How He Loves

This song has always and forever will have a special place in my heart.
I love it, i really do.
And I, 100% agree with what John (the writer/singer of the song) said about Love.

Love hurts. Yet Love heals. And unfortunately, we need to hurt before we can heal.

Should go listen to this from the album, super powerful.

equating $ to time.

is one of the many tell-tale signs society is in the process of degradation.

When you think of the countless things you can achieve with the luxury of time (hearing the last few words of a beloved before he/she passes on, having an epiphany on a 17 year old problem, reconciling with people who mean something to you, sharing a laugh with your best friend, feeling the freedom of forgiveness from a life-long grudge you had against someone...and the list goes on..) simply equating the value of it all to a single and utterly inadequate form of power, money, is just.... not right.
for one, you cheapen the value of time and all that it can be achieved in it... no actually you are saying all those moments in life can be bought, which is not even logical because it is not even possible.
Secondly, you cheapen the equals sign (=) because it is NOT equal.

When we live with the mentality, (get caught up with the motions of the day... of work... of productivity... of capitalist mindsets) that time is money period, you are really reducing yourself to a mere factor of production to the economy.
You are, by choice, reducing yourself to a system that is inherently flawed, a system you most likely would not agree with (unless you are not poor).
You are, in short, closing up the number of ways in which you can live life.
& there are so many ways you can live life, but sometimes we get caught up with the generic flow of things.
we let the majority, establishment and major events dictate the way in which we live our lives.
why?

are not all man created equal and free? (sounds so declaration of indep of U.S)
why are we surrendering our freedom up to a cause we do not even like?
it is like purposely enslaving yourself to serve a person whom you absolutely hate, and yes we are doing this willfully just because, we look around and that is what everyone seems to be doing, no?

I mean, if not, you would not be normal right? that is normal right??
working hard, getting rich, having a stable family, living 'the life' and then you die.
doing otherwise would be.... crazy, no?

who is the real crazy?
the one who lives out of honesty and is perceived to be crazy or the one who lives out of fear and pretense just so he/she can be perceived as normal?

why i like to make life difficult for myself.

in the Singaporean context, if you do something in which the outcome has no tangible benefits or pragmatic use in relation to daily life but only difficulty in the process, it is called 'making life difficult' for one's self.

one of the many phrases thrown at me throughout this year in particular is, 'why do you like to make life difficult for yourself?' or in otherwords, if a cause has no tangible benefits or pragmatic use in daily life, why bother doing it? OR why are you troubling yourself with something in which you will not be graded on?

now. just imagine, a world in which no one pursued anything which had no tangible benefit to themselves or serve any function in getting on with their daily life.
we would not have discovered the theory of relativity. (or any scientific theory for that matter and all their implications)
we would not the internet.i.e you would not be reading this now.
we would not have lightning conductors. (houses will all be burnt down to the ground especially in Singapore)
we would not know what cancer is.
in short, we would not have progressed.
we would still be in the dark ages, writing on the insides of cave walls, grunting at one another.
it is precisely the spirit of questioning that has got us this far.

the world is the way it is because someone, somewhere, along the lines of history, 'made life difficult' for themselves.

so.... why do i make life 'difficult' for myself...?
as cliche and as high a probability that this might not happen, changing the world in a substantial and positive way is on my life's agenda.

Sometimes i really wonder....

what. on. earth. am. i. doing.
really.
what.

yes there is a time to be lost, a place for confusion.
but seriously, isn't this just. too. much?

we were born into the fight

I want to say that life is worth living.
WORTH living.
despite it all.
despite how transient it all is.
here today and gone the next day.
despite how fragile and temporal everything is.
including the things we place value on.
it is really as the philosopher says in Ecclesiastes, meaningless.

so then, what would make life worth living.
really.
the enjoyment?
fleeting pleasures?
what is the point.
what really is the point of life if it is all going to just fade into nothingness as time goes on.
and for the those with noble ambitions, what is the point of going down in history and being remembered if the impact you are going to make is only going to last as long as the lifespan of an average person? yes that person will fade away someday too.
and although there might be repercussions on future generations, if future generations are just going to die off (yes its one whole self-repeating cycle), what then is the inherent value of that?
what is the point?
eventually everything dies off.... no?
what is the point of enriching the whole human race if they are going to die out individually, and eventually?
there is no true value in that if you think about it.

