July 17, 2009

The Case For Nature (vs Nurture)

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When I was young, my dad had a fight with his brother over open­ing a con­ve­nience store next to a phar­macy (my uncle is a phar­ma­cist) in a plaza that my grand­mother owned. Both types of stores have lots of com­pet­ing prod­ucts, so the argu­ment was about who would be the one to open their store. I guess my dad won, because he bought the con­ve­nience store and ran it for quite a few years.

After that, I didn’t see my uncle or his fam­ily at all. For so long that I com­pletely for­got that I had a cousin, Crystal.

When my grand­mother came from Hong Kong to visit one year, she reunited the fam­i­lies again, and I saw them for the first time in a long while1.

At that time, the pop­u­lar thing to do was play cards. I had the rep­u­ta­tion as being the fastest, most dex­ter­ous dealer out of all the kids. But when I went over to my uncle’s house one day and we were play­ing Asshole, I noticed Crystal deal­ing exactly the same way I did, except faster, with­out even pay­ing attention.

It was at that point that I real­ized, “This per­son is my family”.

The only other time I had such a stark real­iza­tion was dur­ing my trip to Hong Kong ear­lier this year. At an inter­na­tional buf­fet, we grabbed some dessert from the cart and ordered some tea. My uncle, aunt (both sib­lings of my dad), and I were sit­ting at the table, with deli­cious pas­tries in front of us, but none of us were touch­ing them. When some­one asked my uncle why he wasn’t eat­ing his dessert yet, he said that he has to have tea with his sweets. And it turns out that was the exact same rea­son me and my aunt were wait­ing too. One of these lit­tle quirks that one never expects some­one else to have, and some­times we’re even ridiculed for it, and yet here we were, three peo­ple doing the exact same thing for the exact same reason.

I gen­er­ally believe that humans are more likely a prod­uct of their expe­ri­ences, with a touch of inher­ited qual­i­ties too. After all, I’m almost noth­ing like either of my par­ents. It was only these two expe­ri­ences that made me admit that there’s a lit­tle more of us that’s inher­ited, that we’re a prod­uct of our genes, than I would have believed.

  1. I even dis­cov­ered that I had a new cousin, Darren, who was Crystal’s brother. [↑]
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March 28, 2008

How To Interpret Nothing

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(I’ve been writ­ing this in my head for four years. Four years and seven months, to be precise.)

So one last touch and then you’ll go
And we’ll pre­tend that it meant some­thing so much more
But it was vile, and it was cheap
And you are beau­ti­ful but you don’t mean a thing to me

—Death Cab for Cutie, Tiny Vessels

Ghost picture

I got this pic­ture in New Jersey. It’s the most pecu­liar size for a pho­to­graph: 3 7/16 by 4 13/16 inches.

For some rea­son, I see it prop­erly like this — land­scape ori­en­ta­tion, with the white stripe on the left — when it could just as well be rotated any other way. This is the bias I place on it. The way I view it.

It almost looks like a room with a wall in frame on the left, and the cam­era has metered for a flash off the wall, under­ex­pos­ing the rest of the pic­ture. There are two smears in the black­ness. Maybe an out-of-focus object, maybe a fin­ger­print on the lens.

I didn’t take the pic­ture. Someone else did, thought it was bad, and was about to throw it out before I asked for it. Someone who took me for granted. Someone who’s world I lived in but for a week, in the midst of the intense sum­mer humid­ity and coitus inter­rup­tus.

I’ve kept it in one of my note­books since. The edges have turned yel­low, and the cor­ners blunt from handling.

Every time I look at it, I like to think that I see some­thing in that grain and that noise. That something’s there; I just don’t see it because there isn’t enough light to expose it, but it exists nonethe­less. Some pho­to­graphic kōan, where I become that which I seek.

But I know there isn’t, the way I know it was noth­ing more than pass­ing moment, a week for­got­ten, a life unchanged.

And I’ve been hap­pily fool­ing myself ever since.

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November 14, 2007

In Her Prayers

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Every now and then, Louise let’s me know that she’s pray­ing for me. For my health. For my success.

She really believes in the power of prayer. It’s healed her fam­ily, it’s given her guid­ance, it’s pro­vided her with the strength that she needs. She’s one of the few Christian’s whose faith I respect1.

It’s a nice feel­ing to be in someone’s prayers, and she does this even though I’m not Christian myself.

Normally, I’m a skep­tic about these things.

Which makes it dif­fi­cult to deny how it’s lately been working.

  1. In most of my expe­ri­ence, it’s as Nietzsche said; “The Christian resolve to find the world evil and ugly, has made the world evil and ugly.” [↑]
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November 2, 2007

The Case For Divine Serendipity

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I sup­pose I shouldn’t be sur­prised to find out you’ll be in town the day after I write about you.

The way the young man I just met is tak­ing the same bus home with me. The way the friend who’s been lost for­ever sud­denly shows up, pack­ing your bags in the check­out line.

But I know it’s not a sign. It’s not some cos­mic path, just the way things are work­ing out. At least, I think so. My life has been filled with such occur­rences, and I’ll be damned if it all doesn’t start to mean something.

See you tomorrow.

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July 13, 2007

Becoming One With The Tao

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After 26 years, I’ve real­ized that I’m a Taoist.

I dab­bled in Existentialism (after read­ing Huis Clos, revis­it­ing it when read­ing Thus Spoke Zarathustra), athe­ism (when I was dat­ing an Anglican), agnos­ti­cism (after we broke up), Nihilism (while read­ing sev­eral books of Russian Romantic lit­er­a­ture), Buddhism (in early uni­ver­sity), and Christianity (through­out my life). None of it ever felt complete.

