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Reading Gone with the Wind, I was left with an uneasy feeling. It had nothing to do with The End of the Old South, slavery, or the KKK. It's because of a character named Ashley Wilkes.
Ashley Wilkes is Scarlet O'Hara's--the story's heroine, in case you don't know--love interest. He's basically everything that Scarlett isn't. He's a very serious, polite guy who likes talking about literature and philosophy and the likes. He's supposed to be a big guy, what with his intellect and all. But the Confederacy lost, the old ways gone, and he just doesn't have what it takes to survive the new era.
The thing is, Ashley reminded me of me. The book-smart who's clueless when it comes to the ways of the world, that's me alright. I'm very idealistic, and I love engaging myself in abstract thinking. In fact, sometimes I loathe the so-called realism and opportunism and practicality of people. Just because things are going as they are, why shouldn't we try picturing what should be or might be instead of accepting them as they are? is what I think.
But the most worrying thing about Ashley's/my personality is the unworldliness aspect. We're book-smarts. We're meant to excel in classroom, achieving success academically, that sort of thing. But that's it. We are confined to the world of ideas, but we are alien to the "real" world.
And what is so wrong with that, you may ask. Truth to be told, I don't know. Maybe because it makes communication with most people impossible (it's like we're on different wavelengths or something). Maybe because it means I'm a hopeless case who badly needs institutionalization. Maybe because an individual like me has no place in the modern society. Heck, I have no idea. Enlighten me.
"Doing what you like is freedom, but liking what you do is happiness." I rolled my eyes when I read that line for the first time. "Liking what you do is happiness," that sounds like something someone who hates his job, co-workers, and boss would say to himself so that he'd feel less miserable. You see where my sympathy lies.
Of course, it works the other way around. People might find the "Doing what you like is freedom" part a lame excuse produced by those who simply refuse to act responsible. Some people don't have the liberty to be picky, with wife and kids at home that need to be fed. So why not try to be content with what they do?
It makes sense, if you put it that way. I admit that I sometimes can't help wondering whether I'm a spoiled-brat. It took two extra semesters in college to make me realize that I can't do things I don't like. If I was forced to do otherwise, I would only screw up. Does it make me a childish person? Or merely a terrible selfish individual?
Despite my age, which qualifies me as a legal adult, I never feel that way at all. I do think that I have become wiser, but more mature? I have no idea. What does being an adult mean anyway? I suspect it has something to do with submitting yourself to what society deems appropriate. Surrendering yourself to the will of the tribe, that kind of thing. If that is people's idea of maturity, I'd rather not being a grown-up at all.
Were I to give my take on what being a grown-up means, it is this: the courage to take full responsibility for the consequences of your choices. You might do something because you like it, or because you have to. But bear in mind that what you eventually do is what you choose yourself. Things might not go according to plan, or they might yet you're still unsatisfied. Either way, you must not blame your boss, your family, the situation, or anybody and anything else besides yourself for them.
Maybe by doing so, you can one day wake up with no regret for everything you've done so far in your life, for a life well lived. Just maybe.
I'm hugely disappointed. After six years and two hundred-something good chapters and elaborate storyline, I expect something more than this ... this ending but no conclusion.
The story started with a boy, Syaoran, traveled through different dimensions to collect the scattered feathers containing memories of his childhood friend, Sakura; Kurogane, a banished ninja in need of learning some manners; and Fai, a mage running away from his home country; Mokona, a cute magical being capable of crossing dimensions. And what do we get in the end? They were all stranded in Clow Country--Sakura's home--without further explanation regarding what would happen to them afterwards. Would Syaoran stay in Clow Country for good? What about Kurogane, Fai, and Mokona? Would Kurogane be able to fulfill his vow to return to Nihon? What actually happened between Clow, Yuuko, and Fei Wong?
If only we Tsubasa fans could rely on the hope that xxxHOLiC would give us a more thorough explanation. Fat chance. I haven't seen any indication of that. Oh, CLAMP, why do you let us down?
I believe that most people see happiness as a kind of runner's high. You know, that exhilaration you get when you're running, on-top-of-the-world kind of feeling. When someone is asked what the single happiest moment in his life is, it's very unlikely for him to say, "Oh, the time when I wake up in the morning and hear the birds sing." Would anyone give such answer? When people say "happy moment", they usually refer to something that doesn't happen every day. They would think about special occasions, like birth, graduation, marriage, something along that line.
