On Ambitions

Sometime ago, at a church event, one part of the schedule was writing notes to people and putting them in bottles with names on them, so that at the end of the event you would get to take the bottle home and see what people thought of you; especially people who you'd gotten to know during the course of the event. One of the messages I received said things about how nice I was--the kind of things you write about people you don't really know that well--but then the end of the message surprised me.

"You come across to me as a very determined and ambitious person. Of course, this is just my own opinion, so don't get upset... Just don't let your ambitions consume you."

Ambitious? Really?

In my head I told myself, No way, this guy has never met some of my friends. Now that's ambition. Among other things that I could say about myself, or remember other people saying about me; overambitious, no, ambitious was just not one of them. What in the world could have inspired this anonymous writer to get that impression from me?

It took me a whole lot of thinking before I began to make sense of it.

I suppose without me realizing it, I had developed into someone inherently different from the person people expect. In primary school I achieved fluctuating grades ranging from fours to sixes on a one-to-ten scale--even now when I see people from my old school they're always tentative when asking about how I'm doing at school. I guess they're slightly worried that I've failed a few times and had to repeat the entire grade curriculum (I can assure you as of now I'm not at much of a risk of failing), so they always try not to bring it up.

Eventually, after we talk, they tell me I'm very different from the person they remember.

That's because the person they remember is the girl in the back row who still hasn't finished copying down that sentence from the board; you know, the one who still doesn't get how mathematical roots work? Uh huh, the one who multiplies by adding them. Yeap. That one.

The person they can see is the person who really outdid what she expected of herself in the first place. Who has her mother to thank for the change in mind that came about as a result of threats (which, by the way, is perfectly acceptable way to get your kid to do stuff), and a whole lot of other people to thank for helping her get so far.

When I look back at how much I've changed from the mute idiot in the back row to the person who takes chances, I begin to think; Yeah, maybe I can be a little ambitious.

Just that when you see a dream come true, and you witness a difference, you begin to believe that it's not complete folly to believe in absurd hopes, and to reach farther than you can grasp. When you look at how far you've gone and how much you've changed, you begin to have more faith in humanity, and you place hope in its dim but existing glimmer of kindness and morality.

You begin to ignore the darker side of the coin (even if it's not the best idea) and you risk looking like an entirely different kind of idiot by wishing for the unrealistic. You begin to find people call you naive simply for having faith in the possibility of a change. You begin to notice that the world you build around you is full of unrealistic hopes that you're more than happy to harbor for the rest of your life. You begin to speak out in defense of what you know to be true; and you're secure in the knowledge of being right without the need to rationalize it to bits.

You begin to think it's normal to actually have some conviction in what you're saying. You begin to melt outside of the norm and determine that you'll lead instead of follow. You begin to close your ears to the incessant snide criticism and your eyes to the 'truth' shoved in front of you, and you lead with hope and the belief that things will work out anyway.

So I guess maybe I have a slight tendency to be ambitious. I guess this is the point where you begin to realize that even though it's expected of you to be normal, you know you're more than capable of doing more.

Call me ambitious; but I think it's just faith when I say I have hope that in the future global warming will cease, that in the future Indonesia will truly get back on its feet and establish itself as a significant power in Asia. I think it's hope when I say 'we'll get through this'. Ambition is taking your chances because you know you can't fall far enough to break. :)

To Inherit Fire

Living fire begets cold, impotent ash. –Things Fall Apart

Earlier in English class we were discussing Part Two of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, and we got around to talking about whether or not Okonkwo deserved any of our sympathy when his own son turned against him. Most of the class were against Okonkwo, and I suppose their dislike of him is justified. But despite his hotheaded temperament and condescending attitude towards other people, I think Okonkwo is still entitled to a little bit of pity, or, in my personal opinion, a substantial degree of sympathy.

I could never imagine walking in his shoes. If I had been in Okonkwo’s place, how would I have felt? I don’t know what it’s like to be a parent, but I suppose it has a lot to do with placing your hopes on someone else’s shoulders; expecting them to carry it onwards into the future that you can’t be a part of.

Wouldn’t it be heartbreaking, then, if the very person you trusted with your everything shrugged your cherished dreams off his shoulders and let them hit the ground?

Maybe my friends are right, to some extent. Okonkwo has to take some responsibility in causing Nwoye to run away to the Christians. He should never have pressured Nwoye so much. He should never have assumed that Nwoye wanted the same things as he had as a young man. Maybe despite knowing Nwoye wanted different things, Okonkwo was doing all he could to give Nwoye the best out of the life he knew. Okonkwo is a father, after all, and perhaps—even if we’re not willing to acknowledge it—he, like our parents, knows what it’s like to not want to follow your father’s footsteps; your mother’s footsteps. Perhaps when our parents were like us they had decided never to follow someone else’s decisions, and ended up making choices they never thought they’d agree to; walking down paths they’d hoped to avoid while still dreaming that they would end up somewhere different.

