk" is one of them.

Well, let's just start talking about the main thing.

What do I mean by "worlds"? Why do I even bother putting a "s" behind "world" to make it a plural?
In this entry, the "worlds" that I'm talking about is not what we usually mean. "Worlds" in this text means the different situations and conditions that people experience in their lives. This is not enough to explain what it means. Let's continue reading to see what on earth I want to talk about.

We all live in one world, if we talk about it generally. We live in this world called "Earth". On this planet, we can further categorize it into different parts, or rather, continents. We can also call Asia a world, and Africa a world, just like what we normally say "the world of Asia". Okay. Now that the word is roughly explained, I want to talk about the real thing already.

I'm now using the word "world" on a smaller scale. My life as a student is one world. Your life as a parent is one world. His life as a doctor is one world. Her life as an artist is one world. Their lives as the rich is one type of world. And those who are the poor are also living in a type of world.
In this case, I can say that everyone lives in their own world, and there are no two identical worlds.

What inspired me to talk about this? Some time ago, when I was doing something (I don't remember doing what, but I think I was doing something pretty usual like driving or walking or just sitting somewhere), I thought about what kind of life I'm living. That led me to think about other people's lives, and what they do in their lives. With that, I found that I'm living in a unique world of my own, while other people each has their own world. What happened in my "world" doesn't necessarily happen in your "world", and what I've experienced isn't necessarily what you've experienced. Every one of us lives our unique lives like no other.

There probably aren't much things to learn in this topic, but I've learnt something pretty abstract somehow. I've learnt the sentence "What kind of world do you want to live in?", and that sentence makes lots of sense. Actually that question can be rephrased so that it becomes "What sort of life do you want to live?", which has the same meaning.

I'm now attending a college, or maybe a university. Around me are youngsters from rich families. From the surface, at least from the surface, it's as if money is not a problem to them. From what I've seen, some of them spend money like turning on a water tap and don't bother to turn it off. Seeing that reminded me of those friends of mine back in high school who aren't from rich families. They were, or probably are, struggling to receive education. I respect them. I respect them for whatever they've done to come this far.

I thought, "What would I have done if I were living in their worlds?" I dare not to think about it. Really, I admit that maybe I've been pampered enough until I feel very, very uncomfortable when I'm forced to face certain life challenges. I'm from an "average family". I'm not rich at all, but I'm not too poor either, or perhaps I can be considered "below average". Maybe it's the fact that I'm from an "average family" that the different "worlds" of the rich and the poor caught my attention.

I did realize that I'm pretty weak. I can be easily disturbed by the mere thoughts of the challenges that I have to face in the future. I'm afraid of quite many things. Well maybe I'm afraid of facing challenges after all. I worry about the unknowns. The future is full of unknowns. But at the same time I also know that life is an ever-changing story. The past has passed. The future has yet to come. The present keeps moving and never stops, and instantly becomes the past. Time is such a simple yet complex thing. So paradoxical...

I asked myself, "What world do I want to live in? A world which there are no worries? A world filled with calm and peace? A world which things all go the way I want them to? Or what?"
Of course I would like to have all of them. Hmph... How greedy of me, or so I seem to be.

They say, "You'll know what to do when the time comes," and yes I agree with that. It seems that the most painful moments are not during a predicament, but before it! It's the thought that "the adversity is approaching" that is strangling us. Sometimes when we're already in a difficult situation, it's easier for us to accept the reality (that is, if we want to accept it). If the adversity has yet to come, even we know it will happen, it's still considered an unknown, or an uncertainty. And it's exactly those unknowns and uncertainties that I'm worrying about!

So I asked myself again, "What world do you want to live in?"
"I want to live in a world which I'm disciplined, know how to take good care of my health, know how to manage my money, know how to live the way I want and should live, and face life challenges the proper way," I replied myself. Good answer huh? I wonder when only I can be like what I mentioned.
If we want to improve ourselves, we should start doing it now, at this second. I think it's best that I initiate my plan right away.

