keep on keeping on

Good advice from the wonderful W, my first boss who spoiled almost all bosses for me (until, of course, the just-as-wonderful BP, the third boss who also spoiled all subsequent bosses for me -- and who would probably have said the same thing). Keep on keeping on. Words to remember.
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PS:
Yes, i've been very lucky with my bosses. Something i'm definitely thankful for.
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remembering lofoten

Just a few more days and then i'm free for a month.
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God, i could so do with a nice trip up to the Lofoten Islands. Right about now.
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new and old

The newly-renovated Victoria Concert Hall and Theatre is simply beautiful. Ok, so i admit i've been a bit slow on the uptake -- it re-opened last year, sometime in July or August, after almost 4 years of renovation works. And i've been wanting to go, really, i have. It's just that i took a bit of a long time to get there ...
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No matter. i love the new look, even though i have mixed feelings about it. It's a sensitive restoration job, generally, that preserves the original facade as well as the best bits of the old interior, while jazzing it up just enough to give it a clean, airy, contemporary vibe. The architects have designed the place so that it lets in lots of natural light -- it's both eco-friendly and very, very beautiful, the way the light falls. They've kept the old marble stairs, and the gorgeous pipe-organ, and they've recreated (i think -- i don't think it was a restoration) the old plaster pillars with their baroque carvings lovingly remodelled.
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i do so wish that my dad could be around to see all this. He used to bring me to attend concerts there quite frequently when i was growing up, and i have fond memories of running around the building, peeping into its nooks and crannies, just being a little music-geek-girl there. i wonder what he would have thought of the renovation.
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Because the new place doesn't quite have the same vibe as the old place, and there are some parts of the old building which seem to have been entirely obliterated. The Green Room is gone, as are the rest of the side-rooms up on the Circle floor, and i'm not sure how i feel about that. The efficient design of the new building doesn't allow for the kind of exploration i did as a child. The musicians used to do their pre-concert practising in the corridors outside the main hall; now the corridors have been turned into closed-up areas inaccessible to the public. Efficiency does tend to be in conflict with being simply human. Oh well. That's Singapore for you. Or maybe just modernisation. Or progress. Just have to get used to it, i guess.
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Still, i'm so glad that the concert hall's open again. It's a nice, classy, and atmospheric (in a good way!) medium-sized venue -- just what we need for more intimate chamber music concerts, choral music, and smaller-sized orchestral performances. i've missed the place, these past few years. i'm glad they preserved it rather than tearing it down.
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PS:
It was a good concert, too. The SSO sounded infinitely better than they did during LKY's funeral. And Lin Cho-Liang's Stradivarius was golden-honey to the ears. i'm glad i went.
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by a thread

