It came to pass that my knowledge of Taost and Confucian values came quite early as well as my childhood attempt at speaking Mandarin. As a kid I played at Ah Chai's house a lot. He had a nice swing. His mother couldn't understand BM that well so she ended up teaching me some Mandarin words. I have to admit, it caused my parents and relatives some sleepless nights. They would grumble, "Kau ni dah masuk Cina ke?" Or, "Kalau nak main, tak de kawan lain ke?" Only years later after hearing stories of how May 13 ravaged that part of the country did I understand the fuss. Perhaps my parents were only being protective of me.
Because of my 'social life' as it were, few kids in the kampung would speak to me. I was neither here nor there. The Malay kids saw me as an outsider. The Chinese kids saw me as an outsider too. No one would trust me but I don't remember feeling bitter about it. I learnt to enjoy my own company quite early, something that proved more useful in my growing years than I ever imagined.
Anyway to cut a long story short, one day when I was in my 20's, seeing that I was jobless, Ah Chai's father pulled some strings, put in a good word and landed me my first job in Singapore. An unlikely fruit from an unlikely tree that grew on that lonely village path many years ago.
My bumping into Ah Chai may have been random but the subsequent events of the story were not. During the subsequent years, I must have made a million decisions, some of them stupid, one feeding the next, that eventually propeled me to where I am today. Similarly there must have been a million conscious decisions my parents made, large and small, that led them to push me to that grocery shop that day that culminated in my fateful run-in with Ah Chai.
From that, I can appreciate why people say there are no accidents. Everything we experience, every feeling, every coincidence appears to have been conditioned from our past choices. Whether we remember them or not, or whether those choices were made wisely or ignorantly is another matter but if we could put all our choices on the table and connect the dots, I have no doubt we could clearly see why we are where we are today.
There were times when I pondered how different my own future would've been had I opted to take that longer road home many years ago and not fallen off my bicycle like I had.
They say we reap what we sow. The future is in our hands. We are masters of our destiny. We speak of it all in the context of yesterday's decisions. We forget we're still living off the decisions we made 30 or 40 years ago. Our career and marriage will attest to that.
So, the fact that we're all self made is great news to me.
Why?
Because if yesterday's decisions made me who I am today, then today's decisions will make me who I am tomorrow.
In other words there is hope. There's always hope. What I do today can and will make a difference. Perhaps not to everyone. To myself, and given the circumstances I'm happy to say it's enough for me.
I think you've stumbled onto something here. Yesterday's decisions, in my case, have made me who I am today. So each waking moment affects my future.
ReplyDeleteIt gives me a feeling of having better control rather than none in today's world.
In my mind, this sounds simple but I don't know if it is when you read it. hahaha
PS.
ReplyDeleteFeeling blue ah?
I always thought we made the choices we made because when they were presented to us we sometimes made them based on our logical reasoning, while at other times we had no other choices.
ReplyDeleteGood morning Lita, yea its hard not to be pessimistic with the stuff that's been going on around us. Thanks for asking. I think many of us feel we're hapless victims of circumstance. I was playing chess with a friend the other day when something rang a bell. Its how the decision behind every move changed the outcome of a game. It felt so familiar.
ReplyDeleteThat's what life is isn't it, a sequence of choices. If we are skilled (not ignorant) we minimise moves that can turn ugly years down the road. And it is precisely our ignorance, as in not understanding the consequences of an action that made us decide to do things that landed us in our stew today.
If good deeds beget good consequences and bad deeds beget bad consequences, then rational people would naturally choose good action over bad action. Its a no brainer. The problem is definiton. What's good for A is not necessarily good for B, and no its not simple as what people would have me believe. Some think the destruction of Israel is good. Some say its not. Some say having 12 children is good. Some say its not. So who's definition of "good" should I use?
If our choices are critical in how our story ends, then we better have the definitions down right.
So back to the chess game of life. From the very start, every move matters. You were right in saying its action that's important. Do allow me to add "wise" in front of action. If ignorance is causing me to make bad moves, then the cure is not to thoughtlessly go with the flow and find myself falling down the waterfall. It is to lift that ignorance to enable wiser moves and pave the way for a happier ending. And lifting that ignorance, that's the part that requires a bit of work i think.
Hi LC, I thought hard and could not imagine a situation where we have no choice, because not wanting to choose is also a choice. Sometimes when someone asks, I say to them I have no choice but to drop everything to look after my parents. Actually I do have a choice. If I want, I can buy a one way ticket to London this evening and leave them just like that. I ignore that choice because of moral obligations but technically I still have a choice. When our forefathers fled their homelands hundreds of years ago, I think they had to because there was also no other choice. Actually they had a choice. It was either stay and brave the odds or flee the homeland. It was by their choice that we are here today.
ReplyDeleteBy the way Lita, I think all religions strive to make it simple for us by defining what is good and bad so we can go about our lives doing rather than thinking. What saddens me is, what's making it easy for us is also making us kill each other in droves, and violently. Juz looking at how religious differences figure behind wars fought on the planet, many of them between tribes and 'simple' people. Life is simple... until someone comes along and says your definition of "good" is actually evil, and his big man says all evil must be eliminated so you must be eliminated. We take offence and suddenly all hell breaks loose.
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