What about you? What kind of world do you want to live in?

A Few Words...
(None)
[From now on if I have nothing to say here, I'll put a "(None)". It's not like my ideas are unlimited right?]

Next Entry's Possible Topic:
Reflective Talk: Existence; Non-existence
Comment...
I'm not a philosopher, but it's nice to talk about it. Prepare to get your mind rolling.

Mysterious:
(None)

Reflective Talk: Existence; Non-existence

2007-07-14T23:23:00.000+08:00

[Originally posted on the old main blog on 13 March 2007]

Prediction Accuracy: 100%
Additional Contents?... No

General:
Welcome back. As mentioned, this entry is about the existence and non-existence of things. But before we go into anything more, allow me to say something to start it off.

If you're here to actually read this entry, then please breathe a few times deeply, and keep your mind clean before proceeding any further. If you're not in the mood, feel stressed, angry with someone, or anything like that, I recommend that you do this reading at a later time. Though the topic this time may sound "big", the contents are just what I've realized and what I've thought about. However, even though they're just my personal thoughts, they can be pretty tricky to comprehend, if you're not used to contemplate this sort of things. Oh, and if this topic isn't the kind of things you like to read, you will get bored quite soon.

Alright... Let's start the main thing.

In this entry, you must know what exactly do "existence" and "non-existence" mean. "Existence" is the state of existing, and "non-existence" is the state of not existing, if explained in a very simple way.
In this world, when we say something is not true, it may be that the thing mentioned is false. Likewise, if we say something is not false, it may be true. However, do take note that although it may be false (if it is not true), sometimes there are just things that are not true and not false either. In the case of existence and non-existence, I guess there is no such thing as "existing and not existing at the same time".
So in a way that we humans can casually understand, something either exists, or does not exist.

Having that said, if I hold an apple in my hands, does the apple exist (in my hands)? Yes it does. If I eat it and throw it away, does the apple still exist (in my hands)? No it does not. In this case, I would like to introduce a new term to use here (just for the purpose of this entry), and the word is "void".

"Void", as defined in the Oxford dictionary, means "a large empty space" (or something like that), if I'm not mistaken, since the dictionary is not with me at the time this entry is typed. But I would like to use this word to mean "emptiness" or "nothingness". In other words, "the state of being nothing, empty."
Now while "void" means "nothingness", it is acceptable to say that if nothing exists at a place, then that particular place is filled with void. Let me give you an example...

Imagine that you have a table in front of you now (or if a table is really in front of you then it's even better).
You take 3 objects, a pencil, an eraser, and a ruler, and put them on the table. Now what is on the table? A pencil, an eraser, and a ruler.
You take the pencil away from the table. Now what is on the table? An eraser, and a ruler.
You take the eraser away from the table. Now what is on the table? The ruler.
And you take the ruler away too! Now what is on the table? What's left above the surface of the table? Void! Nothingness! Emptiness! This is what I mean by "void".

Now let's talk about something more interesting.
Numbers. Digits. Numbers are anything from 0 to 9. Using these 10 numbers, an unlimited amount of combinations can be formed. Now let's say I have $100 and only $100 in my bank account. For whatever reason, I withdraw $30. How much is left? $70. Where does the $30 go? It goes somewhere else, wherever I take it to. So that particular $30 does not exist in my bank account anymore. What exists is the $70.
We very often use credit cards to buy things that we need and want, and money is deducted from our back accounts.

But let me ask you this...
Is there really anything in our back accounts?
Do you think there is something that exists in our back accounts?
You might say that our money is inside. But what is "money"? Is it the cash that we use to pay? Is it just figures and nothing more? Or what?
If you say money exists as cash, it is still absurd! When we buy something and hand over our cash, we're not giving away the cash, but the numbers! It is the numbers of money that we're giving away, not the cash. Cash is just a tool to represent the numbers. Don't get the wrong idea.