The funny thing is, you don't actually need something to happen in order to feel that out-of-this world joy. Just picture something good in your head, and you can feel a high as intense as if that something is a part of the physical reality. An imaginary trip to Japan, a visit to Old Trafford stadium, or anticipating the upcoming Harry Potter movie--they all can send me to cloud nine in an instant.
As far as I'm concerned, this imagined excitement constitutes a significant number of all my happiness. It doesn't mean that I live in a dream world or anything. If you consider that extraordinary events such as what I mentioned above don't happen often in real life, can I really help it if most of the joys I get come from my imagination?
But if we were to think along that logic, it would mean that nobody can truly be happy. A statement like "I'm happy with my life" would be a total crap if we were to understand "happiness" in that sense because, apart from those special occasions and wild imaginations, life was mainly pretty flat, consisted of a bunch of boring routine.
And since perpetual happiness is impossibility if we were to assume "happiness" as that endorphin-induced emotion, I shall reject that notion. We can only be happy continuously if we are unconditionally content with our being.
It seems that what prophets and spiritual teachers throughout history preach--cliché as it sounds--is true after all. Happiness is acceptance. Happiness is serenity. Happiness is being in the moment. Happiness is the lack of want. Happiness is accepting your existence. Your being you, it's all that matters.
Despite knowing that, my "ego" still gets in the way. I have yet to feel contented with the way I am, which is to say that I've got a long way to go to the place where true happiness lies.
I was kind of frustrated when I couldn't grasp the meaning of Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. The story itself was enjoyable. I literally had to force myself to stop reading or else I wouldn't sleep at all--I had that much fun. Perhaps because the story was so full of weird stuff about "flow", Toru Okada's world vs Noboru Wataya's, Manchukuo, a bird winding up the world's spring, etc, I felt that it must mean something. It was way too amazing of a narrative to be a mere story.
Of course, one can always ask if it really is the case. It's possible that the opposite is true. Just because the story is good, it doesn't necessarily mean that Murakami-sensei wrote it to say grand, albeit vague, things like "Follow the path that you believe in" or "Opposite forces are at constant war in our world". Maybe he simply woke up one day with this plot in his head, which he wrote down eventually. That's it.
This way of thinking can be applied to whatever subject we wish to scrutinize. Take human existence, for instance. A particular person's existence. Say, mine.
Because my existence as I've realized it now has been so full of wonderful experience, and because I see myself as a one-of-a-kind individual, I incline to believe that my existence is special and meaningful. But is it really? To think that I'm just one of zillion of people that have walked the earth since the beginning of time, and to think that the majority of these zillion had long since dead and forgotten, it dawned on me how unimportant I am. Even if I was never born into this world, nobody would ever miss me. The people who were supposed to be my family and friends would not miss me since they never knew me in the first place (because I've never been born). My parents would probably have a child anyway; it's just that he/she would not be me.
In the Islamic tradition with which I was brought up, the supreme purpose of one's life is to serve God. It can be said that it is the meaning of one's life. But the fact is that God Almighty doesn't need us exalting His name. For Him, one's individual existence means nothing at all. One might live without acknowledging His existence and still it would cost Him nothing--the fact that a particular person doesn't believe in Him doesn't undermine His power. I mean, He might've never created me at all and it wouldn't make any difference to Him.
To put it bluntly, my existence as an individual means nothing to anyone. Neither to God, to the people I know, to the human race, nor to the universe. I am merely a replaceable sentient being.
So. It seems that the only one for whom my existence means something is myself. But is that valid? Am I not just talking in circles here? The analogy is this. If Murakami-sensei's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle exists for the sake of itself, can we still say that the book is meaningful, since whenever we say "meaning", we refer to something an object has in connection to other things outside it? (Replace "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" and "the book" with "I"s if you will.) Is it possible that the so-called "meaning" presents independently within an object? Because if it's not it's very likely that my existence is indeed meaningless.
Because my first attempt had clearly failed miserably--mainly because its oblique nature and irrelevant illustration--I shall use a different approach to present this issue. As to not leave everyone in the dark about what I'm trying to say, it might be worthwhile to point out that this piece addresses the not-so-scientific conduct of scientists (or those trained in science) regarding scientific matters.
