Ruin is the road to transformation

The Beaver is a film about meaning, purpose, connection, losing your way, and finding it again - all themes that strike very close to my heart. It's a story about a family unravelling because the people in it are lost, confused, hopeless, and at the end of their rope - and how they reach a breaking point only to find that it is exactly what they need to rebuild.

After the movie I kept thinking about what the main character, Walter Black said:

"We reach a point where, in order to go on, we have to wipe the slate clean. We start to see ourselves as a box that we're trapped inside and no matter how we try and escape, self help, therapy, drugs, we just sink further and further down. The only way to truly break out of the box is to get rid of it all together... I mean, you built it in the first place. If the people around you are breaking your spirit, who needs them? Your wife who pretends to love you, your son who can't even stand you. I mean, put them out of their misery. Starting over isn't crazy. Crazy is being miserable and walking around half asleep, numb, day after day after day. Crazy is pretending to be happy. Pretending that the way things are is the way they have to be for the rest of your bleeding life." -Walter Black, The Beaver (2011)

And I couldn't help but be reminded about what two of my favourite writers had to say on this subject of ruin and rebuilding:

 “A friend took me to the most amazing place the other day. It’s called the Augusteum. Octavian Augustus built it to house his remains. When the barbarians came they trashed it a long with everything else. The great Augustus, Rome’s first true great emperor. How could he have imagined that Rome, the whole world as far as he was concerned, would be in ruins. It’s one of the quietest, loneliest places in Rome. The city has grown up around it over the centuries. It feels like a precious wound, a heartbreak you won’t let go of because it hurts too good. We all want things to stay the same. Settle for living in misery because we’re afraid of change, of things crumbling to ruins. Then I looked at around to this place, at the chaos it has endured – the way it has been adapted, burned, pillaged and found a way to build itself back up again. And I was reassured, maybe my life hasn’t been so chaotic, it’s just the world that is, and the real trap is getting attached to any of it. Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.” -Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat. Pray. Love

"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.” -C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

I think instinctively, we all want to settle for 'safe'. The idea of starting again and leaving behind everything we've worked for and built away is a scary, painful thought - it feels like losing a part of yourself - losing all the things that used to define you. But what if leaving the past behind and starting again is exactly what we need? What if it is when we feel like we're losing ourselves that we find who we truly are?

I need this reminder daily. I need to remind myself it's okay to change. It's okay to 're' - rebuild, restore, revamp, re-examine, revoke, retry. I'm not a finished product - I'm a work in progress. And like any work in progress, it's okay to throw everything out and start again. In fact, sometimes it's not just okay, it's essential if you want the finished product to be anything worthwhile.

Image: Some rights reserved by Fulla T

The sweetest words I've heard all year

 

The past week has been an eventful one. What with the Bersih 2.0 rally, Thailand's first female prime minister (and a gorgeous one at that) being voted into office, and of course Rupert Murdoch's News of the World phone hacking scandal.

In the middle of all that, I received some other news, which, while certainly not as significant as the above, was the highlight of my year so far.

After what has been an eventful and challenging journey, I can finally say that I'm a graduate. And not only that, a graduate with first class honours.

Was it a smooth ride all the way? No. Did I feel like giving up along the way? Constantly. Were there times I felt I'd blown the chance at a 1:1 degree? Definitely, when I managed to set a personal record for my all-time lowest grade received for a module. Was it worth it? Yes. Absolutely yes.

If I had to pick one thing university taught me, it would be that there's no shortcut to success. For a straight-A student who breezed by daydreaming her way through school and college, and pretty much being good at whatever she found herself doing, be it editing, designing, or working as a barista at Starbucks, I found myself in a very different world the moment I hit university. A world in which talent and personality were just not enough. Going twenty years of one's life without really having to question your ability and being given opportunities to do things you're naturally good at doesn't really teach you a lot about the real world and the determination, discipline, and hard work you need to thrive in it.

And that is what I believe my degree is worth. Not a fancy piece of paper or a ticket to a bigger paycheck or my module grades, but a primer in Life: The Real Deal.

Lessons in learning I won't always get to do things I like, but that doesn't mean I have to hate what I do;
that community and collaboration, no matter how much of a lone ranger I may prefer to be, is crucial to navigating a world built on complex, intricate relationships;
that getting - and staying - motivated is something that you have to fight for, not something that drifts your way;
that failing is inevitable but it's not the end;
that keeping your eyes on the bigger picture is the only way to move forward;
and that simple things and the occasional distraction and indulgence keep life beautiful.

As always, I couldn't have done it alone. One of my favourite quotes, by St John of Salisbury, goes:

"We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours."

So this is the part where I take the time to say thank you. To the mentors and tutors whose lessons expanded beyond the classroom, in particular Dawn Johnston, Ben Young, and Andy Price. The opportunity to learn under your guidance has been a tremendous privilege. Thank you.

To the friends who kept me going and saw more in me than I saw in myself at times, especially Mabel, Nazila, and Justin. You are gems of friends. Thank you.

To all the ones from home whose notes and little packages kept me going through the homesickness, thank you.

To my family, for believing me in their own unique ways that I don't appreciate enough, especially my youngest brother, whose letters and writing have been a quiet, but very real source of strength to me. Thank you.

And of course to my sponsor, YTL Corporation, for seeing something in me to bestow on me the opportunity to do something I had only dreamed of till then, and the individuals who made it happen. Thank you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. A dozen 'thank you's, silent prayers, and all the best hopes and wishes go out to all of you mentioned above. You make the journey worth it.

