harmless? bananas!

The one thing that has been on my mind for the past week or so, could be dangerous thought. But I just have to put it down in words, just so I know how ridiculous it sounds, or maybe there might be a grain of truth in what I want to say.

“Kill your dreams, kill them now before somebody gets hurt.”

Okay, how’s that for shock value? I say this in the capacity that.. I don’t particularly think that living your dreams will make you happy, from the inside out at least. Jadedness or weary debacle and throwing in the towel because I don’t always get what I want on my terms and timings? I don’t really know.. but the more I look at it from this particular angle, dreams and ambitions are rather selfish things, and people get hurt in the process of us trying to realise our own ambitions. Also, when we don’t hit the targets we’ve set for ourselves, those dreams get dashed, and we become disillusioned and discontent.

And where there is hurt, discontent and disfranchisement, there is sadness. There is something in unfulfilled dreams that make us struggle more than enjoy what’s in front of us at present.

On the surface, it sounds like I’m telling you to throw in the towel, to aim for nothing so that you can hit something. Accept your lot in life and settle. But if you really know me, there is nothing that makes me sadder, and angrier than when someone loses his of her passion for life and decides to settle.

It’s all abit convoluted I admit, saying something, but meaning the other. But this comes from some rather brash and careful examination and deconstruction of the notion of “dreams”. (Son, when you grow up, you can be whatever you want to be.)

I think there’s hope, and there’s false hope. I think there are notions of personal gratification and comfort that are unrealistic, or at worse, damaging to the world we live in and the relationships we keep. More intimately, we kill ourselves for a dream that stays a dream. I think modern thinking to a degree has made us our own gods, and that it is our right for things to go the way we want them to. Our entitlement, inheritance or what have you. Oh the selfishness of it all.

In the chase of dreams, perhaps a concept introduced to us as far back as the fairy tales of happily ever after, of the protagonist verses the antagonist, good triumphing over evil (or in a post modern context, perceived truths and evils.) But the reality of life just isn’t like the man-made constructs we have of the themes of hope, happiness and triumphs. It is not in our dreams that reality exists, but in our realities that dreams exist.

The concept of dreams has been held in such high regard, that it paints a flawed picture of the reality and struggle that curses us in this mortal realm. It’s two dimensional to put it bluntly. It is also self-serving, and perhaps ultimately self destructive when we keep thinking that the grass is greener on the other side.

So I’m not saying kill your dreams totally by throwing in the towel, quite literally. The atrophy of such behaviour would be the utter stagnation of passion as we know it. A life, not worth living. Quite the contrary, if you’re a fan of my radical (yet utterly inane) notion, is that re-examine what it is that lets you live out your life passionately. Chances are, you won’t find them in some constructed dream you’ve cobbled together from watching too much TV.

Face up to this reality, that life is a struggle, but it is still worth living for. And one of the very first steps is to count all your blessings. We have more than we realise, people, friends, pets, ideas, love, hate, loneliness.. and ultimately, some form of hope. This last part might have been a bit confusing, but it’s a concept rooted in duality. You can’t hate if you’ve never loved. You can’t feel loved if you’ve never been lonely or undeserving of it. You can’t feel rich if you’ve never been poor, you can’t feel healthy if you’ve never been sick. Count your blessings, work.. find solace and joy in the struggle. And one day, I promise you.. it will all end, this mortal curse and blessing all at once.

I will write in here until my eyes bleed out, that much I can promise.

A lot has changed in the past year, that’s all I can think of. Soul searching here and there, finding out where my strengths and weaknesses are, what I wanted to change, and changing some, stagnating in others.

That’s life. It’s not really the success story of perfection that the world constantly tells us to achieve, even if they’d like to admit that we are all masters of our own fates. The reality is that society expects various things of us, and maybe I’m not really that brave with regard to the unknown. For starters, the need for a job and a source of income. Support our families and loved ones. Even if I’m not married or have a partner, my family is a responsibility, one that I’ve grown to accept, and appreciate. There will always be things that I hate about them, but there’s also so much more that I could love. Though it’s not a matter of having more loves than hates, but learning what family is during this last year, and the things we do in the name of family. I can appreciate, and I’ve been blessed to be allowed to appreciate.

A vengeful spirit that counts the cost, leads us to be conservative in how much we want to give. But I’ve learned that you can give you all and still not receive, yet.. the less you give, the more you fade from existence. You disappear from the hearts of people when you seek solitude. Sometimes, I liked that solitude, other times, I scream at the walls. My neurosis means that I tell myself that I have to pick one. My growth tells me that they each exist as two sides of the same coin.

Duality is the main idea I’ve picked up this past year. How one person can be two different things, and not be fake. It’s not about wearing two different masks, but accepting the good and the bad that exists in all of us, and in all situations. To keep walking even when you’re not fully healed, to stop walking so you can heal yourself. It’s like walking forwards and backwards at the same time, or walking two different paths at the same time. Life.. simply isn’t a linear phenomena.

I just signed a teaching contract with MOE, and there are still doubts in my head, as there is sureness as well. It can be both the best and worst decision I’ve made my entire life. But there’s something about Singapore’s meritocratic culture that tells us we have to make only the best decisions, as if it were a multiple choice answer. I reject that. The best choice is also the worst choice. There will always be something down the road that will ask for our sacrifice, or make it seem like we made a bad choice. But that is the reality.. we have to experience the bad, as much as we experience the good. We cannot go through life experiencing only good things. Even though we crave for comfort instead of struggle, life itself is a struggle just to stay on the path.

So, it might sound like I’ve gone no where in my quest for an answer, but I think that my thinking has matured, and can finally accept both the good things and the bad, and not just seem them as singular concepts, but a holistic concept affects the human condition. That’s a good thing, it’s a step forward. It might be a bad thing, because I’ll end up over-thinking and paralyzing myself again. But hey, life’s a ride.