Thursday, November 08, 2007
first cut is the deepest
WARNING: THE POST YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ CONTAINS BRUTAL HONESTY. INTERNAL DISCRETION IS STRONGLY ADVISED. ONLY SUITABLE FOR CERTAIN AUDIENCES.
Self examination, by far, is perhaps the toughest examination one could ever take. Forget year end stress, A levels, ECAs, wat have yous.. Those are still considered minute next to this. Before I get bombed by readers going through exam stress, let me explain. I am not going through any formal exam in this season. Not yet, at least. What I am going through, however, I'd rather trade formal exams for it. At least it only tires your intellectual abilities, and you can find solace in many forms of de-stressing techniques. Not so for self-examinations. They tire your whole being, and there's no way to escape from yourself now is there?
And what's more, you can't ever prepare from self-exams! They just happen to you, especially if you're introspective by nature. Anything could trigger it, but failures would be the one catalyst proved to be the most effective. So you fail in order to take the exam. How amusing.
First cut is the deepest. It's truer than it first appears. I find that after I realized that my dad is not who he made himself out to be, and denies who he really is, the disappointment that comes with it resonates with everything or everyone else that gives me that same sense. In fact, I begin to develop a fear or a dread that people in general are like that, and lo and behold, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whatever you try to prove right would in the end be right to you. God already warned us; the way of a man seems right in his eyes but God weighs the heart. I can't even carry out a proper conversation without that nagging sense of disappointment in the people I dearly love from time to time, when they share what appears to me to be worldly pursuits, or faulty beliefs. It resonates the sense of helplessness that I feel with my parents' issues. It resonates that sense of false responsibility; perhaps it's my fault, I should have done this or that. I have formed a statement in my mind that has shaped my worldview; a question, really. 'Why is it that people are always blind to something that is harmful to them?' I even apply that question to myself.
If I don't deal with the root issue about my disappointment with my dad, I guess my worldview would never change, and the way I interact with people will forever remain the same. On the contrary, what does it look like on the other side?
Mantou at 10:15 PM