So. Ever since who knows when, people have been working on making this world more intelligible. Be it mythology or science, it's basically the same. They're all means of explaining the natural phenomena. (Subjects beyond the realm of nature, the supernatural or metaphysical or whatever, will not be discussed here.) Whether it's Demeter lamenting her absent daughter or the the sunlight hitting a hemisphere at an oblique angle in that particular period, it's winter that people have in mind. It's like describing the same object with different languages. The observable fact is the same, the method with which it is rationalized is different.
Even though science has come a long way ever since the time of Aristotle, it must be realized that science remains a trial-and-error process. Once upon a time it was said that the sun and other celestial bodies moved around the earth. But guess what, the movements of planets are easier to understand if it is assumed that it's the earth that rotates the sun, and not vice versa. In the end the old geocentric theory was discarded, replaced by the heliocentric one that makes more sense. (The geocentric theory was widely accepted even though it is the latter that's true.) If one were to look upon the history of science, similar episodes were to be found in every step of its way. There's nothing wrong about that of course, that's just the way science works. It's not too much to say that constructive criticism is the essence of science.
Bearing that in mind, I consider it a disgrace when scientists reject a new, better finding out of personal sentiment alone. It's perfectly okay to do so when that new theory/finding has been proven refutable (or not much better than the old one). The problem is when novel findings are rebuffed because scientists are just too stubborn to let go of their old views. Worse still, at times it's just their egos getting in the way.
Some prominent examples are these: antibiotics' ineffectiveness in most cases of upper respiratory tract infection; bacteria being the chief culprit in peptic ulcer; continental drift. And yet, antibiotics are still prescribed profusely, thus causing more and more resistance by the day; antibacterial agents are seldom used for peptic ulcer medication; and the actuality of continental drift not acknowledged by the scientific community until thirty-something years following its originator's death.
The world--or the truth--remains, it's just our understanding that evolves. When it's been established that our current knowledge isn't sufficient enough to explain the natural phenomena, shouldn't we revise it instead of clinging to it desperately? Isn't that what science is all about? I rest my case.
I'd like to believe that there's no such thing as mere coincidence in this world. I'd like to believe that what people labeled as "coincidence" is actually a representation of some hidden connection that we all have with each other. There have been many amazing occurrences that prompt me to wish that it is so. Shrugging them off as independent incidents unconnected to one another--they simply happened in close proximity--feels no fun at all to me.
But let's end this babbling and on with the story, shall we? I pick these two because they're the most recent. Incidentally, they are somewhat music-related.
First one. I was working on the computer and as was my habit, I picked songs to listen to from the computer's library so that it wouldn't be so quiet. I normally selected songs from my own library because they're the ones that I like, obviously. But this particular day, for no reason whatsoever, I felt like to listen to UB40's "Kingston Town", courtesy of my brother. Which I listened to amongst all other songs that morning. There's really nothing funny up to this point.
The very same night, I was watching TV and playing with the remote. I couldn't bear TV commercial, that's why I kept changing the channel every time a program went into commercial break. And then, lo and behold, there they were: UB40, playing "Kingston Town". Bearing in mind that the song was released some time in late 80's or early ‘90's (I don't know what year) and that this English band is unknown to most Indonesians in this year of 2009, you could see why it is very unlikely to see the video on local TV channels. How the airing of this video coincided with my picking out the song out of hundreds available on my computer that same day is a mystery to me. If that wasn't odd, I don't know what it was.
On with the second story. It was Friday, two weeks ago. For no apparent reason, again, I took out Manic Street Preachers' This is My Truth Tell Me Yours from the drawer and played it. I just felt like listening to MSP at that time, and that's what I did. (As a matter of fact, it's been in heavy rotation ever since. I wrote this with "You Stole the Sun from My Heart" as background music.) And when I opened the Sunday paper two days later, voila, MSP's newest album Journal for Plague Lovers was reviewed on the music section. MSP was even more alien to Indonesians than UB40 that Kompas publishing an article about them or their album--of all other albums from more prominent musicians--is a fact strange enough in itself. And to come across that article when I was at the outset of an MSP frenzy--how's that?
So, what do you think? They're just too unbelievable of coincidences, aren't they?