Now where does money exist? Does money exist in our bank accounts? If so then where are our bank accounts? In the banks? Hahaha...
In this case, I'm relating something to a location. But when we try to do this to something as abstract as money, we find that it is not possible. The only answer to "Where does money exist?" is "It exists in our mind."

Now that the two words, "mind" and "exist", have appeared, let me ask you this...
Does mind exist? Does our mind really exist? It appears that we, humans, think that we have a mind of our own. Do we possess the "mind" that we think we possess?
There was this interesting thing that I saw when I was watching a documentary one day. A scientist was showing a picture of the human brain. He explained that this part is for memory, this part is for balancing, that part is for hearing, and so forth.
However, when he finished explaining the brain structure, he mentioned one thing, "Every part of the brain takes care of at least one function. But, we cannot find any part of it for 'consciousness'."

Nice statement. "Consciousness" doesn't exist in the brain, but in the mind, or some would say the soul, or the spirit, or whatever you call it. But for now, I would like to say what I think about it.
"Consciousness" is just a name we give so that it is easier for us to call it and refer to it. It is the same thing for "mind".
However, if we take the word for granted and think that we have a "mind" in us, we have made the biggest mistake ever. "Mind" is just a word we use to call it. Don't think that our mind exists just because the word "mind" exists.
I shall discontinue talking about this as I have come to a point where words and languages are insufficient to convey it.

Since that's the case, I cannot continue anymore. This is as much as I can talk about the existence and non-existence of things. If you're interested to proceed further into this topic, I can only say a little bit more...

While we often neglect its existence, "void" does exist. "Void" is everywhere at anytime, but we normally do not realize it.
Things are not as simple as they seem to be, yet they are actually very simple. There is something more to explore beyond existence and non-existence.

A Few Words...
(None)

Next Entry's Possible Topic:
Reflective Talk: Children & Grown-ups
Comment...
The children's "world" and the grown-ups' "world". This entry will be all about these two "worlds".

Mysterious:
(None)

Reflective Talk: Dreams? Desires?

2007-07-14T23:08:00.000+08:00

[Originally posted on the old main blog on 9 December 2006]

Prediction Accuracy: (Not Available)
Additional Contents?... (Not Available)

General:
Voice A: "Tell me my girl... What do you want to be when you grow up?"
Voice B: "I wanna be a doctor!"
Voice A: "And why is that?"
Voice B: "Coz I can save lives!"

Voice C: "Dad! Dad!! See I got 100% for my Math test! Teacher said I'm a good boy!"
Voice D: "Ooh.. That's something! Tell me son, what do you want?"
Voice C: "A computer!"

Voice E: "Did you see that? That girl's hot!"
Voice F: "Yea probably just another nerd."
Voice E: "Argh she's so my type!"
Voice F: "She doesn't look pretty to me though..."

Voice G: "Hey who's that boy?"
Voice H: "Huh? Oh you're new so you might not know. He's Peter."
Voice G: ".................."
Voice H: "........Why? You... interested?"
Voice G: "Hell no!!"
Voice H: "Hmmm....? Really...? Your face doesn't say so."
Voice G: "........... Do you think I have a chance?"
Voice H: "You.....him? Hahahaha... The top model student the previous year, and the girls look at him like he's some prince or something. Forget it..."

Voice I: "Wow that was a nice movie."
Voice J: "Yea..... I wish I were born in there."
Voice I: "The movie? Don't be crazy. There's no such place."

Voice K: "Haaa......"
Voice L: "What happen to you?"
Voice K: "Do you think I'll have a love life just like that one?"
Voice L: "You mean that love story? Hah don't think about it. There's no relationship so ideal that everything happens at the perfect second. That's fiction."

Okay...... After so many dialogues up there, you should have already known what I want to talk about.
When we say "I wish I were...", a desire has formed in our mind. By saying "were", it means we're now not what we wish to be.

"I wish I were stronger!"
"I wish I were prettier!"
"I wish I were you!!"
All these are desires. All these are dreams. Since there is not really a standard for when to use "desire" and when to use "dream", I would say they both mean the same thing. Perhaps "desire" is a more neutral term though.
Why do we desire? Why do we even have desires?!