And in order for life to be worth living, there has to be some true value in it.
And as we have already agreed, true value cannot have an expiry date.
If not it cannot be considered true value.
Therefore, this means we acknowledge that in order for something to be of true value, it has to be timeless. not restricted by time. it has to last.

Hence the only way in which this life would ever make sense and thereafter be worth living is when we have an eternal cause that we are living for. something that will defy the barriers of time. something that will last. and i mean forever. Yes i know forever is hard to comprehend, sorry i mean it is impossible to comprehend because as we are now in the human state, we are limited, finite beings so obviously there is no way we are going to comprehend forever.
But how about imagining. i think we'll probably have better 'luck' with that.

Reason begets Being. (what i took away from school of thought's lecture)

It sometimes really amazes me how logical people think they are, what with their lives and everything but yet make zero sense when it comes to the purpose of their existence.
And by this i mean...they have to make sense of everything in their lives but they do not make sense of their life in totality. which is really kinda ironic.
because that is like saying there must be a reason why there are road signs on the road but no reason why there are roads.
Well i say.... reason begets being.
it is a simple logic really.
just look around you.
for everything that you see, there is a reason why it exists.
a pen, to write.
an eraser, to erase.
a rubik's cube (being), to exercise one's brain (reason).
nothing exists for no reason.
likewise, we came into being, (were born into this world, survived pregnancy and possibly a 1001 disasters that could have happened to us) because of a reason.
we were born out of a purpose and a reason.
and obviously this suggests a higher power, a supreme being who had a reason for us to come into being just like the way a pen came into being because we wanted (reason) to write.

unfortunately unlike a belt or a guitar, the reason in which we exist is not quite as clear.
why do humans exist?
well... go figure.
haha.
but i would say that there is a generic reason in which we exist, and there is a specific reason in which we exist.
just like the way words exist to carry a message, and how each word adds a different flavour to the message/story.

we are words in a story.
the true meaning of our existence is dependent on an external reason by something greater than ourselves and this is the only way that such a short life could ever possibly make sense, and therefore this makes life worth living.

Will there ever come a time/place where questioning is wrong?

I am sure you must have heard that too much of a good thing is a bad thing.
Well, what about the neutral things? like questioning?
Will there ever come a time when questioning becomes.... wrong? or invalid or out of place?
Heh. How ironic for this is a question in itself.

Can't get enough of this

I dont mean to be a beliber (however you spell it) but... i really can't get enough of this.
His rendition of this song is just so good.
Plus he's really cute here.
And i dont mean this like.... in the whole 'OMG HE'S SO CUTE.' gush gush gush kind of thing.
I mean cute as in... child-like kind of cute.
And i think that's what sets him apart from many other teens who can also sing.
He is just being him and doing what he loves best.
Sigh it must be quite the experience being this famous at 17.
Golly i would just go with it if i were him too. heh.

i am thinking....

you know how when people are in the same or similar situations you would say that they are 'in the same boat'?

well, i've realised recently that there are many people on my boat.
and you would think that since that there are so many people on my boat, i/we wouldnt feel so bad, except that the boat i am on is completely silent.

Sometimes even if you are in a similar situation as someone, or maybe because you are in a similar situation as that someone or someones, you realise you have nothing to say.
no advice to offer.
no direction to give.
maybe the most you can do is offer a sense of silent comfort.
the kind of comfort that says 'i know what you are going through, i am right here with you' without really saying anything.

i am on the same boat as so many others, but it's a really silent boat.
we are on the same quiet boat in a raging storm.
and hopefully, it isnt sinking.
but on the other hand if it does sink, at least it will force us to learn how to swim. (i can't swim)



The RMS Titanic.