I think we sympathize with Nwoye more easily because most of us know what it’s like to fall under the pressure of someone else’s expectations. We readily back him in his decision to tear away from his father’s ways because some part of us has already known what it’s like to want the same thing. If I had been in his position I would have done the same—I suppose I would have at least contemplated running away.

Let’s imagine it this way; Okonkwo’s modern day equivalent would be a prominent bussinessman with influence left and right in a sprawling metropolis—a highly successful public figure whose life is characterized by outstanding achievements in an Ivy League university and an offer to join a prestigious company upon finishing his second year. It is hard enough to imagine being a daughter to such a man—but to be a son who is expected to continue the legacy? In my head I imagine Atlas with the world on his shoulders, passing it on to a nervous, slippery-fingered, scrawny teen who knows the world will tumble and crash out of his hold.

Then again, isn’t that just what we are expected to do?

In an episode of Heroes, Peter Petrelli comments that “...we’re just cheap knockoffs of our fathers.” For me personally, it feels like a punch to the gut. It hurts more than a little to know that no matter what we do we’ll still be compared to our parents. That we won’t have any trace of things that people thought would still be imprinted in us. That we’ll probably never be good enough to satisfy what people expect. In this sense, I sympathize with Nwoye.

Is it any wonder then that we want to break away from the paths our parents have set out for us? Isn’t it plausible to think that we attempt to build paths other than someone else’s because we’re scared of being less than what they were? I don’t ever want to be known as ash remaining from someone else’s fire.

I don’t want to grow up chasing my father’s shadows and pursuing my mother’s victories and mistakes. I don’t want to destroy what they worked so hard to build. I don’t want to be the one responsible for the look in their faces when they find their life-long struggles are for naught.

Do you still think Okonkwo deserves no sympathy?

A part of me wants to exclaim that I could never forgive Nwoye for tearing down what Okonkwo had given his all to build. I could never forgive Nwoye for taking the dreams Okonkwo had carried with him from childhood to fatherhood—the dreams he had kept alive by pouring out his sweat, blood, and tears for—and allowing them crash and burn. I could never forgive Nwoye for insinuating that Okonkwo’s lifelong struggles held no importance, by walking out on everything his father worked for.

If Okonkwo held true to the hotheaded and violent nature we have associated him with, I would have expected him to take his machete and separate Nwoye’s head from his body. Doesn’t that sound like something he would do?

But people like me who have no idea what it’s like to be a father or a mother will never understand what it is that makes them love their children so much. I may never understand why Okonkwo still allowed Nwoye to pursue his own choices; why Okonkwo would allow Nwoye to build a new life and support dreams of his own when Okonkwo’s hopes had been sullied and broken beyond repair by his son’s betrayal.

I may never understand how Okonkwo can retain love for a traitor. But at least I can imagine him thinking about Nwoye and sighing at the fire. Perhaps at that moment some semblance of weakness crossed his features. Perhaps at that moment we would be able to see the face of a broken old man, mourning the death of his wasted, uncontinued dreams; still harboring an amazing, undying love for the boy who blew out the fire and left behind only ash.

My Restraint is my Own Suicide

*Not to be graded, unless I don’t post anything next week*

Disclaimer: This post was written at a time when the writer was in an extremely emotionally unstable mood. Therefore what is said here should not in any way be taken seriously.

Happiness to me is among the rarest things on earth. Yet happiness is knocking on my door, only to be rejected by my idiot self.

Christians claim that Christ is the only way to true happiness, and that worldly and iniquitous pleasures only brings out a temporary joviality within ourselves - the rest is supposed to be a hollow, lightless emptiness.

Not so, I have come to learn. The happiest people I know are the most dissolute - those who are wise enough to indulge in everything the world has to offer. The emotional train wrecks are the uptight, prissy, unrealistic nuns who drown in this pool of heinousness.

If God really is just, then where is he? Why is it that morality is punished by exclusion and loneliness, while evil is rewarded with popularity and a sense of social significance?

On the night of my birthday, I was greeted by a deeply unwelcome sense of emptiness and rejection. My bestfriend, angered by my chauvinistic idiocy, told me that she wouldn't be coming on time for my birthday party because she has a date, and I am now sure that the people I care about won't be there for me as I "celebrate" my coming of age. Imagine that, being left out from your own birthday party. Here, on the day that was meant to be the day I bask in the joys of friendship and hope, I instead mourn the loss of my hope – the deathlike feeling of seclusion.