It's built-in. We have a body, with a mind, with a spirit, and all those things, together with a "will". Why do we want to have the ice-cream that the other kid is eating? Why do we want more money? Why do we want to have a computer? Why do we want to have a car? Why do we "want"?

Think about it, we're motivated to live because of our desires. It's because we have what we want to do that we continue living. From an embryo to an old man, our desires never end.
But..., what motivates us also makes us suffer! There were people who had committed suicide after they failed to fulfil their desires. So I can safely deduce that desires motivate, and desires... kill!

Now it's up to us to decide whether we want our desires to be a motivator, or a killer. We're all "intelligent beings". We have a mind of our own, and we can think. But too bad, our mind isn't perfect, and we cannot think what we cannot think. Predicting the future? Expecting the unexpected? We can't do this. If something is expected then it's not unexpected anymore. If an idiot knows he's an idiot, he's not an idiot anymore. There is always a limit to what our mind can do. From my perspective, if I had limitless power, I won't call it a "mind" anymore. (It's something beyond a "mind".)
In fact, where is our mind? Is there really a mind? Or do we "think" there is?
This sort of things are paradoxical, but worth thinking about. However since I'm not talking about philosophy now, I'm not going to continue talking about this.

They say "dreams are always beautiful". Yea, they are always beautiful, because reality is not beautiful!!
Why do we even create "dreams" of our own? What makes us to "dream"?
Reality! When reality is not going "our way", our desires become more obvious and prominent. When we see what we want, we create "dreams", and hope that our "dreams" will come true.

When we juxtapose reality with our "dreams", we'll say "dreams are so beautiful; reality is so ugly!" That's where this sentence comes from. "Dreams" are what we want. "Reality" isn't what we want. "Dreams" are going "our way". "Reality" isn't going "our way". We have full control in our "dreams". So we say dreams are beautiful. But this phenomenon is a source of agonies.
We want this and we want that. We want too much. We choose too much. That's why we suffer. When we don't know how to let go of what we cannot get, we suffer. When we can't let go of our desires, we suffer. It's that simple.

Movie, story books, fairy tales, cartoons, anime, all these are products of our "dreams". They are merely products produced by other people out there (usually) with the intention of earning your money. When is a movie "good"? When it successfully catches your eyes, catches your attention, catches your mind. So they write the story of the movie, anime, cartoons, according to what we like to see. And what we like to see are what we normally don't see in reality. So in a movie, we can also see "dreams" that are so not real compared to reality, that we have to call it "fiction".

Don't get yourself trapped in it. It's a hard way out. So stop dreaming. Stop dreaming as in don't dream for something too ideal to happen. (You might not be a person like this, but there are people like this out there.) Those "dreams" in movie, anime, cartoons, fairy tales are nice, wonderful, beautiful, but false, untrue, and are just illusions that will fade when you wake up. (People know this. But sometimes they just need someone else to tell them again in their faces to see the effect.)

Dream appropriately. Dream for something practical. Don't dream for anything ideal.
We think we have control over ourselves...

Think again.

We're often the slaves of our own desires. We're often the slaves of our own worries. "We" are our greatest problem ever. (In first-person view: "I" am my own greatest problem.)

So face it. Honestly face it. Although so, there is still help. It's just a matter of time until you go find it, or it comes to you. So go seek for it. Seek for help if you can't handle something. And while you're still living, don't waste time. Do useful things before you regret it.

A Few Words...
If there is a will, there is a way. If there is a problem, there is a solution.

Next Entry's Possible Topic:
(Unknown)
Comment...
Yea. Unknown again.

Mysterious:
Don't stop. Do that everyday. You know it.

Reflective Talk: Children & Grown-ups

2007-07-14T21:27:00.000+08:00

[Originally posted on the old main blog on 23 March 2007]

Prediction Accuracy: 100%
Additional Contents?... No

General:
Greetings. So we meet again. It seems like nowadays I would type an entry every week when I'm free. Lol. Of course, my mood is also another issue.