You know i just watched the movie Titanic. Loved/love it.
And i think to myself, maybe being on a sinking ship isnt so bad after all.
Jack encountered true (well) love. Never before experienced in his vagabond existence. even right through the end, he stayed through to his convictions of life being one grand adventure. he was consistent from his beginning till his end.
And rose, well rose found life in her near death experience. freedom from expectations. from societal norms. from marrying a guy and into a life that wasn't her.
Titanic, a disaster to most, was the best thing that could have ever happened to them.

not all disasters are catastrophic after all eh?
what is your titanic?

some covoluted thoughts on money and the meaning of value.

I think one of the main flaws that came with the great invention of the modern monetary system is the misplacement and misunderstanding of value by society.

Of what constitutes value.

You see, because value in itself is a highly subjective and ambiguous thing/concept to begin with, (something that the human mind has constantly struggled with), the modern monetary system unofficially and highly inadequately filled in this gap by arbitrary defining value for purely pragmatic reasons when it was created and hence, has from then on become (more or less) the standard for value. Or in the other words, we took price=value.

(wow i am so...un...understandable.... pls pardon the convoluted and incoherent writing and i hope you get my drift.)

But if you think about it (ha i am told i use this phrase a lot), how accurate is this? and how logical is this really?

Economics 101, tells us that a price arises from the interaction between forces of demand and supply. This means that we if were to take the value of something to be as the price states it to be, the average consumer or person in society defines value as according to how much a supplier is willing to sell it at and how much a buyer is willing to purchase it at. (of course this sch of thought already assumes price=value)

What this really means is that i am taking a strangers' perception of value of an object and adopting it as my own. (this could be liken to adopting a stranger's favourite colour to be your favourite colour, which one would normally consider.... rather absurd)

And then if you deconstruct the money=value thing, you'd realise how inequitable/absurd the monetary system can be.

For eg, who decided that food=a price, if food is the thing that sustains human life?
Or in another sense,
With S$3.90, i can either buy a plate of chicken rice (if you are an international reader, this is basically a Singaporean local favourite dish... you should try it sometime) or a pilot pen.
Now, how is that equitable?
On one hand you have an object that satisfies (as according to maslow's hierarchy of needs) your most basic needs, yet on the other you have an object that is a tool that you use to express the highest form of need you have. (creativity...etc... self-actualisation essentially)
But then you would probably say, to each his/her own. Or rather ... to each his/her own need.
Yeah i guess, but.... i don't know.
It just.... doesnt feel right/equitable.

Anywhos... I just feel that with society placing so much emphasis on the tangible and the economy, we have abandoned the meaning of value to the monetary system. I suspect it is partly because we did not have a good and solid idea of what value meant in the beginning and secondly because we're just lazy, superficial crowd-followers. Hence, we abandoned it to the monetary system. Hmmm and maybe because we are devotees of the monetary system as well.

To me, true value is intangible.
True value is priceless. And this should not even be ironic as it so often comes across as nowadays.
The reason why this is so is because we have so closely yet erroneously associated value=price.

Value is subjective.
Value doesn't/shouldn't come with a standardised number.
Value is personal.
Value is what the entity means to you.

And i think the greatest disproof of value=price or price=value is what we consider most valuable in our lives.

Joy.
Love.
Peace.
Security.
And the people who embody these attributes.
People like our friends. siblings. Parents.
Human relations.

Value.
what is value?

I think value is an infinite concept.
Something immeasurable if you really want to stay true to what value really means.
Ergo, it cannot be contained to an arbitrary number, just like the way you can never ever name a price for a human relationship (friendship, parent-child). <-- (assuming you are not into human-trafficking)
Value should therefore also be timeless.
If the value of something can depreciate over time, then..... that would make the nature of that object's value rather low or superficial in the first place. (since it is liable to change over time)

Shouldn't true value be a constant?
Or maybe it should be an ever-increasing thing, kinda like the universe.
I don't know.

'The regard that something is held to deserve; the importance or preciousness of something' - google's def of value. Hmmm.... have to agree with this one. (for now)

One of the reasons why my father (parents) do what they do.

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot.
Missionary to Ecuador.