Being good

To be all things to all people, or to be one thing to one person once?

Idealists wanting to fulfill all their ambitions, or a perfectionist devoting their everything to a single goal?
A constant of either would be torture. One is doomed to fail from the onset, the other has to ignore everything the world has to offer.

The only option left is to be average and be somewhere in between. Content is an elusive emotion when one is aware of unrealised potential. Yet, many can devote everything to a single goal and constantly question the choice he has made.

I refuse to give in. My mind and body is my own. My actions and thoughts can forever be judged by an endless number of perpectives, but at the end of the day, my decisions are my own.

I want to devote a single mind to a single goal at all times in my life. And yet, I want time off to be an idealist that fails at everything I do. This is what I have chosen for myself.


The fear is I confuse the single devotion with the other planned failures I have in my life. May I never do that.

However, my problem is that I constantly get distracted. I run off to the first obstacle I see and start to climb. I forget the important things. I worry about irrelevant things. It takes a strong man to ignore and consiously uncare. Because he will be hated for it, and yet it is the only way he can live with himself.

I have a horrible headache that follows a horrible stomach ache which let me escape from shopping with the girlfriend, but I find myself writing nonsense I barely understand myself

Putting my thoughts up like this allows scrutiny of myself by anyone. The bad far outweigh the good, especially when they know who I really am. And strangely I am drawn to exposing myself in this way. Could this be the start of a fatalistic streak? A practise in self-contemplation? A cry for attention? I have absolutely no idea what this is. Only that I stop thinking in circles when I write it down somewhere others can read.

Perhaps I find myself a monster of sorts and I feel compelled to warn others of my true nature. Or perhaps I find that everything we say or everything we do is constantly assessed and reassessed by ourselves and everyone around us to conform to a preconceived notion of civility. Perhaps a blog is my best way to express myself completely uncensored save for the riddles by which I communicate. Perhaps this is my freedom. Perhaps it is why I fantasize of being a barbarian although I know I would be crocodile food within the first day.

Perhaps I find this the only way I can communicate without someone else derailing my train of thought. Perhaps I finally realise that we are incapable of seeing the world outside our own experiences and therefore we can never really understand what someone else feels. Perhaps it follows that the most honest conversation we can have is with ourselves. And yet that is forbidden. Perhaps a blog would be a suitable cover for such an activity.

For the coming year

Pride in whatever I do.

A post to remind me about the above. May I have satisfaction regardless of outcome.

By the way,

This winter is a perfect metaphor for my life in this country. My dream life is currently frozen until I get out of this country. Ironically, my dream life is unattainable until I finish what I set out to do here.

Feels like my dreams are slipping away out of memory, as I try to make myself into something better here, more mature, more compassionate, more considerate, more understanding.

There's nothing in this country for me except a better me. A necessary evil, as home is too comfortable and familiar, with family that will not let me risk. A long degree in a foreign country with high standards . . . now that's something difficult and ideologically dangerous enough to make me better. Or so I told myself years ago as I first came here.

Life has moved on, I have moved on, I thought, as I contemplated leaving to go back home to pursue the dreams I didn't know I had. Leaving home does that, it makes you recognise the things you love and took for granted, things you needed and made you complete and functional. However, my task here wasn't yet complete, my parents reminded me, and so I had no choice but to stay. Staying on here, degrading into forlorn version of my older self. Each day became a chore, a set of motions executed out of duty. To complicate things, I let childish obsessions distract me from my misery.

Then a twist of fate. A few months ago, I reclaimed some of my former self. I unknowingly spent time and money to nourish the old me, ignoring everything I was meant to do. I did it without thinking, without realising my body started to do things for its own good. 2 months passed. I started to come back as I rested and energised. It was as though I was locked away for years. In a way, I was.

Now, I'm hiding a hint of unreasonable confidence that I used to have and loved about myself, it was foolish to let myself lose it and be replaced by calculated reason. It took a failure to wake me up.

Dreams and goals now fill my head. Restlessness fills my body. Obstacles once unsurmountable seem fallible.

In the last 3 years, I learnt a little about myself. I have weaknesses. I can get discouraged. I can get distracted. I finally understood I could fail. The illusion was broken, the bubble burst. I felt powerless and resigned myself to my imminent fall, trying to salvage as much dignity as I could as my world fell apart.

Then a spark lit. Weaknesses sweeten the victory. Courage is a fire which burns defiant in the face of despair, fueled by desire. Distraction is fear manifested. I want to die a warrior's death. Scars remind me that I have lived. These are wisdoms I once knew, but forgot, and now remembered again.

I'm staying in this country voluntarily now. I have unfinished tasks, unproven to myself that will complete in 2 years. Then I'm going home to create the life I want . . . every single, elaborate, impossible part of it.

The mind will plan and assess, but desire is the motivation behind every act. I did the mistake of letting my mind decide my life for the past few years, and listened to advice and thought too much till I questioned everything I believe, leading me to come very close to making mistakes I will regret. No more. Now what I want calls the shots, no matter how unreasonable and foolish.

Age may alert my eyes to dangers previously unseen, but the blind cannot see. And blind courage is what I have.

I'm back, world. And this is my battle cry. Just watch.