Okay. Cut the nonsense. Now let's start talking about children.
But how should we start?
Right. Let's have it this way.

Do you like children? Are you the eldest one among your siblings? Or the youngest? Do you get to meet a lot of children in your daily life?
Then have you ever thought about how they live their lives compared to yours?

I have this little cousin that visited my family some time ago, together with her parents (whom are my relatives). She is just a 6-year-old little kid with a very tiny body. She is so small-sized and she doesn't eat a lot. And, her face... Damn, she is somewhat cute that I feel like pinching her cheeks and pulling them around! (Of course, not until she scream in pain. I would make sure I wouldn't hurt her.) She looks very fragile and because of her tiny size and thin arms and legs, it's as if she would break if she falls. -_-"
Anyway, she likes to... uh..... I don't think there is this word in English, but in Chinese it's called "撒娇" (which in this case, for a girl, means behaving in a so-called "girlish manner" in order to get certain attention). She is just the type that likes to play and wants me to hug her. Well, kids are kids. That's how she lives, for now.

She is the "perfect example" (as in very suitable) for me to see how a kid lives their lives these days. As I observed, I gained some insight into her "world"; the typical world of a kid. There are little worries, little things to think about, little things to fear, little responsibilities to carry, and of course, little things to bother. Everything is very little and very unlike us. Hungry, they eat; thirsty, they drink; sleepy, they sleep. Things are so simple and so straight forward.

But look at us now. Are we enjoying life as they are? No. It seems that the older we grow, the more worries appear and the more complex our worlds become. What's happening? Can we ever live a simple life as they do, again? I don't think so.

However, being a grown-up isn't all that bad is it? In fact, I say it's very good.
Though children live without worries, they live "in the dark." They do not understand many many things and there are many many more things for them to learn and explore. Unlike us, they do not understand many simple life principles and life philosophies and so, they suffer even the simplest adversities. They can be very upset when they lose something they like very much. But for us, we can educate ourselves to "let it go", which is something difficult but not impossible to do.

So it's not like it's totally wonderful being a kid. Children are ignorant of many things in life and what's worse, they are highly vulnerable to the manipulation and exploitation of their ignorance by adults. But not us. At least we have what it takes to think something through without the help of others. But children's ability in this isn't very good.
All in all, though they live a simple life, they're open to all kinds of attacks. Though we live a "not-as-simple" life, we've the ability to comprehend many things in life, and that's far more important than blindly enjoying life.

Long time ago, quite some years back, I was thinking, "How good if I could become a kid once again..." But now, I take that back. During that time, I was afraid of losing my freedom to play, losing my time to enjoy myself, or rather, losing my childhood as a whole. But now, no, I realized how foolish I was to remain a child. Though I could live without worries, attract attention in the cutest way possible, get what I want by making lots of noise, so what? If ever something bad happened to me, I wouldn't know what to do and would just suffer blindly and painfully.

Though it sounds pessimistic, the process of growing up is quite painful. We suffer since the moment we were born. The skin of a newborn baby is so sensitive and, since it has never felt air before when the baby was still inside the womb, the flow of air and wind that hits the baby's skin will greatly hurt the baby. It's as if needles and pins are penetrating the skin throughout the whole body. And as the baby grow, he has to go through many stages that he has to suffer without knowing why (since he can't understand anyway).

Now, I don't want to be a kid anymore. Instead of seeking false happiness, I want the true one. My curiosity when I was a kid drove me to the direction of knowledge and wisdom. I was somewhat "knowledge-hungry", and I think I still am now. When I was small, I wasn't very good in thinking, and so I was behaving very badly.
Oh, and if you haven't known yet, I've started observing the opposite gender since 8! Lol! And, as any other normal human beings on earth, I was also a person who was curious about what kind of feeling love can bring. I had even started to have good feelings towards some girls. (How bold of me to tell you this...) But I can't believe I took 9 years to have such desire under control. Which means, I suffered through that 9 years when I was learning to control my desires.