Had a nice convo with a colleague over lunch today. A much-older colleague -- i think he's probably about due for retirement soon. i've always liked talking with older people though -- actually i often prefer talking with older people than with younger people. Maybe i'm just an old soul at heart.
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Anyway, so the conversation very quickly swung round to the idea of contingency -- how so much of life is really so terribly contingent on so many things entirely outside our control. i guess maybe i have a stronger sense of this than most people around me of my age. When i was 27, my dad was hit by a failed brain tumour operation. Something -- my family never found out exactly what, because, you know, it was the brain -- happened during the surgery and left him paralysed on one side of the body. Over the next 8 years, we watched his condition deteriorate -- he suffered from several strokes, lost his ability to eat, drink, and, in the last 2 or 3 years, even to speak. Also in the last 2 or 3 years, he came down with prostate cancer: what one doctor called "the cancer that people die with, not of". It's rarely aggressive. But as luck would have it, my dad had the aggressive version. He died a few years ago -- his body a complete wreck. And all this, despite his very healthy lifestyle. He neither smoked nor drank, ate healthily, and exercised every day. He did all the right things, and yet was hit by a juggernaut of disease far worse than anything suffered by many who take far less care of their health than he did.
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i guess that's why i get so annoyed by a certain brand of positive-thinking, the kind that results in people not seeming to realise just how much of their life is really just a matter of tremendous, amazing luck. i mean, sure, positive thinking helps. i believe that, i truly do -- and i like to think that i make the fullest use of it in my own life as i can. But the kind of positive thinking i'm talking about, is that kind that focusses solely on the "I". It uses words like "I can", and "I will". But i don't think many of these incredibly lucky people realise exactly how much of that 'can' and 'will' is made possible because of things outside their control. They don't realise or acknowledge how blessed they have been, how little of what they have has been earned by their own efforts.
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i mean, yes, we can work hard. And work smart. And plan and strategise. But all of life is so contingent. i mean, you can die of a falling tree branch. Or there are those gruesome stories in Singapore of people walking under HDB flats and nearly being hit by a falling (suicidal) body. i mean, things happen. (As the Physics teacher i sit next to likes to say.)
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So many things come down to things we can't do anything about: where we were born, the kind of parents we had, our IQs, our looks, our health, the historical circumstances of our lives. Even so many of the things that people attribute to willpower and attitude are arguably at least partly due to biology and chemistry, really -- our genes, our hormones, the specific ways our bodies are constituted to function. Clinical depression, for example, is not about being unable to pull yourself up by your bootstraps -- it's about the chemicals in your body going berserk and wrecking havoc on your emotional state. Even how much sleep we need at night for optimal functioning is really beyond our control. i've always envied the people who need only 4 hours. That's about 3 hours less than the average person needs. Imagine -- 3 hours extra per day for 365 days. That works out to an extra 45 FULL DAYS worth of time a year compared to the average person. Imagine what you could do with all that time! Health, too, is very much a genetic lottery. i found out recently that 30% of the risk for breast cancer can be managed by things like eating right, exercise, etc. The rest of the 70% is just a matter of luck (or the lack thereof).
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Anyway, so back to the convo with my colleague. So there we were, talking about contingency and that sense that life is in fact so tenuous, so fragile. Everything hangs by a thread -- and so many people don't realise this. He told me a pretty funny anecdote about some advice he gave a friend once about whether or not to go and work in Africa. My colleague had lived in Nigeria for several years in the 1970s, and emerged from that none the worse for the wear. But when his friend asked if he should also do the same, the answer my colleague gave was this: "If you have the sense that your luck is good, then by all means, go. But if not, maybe you should think twice ... "
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i liked the way he put it, really.
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This may all sound terribly depressing and disempowering. But i don't see it that way. In fact, i think that an adequate sense of the contingency of life is indispensable for any genuine sense of gratitude for the gifts that life has blessed us with. Some of the positive-thinking people i know are so (forgive me, i know this sounds horribly judgemental but it's true nonetheless) incredibly arrogant. They think they've got it all made because of what they have done for themselves. They think that life is just a matter of willing things into being. They forget how much others have done for them; or, perhaps, their self-narratives don't make room for saying, "Yes, i was able to do this because i was supported by so-and-so and so-and-so", or "This was made possible because of such-and-such circumstance which just happened to take place at the time".
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Whereas, i think that to recognise that so many things in life really do hang by the thinnest of threads -- is wonderful for fostering a sense of gratitude, an awareness of grace. In other words: humility.
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PS:
That's what i like, actually, about LKY's attitude towards Singapore's extraordinary success. He always said it wasn't something we could take for granted. He was so aware that it could so easily have all gone so pear-shaped. This is not to say that he and his colleagues did not work as hard as hard can be, and smart as smart can be, and then some. No. It's just that he knew, and was not afraid to acknowledge in public, the role that sheer luck played in his life. i like that.
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like the deserts miss the rain