In 2003, I hap­pened to come across a few verses of the Tao Te Ching. The con­cepts were dif­fi­cult to grasp at first1. Eventually, with the guid­ance of some Chinese elders, I came to a solid foun­da­tion of under­stand­ing, then approached it slowly and care­fully. I had put so much hope in find­ing a sys­tem of beliefs in the past, that I was scared of hur­riedly align­ing myself with the first one that bared a pass­ing resem­blance to my own.

More specif­i­cally, I’m a philo­soph­i­cal Taoist. I don’t believe in any poly­the­is­tic aspects of the reli­gious side, the div­ina­tion of the I Ching, or any of the archaic sex­ual prac­tices of ret­ro­grade ejac­u­la­tion and the like.

This doesn’t mean that I’m a per­fect Taoist, inso­far as there are no per­fect Christians, or per­fect peo­ple. The Tao Te Ching is my bible. It guides me on how to live and behave as much as it is a label of my exist­ing beliefs. There are things I have yet to learn, apply, or both.

I think I’ve always been a Taoist. I just never knew it. For as long as I can remem­ber, I’ve lived by the prin­ci­ples of bal­ance, empti­ness (or recep­tive­ness), and strength of flex­i­bil­ity. I’m glad that it’s a part of the cul­ture of my blood. It makes me proud. Understanding Cantonese has cer­tainly helped me appre­ci­ate the beauty of it all.

One doesn’t decide to become a Taoist. The Way is described as hav­ing no begin­ning or end. You must become one with it.

As such, a trav­eler is at his des­ti­na­tion at every part of the journey.

  1. I’ve come to see that the ideas are eas­ily lost in trans­la­tion [↑]
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October 24, 2005

Thrice = Love: The Journey

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I see the parts but not the whole
I study saints and schol­ars both
No per­fect plan unfurls
Do I trust my heart or just my mind
Why is truth so hard to find in this world
Yeah in this world

‘Cause I am due for a mir­a­cle
I’m wait­ing for a sign
I’ll stare straight into the sun
And I won’t close my eyes
Till I under­stand or go blind

—Thrice, Stare At The Sun

Even at my age, whether oth­ers may con­sider it young or old, I haven’t decided on a spe­cific set of beliefs, whether they be reli­gious, philo­soph­i­cal, or psychological.

In try­ing times I find myself wish­ing that I had some­thing, some form of struc­ture that would make sense of the things that hap­pen. The most serene peo­ple I know are also the most pious, as they seem to have an answer for the seem­ingly unex­plained or unde­served. I’ve often asked the­ists, the ones whose intel­li­gence I respect, what has made them believe in one or sev­eral gods. Most com­monly the answer is that they have enough evi­dence for such an exis­tence. Even though I’ve had a few serendip­i­tous expe­ri­ences myself, things which I can’t explain by chance alone, it hasn’t been enough to give me a defin­i­tive answer.

Sometimes it feels like I’m wait­ing for a mir­a­cle to give me an answer or show me a path.

I used to be an athe­ist, then an agnos­tic, until I became com­pletely unde­cided. It’s rare to find other peo­ple who are open-minded enough to admit that they are still learn­ing, or have yet to dis­cover what so many other peo­ple already have. What I know for sure is that I still have the rest of my life to find out, to walk that path and make that journey.

Gimmie a girl who isn’t afraid to stare at the sun with me.

The Thrice = Love Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Journey
  3. As The Crucible
  4. Rock It
  5. The Rush
  6. Far From The End
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July 13, 2004

The Zarathustra Sessions, Part 3: Saint Salieri

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I know the hatred and envy of your hearts. You are not great enough to not know hatred and envy. So be great enough not to be ashamed of them!

—Of War and Warriors, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Ah, back into this again. I wasn’t plan­ning on writ­ing this tonight, but some­thing set me off.

I like how Nietzsche believes that two human “flaws”, which some view as sins no less, should be embraced instead of shunned. Most likely, he’s attack­ing Christianity, and it’s view of hatred and envy as sins (he goes on to attack other beliefs in sweep­ing sub­ject dances). Personally, I think that he’s point­ing out the fact that humans are, in fact, human, and prone to err. After all, who is good enough to not feel such base emo­tions, even if only once-in-a-while?

It’s made me real­ize that some­times I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. I shouldn’t blame myself for feel­ing a cer­tain way, or hav­ing a cer­tain flaw. It doesn’t even mat­ter if painful emo­tions don’t gen­er­ate some­thing ben­e­fi­cial, like self-improvement.

Of course, if my base assump­tion is wrong, then I’m read­ing too deeply into this. Such things are always a haz­ard of read­ing trans­lated mate­r­ial, and all that really mat­ters is whether or not it helps.

It’s taken me this long to real­ize that the best that one can do is try, not suc­ceed. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to set­tle for a life with­out self-improvement, it just means that I should learn to for­give myself before I learn to for­give others.

Because the for­mer has always been harder than the latter.

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June 9, 2004

The Zarathustra Sessions, Part 1: Anthropomorphizing The Image Of The Self

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I should believe only in a God who under­stood how to dance.

—Of Reading And Writing, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

I don’t cur­rently believe in a god, but if I did, I would imag­ine that he, being a god, would under­stand all the things that I hold as impor­tant. I couldn’t imag­ine a god with­out a great sense of humour, a good sense of musi­cal taste, or a nice bowel move­ment or a reg­u­lar basis.

And how mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal is that?

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