Anyway, there are all kinds of ways that people use to try to run away from reality. They throw themselves into their day-dreams and fantasies; they get themselves obsessed with computer games and "live" inside them; or they wish to once again be a kid. Reality is cruel huh? Hahaha...

Life is life. The "law of time" has no sympathy. What has passed, has passed, and there is no way to go back or retain it. Living on is our only choice. When we're old, though nostalgia may make us feel like wanting to experience our childhood again, it's better we let it remains a memory.

An immature person will continue to enjoy life in a way children do. But a mature one will question themselves, "What have I done so far in my life?", "How much precious time have I wasted?", "What should I do from now on?", "What is it that I'm truly seeking?", "What should I do to continue improving myself?", and so on.

Many people do not like to admit that they're immature while they're really immature. In fact if a person is immature, he most likely wouldn't realize it. If this person realizes it, then he is on the way towards maturity. Accepting and acknowledging our own weaknesses is crucial to be mature. Disregarding our weaknesses blinds us even more. As children we were immature, and we behaved in a childish way. We didn't know what was important to us, and we didn't know how to make plans for our lives. But now, as grown-ups we're different. Even if we choose to remain immature and childish, as we grow our environment forces us to change. It's either we change, or being left behind, or we'll simply destroy ourselves.

So you should ask yourself and answer yourself honestly, "Am I mature?", "Am I still a child? Or am I a grown-up?" Really, you won't regret it.

A Few Words...
(None)

Next Entry's Possible Topic:
Reflective Talk: Compassion
Comment...
Ahh...... One of my favourite human characteristics.

Mysterious:
(None)

"Something"

2007-07-14T21:24:00.000+08:00

[Originally posted on the old main blog on 4 November 2006]

Prediction Accuracy: (Not Available)
Additional Contents?... (Not Available)

General:
For some reasons, I feel like talking about this "something".
By just seeing the title "Something", I don't expect you to understand anything. Though it's not going to be everything, if you don't read this entry, you'll understand nothing. (...what am I talking about?)

Everyone has "something". Everyone of us has the hidden potential to learn "something". It's just a matter of time until a person actually learns it and uses it.
After this many seemingly nonsensical sentences, what is the "something" I'm talking about?!

"Something" here, is the ability to extract a situation from life experience, and relate it to a philosophical theory, then educate oneself (yourself) with it.

How many people can do this? I don't know. Some people can just do it at a very young age, but some people can never do it.
This ability might not be commonly mentioned, but it does exist. I don't know how crucial it is, but I know it's very useful. It's just the kind of ability that people who always want to improve themselves will seek.

So how does this ability works? One of the simplest, easiest, and common example is:
A smart little kid saw a tiny flower bud on a small plant. A few days later, this bud opened up and became a flower. A week later, this flower withered and died. This little kid saw it all, and quickly learnt that this would one day happen to him as well.
This is what I mean by "something". I can't find a word for it, so let's just continue calling it "something".

People usually think that education means a teacher teaching students at school, or a parent teaching a child at home, or a book teaching a person as the reader reads it. Then what about a person teaching the person him/herself? The fact is, education is everywhere, at any time.

Another thing is, people's perception is that a person can teach us something; a situation can teach us something. But do you know an object can also teach us something? Actually everything, anything, all the things around us can educate us. It depends on whether we can receive and comprehend what those objects are teaching.

Em... For some personal reasons, I have to end this here. The above should be enough for this topic (since the length is also a concern).

So, bye.

A Few Words...
Waking a person up from his/her bed is pretty easy. But waking a person up from his/her life is another story.

Next Entry's Possible Topic:
(Unknown)
Comment...
Same. Waiting for inspiration.

Mysterious:
*Inhale*
*Exhale*
.....................peace.......