God i miss England. Next time i go back, it'll be to visit the coast, maybe down in the southwest. i miss those long coastal walks from the geography trip to Slapton Ley. i miss Dartmoor. i miss the woods in Oxford. i miss the lakes up north. Oh God i miss England -- the landscape there -- so much, it hurts.
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It's interesting -- i think i'm a "victim" of literary colonisation. After all, if you spend your childhood reading books set in a particular country, you can't help but absorb things about its culture. i was reading books set in England all the way till my first visit there in 1994, and then some. (Quite some...) The rolling hills felt so familiar, somehow. And it's only in the last 2 or 3 years that i've gradually realised why. i'd spent my entire reading life up to that point reading about English landscapes. For crying out loud, i studied Thomas Hardy for 'S' paper -- Mr Lush-Elegaic-Gorgeous-Descriptions-Of-English-Landscapes himself. How could i do otherwise than to feel these landscapes as home?
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toughness

i think toughness -- emotional toughness, grit, strength, etc -- is currently overrated. Of course, it's really important to be resilient. To be able to bounce back from things, to pick yourself up when things go wrong, and to keep on keeping on. But there are other things that are just as important but don't get much airtime these days. Kindness. Empathy. Understanding. The ability to feel for the suffering (or, as a 'tough' person might perhaps see it, the weak).
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One of my old friends has become so tough over the years that i think she is starting to lose her capacity for empathy and sensitivity towards others. She's become so (apparently) callous -- IF it's only 'apparent', that is. She sure does a good job of making it look like her truth. i'm not sure if i actually like her that much anymore.
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what we should do better (2)

The other thing that has struck me over the last few years, is the extent to which Singaporeans are so driven by fear.
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It's frightening, what fear can do to a person. It makes us want to grasp at things, to keep them as tightly within our control as possible. This makes generosity impossible because we're just thinking of ourselves, and everything else, including other people, becomes something that we use to try to secure our own safety -- however we define that safety.
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So yes, we are kiasu. The word has even made it to the Oxford English Dictionary -- and it's definitely not something i'm proud of. i wish we could learn to be just that little bit less afraid, and hence, less grasping and selfish.
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Of course i realise how perhaps impossibly idealistic this is. The only antidote to fear is security, and, especially in a small and competitive society like Singapore, one needs a heck of a lot of a sense of security to not be kiasu. i think the only way any human being can ever feel that secure, is through an unshakeable faith in the divine. You've got to really believe that, ultimately, the things of this world are not what really matters. Because, of course, we can only see the things of this world -- and not one of them lasts forever, not one of them is entirely trustworthy. And seeing how difficult it is even for believers to truly believe in the ultimate reality of the divine, i do think that hoping Singaporeans would be less kiasu -- is really a bit of a pipe dream.
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life's too short

Ok. Clearly, even lurking on FB is bad for my emotional well-being. Even more clearly, life is much too precious for this. Operation Disengage. Even if it means being cut off from and ignorant of what my communities are thinking and talking about. Maybe i should just create my own little bubble of sanity and happiness and just not pay attention to all these things that cause me so much aggro. At least, until i learn to be far more zen than i am at the moment. Life's too short.
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what we should do better (1)

Lest i start sounding like some sort of pro-Establishment Singapore Inc lackey ......
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There are lots of things we could, and should, do better. Here's a cluster of freedom-of-expression-related goals that i think it'd be good to work towards.
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We can learn to be more big-hearted, less paranoid, less small-minded and nit-picky in that incredibly "aunty" way. Case in point: we could let people who insist on saying stupid things just continue saying them, as long as they are not actually causing harm to anyone. No need to report every foul-mouthed attention-seeking teenager to the police. In London's Hyde Park, nobody pays any attention to the people speaking at Speakers' Corner because everyone knows they are just spouting nonsense. We need to cultivate some of that ability to shrug off those who simply don't deserve to be taken seriously, and just focus on the things that really matter.
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Related to the above: it'd be great if we could develop the maturity to listen to one another without flying off the handle at even the smallest hint that the other party disagrees with what we think. What is it about Singaporeans -- that we seem unable to just listen to different views without taking it all so terribly personally. i mean, everyone has opinions. Why are we so unable to accept that some opinions are simply not going to be in harmony with our own?
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Also related to the above: responsible free speech. i think there's some truth in the idea that repression breeds resentment and rebellion. And, in Singapore, also irresponsibility. So often, the free-speech advocates here are also the ones who couldn't give a damn about the impact of their words on the rest of society. They just want to express themselves, as if self-expression were a goal worthy enough to trump every other consideration in a civilised society. i think self-expression is good -- provided it's done responsibly and with the bigger picture in mind. i guess, at the end of the day, i'm more Asian in this regards: i don't happen to think that the rights of the individual should trump every other right. As my school principal used to say, 牺牲小我，完成大我。i honestly do believe in that, ultimately.
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the singapore paradox

