Posts tagged with "reflection"

What Do I Know Of Suffering?

Sometimes I ques­tion whether or not I real­ly know what suf­fer­ing is. Reading back on my last entry, it struck me that in many ways, my life was­n’t that bad.

A Hero Of Our Time was writ­ten dur­ing great mil­i­tary con­flict, where peo­ple were fre­quent­ly “exiled” by being sent to remote places along the front of the Russian-Circassian War, where Russia had already been fight­ing for over 40 years. Some may argue that I don’t tru­ly under­stand suf­fer­ing, because my cul­ture has­n’t been through some­thing like this, where­as such pain is already in the blood of Russians. Even in pop­u­lar cul­ture, such as Babylon 5, the Russian char­ac­ter Susan Ivanova (whom I quot­ed in this tweet) seems to fol­low this stereo­type.

So can I tru­ly relate to this with­out hav­ing gone through any of it myself?

If you look at Aya Nagatomi’s per­for­mances of Chopin, specif­i­cal­ly her inter­pre­ta­tion of his Étude Op. 10, No. 12, you can tell that it’s tech­ni­cal­ly amaz­ing — cer­tain­ly a vir­tu­oso in the mak­ing as she’s only 19 in this video — but you don’t feel the ruba­to with which Chopin intend­ed it. As such, it sounds like it’s being per­formed by a com­put­er. You have to won­der whether it takes a cer­tain degree of hard­ship expe­ri­enced to do it jus­tice, per­haps going through the polit­i­cal tur­moil of the November Uprising in Warsaw that inspired Chopin to write this Revolutionary Étude.

Could Leonard Cohen have been able to pen a song like Famous Blue Raincoat with­out hav­ing suf­fered through a few lone­ly nights in New York City? I think not.

I don’t know enough about Chinese his­to­ry to know what my ances­tors went through. The rel­a­tives I know of in pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions escaped the Cultural Revolution — where they would have been sub­ject­ed to unbe­liev­able hard­ships — to Hong Kong. Maybe it’s not in my blood, and I’m just drawn to the idea of Nihilism on a super­fi­cial lev­el, nev­er tru­ly under­stand­ing it any deep­er.

But a long time ago, I remem­ber read­ing an entry by Tina where she felt dis­turbed by oth­er peo­ple’s opin­ions on how jad­ed she was feel­ing, as they were say­ing she had noth­ing to feel bad about. I told her not to com­pare her­self to oth­ers. That one per­son going through heart­break is a dif­fer­ent kind of suf­fer­ing than a per­son going with­out food, and that one can’t said to be more “painful” than the oth­er.

I may have been well-fed, healthy, and from a mid­dle-class fam­i­ly in my child­hood. But none of things mat­tered to me because it was the emo­tion­al con­nec­tion that I was seek­ing, but could nev­er find.

I’ve always had the bad habit of com­par­ing myself to oth­ers. I should prob­a­bly just fol­low my own advice and enjoy the com­fort, beau­ty, and inspi­ra­tion that Russian lit­er­a­ture gives me.

After all, if I can acknowl­edge that my suf­fer­ing is my own, no one else would tru­ly under­stand any­way!

Five Year Timestamp, Revisited

On the last entry, my Uncle Joe post­ed this com­ment:

You’ve changed a lot. More mature, more sta­ble, more tol­er­ant. 5 years back, you paid more atten­tion to your appear­ance, now you care more about what you do, what you observe. Now you’re a bit slop­py :)…and I like that. Your spend­ing habit is so much dif­fer­ent.

I don’t know what caused all that…work expe­ri­ence? Parents’ divorce? Love life? Tai Chi and Taoism?

The caus­es of my changes were too big to cov­er in the small box, so I said I’d cov­er them in their own entry. Here goes.

Therapy

One of the sig­nif­i­cant things my ther­a­pist helped me with was the abil­i­ty to not sweat the small stuff. It took a few thought records for me to real­ize that there are things out of my con­trol. I used to be real­ly moody, where if a small detail did­n’t go right, I’d get real­ly grumpy. Now that does­n’t any­more, although I do occa­sion­al­ly have to remind myself of this idea, as it’s not a com­plete­ly nat­ur­al reac­tion (yet). This is prob­a­bly what Uncle Joe noticed as me being “slop­py”, as I’ve stopped wor­ry­ing about things going wrong, so a bit more care­free when it comes to details. Even Bronwen said she’s noticed the change.

