the question and the reply.
written: 4:10 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 03, 2004

My intelligent response to that was, "One what?"

"You'll find out," he said, and found out I did. You could say I was rather slow on the uptake because the A1 in GP cleared everything up (only 1), but the truth of the matter is, I simply choose not to believe in my own abilities.

This is what I believe: my abilities are limited; I could have fared better for the O Levels if I had studied harder, and I also could have fared exactly the way I did; a huge part of my self-confidence is a mirage conceived by the hallucinatory mind of a lost traveller in the middle of a harsh desert; and I am able to possess such self-confidence because I have somehow given in and started to believe in my own myth; but, simultaneously, there is an equal amount of self-doubt that is the product of years and years of un-met expectations and hopes and dreams, crushing disappointments too painful to experience again, and for that reason alone I choose instead to cease to believe in my own myth; for how can you believe in something that is not real?; but if I were to believe in myself I think I would be putting a hex on default on whatever potential that may be inside of me, thereby jinxing everything; but at the heart of the matter I think I believe in myself, but I also believe that what I can achieve is limitless, provided I'm operating under ceteris paribus conditions; and what, exactly, these conditions entail are things that I have not began to work out; but the honest truth of the matter is that most of the time I want to believe, but I shy away from it because of its obvious implications that are a bit too much to bear sometimes, and what I would look like if this belief turns out to be founded on nothing more than helium instead.

The fact that one has just failed one's Maths prelim (nevermind that half the mistakes one made were careless calculation errors brought over from childhood) would make one re-think one's obdurate ambition of holding on to it to give one the chance of attaining straight As in a major exam. And in fact, that is what many people have been telling me, friends and family alike. "If you can do it, good; if not, give up Maths and focus on the others to ensure that you will do well in the other three."

I would just like to tell these people that they have entirely missed the point. I signed up for four subjects in March last year not with the intention of dropping out of the race, however fierce the competition, however far I'm lagging behind, however much my stamina is threatening to desert me completely; on the contrary, I signed up with the full intention of following it through. Monetary considerations aside (not exactly cheap to take the Maths paper and I can think of better uses of the money), the act of quitting now, when one is so close to the finishing line, would completely fly in the face of all that I have tried to do over the past couple of months or so.

I'm doing this for a few reasons:

1) I refuse to own up to the possibility that I may never fulfill my own expectations of myself without first giving myself the opportunity to prove myself wrong;

2) My pride is getting in the way of rationality. Giving up would mean admitting defeat, which automatically translates to "I am a fucking loser" being tattooed in black and white on my forehead;

3) And I do not believe that I am a loser;

4) I want to go out with a bang, not a pathetic whimper, and this intrinsically means doing what everyone is doing but a million times better;

5) Most importantly, because I refuse to conform to the standards of the majority of the school in which I am stuck. This is not done for pragmatic purposes in the lines of trying to win a scholarship of sorts. Call me a snob if you must, and I would cheerfully agree with you, but I'm better than what the name "JJC" implies. My refusal to snip the thin thread that represents the last remnants of the pride I once had, binding me to what could very well be my impending doom and downfall, is a rebuke to the fact that I am in JJC, a belated, last-ditch attempt to cushion my fall from grace and show my detractors -- past, present and future -- that JJC does not define me. I can rise above my circumstances and stop sleep-walking through my life. And, in my opinion, the only way to go about doing that is, of course, to get the straight As.

Right now, it seems pretty impossible, considering the fact that I did fail Maths, however razor-thin the margin, and I'm bracing myself for the worst, but it does not mean that I'm defeated. I asked my cousin who is helping me in the wretched subject with which I have absolutely no affinity if I should give it up, and his answer was an immediate, unequivocal "no".

There. The exact reassurance that I was looking for. I whole-heartedly agree with him.

I'm just wondering why people bother hoping for moderation for the prelims. I don't know if guys need their results for some NS thing, but for me, I don't see the point. So what if they moderate and up your grade from an O to an E? It still doesn't conceal the fact that you did fail your thing in real terms. So what if I would give me an A in History? The fact still remains that my efforts fell short of the grade that I so desire.

The point is... there is no point. I don't know. I have overdue History essays to do, as usual, so I will abandon this train of thought and move on to something else.