This country has been so much in the news recently. First there was LKY; then "Cheryl's birthday"; then Amos Yee; and now the fact that we've topped the global ranking tables for education published by the OECD.
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i wonder what outsiders are thinking about us (if they think about us at all, that is ... ): this place must seem so weird from an outsider's point of view. At once so developed as a society and economy, and yet in other ways so apparently childish and unsophisticated. It doesn't help that the (Western) media inevitably projects its own (Western) values and expectations onto us in its reports, ignoring Singapore's complex social, cultural, historical and political context, whether out of ignorance or arrogance or maybe just plain cannot-be-bothered-ness.
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The American coverage of the Amos Yee case, for example, really makes me just want to shake some sense into these journalists' heads. For crying out loud, the boy is not a free-speech hero being martyred for his ability to think critically while the rest of Singapore wallows in a morass of blind submission to governmental authority. The things he's doing and saying are simply too dumb, too poorly-researched, and too pointless, to merit such a description. He's just a bloody si gin nah (literally 'dead child' -- a commonly-used Hokkien phrase used to describe children who are just annoying and full of themselves and generally incorrigible, though definitely not criminal) -- and my view is that we've overreacted with this and are playing into his desire to bask in what all si gin nahs ultimately want (and should not be given): attention. He does not deserve to be charged for what he did, not because he was in the right, but because we really should have better things to do as a country than to waste our precious resources on the likes of him.
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Another case in point: the Western media's views on LKY's social-engineering policies, like the infamous chewing gum ban, the courtesy campaign, the no-spitting campaign, the clean toilets campaign, etc. Sure, these seem unnecessarily nanny-like and paternalistic, and i'd be the first to agree that they open us up for a lot of mockery from developed Western countries. But the context for this is so important, and so often overlooked. Singapore started out as a nation of migrants. Most of our people came here to flee from poverty and to seek a chance of a better life. Just 2 generations ago (my grandparents' generation), most Singaporeans were first-generation migrants, uneducated or lowly-educated, eking out a living as farmers and labourers. The creature comforts -- and manners -- of first-world life were unknown to them. (My own grandmother did not get a flush-toilet in her home until around 1983: before that, like many others like her who also lived in kampungs, she was using an outhouse with a bucket. A bucket! That had to be emptied every day by night-soil-men going from village to village to collect each day's allotment of faeces and urine -- pardon my French -- that they then disposed of using goodness-knows-what methods in goodness-knows-what places.) And they behaved in ways that corresponded with their economic reality. (Am i being politically-incorrect? Very well, i'm being politically-incorrect. But this is the truth, whether we like it or not.)
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Ever been to China? And i don't mean Beijing or Shanghai, the Boston and New York of China respectively. i mean the more rural areas, or the smaller, less developed cities. Ever seen how the Chinese behave? It's hardly first-world behaviour -- and the thing is, it's not their fault. It's just their economic circumstances, and their lack of exposure to anything different. But THAT IS HOW SINGAPOREANS USED TO BEHAVE TOO. In fact, among the older generation today, there are still some who continue to behave that way. And it is not their fault. It is simply what they knew growing up, and what they have gotten used to.
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What LKY did was to speed up what would have been a very slow and painstaking learning process that might have taken generations if left to develop on its own, by mandating new, desired behaviours with the force of the law. If not for his campaigns, we'd still be spitting, not flushing toilets and squatting on toilet seats, being generally rude, uncouth, and unhygienic, and yes, sticking chewing gum on train doors. We'd still be country bumpkins; no, worse, we'd be rich country bumpkins. Honestly, i'm glad we're (generally) not like that anymore, and if that means that we have nanny-state laws and fines restricting our behaviour, well, so be it. It's a trade-off i'm willing to accept. At least for now, and for as long as it takes to turn what is now mandated behaviour into national habit.
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As for free speech... Ok, now that's a really complex issue. But i would say this: that Western liberal notions of freedom of expression with respect to race and religion simply will not work here. Even in Europe and the US today, we can see so clearly that race and religion are tinder for all sorts of aggressions and conflicts -- and those are white-majority countries with long histories, extensive land areas, and long-established social contracts. Singapore is so different. We're tiny; we're the most religiously-diverse country in the world; we're surrounded by countries with very different racial and religious demographics and a history of discrimination against their own minority groups. We cannot afford a Charlie Hebdo or Baltimore here; we cannot afford rudeness and inconsideration and disrespect the way France or the US can. (And why on earth anyone would want rudeness and inconsideration and disrespect in the first place .... i cannot even begin to fathom.)
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Still, it is true that this place is very much a paradox. And for that very reason, i would say that to apply Western (or any other, for that matter) yardsticks to us is simply unfair, mistaken, and, ultimately, pointless and ineffective. But i'm not sure if what i'd like to see instead is actually do-able, given that i guess yardsticks have to be applied one way or the other, and there always has to be some sort of basis for comparison. What can Singapore fairly be compared with? i really don't know. (And i'm open to suggestions.)
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bad news, and how to help