More About People

2007-07-14T21:18:00.000+08:00

[Originally posted on the old main blog on 20 October 2006]

Prediction Accuracy: 100%
Additional Contents?... No

General:
By now, all of my exams have just finished. I'm now back at home, sitting in front of this somewhat old computer of mine, typing an entry for this blog.

Exams are now over. Everyone cheers happily. But... not me. Some people asked me, "Why aren't you happy? Exams are over." Yea, of course I'm happy, to certain extent, but my mood has already been long disrupted by all those projects. Yes, they are yet to due.
Never mind that... for now.

One of my subjects that I'm taking now is called "Psychology for Personal Development". In this course, I got to know two terms: "introvert", "extrovert". Well it's not like I didn't know these two words before I heard it in my class, but I didn't really like to use them because saying someone is introverted sounds like saying that person doesn't like to mix with people; and saying someone is extroverted is like saying that person mix a lot and talks a lot.

But now, scientifically, an "introvert" just means a person who gains his/her "energy" (spiritual energy? O.o ) through him/herself, while an "extrovert" is a person who gains his/her "energy" through other people.
Extroverts like to mix around, and when they're free, they like to go out with their friends instead of staying at home. Introverts are the complete opposite. They like to be with themselves, and when they're free, they just like to be alone. For introverts, it is a "must" that they have some time for themselves for introspection or contemplation everyday. What a world huh? (For more information on this, please refer to some books or search the Internet. Some information here is also from my course textbook. )

So an extrovert has a lot of casual friends, hi-and-bye friends, as well as acquaintances. An introvert, however, doesn't have many friends. But once they get to meet someone that they think they can befriend, it's going to be an everlasting friendship. Well they might have lots of casual friends too, but not for those friends who they are willing to talk very openly. They usually only have 1, or 2, or 3 of them, just that little.

By the time you read until here, you're already thinking whether you're an extrovert or an introvert, aren't you? Lol... Never mind.
Without doubt, I think you all can already see that I'm an introvert myself. I don't give people my trust that easily, nor do I talk with people that openly. Don't ask me why. This is my personality, shaped and moulded by many factors until today.
If anyone of you have visited my sub-blog, you might have seen me saying "I think I'm an introvert in its own category." What can you infer from this sentence? If you understand me, you'll understand this sentence. Or if you understand this sentence, you'll understand me. I'm not making a riddle here, so there's no second meaning in that sentence.

I've a friend. I think she is an introvert too, due to the way she thinks. One day, she told me online that she feels lonely. (Please note that the plot of this real "story" here has been modified, but its main happenings are still the same.) I can't quite remember what she said, but she mentioned that although she is around her friends, she still feel lonely, uh... or something like that.
Well, what I wanted to say here, is that..... If you ever feel lonely, please sit down, and think carefully what is happening. Loneliness, from certain aspects, is a mechanism which tells you that there's a difference, or differences, between you and other people.

What does this mean? Think carefully, why do you feel lonely? That's because your heart doesn't feel any company. Even though your friends are around you, they're accompanying "you", but not your heart. This happens when something inside your heart doesn't match with something inside their hearts. By saying so, there must be some kind of differences. They can be differences in terms of ideas, judgements, opinions, comments, principles, et cetera.

These differences might be good or bad, depending on what is in your heart. If a person's heart is full of the will to vandalize things, and he's with people who don't do such a thing, of course he'll feel lonely. But he's the one who should change.
However, if it's the other way around, then this person can choose to leave this group of people, and it's those people that should change, not him. This is what I mean.

I don't remember if I've told you all this story before on either of my blogs. But it's a nice story very much relevant to what I'm talking about. The story goes like this:

There was once a Chinese in China long time ago. This man had a Chinese zither, and he was very good at it. While he played, he could mingle his feelings into his music and play it out in a magnificent way. Truly talented, he practised a lot. He could even play music that depicted natural scenery, like the storm on the sea, the beauty of waterfall, or the peaceful atmosphere at night.

