Courage

cour•age
noun [U] the ability to do sth dangerous, or to face pain or opposition, without showing fear


We live in a relatively peaceful society here. We long lost our sense of courage.

People often discuss their problems with me. Sometimes they come and ask for advice, but most of the time it's just me being nosy. At the end of 99% of these chats, I'd tell them courage was the answer.

I am not sure how many of them understood what I meant, though.

In a relatively stable, but boring, society, people only have a limited set of problems. It's either about love or career. Most of the problems related to career are actually very practical and straightforward. It's only about rationally deducing the right choice and having the courage to take responsibility and risk of making that choice.

But courage plays a key role in this thing called love.

In a world without necessity, you boldly devote yourself to the one you love. You don't really have to love that particular person, you can actually love anybody, there's no destiny nor fate. It's the same for your lover. He or she can always stop loving you for no reason.

Even if the love between you two never dies, both of you can actually die on any day, at any time.

Think about it, it takes lots of courage to love somebody in this world of contingency. Your lover could suddenly stop loving you, or you two might be forever parted by the heartless hands of mortality.

But you still take the risk. You courageously love.

Courage is never a virtue solely for fighters in battlefield.

So next time when you're puzzled, make sure it's not about your cowardice.

Rainbow Bridge

“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace.” - Milan Kundera

I am not the kind of person who could get touched by stories easily, but I don't know why it's that difficult to hold my tears whenever I think about the story of rainbow bridge. More peculiar is that, it's related to heaven, a place I have zero faith in.

When a pet dies, it goes to this meadow outside of heaven. It has all illnesses cured, and there're plenty of other pets to play around with, missing only one thing: its owner who's still on earth.

When the pet's owner dies, the owner crosses the meadow upon his/her journey to heaven. It sees him/her from afar. It couldn't help but leave its friends there and run towards its owner. After all these years, the pet and its owner finally reunite. They cross the rainbow bridge together and enter heaven. They will never be parted again.

I don't know if Debbie will be waiting for me there, or for his original owner whom he stayed with for almost nine years. I don't think I can make it to heaven anyway, if there's one. But I found it pretty difficult for me to carry on writing this entry already, when I have to talk about this sad, but touching, story.

Pretty much everybody who knows me knows that The Unbearable Lightness of Being is my personal bible. I cry every time I read to the scene when Karenin, the dog of Tomas and Tereza, is dying.

I really don't understand why I am so touched by the death of pets. I have never even experienced one.

Maybe because pets are so innocent and truthful. There's a saying that, for owners, their pets might only be a part of their lives. But for pets, they have no other lives than their owners. We're all of our pets ever had.

Or maybe I unconsciously accepted and trust an after life. The long wait for us to reunite is too painful for me.

Or maybe, because pets never speak. You may rest assured that they love you; yes, they love you unconditionally. Behavioural psychologists can never share this thought, because they always like to say that, it's all conditioned.

And the fact that our pets' minds are a mystery to us is itself so enchanting.

Whenever I imagine that Debbie will see me from afar in the meadow and run towards me happily, I break down and cry.

Anything

any•thing pron.
1 used instead of something in negative sentences and in questions; after if/whether; and after verbs such as prevent, ban, avoid: Would you like anything else? There’s never anything worth watching on TV. If you remember anything at all, please let us know. We hope to prevent anything unpleasant from happening. The difference between anything and something is the same as the difference between any and some. Look at the notes there. 2 any thing at all, when it does not matter which: I’m so hungry, I’ll eat anything. 3 any thing of importance: Is there anything (= any truth) in these rumours?

"I can be anything", a friend wrote. He wanted to start a blog based on that idea, but he didn't make it happen.

When we're young, we never understand that we can be anything. We tend to think that we all have a destiny. "I will definitely become certain something."

I never before imagined that I'd have become what I am now. It was entirely unthinkable.

We all learned after a while, for some it takes longer, others quicker, that we can be anything.

Life is a possibility, instead of necessity. We create, instead of realising what is determined.

But without necessity other than mortality, life becomes so light. We don't know how to make our choice. Everything is possible, everything is not necessary.

My friend didn't start that blog. I guess he never will. It's also one of the possibilities he realised. He could have been anything, including nothing.

Guitar

gui•tar
noun a musical instrument that usually has six strings, that you play with your fingers or with a plectrum

I fell in love with guitars when I first saw Guns N' Roses' November Rain video more than 10 years ago.

I didn't even know that I needed an amp to make a sound out of an electric guitar. You see, Slash didn't have one in the video.