i learnt several years ago that people very often are at a loss as to what to do when you tell them bad news about your life, or when you share with them something difficult that you're going through. Or at least, i think this is true of people who haven't themselves gone through tough stuff.

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Often, they'll mouth some well-meaning but ultimately meaningless platitude such as "Oh, i'm sure it'll be alright eventually", or "Oh, you'll be fine, don't worry" -- as if they had any insight into how things would work out in future. If they're Christian or religious in some way, they might say things like, "i'm sure God has his reasons", or, even worse, "Remember that all suffering only serves to bring us closer to God" -- (in that case, i guess they must be so wishing that they could suffer more and must be so envious of all the suffering people in the world for their closeness to God). Another category of response that i found absolutely tactless: the people who take the opportunity to extract some sort of life lesson for their own lives, such as "When i see these things happening to people, it reminds me that i have to (insert imperative statement on steps they have to take to sort out their own lives)", as if your bad news was their inspiration for some timely self-improvement project. (Hip hip hooray. i am so happy for you that my pain has been of some service to you.) Sometimes, people just tell you to "take care" and then disappear off the radar completely and you never hear from them again. They don't even bother to follow-up with you and ask you how you're doing.

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It's difficult, of course -- we feel so helpless when we see someone we care about suffering, and the first instinct is to do something that we hope will make them feel better, but may actually just be a way of (unconsciously? subconsciously?) relieving our own discomfort. Surely, though, learning how to be with friends and loved ones through tough times is an essential life-skill. If i had to pin it down, i would say it comes down to two things: presence, and/or usefulness. 

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Presence -- simply being there, being available, listening without offering any judgement or advice. This can be so immensely reassuring for the person who's going through the tough situation: just knowing that he/she is not alone. Sometimes, words are unnecessary, and silence is truly golden. 