I will get to know the way my skin curves around my bones

(via shipwreckedinthedesert)

The start of a new chapter in life, of a transition from what was to what is - always takes me a period of reflection before I finally feel I am ready to embrace the new opportunities of the present.

And this period of reflection often brings with it the ironically familiar surprise that somewhere along the way, I've lost sight. Of who I am, why I'm here, of where I'm going, of what I want.

This new chapter of transitioning from academic life to the working world has been no different. Yesterday I learnt a new term that up till hearing it, I had no knowledge of: "quarter life crisis". I might be going through one of those now.

I'm not supposed to be so jaded at 21, or at least that's the vibe I get from most people I talk to, but since when do life experiences move in a linear pattern anyway? We live, we make mistakes, we get tired, we give up, we pick ourselves up, we learn, we move on... and the process repeats itself over and over again.

I've been in this place many times before. Different chapters, different friendships, different loves, different questions, different struggles - they were all documented somwhere, on some blog, out there in the great vast web. Because of this I've been able to look back and see how I've grown, made mistakes, learned from them, repeated a few more times than I should have, but picked myself up again.

It gets harder each time, it's true. I find myself becoming more guarded and wary of not making any mistakes so I don't go through the painful process of trying to pick myself up from another one the older I get. It happens to all of us as we grow up. Maybe it's not such a bad thing, as long as we don't wall ourselves up so completely we stop growing altogether.

So I guess this is just another one of those parts of the story where I get to start from zero all over again and redefine what's important to me in life and what I want out of it. Notice I said, "I get to". Not I don't have any choice because I don't have any cooler, more kick-ass plan figured out for my life than working a corporate 9-5 job or because there seems to be an hopeless dearth of good, single, passionate men left in the world, let alone my city.

Because I still believe that life is what we make it, and how we choose to see it. I could spend the next three years telling myself that all I have to live for is getting by with just enough, working off my bond and otherwise bumming my life away, waiting for the-powers- that-be to hand me my life's purpose or my perfect soul mate on a silver platter, since I have neither the freedom, opportunity or finances to do anything more exciting, like backpack solo around the world or open a coffeehouse.

Or I could see these three years as a gift. Time given to an intense, unpredictable, impatient, emotionally-voilatile go-getter and overachiever to slow down and let life catch up with her dreams for a bit, to enjoy her youth before it slips out of her grasp, to figure out what she really wants - what 21-year-old her wants, not what precocious 15-year-old or idealistic 18-year-old her wanted. To have her faith in humanity and hope in God restored again before she goes rushing about with the notion that she can make the world or someone else's life better.

To find the courage to face the demons she's been running from and the truth that all this while, her noble ambitions and aspirations have been nothing but attempts to prove that she was better than everyone else, and that those attempts stemmed from a deep insecurity. The truth that all her 'fearless' efforts at loving people she knew were not good for her stemmed from never really believing she could be good for anybody. The truth that the reason she secretly hated authority and the church and men was because she had been hurt by people who represented all of the above and refused to believe that maybe those people didn't represent those groups accurately. The truth that the reason she didn't have good things in her life to celebrate was not because she didn't believe they existed, but that she didn't believe she deserved them.

There's so many things I need to work on. So many things I want to work on. But if I had to pick somewhere to start, I would pick fear. I watched Green Lantern last night and although yes, it was hardly anything to shout about, what struck me was the overwhelming, total destructiveness of fear. I think mankind's greatest threat is not World War III or global warming or tangible things like that - I think our greatest enemy is fear, and the greatest battlefield is in the mind.

The most deadly, totally-consuming things are not bullets or guns or radiation or toxic waste - they are fears.

The fear that I don't matter.
The fear that nothing matters.
The fear that my life will always be this way.
The fear that nothing will change.
The fear that I will be just like my parents.
The fear that my children will be just like me.
The fear that nobody cares.
The fear that I can never bring myself to care again.
The fear that things will get worse.
The fear that I can never pick myself up from something like this.
The fear that life is a mistake.
The fear that I am a mistake.

Fear creeps in silently. But it is potent and will-crippling and mind-numbing and soul-searing. Even anger and hate, in all their explosive fieriness, stem from fear at its very core.

And only courage can overcome it.

As Carol tells Green Lantern Hal, it's not "that you are fearless. It saw that you have the ability to overcome fear. It saw that you are courageous."

Living takes courage, because living is dangerous. It's easier to survive.

It's dangerous to keep trying, again and again, for what you want. when you risk looking a fool. It's easier to settle.
It's dangerous to care because there will come times when caring will hurt. It's easier to not give a damn.
It's dangerous to change because it will be uncomfortable, difficult, and you might slip back into the same old rut, reinforcing your fear that nothing will ever change. It's easier to resign yourself to the status quo.
It's dangerous to hope because you risk disappointment. It's easier to accept the way things are.
It's dangerous to believe your life has meaning, because you will have to chase down that meaning, and when you find it, defend it at all costs, because there are those who would like nothing better to steal it from you, so they can continue surviving safely, conveniently, and comfortably, but fearfully, through life. It's easier to give in to your fears.

I'm getting tired of letting my fears dictate my life. I know I've been in this spot before and said things along this line before, but I'm not going to let the fear of making the same old mistakes and the fear of nothing ever changing stop me from deciding, again, that I'm going to let go of things that hold me back, I'm going to live my life, I'm going to find out who I am and what I want, and I'm going to colour and paint in life's meaning for myself.