Like for all kids, the reality could always be a bit difficult to handle. I learned a hard lesson from Tom Lee's super "nice" sales that I need another grand at least for the amplifier. And I could never dance freely like Slash does, as I will need a cable connected from my guitar to the amp.

I ended up spending all of my teenage extra cash (those left after meals, booze, and smoke) on guitar until I got into university. The first electric guitar I bought was a wine red Gibson Les Paul Studio.

It was a big thing back then. We thought we're spoiled kids.

I practically taught two persons on how to play guitar. I learned from a Christian mathematics teacher in my school, who told me not to listen to the Beatles as they spread false and immoral messages. I found out later it's about the greatness of them.

That teacher told me I would not need him anymore after I had shown him how to bend the strings. That was foreign to Christian music; that's rock (Not sure if Christian Rock bends though).

I refuse to teach any other person how to play guitar. The two buddies I taught are still in my band today. I don't exactly know why I hate teaching others how to play. Maybe I just don't have the patience. And I thought anybody could learn that on their own, like I learned how to bend the strings from reading the notes to the tabs (Yes, there're no Internet, and we had to buy tabs from Tom Lee, a hardcopy tabs book, I mean).

I bought another very nice tobacco sunburst Gibson Les Paul Standard from a friend. That's my main guitar now.

I wrote somewhere that, if I died, these two Les Pauls would go to the only two persons who learned from me, who both became much better players than I am now.

Loneliness

lone•ly adj. (lone•lier, lone•li•est) 1 unhappy because you have no friends or people to talk to: She lives alone and often feels lonely. As I didn’t speak the language I grew lonelier and lonelier. 2 (of a situation or period of time) sad and spent alone: all those lonely nights at home watching TV 3 [only before noun] (of places) where only a few people ever come or visit isolated: a lonely beach note at alone
lone•li•ness noun [U]: a period of loneliness in his life


The one peculiar thing about loneliness is that, you don't have to be alone to be lonely.

Or is that just melancholy?

Necessity

ne•ces•sity noun
1 [U] ~ (for sth)| ~ (of sth / of doing sth)| ~ (to do sth) the fact that sth must happen or be done; the need for sth: We recognize the necessity for a written agreement.
2 [C] a thing that you must have and cannot manage without.
3 [C, usually sing.] a situation that must happen and that cannot be avoided.

The more we look around, the less necessity we found.

Mortality might be one.

Everybody can be anything.

Writer

writer noun
1 a person whose job is writing books, stories, articles, etc.: writers of poetry a travel / cookery, etc. writer
2 a person who has written a particular thing: the writer of this letter
3 (with an adjective) a person who forms letters in a particular way when they are writing: a messy writer


Writers are all liars.

As Haruki Murakami rightly said in his Jerusalem Prize speech, it's the novelists' job to tell lies. By telling lies novelists "bring truth out to a new location and shine a new light on it".

I think it's the same for all writers other than novelists.

Writers write many different kinds of things. With words writers create a reality of ideas and emotions.

Writers create, instead of representing things truthfully.

The reality writers created belongs no more to its maker. Writers can no longer manipulate what's been written, and are no longer responsible for its interpretation.

Liars will never interpret nor explain the lies told; writers do not dissect the reality created.

When I studied in the university, my supervisor always asked me to explain the things I had written. He either had no time to even glance through my works, or they're really badly written. I guess it happens all the time in that kind of setting, not only me, go ask every philosophy student.

But now we have this thing called Internet. We write in blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and commenting on others' writings all over different places.

I enjoy writing in these places, or else you won't be reading this.

But I must tell you again, that writers are liars.

Whenever people get serious about my writings, it becomes so unbearably nauseous. I feel like I am about to be forced to dissect the lies I told.

Most importantly, whenever people get serious with my writing, they almost always don't get what I have written.

Writers are all liars.

Metaphor

meta•phor
noun [C, U] a word or phrase used to describe sb/sth else, in a way that is different from its normal use, in order to show that the two things have the same qualities and to make the description more powerful.


"Metaphors are dangerous," Milan Kundera wrote in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Metaphor gives you a more colourful exposition of certain qualities in things, it helps you understand things better by analogy.

But why metaphors are dangerous?

Tomas fell in love with Tereza because he had found her like a baby sent downstream to him in a bulrush basket.

Metaphor works by abstracting the similarity between two things. In a metaphor, the things compared cease to be themselves. We're left with the similarity.

Tomas followed what every human would do seeing a bulrush basket floating downstream with a baby in it: he picked the baby up and brought her up. The metaphor carries the necessity of the conscience of "saving the innocent and helpless". Yet, it might not be so between Tomas and Tereza. Tereza came up in Tomas' life just like a baby floating downstream in a bulrush basket, but there was no necessity for Tomas to fall in love with her, like every other romantic relationships.