I also had inti­ma­cy issues, where I’d push my girl­friends away if they got too close. I’ve since learned to let some­one in, even if it means it may hurt me in the end, and there’s a great com­fort to be had in know­ing this. In fig­ur­ing out what went wrong, and being giv­en the hope that my future rela­tion­ships won’t end due to my old inti­ma­cy issues, which I’m sure was buried in my sub­con­scious before.

Taoism

Taoism has giv­en me the same rough mind­set as ther­a­py, in terms of let­ting go of the lit­tle things that don’t go my way. But it was­n’t just due to the fact that things are out of my con­trol, but also the idea that things don’t real­ly mat­ter. I’m still work­ing on oth­er tenets, like spon­tane­ity and wu wei, but what I’ve been able to under­stand and apply so far has helped a lot.

When I’m hav­ing a bad day, I can go to the Tao Te Ching, find a verse that’s appro­pri­ate to my sit­u­a­tion, and for some rea­son my heart finds such con­tent­ment in the words. Perhaps it’s even more than the indi­vid­ual tenets, and the fact that I now have some­thing to believe in that brings com­fort, sta­bil­i­ty, and hap­pi­ness. A non-reli­gious opi­ate, if you will.

Relationships

Having been through two good rela­tion­ships with two good peo­ple, espe­cial­ly with the mem­o­ries I have now, has giv­en me a lot of sat­is­fac­tion. Sure, they may have end­ed, but I nev­er thought I’d be in a good rela­tion­ship, prob­a­bly because of my child­hood with my par­ents, along with con­fi­dence issues. I think some peo­ple go their whole lives with­out ever hav­ing the sort of love that I did, or being able to expe­ri­ence the same won­der­ful­ly inti­mate moments. This has giv­en me a con­tent­ment I would­n’t be able to find any­where else.

Revealing Words

A read­er recent­ly sent me an e‑mail. This was the last para­graph:

Lastly and please don’t take this as being bold, I want to keep read­ing and one day read that you are noth­ing but hap­py and ful­filled. I would nev­er post a com­ment because I am too shy and also pret­ty prone to being embar­rassed by peo­ple who are cool­er than me (and I con­sid­er peo­ple who blog as peo­ple who are cool­er then me), but many times when I read your entries I feel like I am watch­ing a pro­tag­o­nist in a favourite movie or re-read­ing Siddhartha. Does that make any sense to you? I’m cheer­ing you on and I’m in your cor­ner.

It made me won­der: if she wants to read that I’m hap­py one day, does that mean that I’m not hap­py now? It forced the real­iza­tion in me that the answer is no. Obviously no. Life isn’t great. But do I only write about the bad stuff? I’ve always believed that you have to suf­fer to cre­ate. I’m one of those, so maybe this is the case. I imag­ine it’s the oppo­site with my Tai Chi or table ten­nis part­ners, who must think my life is per­fect, because of how hap­py I am when I’m doing those activ­i­ties.

It also made me won­der how much of myself is revealed here. Someone once told me that she sees two dif­fer­ent sides of me: one who is seri­ous and intim­i­dat­ing from the things I write, and anoth­er who is easy-going and relaxed over the phone.

So what comes through in my words? Certainly not every­thing. But it’s the same as any­thing else, because it’s hard to get a total pic­ture of some­one, unless, per­haps, you spend an appro­pri­ate­ly uncom­fort­able amount of time with them.

Accepting My Baggage

Sometimes, I won­der what my life would be like if I did­n’t have so much bag­gage. How my rela­tion­ships would be dif­fer­ent. Which ones would have worked, and which ones would­n’t have changed at all.

Love, in all it’s mul­ti-faceted won­der, lev­els, and types, is nev­er a sure thing for me. I may feel it, but feel that it’s fleet­ing and con­di­tion­al at the same time. Other peo­ple have the lux­u­ry of tak­ing love for grant­ed. They assume they’re loved. How com­fort­ing it must be. For me, it’s always been a strug­gle for sta­bil­i­ty. “We won’t love you if you don’t do well on this test. We won’t love you if you don’t prac­tice piano. We won’t love you if you don’t fin­ish your din­ner. No one’s going to love you if you always stay this skin­ny.”

It feels like I haven’t sur­vived my child­hood yet. And I arrive at this fact so many times when try­ing to fig­ure out the source of my issues that it’s start­ing to sound like an excuse. Therapy has helped iden­ti­fy my issues, but it’s still tak­ing work on my part to resolve them, along with patience on the parts of oth­ers. I’m begin­ning to ques­tion why peo­ple would accept and love me. I guess it’s worth it to some, but things would be so much eas­i­er if they did­n’t have to deal with my inse­cu­ri­ties.