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.