Self-help and self-motivation books are popular these years. They tell you what you should do by thousands of metaphors. Readers chew on these user manuals of life and get high on the comfort these metaphors offered.

Choices in life are however particular. Generalised and abstract direction or inspiration just won't solve the puzzles in life. Maybe that's why they said self-help makes you feel worse, spood-feeding generic answers just won't cut it.

Metaphors are safe for helping one to grasp a thing otherwise difficult to understand, but could be dangerous when we're talking about choices in life.

Faith

faith noun
1 [U] ~ (in sb/sth) trust in sb’s ability or knowledge; trust that sb/sth will do what has been promised: I have great faith in you—I know you’ll do well. We’ve lost faith in the government’s promises. Her friend’s kindness has restored her faith in human nature. He has blind faith (= unreasonable trust) in doctors' ability to find a cure.
2 [U, sing.] strong religious belief: to lose your faith Faith is stronger than reason.
3 [C] a particular religion: the Christian faith The children are learning to understand people of different faiths.
4 [U] good ~ the intention to do sth right: They handed over the weapons as a gesture of good faith.


People came out of the cinema complaining that Constantine was a bad action and supernatural thriller which merely warned us about the hazard of smoking wasted 121 minutes of their lives, which might be as hazardous as smoking itself.

John Constantine was damned to hell for the suicide he had committed, but was resuscitated and made the guardian of the earth. His job was to bust the half-demons whenever they break rules.

Constantine just hoped that his service would eventually earn him a ticket to heaven.

But the game was not played by that rule. God expects repentance and most importantly, faith.

God doesn't judge your faith and repentance by the services and good deeds you performed. God wants you to have faith in Him, and hence, admit your sins and repent by doing good deeds. It's never a honour medals collecting game in the first place.

As an apatheist I still admire the idea of faith Christianity brought, though I always doubt if faith is humanly possible at all. It's sad, and in fact annoying, to see most of the people from the Jesus fans club play it Constantine's way.

Some of them ended up being hypocrites, they do moral things merely for the ticket to heaven.

Maybe Christian faith implies also the belief in the good of heaven, which I never have. I learned when I was very young that the only thing angels do up there is cleaning the clouds. Being a hypocrite for whole life to end up being the janitor of the cloud land FOREVER sounded like a very lame idea.

But I do have faith in another divine thing, called love.

If you want to ask why, read the definition of faith above alongside this entry again and again until you want to stop asking.

Morality

mor•al•ity noun (pl. -ies) 1 [U] principles concerning right and wrong or good and bad behaviour: matters of public / private morality Standards of morality seem to be dropping. 2 [U] the degree to which sth is right or wrong, good or bad, etc. according to moral principles: a debate on the morality of abortion 3 [U, C] a system of moral principles followed by a particular group of people SYN ethics—compare immorality


We lost our sense of morality.

Morality has never been used as an instrument more than we do now.

Whenever you have an argument with others, or if you happen to be in any competition, you don't have to work towards the goal or reason with your head. You simply take the moral high ground fast! Get there and you win.

It's an age of moralisation.

I long for the age when morality means very little, almost nothing. People are judged by many different aspects, morality is only one among the others.

There're only a few things in life that call for a judgement of morality. For example, that you shouldn't kill a person for whatever reason, you should never intentionally cause harm to others, etc. Things like taking drug or having a drinking problem, should never be judged morally.

In the age of moralisation, movie stars and singers are not judged by their acting and singing, but by their moral character.

You get caught puffing a bong, you're doomed in your stardom.

We need to understand, being judged as immoral implies guilt, and that gives you the right to get your pound of flesh off that person.

It is indeed immoral to torture a person with moral condemnation for actions without moral relevancy. That drunken bastard next door has a problem, he needs help, as he is sick. Condemnation is the last thing he needs.

On the other hand, exaggerating moral condemnation numbs the guilt implied. Morality got reduced to an instrument for attacking your rivals. Moral judgements become mere talks without weight.

I long for the age when morality has its proper weight, not more, not less.

Philosophy

phil•oso•phy noun
1 [U] the study of the nature and meaning of the universe and of human life: moral philosophy the philosophy of science a professor of philosophy a degree in philosophy
2 [C] a particular set or system of beliefs resulting from the search for knowledge about life and the universe: the philosophy of Jung the development of different philosophies
3 [C] a set of beliefs or an attitude to life that guides sb’s behaviour: Her philosophy of life is to take every opportunity that presents itself.