In truth, perhaps I do deserve to be excluded from everyone else. I am a chauvinistic, intolerant, uptight, two-faced bastard, and inconsiderate of other people’s privacy. In my fruitless endeavors to please God, I have instead angered everyone around me.

Why then should I continue my one-legged dance of unfound hope and light? No good can come from it – my peers will be infuriated by my fanaticism, social tension will arise between those who judge and those who are judged, and I will of course be devoid of any sense of belonging as I witness the crumbling of my social life.

I look back to the old me – a rebellious person on the verge of expulsion from school, a person with a 13GB porn collection, a person everyone sees as fun, a person with an actual “life” – and realize that life was so much better for me back then than it is now.

Why then, should I continue committing this social suicide, when no one benefits from my irrationality? Shouldn’t I just conform so that I am accepted?

Christ is an illusion. Persistence for the truth is nonsense – merely a byproduct of Christian denial of God’s non-existence. Spiritual euphoria is resultant of the insanity associated with Christianity. I will never find light in Christ. Heaven is already here – this heaven of sex and drugs – yet I am too stupid to accept it. These thoughts continue to resonate in my mind like an echoing scream of despair.

I’ve always told myself that what everyone around me does doesn’t affect me. Peer pressure is very much real, my friend. I struggle to juggle my spiritual and social lives as I enviously witness others who manage to completely segregate their spiritual lives from their social lives. But my passion, unlike theirs, is uncontrollable. My raging fury is beastlike, and my own integrity is self-destructive. My soul is on the verge of its own demise. And my words turn into my own poison, as my restraint becomes my own suicide.

Our Liberty is Our Suicide

Change is for good. Liberalism liberates. Boundaries bind. - Ideas that deceptively promise to make the world a better place. 

Collective surveys say that nine out of ten Americans have had premarital sex. In fact, there, fornication is so casual that people pride themselves on how many sex partners they've had. To my dismay, some people I know have begun to make sex a routine parts of their lives. Parents begin to teach their kids on how to wear condoms, reinforcing the decadent idea that "premarital sex is fine," as long as it is done "safely". Why not? After all, Western society – the “idyllic” society – believes in freedom to do anything with our libido-driven flesh.

I - someone of more conservative character - is detested by everyone for trying to do something about the gradual suicides of my peers. They call me disrespectful of their so-called “rights". I lay in grief and despair as I witness the loss of innocence – the embitterment of my cherry-topped youth.

We Asians look up to Westerners like they are gods. Escorts prance around malls with bule in their arms and radiate a nauseating aura of self-worship, as if their social status is raised for sleeping with a Caucasian. We all fail to see that every culture is equal, as we abandon our heritage in search of becoming more like them. And in our pursuit of becoming American, we seek to morph Asia into an American Asia – an orgasmic “utopia” advocating the "freedom" to sin.

Western countries perceive the ideal living haven as a place where equality, human rights, and liberty are commonplace. Their societies are structured upon this philosophy where the sky is the limit. The problem is, the human body and mind is naturally stupid. It desires to get drunk, die of liver failure, fornicate, get pregnant, rot of AIDS, and self-destruct. Yet asinine freedom is encouraged – freedom to allow our natural defects to take hold of ourselves.

Needless to say, Western ideologies also base life on independence, productivity, fulfillment based on achievement, and pushing yourselves to the limit – commendable ideals that I applaud. And for them, freedom allows for success to be achieved to the maximum. Yet here, we find many of the most Americanized teenagers to be daughters and sons of privileged entrepreneurs who superficially base their lives on who has the most expensive bags and cars – bags and cars bought by inherited wealth. So here we find Indonesian youth plague-ridden by a class of the idle rich – Paris Hiltons and Nicole Richies – purposeless, spoiled, deflowered, promiscuous, Americanized brats.

America's rubbish we glutonously devour. Its gold we heedlessly throw away.

Friends, America is here! Iniquity poses as liberty, and we gladly take it. We eradicate our sense of value, our tradition, our dignity. Globalization is the new colonialism! No longer are we united by corpulent kings and queens engraved to the back of coins, but united by garmentless people on magazines. Unity by the queen is so over; a new form of unity is here – Unity by promiscuity!

Here we stand in the “height of modern civilization.” Here we lay in schizophrenic fallacy. Here we witness the stupid; exalted, the wise; mocked. Here, as moral ground corrodes, we deny, we conform, and we blithely march towards hell under the iniquitous mask of heaven.