However, for some unknown reasons, no one, absolutely no one could understand what his music meant. No one could decipher what his music described. So naturally no one would really enjoy his music, and he felt very sad about this.

One day, he met a person who had the same interest. They talked. Eventually, they got to see each other's skills in playing Chinese zither. The man, whose music could not be understood by anyone, played the zither, and the other man listened.

Suddenly, the man who was listening said, "Wow... You're good. I feel like a bird flying in the sky......"
The moment the zither player heard it, he burst into tears, and responded happily, "You're the one!! You're the one I've been looking for!!! You... you can understand what my music means!" Both of them formed a strong, unbreakable friendship henceforth.

However, very shockingly, the other man suddenly passed away in some kind of incident a few years later. The man, the zither player, received the news, and shouted out towards the sky. Having lost the virtually only person who could understand his music, he shouted, screamed, cried, hit the ground, and punched the trees. Unable to bear the agony, he eventually committed suicide. (I'm not sure whether he did commit suicide, but that's what I heard.)

So, what does this story tell you? I like this story you know... It's very sad, but I like it. Why? Because...... Well, I don't feel like telling you the reason. (I know some people have already understood what I'm talking about. Lol!)

Back to the main topic, you now should have already understood what I mean by "I'm an introvert in its own category," right? Ahahaha..... It doesn't really matter. Forget it...

I think this entry has been long enough. Let's just end it here.
Farewell.....

A Few Words...
Look beyond what you see...

Next Entry's Possible Topic:
(Unknown)
Comment...
Yea, unknown, yet.

Mysterious:
Stand your ground. It's not forever. They'll one day grow up too. So it's definitely not forever. Just remain unaffected will do.

A Little About Critical Thinking

2007-07-14T21:12:00.000+08:00

[Originally posted on the old main blog on 30 August 2006]

Prediction Accuracy: (Not Available)
Additional Contents?... (Not Available)

General:
(Note that this entry was extracted from an entry from the sub-blog.)

(Start)
Okay. I now have "Critical Thinking Skills" in my list as one of the subjects that I'm taking in college. But whatever it is, I just want to talk about something..... that came to my mind.

Usually, we all have critical thinking skills. We all have them, but it's only a matter of weak or strong. However, even for the best critical thinker in the entire world, there're just times when this person simply can't think critically enough, somehow... (They too aren't perfect.)
Why?!

Below are some reasons:

1) The development of our wisdom is limited and obstructed by ignorance.
a. "Ignorance" here is the ignorance of anything, from how things happen, to how you think, even to your own existence...
b. These "barriers" control how critical one can be in their thinking.

2) Everyone requires a different amount of time in the process from thinking critically to producing the results.

3) The mood you're in doesn't fit.

There're just so many more reasons, that some even words can't evaluate.
We're "human critical thinkers", not "supernatural critical thinkers". For normal critical thinkers like us, there's always a limit to how critical we can be. (Humans aren't perfect.)

Having said so, many critical thinkers say that critical thinking skills are very useful. Of course from the surface we can see straight away that they're useful, but if we think critically we should even think, "What is 'thinking'? What will 'thinking' do to me?"

Looking at it from another perspective, "the more you think, the thicker the fog covers your eyes."Who dare to prove this incorrect?
I dare not. Instead, I support it. And I also support critical thinking.

Paradoxical?
We're living in a world where "wet" and "dry" do not come together, where "near" and "far" do not come together, where "static" and "dynamic" do not come together. If they were to take place together, it sounds illogical to us, to our human mind.

However, however...
These are all just what you see. We're so used to seeing this logic that it shapes our perception and moulds our mind so that to our mind, only the above mentioned conditions make sense and not when they're taking place together.
And.....

My idea suddenly disappears. Lol. Let's end it here then.
(End)

A Few Words...
A rich man who desires everything is never rich. A poor man who desires nothing (more than simple necessities) is never poor.

Next Entry's Possible Topic:
(Unknown)
Comment...
Same.

Mysterious:
Don't play too much. Time is getting harder...