This is a question that I have not stopped asking ever since I was old enough to decide for myself that religion is asinine nonsense deviced by men to make themselves feel better about the transience of their lives and their impending mortality.

My atheism can be attributed to many things, including a desire to rebel against the norm when I was 14, but mostly, it is steeped in my absolute bafflement of the foundation upon which Christianity is built. Frankly, I don't understand at all why a god should exist. Why should a god be responsible for the beauty of nature? Why can't things just be? Why should I credit my hard work and intelligence to a higher being whom I can't even see? My parents were the ones who gave me life, and my grandparents were the ones who gave my parents life; I inherited my intelligence from my parents' intelligence, and they got their intelligence because they worked for it. And if a god created the world, how do you explain dinosaurs? Are you saying that there was no god so many billion years ago, but one suddenly came out of nowhere and asserted his presence on earth so many years later? Why must there be a life after death? Why can't death just be an empty void, the sealed exit of a long and arduous tunnel in which there is no light? What does it matter what happens to our souls when we reach our expiry dates? Why can't things just be without people making a huge mess of everything?

Truly, I don't understand. Emotional comfort? I can provide myself with such solace, thank you very much. And if Asian religions such as Taoism and Buddhism are "irrational" and Western ones so modern and superior, then it means that Aung San Suu Kyi was wrong when she wrote an essay on how some of the principles of Buddhism can be a guiding model upon which democracy, a product of the West, can be built. But if she won the Nobel Peace Prize and if something perennially Western can be explained using Eastern concepts, doesn't this mean that some values taken for granted to be Western are actually rather universal? And if everyone is right, how can Christianity justify itself by asserting that it is the only right religion? How do you explain Taoism and the strange workings of Taoist rituals that sometimes make more sense in its crazy defiance of Science than the fundamental concept that "god exists"? Maybe a god exists, but maybe many gods exist simultaneously. Or maybe, just maybe, gods wouldn't exist if nobody believed in any.

Ultimately, it boils down to the simple, cliched question of "If a tree falls down in the middle of a huge forest and no one is around to hear or witness it, did it really happen?" Personally, the fact that so many faiths can exist concurrently is obvious that there is no god. At least, there isn't a single god that rules over the entire universe. To say that would mean that Christianity is right and Taoism and Hinduism and the rest of it are wrong, but Taoism is very right in the minds of staunch believers and who is anyone to say that this belief is less significant or real than the belief of a Christian?

If evangelists never made it out of Europe, would Chinese Singaporeans still believe in Christianity? How can you believe in something which you are not even aware exists? And how do you know that you are not blindly following a faith that you do not truly comprehend?

And, going back to one of my earlier questions, why can't things just be? I am afraid of death like everyone else, but certainly not enough to romanticise it. What comes after death? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You're just dead. Why should anything come after it? What happened before life then? Does it matter? Why shouldn't it matter? But if there was something before life, why don't we remember it? And if we don't remember what was before life, what does it matter then what comes after death if we won't be able to experience it?

This is what I believe: Religion and god are real because the mind makes it so. I have many friends who are Christians and Catholics and I don't doubt at all the power of what they believe in. At the same time, I don't doubt the power of what I don't believe in. I believe that I am in control of my own fate and my own destiny; whatever happens to me would be the product of my own design and choices; and I am liable for my own successes and failures.

Why are we here? Because we just are. Things that are, just are. Suddenly, it seems that the existential questions aren't real questions at all.

If this entry sounds frightfully familiar, it might be explained by the fact that I have just finished reading Julian Barnes's "Staring at the Sun", a brilliant tour de force whose larger meaning is mostly lost on me.

But honestly, I think he is amazing. The way he uses words is nothing short of breath-taking, and the philosophical questions that he explores... I guess it helps that I agree with him most of the time, but seriously, the guy is deep. Such a brilliant, amazing, talented, genius writer, without the slightest air of pretension and artifice. Absolutely wonderful.

Okay, an hour and 18 minutes since I started this. Shit, I have to finish my History stuff before seven. I should stop wasting time like this, eh?

before sunrise // before sunset

Previously:
- - Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017
I'm moving. - Sunday, Jul. 11, 2010
In all honesty - Tuesday, Jul. 06, 2010
What I want for my birthday... - Sunday, Jul. 04, 2010
On Roger's behalf. - Friday, Jul. 02, 2010