What does it mean to truly live
To be alive, conventional thinking suggests that the entity must be self aware through cognitive.... thinking *wrote myself into a spot there*.
To experience ups, one must have downs. To constantly be surrounded by yes-men who praise and flatter would cause an individual to have stunted growth, unable to bear stress from criticism.
Likewise, to experience periods of depression, one must have known happiness and contentment before abandoning it through bad lifestyle choices or ... by circumstances outside of their control.
Hence, a modernist idea I picked up reading Neil Gaiman's sandman series (of artistically thought provoking graphic novels) of the supernatural fantasy genre is as follows; 'what is heaven but just another place without hell, and what power can hell have to make us fear it, if there is no heaven?'
Chinese (or rather, traditional Taoist and Buddhist) cultural philosophy is that one should do good to gain good karma levels over countless cycles of reincarnation and achieve Nirvana (Possibly derived from the Hinduism). This goes squarely and quite contrary to mainstream Judeo-Christian monotheistic doctrinal origins and, several hundred years later, of Islamic one true God ideas, scholars hypothesizing that the many branches of Christianity interpretations may have caused Prophet Mohammed to criticize Christians for "changing" their scripture.
(Oh dear, I have once again gradually meandered into excitingly controversial territory and i'll try to find my way back without giving cause for offense)
So growing up in a multirural environment, what it meant for me to be alive was to go to school, walking alongside my S. Korean neighbor who spoke little English but often invited us over for dinner, studying and competing in exams with a school class of over 500 children per grade level in each school, in a population ratio of 75% chinese, 14% Malay, 7% Indian and less than 1% white neighborhood.
After school, it was playing in the playground till I was 8, then have after school lessons in maths, chinese... till I was 15, then I had tuition lessons in more subjects. This was a lot less than many singaporean kids experienced in tuition, as I also had piano lessons and swimming lessons to fill up my spare time. It's a wonder my mom made me give up playing the clarinet in the band, gymnastics and Tae Kwan Do early on.
But what made me feel alive, wad not the activities or church events each Sunday. They served to tire me out and cause contention being overwhelmed.
What made me feel alive, was when the family ate dinner together. And fished by the ocean, ... and traveled to Bali, Malaysia, visiting grandparents with amazing pork bone soup, jogging in wild trails no one else knew of in bukit batok nature reserves where several times I had to claw my way up vines ...
My breathing would slow down, my sense of hearing and smell sharpen, to where I can still taste the moments that took my breath and held forever in a dear memory.
Now, I try to make these stories anew with a family of my own. Will I make the mistakes of my parents, or live in a harmony of sun kissed, tanned memories.
To experience ups, one must have downs. To constantly be surrounded by yes-men who praise and flatter would cause an individual to have stunted growth, unable to bear stress from criticism.
Likewise, to experience periods of depression, one must have known happiness and contentment before abandoning it through bad lifestyle choices or ... by circumstances outside of their control.
Hence, a modernist idea I picked up reading Neil Gaiman's sandman series (of artistically thought provoking graphic novels) of the supernatural fantasy genre is as follows; 'what is heaven but just another place without hell, and what power can hell have to make us fear it, if there is no heaven?'
Chinese (or rather, traditional Taoist and Buddhist) cultural philosophy is that one should do good to gain good karma levels over countless cycles of reincarnation and achieve Nirvana (Possibly derived from the Hinduism). This goes squarely and quite contrary to mainstream Judeo-Christian monotheistic doctrinal origins and, several hundred years later, of Islamic one true God ideas, scholars hypothesizing that the many branches of Christianity interpretations may have caused Prophet Mohammed to criticize Christians for "changing" their scripture.
(Oh dear, I have once again gradually meandered into excitingly controversial territory and i'll try to find my way back without giving cause for offense)
So growing up in a multirural environment, what it meant for me to be alive was to go to school, walking alongside my S. Korean neighbor who spoke little English but often invited us over for dinner, studying and competing in exams with a school class of over 500 children per grade level in each school, in a population ratio of 75% chinese, 14% Malay, 7% Indian and less than 1% white neighborhood.
After school, it was playing in the playground till I was 8, then have after school lessons in maths, chinese... till I was 15, then I had tuition lessons in more subjects. This was a lot less than many singaporean kids experienced in tuition, as I also had piano lessons and swimming lessons to fill up my spare time. It's a wonder my mom made me give up playing the clarinet in the band, gymnastics and Tae Kwan Do early on.
But what made me feel alive, wad not the activities or church events each Sunday. They served to tire me out and cause contention being overwhelmed.
What made me feel alive, was when the family ate dinner together. And fished by the ocean, ... and traveled to Bali, Malaysia, visiting grandparents with amazing pork bone soup, jogging in wild trails no one else knew of in bukit batok nature reserves where several times I had to claw my way up vines ...
My breathing would slow down, my sense of hearing and smell sharpen, to where I can still taste the moments that took my breath and held forever in a dear memory.
Now, I try to make these stories anew with a family of my own. Will I make the mistakes of my parents, or live in a harmony of sun kissed, tanned memories.
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