you know, every year when i look back on the things i've learnt in that past year, i usually feel a sense of self-awareness and maturity. it's kinda hard to explain, but i think it's true. it feels like i'm progressively becoming a more complete, well, if not more complete, then a wiser young man; i've sort of experienced an actual point in my life where i feel that i'm older and wiser and learnt a little bit more about the truth and reality of life. i've reached a point where i can say, there, look, i've arrived; i've levelled up, in some new direction, in some new dimension. and the funny thing is that sometimes i get the feeling that i'm about as fully grown as i can and ought to be, i'm there and alright, but then i do keep growing, there is something new for me to learn, having climbed a step only to arrive at the foot of the next one. i've reached a checkpoint, but there's more ahead, and it feels natural to grow further. it never feels like the next phase isn't supposed to happen; even if the next bit is unexpectedly momentous, i can see the path which led to it and where it henceforth leads. and it also incidentally feels a little silly that i was pleased with myself at each prior checkpoint, a sort of ignorant self-assuredness. and so, bemusedly, yet expectantly, and somewhat optimistically, i do accept that i have tons of growth left to be doing in the years to come. anyway, i feel like i've just crossed one.
school was tepid this semester. the first few weeks of the holidays were likewise. as much as i enjoyed hanging out and getting nothing done, i suppose it was not a waste of time only in as much as the resting may well have been a good thing for me. anyway i did end up going to adelaide to visit my mum, but i did leave singapore reluctantly. i figure i don't like to travel because i love singapore.
but i did love australia too. younghusband, being on the road, getting to know aussies, seeing adelaide, the country, i loved it all. i told a friend that i hadn't at that time found a single thing i didn't like about australia, and my opinion remains the same. indeed, coming back to singapore, i found myself asking questions that i'd always known the answers to, questions about the future.
i'd been doing a bit of reading too. i went through what i call the "classiest book ever read on a train and a plane", plato's "the republic". and i found socrates' vision to be something which i believed in. i thought a lot about what he said, a whole lot. and i grew cynical of politics, of hegemonies, of people's ambitions, desires, the things they called beauty and what was good, and i believed in philosophy and in the pursuit of wisdom.
and then there was "'84". i said, "norwegian wood", and she said, "'84". so okay, i read it. and to me, it's one of the best. there's very little that i can say about the book that would do it justice, but orwell is a visionary and an artist. i can scarcely believe that such literary genius once existed. the book's ending is so horrific but so necessary, so perfect, so undeniably right. maybe i could be rational about it and dismiss the book, saying that it could never happen (well, history has it's examples), or that the horrors of vaporisation and torture would never be permitted, or that with some understanding of the legal concepts of duress and insanity, i could in some way disconnect myself or even forgive myself if i'd basically done what winston had done in those circumstances, i.e. betrayed julia to the rats. but the concepts of doublethink, of conscious and subconscious goodthink, crimestop, blackwhite etc. well, those are real. those are real ideas, and they exist, and they have real power. and the parallel between bb and god was something, too.
so that was '84, orwell's god-is-power against socrates' philospher-king. and i thought, what else do i read now? i thought of j s mills' "on liberty", and i thought of kafka, of the existentialists. i bought a penguin classic (my favourite kind) on "the consolations of philosophy", but that turned out kinda watered down. i thought of re-reading the gospel, to re-assess my foundations.
so having returned from australia, i was doing a bit of soul searching. i spent some time at the pool steps, thinking about my life. i knew that my world had grown, and that i would be making choices very soon, and i could have proper alternative choices for once. i wondered what i would live for, and at what bent. but i figured i'd do the right thing when the time came, because that's one thing i know about myself for sure.
and now, by metaphorical randomness, i managed to borrow a copy of lky's book, "hard truths". and i believe in this book, and in this man, and in this book's purpose. so, socrates, orwell, lky. that seems about right.
and i figure along the way, those questions will have their inklings re-affirmed.