I studied philosophy when I was in university.

I have been having years of hard time formulating a sincere, yet snappy answer that can be spoken in 10 seconds, about what I did in university.

At times I gave examples. It's a study on "whether god exists", "what makes one thing true and real", "what is the meaning of life" etc. People seemed to be satisfied with the "god" example more, but I personally think that it's the worst one.

Another way of talking about it would be giving a brief introduction on the so called three major streams of philosophical study, namely, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. For the first few times, I started with metaphysics and tried to end with ethics. But people's concentration usually couldn't make it to even the middle of epistemology.

I adjusted my strategy later, and started with ethics instead. It sounded better, but then reducing philosophy to a study of practical ethics is the last thing I feel like doing.

Studying philosophy in university is having a bunch of kidults talking about things in difficult terms. They pride themselves on having thought about things that common people wouldn't care, or don't have the intelligence to think about. But in reality, any normal adults think about those great things one time or another in their lives.

Thinking about things in a philosophical attitude is another thing.

You suspend all your prejudice, challenge the accepted grounds, and think independently for yourself. You ask a specific and peculiar question of why things are as such but not otherwise. And you do not accept what others offered as answer. You work it out on your own.

It is misleading to say that philosophy is about the meaning of life and the world, and that it teaches you how to lead a fulfilling and meaningful life, nor how to build a better society.

It makes people think that books on philosophy are user manuals of life and world.

There is no user manual for life and world, not even god can write one.

But answering problems of life and world requires a philosophical attitude. You find an answer for yourself, and not accepting the accepted.

When people ask me what philosophy is about nowadays, I still resort to the "god" example.

Improvisation

im•pro•vise verb
1 to make or do sth using whatever is available, usually because you do not have what you really need: [v] There isn’t much equipment. We’re going to have to improvise. [vn] We improvised some shelves out of planks of wood and bricks.
2 ~ (on sth) to invent music, the words in a play, a statement, etc. while you are playing or speaking, instead of planning it in advance: [v] ‘It’ll be ready some time next week, I expect,’ she said, improvising. He improvised on the melody. [vn] an improvised speech
> im•pro•visa•tion noun [U, C]

Musicians understand this concept well.

We probably improvise a lot in our daily lives, I hope we actually do more.

If you are a musician or an actor, you will know what improvisation is about. You don't play or act following certain score or script, you simply play what is coming up in your mind and let it flow.

You still play in harmony with the tune of the music, or under the context of the act, people could still judge aesthetically if you're doing it well. Only that there is no definite or determined score to follow. It's when we make our choices of notes or actions freely.


Sean O'Casey once said, "All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed."


If we believe that there is no script written for life, then there're lots of improvisations to do everyday.

Having no script, doesn't mean that you go on the stage and do whatever you like chaotically. You however play it freely.

You get big applause if your improvisation goes harmoniously with the context or tune of your life.

I imagine that when the last judgement comes, each of us will be judged by an aesthetician, instead of a moralist.

Luck

luck noun, verb

noun [U]
1 good things that happen to you by chance, not because of your own efforts or abilities: With (any) luck, we’ll be home before dark. (BrE) With a bit of luck, we’ll finish on time. So far I have had no luck with finding a job. I could hardly believe my luck when he said yes. It was a stroke of luck that we found you. By sheer luck nobody was hurt in the explosion. We wish her luck in her new career. You’re in luck (= lucky)—there’s one ticket left. You’re out of luck. She’s not here. What a piece of luck! The only goal of the match came more by luck than judgement. Finally my luck ran out and they caught me trying to climb the outer wall. She dared not trust to luck that nobody would see her.—see also beginner’s luck
2 chance; the force that causes good or bad things to happen to people fortune: to have good / bad luck I put the loss of the money down to pure bad luck.—see also hard-luck story

verb
luck out (NAmE, informal) to be lucky: I guess I really lucked out when I met her.


"The man who said 'I'd rather be lucky than good' saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net and for a split second it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck it goes forward and you win. Or maybe it doesn't and you lose."

~Chris Wilton, in Match Point


Luck has always been underestimated by people.

People admit that there is luck, of course. But most people fail to see how luck contributes to the significance of human life.

Hardworking people are often acclaimed. But sadly as Wilton (or actually, Woody Allen) rightly said above, being lucky seems to conquer everything.

Luck implies a deeper human situation, which I gladly found in the Oxford English Dictionary, i.e. chance.

No matter how hard you work, there is always a chance that you will fail disastrously.

