innocence

One thing that I have always been very afraid of is that I will start forming walls around me and stop feeling the range of feelings that God has given me because of the circumstances in life. You know what I speak of: The cliche that we all got from Simon and Garfunkel's song, I Am A Rock.

As I grow up, especially throughout the transition from secondary school to junior college, I find so more and more people around me start to harden and just really become clams in their own worlds.

We all become increasingly cynical as we grow up whether we like it or not. WSM was a case of someone who tired of the incessant complaints we have of the government and how it's not doing enough for the betterment of us. I began to understand a little of where she came from as I read the Straits Times today and started to ask: Why does the government have to foot the bill for poor students in NUS when even the alumni are not willing to do so? If we lived in the US, such inaction would not be rewarded with payouts. The situation would be simply work for your education or make do with social handouts for the rest of your life. Sadly Singapore has no such system, turning us into little puppies asking for more and more pedigree feed.

But that's not the point. I feel that it's as if that as we become smarter in the world's ways, we become more and more disillusioned, and our dreams get destroyed ever so slowly that we eventually lose them.

When I was really young, I wanted to be an actor. As in those really handsome guys you see on SBC or TCS like James Lye or Thomas Ong. I did become an actor when I grew up, on the Chinese Drama stage. But I know in my heart that I am not a good actor and I am typecast into 'comedy' due to the limitations of my expression which displays only 'whimsical' and 'quaint'. Then there's the typical reaction that parents would give that Lian would be all too familiar with: Theatre gets you nowhere.

I can't say my parents have been really supportive of anything I have done at all. A generation curse no doubt. Kayaking was too time-consuming, Chinese drama was too drama, BB was worthless because I couldn't appeal like others, NYJC is a shit school because they have shit-coloured clothes. These are the kinds of comments I get. I don't feel good, obviously, but I know she doesn't mean it (at least I hope).

It's precisely these hurts that would cause people to close up. If you stopped listening to these people, or stopped caring, you wouldn't feel like crying. And crying is bad right? And feeling that pain is bad.

Then there's the legendary bgr thing which everyone tries to boast of. Ouch, romantic hurt. It really hurts, I'm sure.. When you really unravel the layers and find that what's hidden beneath your preconceptions are merely romantic thoughts and basically rubbish of your wishful thinking, it hurts. Thus you'd stop putting yourself in the 'single and super available' status but in a 'don't want because there are so many important things in life' category. This might just be why Singaporeans aren't getting married. Old women in their 30s wake up one day telling themselves that they want to be single and available again, only finding that guys like young girls and not women past their fertile days. We are after all, creatures of nature and governed by survival. (Sense the cynicism?! Oh oh oh.)

But think this:
Is everyone out there just to harm you? The answer is, of course, no. Who in the world would live just so that they can irritate you? No one is so free, not with the A's coming up.

Is the aim of getting higher education for one to feel superior over others who did not have the opportunities or for us to help them? My mind is inclined to say that the sole aim of education is to serve an economic function to the government by meeting job needs so that we can continue to survive in a meaningless machine-like market. (alliteration!) But is that really true?

My point exactly is what you are thinking now. Be naive again! Be altruistic again! Believe in fairy tales again! It's so easy to intellectualise everything and assume to understand how the globe turns, coming up with theories like how Bush would always attack oil-rich countries hence ruling out a military strike on N. Korea and how people are becoming gayer.

This is perhaps why people in drama are so happy. They live out their utopia right in that black box of dreams and smiles while we strive with all our might to get out of the hole we dug for ourselves.


Okae.. this was not what I wanted to write, but it just came out. So what the heck!