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Usefulness -- finding practical ways to help. This requires a bit more thought, time, and effort, of course. But i remember back in the first workplace when one of my colleagues came down with a serious illness: a few of the older teachers organised themselves to help her with things like groceries and house-cleaning, and one of them even made it a point to buy her her favourite gossip magazine every week. i thought that was so kind of them, and i'll remember it for a long time to come. When my dad passed away, my older cousins all chipped in to help with organising the wake and funeral. i still remember one of them stopping by early one morning with some steamed dumplings (i think it was dumplings; if not, then it was bao) that he'd bought my family for breakfast. We were so grateful -- the last thing on our minds at the time was what to have for breakfast, and we would have made do with just bread and jam, but it was so wonderful to have something freshly-cooked and piping hot and very delicious, because of course my cousin had bought the dumplings (or bao ... ) from some renowned shop, and they tasted very, very good.

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i don't think it takes much to communicate these life-skills to people. And it can make such a big difference when people are going through tough times. Definitely something to make known more widely.

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to vote or not to vote

So the UK has spoken. And the Tories have won.

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It's quite amusing -- having Singaporean friends studying in the UK at this time. They're in their early twenties, and most of them were so excited about the opportunity to exercise their vote as Commonwealth citizens. i did too, back when i was an undergrad -- in the election that brought Tony Blair to power. Back then, there was definitely a sense that this might actually be the only time in my life i'd ever get to vote in a national elections. Even now, i think, it's still the running joke -- that as Singaporeans, there is a chance we'd never get to take part in our own elections here if we live in constituencies that are never challenged by opposition candidates, and that the only time we might ever get to vote might well be in a country not our own.

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i voted Lib Dem. Not because i felt any stake in their policies -- but because as a foreigner who wasn't residing long-term in the UK, it just felt wrong, somehow, to be casting a vote that might actually make a difference to the election outcome. So i avoided voting either Tory or Labour and went with the coolest, most popular no-chancer instead. In other words, i voted for the sake of voting, and not because i had anything real to say.
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Now, i'm not sure if my reasoning back then was sound. i guess it all depends on how you see it. It could be interpreted as a refusal to take responsibility, an abuse of a privilege that, to be honest, i'm not sure i actually deserved. One of the young Singaporeans i know who's studying in the UK right now made the case that, in the short run, he enjoys the protections and amenities provided by the current government, and will be affected by the policies of the new government; and in the long run, he's giving a voice to future students and visitors who 'have not yet arrived' but will still be part of the larger political community that is the UK. He felt that voting responsibly was his way of contributing to the community that had given him so much. He also said that using his vote was his way of trying to make the UK a better place for those who were not doing so well under the current government. (No prizes for guessing which way his vote went ... ).
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i'm still in two minds about this. Not that it matters. For now, i'm just wondering whether i'll get the chance to vote in this year's General Elections. (We're all pretty sure it will be this year ... ). i did, in 2011: the first time i ever got to vote in a GE here. Not that there was any real choice ... i hope, of course, that i do get to vote again this year -- and that this time, the choice will be a meaningful one.
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visionary pragmatism

Hmmm. It looks like i won't be putting up my LKY Ambivalent-Fan piece anytime soon ... At least, not as a single essay or article. What i may do instead is to write short little pieces focusing on particular aspects of his personality or leadership style that i find interesting.
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So let's start with two things that, at first, seem largely contradictory -- which may perhaps explain why the man was such a paradox. i do believe though that these two qualities, together, enabled his extraordinary success and very much defined the Singapore that he created.
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i wish i had that combination of extraordinary vision, and hard-headed pragmatism. Honestly, i can't think of many people who could have dreamt the dreams he had for this country, and made them work against such incredible odds. How was it that he had such a firm grasp of reality, of realpolitik, and yet was able to envision and make into reality things that other people dismissed as impossible? How was it that he could be, at the same time, so cynical about human nature and yet so determined to build a kind of socialist-meritocratic (another one of those paradoxes .... ) utopia out of this tiny island-state? (More on the 'socialist' bit some other time -- Singapore is famous for its meritocratic system -- but as a nation, we had socialist roots, and i believe the socialist impulse is still very strong, albeit rarely publicised ...... ).
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五体投地。。。
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not a vulcan

