|
|
Monday, April 20, 2015 @ 1:22 AM
Thoughts! I just saw the graduation video of 37th and that reminded me of this blog, so 心血来潮 and decided to post something! I remember we spent a lot of effort thinking of how to ensure proper succession before we step down from OAC. I guess it stemmed a lot from our own personal feelings about our own term as a whole, and maybe we felt many things could have been better. I remember Derrick, Sarah, Xiao Qi and I discussing a lot about how to handover OAC and how we should infuse this sense of responsibility and ownership within them. We even toyed with the idea of setting the tradition of burying time capsules and unearthing them at the end of each term. Thinking back it has already been 4 years! Well guess what? Our junior batch is doing much better than us now haha! They still keep in close contact with each other, and I see their pictures on Facebook a lot! Honestly for me when I see them still having close ties with each other, something which I think is a rarity across all batches in OAC, I find it really nice :) This in particularly taught me about this beautiful thing called letting go. So many times we get overly attached to something and do our best to control the outcome. By eventually there are many things beyond our control, and really Que Sera Sera, whatever will be will be. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn't, and we just got to embrace that things are like that. It really isn't easy keeping contact after the systems that previously held a group together disappears. Because when these systems disappear, it takes effort on the part of individuals to make things happen, and as we grow we all have our different priorities. Sometimes it is awkward meeting up after a long while too, it is easier to just let things be. And yup we learn that the universe always tends towards greater entropy, and things diverge, and that's just another fact of life bah :) The truth is as we grow, we filter through our friends and some we have to let go. That being said, personally I would still like to know how we are all progressing in our individual lives, and to catch up a little hahahaha! Personally since JC it has been quite eventful for me too. Army was really really hard for me, and for a certain phase of training I did so badly. Honestly I think the fact that we were all from Hwa Chong meant we are pretty privileged to a certain extent. And during army, that was the first time I really felt like I was failing so damn hard in life. But because it was very hard, I also learnt a lot from the whole experience, and the 2 years were the most enriching time I've had so far. The main reason why I really struggled was because after JC, I went through a phase of OCD, a form called rumination where I was caught up in cyclical thoughts. In fact this went on until late last year, and I didn't even know I had it until I chanced upon a website and found myself ticking off all the symptoms. Since then I've tried to walk away form it, and now while remnants still remain, I'm better off now than in the past 4 years since As ended :) After I ORDed, I made an aspiration to change my life around. That was when I joined Tiong Bahru YEC. Most of us are familiar because of Alex of course, and yea my sister is in it too. I became very involved in planning for community events, including an overseas CIP trip, a National Day project, and 2 Story Telling competitions. I also applied for various scholarships during my 2nd year of army and was fortunate enough to get an offer from HDB, which I accepted. More significantly, I became more spiritually inclined after my experience in army. I joined Buddhist Fellowship Youth's annual camp in 2013, and thereafter became more involved as a member. After that they offered me a leadership position. A year passed and the old guards were stepping down, hence we held an election and as things turned out, I became the new youth head for the group. It has all been a chance occurrence, which goes back to my previous point on Que Sera Sera. Sometimes we just flow on and things happen beyond our imagination, so there's not much use insisting on a certain way of things or expecting something in particular to happen I feel. Well I've always been a Buddhist in name, but it was only after reading up more 3 years back that I found myself more aligned to it's core message. I believe life is a pursuit of happiness, but what we are on different paths because our definition of happiness differs. From an spiritual point of view, there is of course an absolute measure of how true our various definitions are. But this obviously doesn't go down with people, because conventionally it is more of a "whatever floats your boat" thing. Personally, I just go with whatever works with me, and instead of trying convince anyone I believe the effort would be more rightly placed if directed inwards. :) Then uni started and I decided to foray into music, since it is something I am not that bad at and am slightly interested in. So I joined Voices, which is a Mandopop CCA and I fitted in and did pretty well there too. Academics was challenging but really I felt its quite enjoyable in a sense. Personally I think studying is really quite interesting and the process of planning towards an exam is quite exciting, like going to war. It sounds weird yea? But I felt that way during A's preparation too. I guess that's something good that my experience with OCD and army has brought me. That even when stressed with schoolwork or projects now, I think it can't be as bad as "being in a shellscrape being repeatedly slapped on helmet and having expletives thrown at your face while facing a cyclical loop of thoughts in the head - and having to do this for the next 6 months" kind of bad. I distinctly remember there was this moment in Brunei when we were climbing up this stupid hill when my group mates were saying no matter how bad things get in the future, it can't be as shitty as the shit we were going through then. 2 years in and I still find it to be true and a comforting thought! But people are saying army is easier now then it was before, and of course some had it worse than others even now. Yet these are personal experiences, and we shouldn't value judge our experience against others - be it comparing up or down. And having shit times isn't something to be worn as a badge of honour too, though it feels good bragging about it honestly because ego gets in the way of us a lot as humans. But I guess ultimately it is up to each of us personally to handle it well in such a way that it aids our own growth and development, and if possible in a way that helps other people as well. I just realised I, and by extension all of us in 36th, are not that young already. Or rather, we are young now, but not for long anymore. 22 seems ok, 23 and 24 too. 25 then seems a little... mature. Then 26, 27, 28 and so on are just adults already lah. Then they say that "Youth is wasted on the young", which I really agree. I am sure many of our peers, or maybe even many amongst us, are currently indulging in sensual pleasures. On the extreme scale we have smoking, drinking, clubbing, and so on. Who knows maybe the adventurous amongst us may have ventured beyond the scales. Drugs, casual sex, hahaha really who knows right? On the milder and maybe more normal scale we have things like BGRs, movies, nice food, or just feeding a narcissistic side of us by ego-tripping ourselves on social media, these are all sensual pleasures, and they are not morally wrong of course. Ok most of them are fine. But the thing is I recently read an article and an excerpt reads "the thing about life is that its pleasures come pretty early on, living us with the nasty bits at the end". I took the liberty to paraphrase a little. I found it so true, and for a few days I just looked around and realised how eventually everything must end. So am I using my youth now for? Am I in just for the short term pleasures, on a journey to maximise whatever joy I have? Or am I in for the long haul, to invest in deeper things so that I can reap them when I am older. The right answer seems obvious, but the thing is it is very very hard. It is always easier to pick the path of least resistance, to go with the flow. The scary thing is that we are not even mindful and aware of it. "The eye cannot see itself", and these blindspots are the difference. They may be little, but the devil lies in the details. So yup these are my thoughts on things for now, and I am sure they will change in due time because yea things change. But for now just putting it out here for no real purpose :) Live well! -Sze Yuan :) |