It's this grim possibility that people often try to ignore. They imagine that there is a harmony between their virtues and happiness. But sorry, not in this life.

Then should we stop all our hard work, sit there and wait for our luck to come? Any three years old knows the answer.

I believe that the world is fair to the extent that the hardworking fellas get more of what they deserved.

However, having the element of luck in life actually makes it more interesting. We do not lead our lives like completing a sudoku. There is always a chance that there will be two "9" filled within a row to make the whole grid fail.

Or you are otherwise lucky, the ball goes forward and you win.

If life is like a play script and we only work very hard to realise what was written, without chance of otherwise, it's actually pretty doomed, and the worst part is, it's unbearably boring.

I rather believe that there is luck, than fate.

Seriousness

ser•ious•ness noun [U, sing.] the state of being serious: He spoke with a seriousness that was unusual in him. We saw from the seriousness of her expression that she meant it.


"Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow." ~ Oscar Wilde


I come across serious people everyday.

It is necessary to distinguish between serious people and sincere people. I am very fond of the latter.

Serious people simply don't understand that life is beyond seriousness. They are only going to end up being very sadly frustrated.

Not only that they are serious about their lives. They seriously comment and concern about others' lives. If people only causally jive about others' lives, they're only nosy. But serious people shove it further; they want you to become just like them and be serious.

Seriousness is an essential component of social movements. Who can take the image of the leader bursts out laughing amid the great march towards a better future? All social activists, to me, are serious people.

So serious people have a future, and are dreamers. People who are not so serious, like myself, live relatively animal lives.

Serious people want you to become part of them. But we laugh.

Seriousness might be one of the most laughable human phenomena.

People who can laugh never have the heart to convince serious people to start laughing, we just simply laugh.

Why so serious?!

Melancholy

mel•an•choly noun, adj. noun [U] (formal) a deep feeling of sadness that lasts for a long time and often cannot be explained: A mood of melancholy descended on us. There is a brooding melancholy in his black and white photography. adj. very sad or making you feel sadness SYN mournful, sombre: melancholy thoughts / memories. The melancholy song died away.

Melancholy is one of the things in life that I don't really understand.

It's a sadness without a cause.

Just because it comes without a cause, it's the most private kind of all sorrow. You simply have no clue what is going on, you don't know how to talk to people about that, sometimes, you don't even want to talk about it.

It just comes and goes. At times, it never leaves.

It seems that ECT was the only effective medical treatment for melancholy. But then, tying myself to the operation chair with two electrodes stuck to my head, and having electric shocks sent in, sounds awkward to me. I don't know if I would become more depressed or what.

Most importantly, I don't know how pathological melancholy is.

Melancholy chooses you.

Choice

choice noun, adj.
noun
1 [C] ~ (between A and B) an act of choosing between two or more possibilities; something that you can choose: women forced to make a choice between family and career. We are faced with a difficult choice.
2 [U, sing.] the right to choose or the possibility of choosing: If I had the choice, I would stop working tomorrow. He had no choice but to leave (= this was the only thing he could do).
3 [C] a person or thing that is chosen: She’s the obvious choice for the job.
4 [sing., U] the number or range of different things from which to choose
adj. (choicer, choicest) [only before noun]
1 (especially of food) of very good quality
2 (NAmE) (of meat) of very good, but not the highest, quality
3 ~ words / phrases carefully chosen words or phrases: She summed up the situation in a few choice phrases. (humorous) He used some pretty choice (= rude or offensive) language.

I came across two types of people at times, either they think that there is no choice at all, but only fate. Or they consider choice being the dignity of human, with that we conquer anything.

The first group of people can either be a pessimist or an optimist; although I cannot agree on the fate-only talk, I think this group of people see certain truth about life.

The latter group of people, who indulge themselves in the dignity of human, ignored an important essence of choice itself.

The pure form of choice is options having equal weight. If options carry different weights, where one is inclined to choose the heaviest one, the choice is actually determined.

We make many of these determined choices everyday, from the choice of coffee or tea to the choice of which career to pursue.

But what's the big deal about determined choices, then? My dog chooses freely everyday rather to pee in his toilet or in the middle of our living room, too. We still have a hard time trying to figure out a way to determine his urination habit.

His choice of pee location sounded freer then my inclined choice for coffee upon breakfast.

Yet, there are certain pure choices we all have to make at certain point of our lives. We necessarily make the choice arbitrarily, because all options carry equal weight and we simply don't know how to choose.

More often than not, critical choices in life are pure choices. And there lies the true freedom, the human dignity we treasure.

The real free choices are those we simply don't know how to choose.