" ... i can no longer bear any kind of rational argument, nothing formative in the world, nothing great or beautiful in the world has ever been born of rational argument."
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- from 'Art', by Yasmina Reza
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This line from 'Art', Yasmina Reza's very excellent play on friendship, identity, and art, has haunted me ever since i first heard it, back when i watched the first run of the English translation during my undergrad years in London. In fact, i've been wanting to put it up on this blog for a long time -- but i never did because i didn't know how i actually felt about it.
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Now i know that i usually don't know how i feel about anything until i've written about it. So not knowing how i feel, is probably the best place to start writing.
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Clearly, it's just not true that nothing great or beautiful in the world has ever been born of rational argument. i mean, mathematics is rational, and it's beautiful (i take this on trust ... i'm such a dud at maths that i can't quite appreciate its beauty....). And i don't think Yasmina Reza meant this as her own personal manifesto, either -- she put it into the mouth of a very flawed character who has lots of issues of his own. But it's something to think about -- the place of logic and rational argument in life.
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As a Lit person, i'm very much aware, i think, of the dangers of romanticism and idealism. And of course, i'm Singaporean -- my country's famous pragmatism is part of my inheritance whether i like it or not. But there are some things in life that are beyond logic and reason. And when we try to apply logic and reason to them, things just inevitably go very pear-shaped.
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Right now, i'm wondering if i need to learn to be more logical and pragmatic with big life choices, or if i need to learn to just let go and listen to intuition and not be so bounded by reason and logic. Perhaps that's a question everyone needs to ask themselves once in a while. i'm sure i'm not the only one.
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post-high

Ok. So i'm back from the poetry-high. It didn't last very long. Poetry highs don't usually last long. But something has shifted. i'm not entirely certain i can say what it is. i have been reminded, though, that it (literature, art) can matter -- the only problem being that this mattering is so beyond my (our? does this apply to everyone? i don't know ... ) control. Logically speaking, i'm not sure there was anything really that special about Theophi's work -- i mean, yes, it was very good, but were those poems that different from the many other very good poems i've read over the years that just didn't affect me in the same way? What distinguishes the good piece of writing that makes a difference, from the one that doesn't? There's something serendipitous to it, something beyond what we can will into being on our own. It's a kind of grace, i guess. A gift. Like love.
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Anyway, so the thing i'm taking away from the poetry-high that i actually do have real control over, is that i need to keep writing. Even when there's no poetry in me; even when i'm just too emotionally drained to write anything epic-ly spectacular. There's always this blog. Maybe this will be my legacy after all -- 'legacy', that is. It's been almost 10 years here on this pink blog -- 10 years of mostly consistent blogging (with a few gaps in between for those times when things were really, really bad ... ). Maybe this is what has been given me to do.
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One more thing. That chasm that seemed to be gaping just beyond the edges of those slightly-depressive blog-posts about human suffering from earlier this week. Maybe it seems that i've been skirting round it, avoiding the Big Questions about how i reconcile my faith with the fact of evil and suffering. It's not avoidance, though. i think it's more that i think the answers would not make sense unless one first accepts the premises of a Christian worldview -- in the same way no argument, however logical, can possibly make sense unless one accepts its starting premises. i actually don't think there is any logical incompatibility between the fact of earthly suffering and the goodness and power of God. Not when one remembers that Christianity is a faith that concerns itself, ultimately, with our eternal souls. The problem is not one of logic, but of emotion and ethical(?) sentiment. (And i use the labels 'emotion' and 'sentiment' in a descriptive sense -- with no intention at all of trivialising or discounting them.)
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But enough of that for now. Maybe this blog is not the best space for explaining my (admittedly rather ... erm ... off-centre) theological theories ... i think the best place for such long and complicated discussions is over a fragrant coffee in a nice quiet cafe, or at a small pinewood kitchen table in a cosy kitchen with the light slanting in through the windows. Frivolous pink blogs are perhaps best reserved for frivolous pink things. Perhaps.
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