eGo & fear

Once upon a time, there was someone whom learned a secret. It was a secret that many people come to learn in life. But the difference was, this secret was learned very early in life. And so, it changed the person’s life. Like it always has, like it always will. But like all things in life, secrets carry a double-edged sword. And this secret was no exception. And so, the cycle of life continues.

The person continued on in life. With the secret, it wasn’t that hard to become “superior”. Or so it seemed. Life was going on smoothly. With the secret, no stones were left unturned in the journey. And so it went on. For a long time, a very long time. Oh, there were obstacles strewn in the path, no doubt. But as always, with the secret, the major challenges were taken care of, the minor problems ignored.

Life became a major bore. To stimulate more excitement into life, the person took up ever more and more. One wonders why now. Was it really to challenge oneself? Or is it nature’s instinct to play with fire, then crash and burn, whenever our ignored problems snowball into one huge avalanche? Undoubtedly, no one person can bear that weight. And of course, the inevitable breakdown. And the huge reversal in life. Just like the pendulum, swinging from one extreme to another.

The person saw the trap of the secret now. But there was no escape. Or so the secret made it seem. The trap had tight jaws… escaping from it seemed impossible. Until another person appeared. For once, there was a glimmer of hope that the trap could be smashed apart. It wasn’t anything said or done. It was in how the trap didn’t exist at times all of a sudden. But the person started to grow afraid. See, the trap has become a safety net. By acting from a standpoint of the victim of the trap, it was easy to come up with excuses.

But the moments when the trap disappeared happened more often. And whenever it came back, the feeling of confusion became ever greater. As fate would have it though… an event happened to change the confusion. Gone to some other place, the person finally had time to be trapped firmly within the secret again. Or so it seemed. See.. the trap doesn’t come with the secret. The secret is a tool like any other. Only when we become dependent on the secret do we trap ourselves firmly within it. And that has thus become the new secret.

But the new secret doesn’t allow for excuses. It also doesn’t provide answers. And oftentimes, it is easy to lose track of the new secret, and live in the trappings of the old. And that leaves the person quite confused also.

Have you ever noticed that we are not ourselves? We have voices in our head, talking to each other. The one which we listen to then helps shape our personality. But is that who we truly are? I was a pre-mature baby. Born purple-faced, and god knows whether I would have lived, I was much more stupid than most kids my age. But I learned something. About the mind. And how to think. All of a sudden, life changed. Whole new worlds opened up. To this date.. I am still very grateful to my Pri 1 form teacher. Unfortunately, he is dead. From cancer. Although after switching primary school, I didn’t contact him, but there was once when I saw him on the TV. Talking about his cancer. He was crying, talking about his children. He’s the tallest man I remember in my whole life that I have ever met. When he came to my house back at Pasir Ris, he had to bend so much to come inside. I still remember the funny joke about watermelon and 我的美人. His chinese really sucked. Hahaha… See, he gave me a great gift. He empowered me with the gift of thinking. No one can teach you how to think. But once you understood what thinking was, didn’t your life change about? Maybe you don’t remember. But I do. The criticisms. The scolding. The exasperation. The helplessness. Knowing that it was possible to use my mind allowed me to train it, then use it in ways I never thought possible. The criticisms became praise. The scolding became envy. The exasperation faded to satisfaction. The helplessness changed to empowerment.

Learning is the tool that facilitates thinking. Thinking is really a very simple business. It’s about using paradigms to form thoughts. Learning creates new paradigms, thus facilitating new thoughts. It helped a lot that I was fascinated with reading. The vivid imagery touched my heart, and I strove to just keep reading. Learning. And it made life much more simpler. Once in awhile, that 小聪明 wasn’t nearly enough by itself to overcome the challenges that came. So I had to put in hard work now and then. But for the everyday things that lash at my paradigm, I would keep away from. You know, niggling doubts. “Raw instincts are never to be acted on.” “Only things which have been thought out carefully should be done.” Thinking gave me a life I thought I wanted. But it also robbed away my ability to feel, and I let it. Did I knew it then? I can easily say I didn’t, but I think the truth was, I think I did. I just refused to admit it. The trap of the mind – ego. It was just too hard to admit that I was wrong. That there was so much more I didn’t understand, so much more I couldn’t understand. It was easier to pretend that they didn’t exist.

See, this ego, it’s a really funny thing. Ego kept me from hard work too. Ego kept me from many things. At the same time, it always encouraged me to feed it. Over time, ego became the loudest voice in my head. Oh, that ego didn’t really make me that overbearing I guess. I supposed it did at times, but I doubt it was a constant thing. The ego knows how to protect itself well. The ego will have tricked you not into believing that the other voices exist, but into the belief that those voices are not important… “Not you”. To prevent outside influence from getting at you, it will also tone itself down once in awhile, so that no one will stick a pin into that inflated balloon. I don’t know whether it was ego, or was it the me trying to bring it down, that motivated me to go for as many things as I did. Maybe both. In any case, it was what I did anyway.

Well, I crashed and burned. Burned out would have been a simple way to put it. I don’t even want to recollect that period of time. I hadn’t joined Leo Club for community service, but in the end, it was community service that shook me out of it. That was Serve China about a year ago. I still remember my days at Bo Ai fondly. And I really miss Kang Ning. He taught me that I still had the capacity to feel. He showed me how sad it was to have intelligence, but to have it repressed. Most of all, it was him crying when I was about to leave. For the first time in many years, I really had tears coming into my eyes. I didn’t let them out of course. But they were there nonetheless anyway. Back then though, I was still firmly entrenched in the trap. “He’s just a kid. It’s easy for him to become emotionally attached, he will forget about me soon enough.”

I went back to Singapore changed though. Maybe it wasn’t something obvious. But I know I did start to change. Gradually. With the ability to think… fears were cut away… one by one. But there are fears that thinking cannot deal with. Although I tried to kid myself, Kang Ning had severed another one for me. And although I didn’t know it then, I started to let go of fears more and more rapidly. Not by thinking, but by confronting them. Still, there were some that I didn’t. See, letting go of fear gives you more clarity. Each time you confront a fear though, that clarity vanishes for awhile. When the fear you confront is really something huge… haiz. Some fears are so strong, it was much easier to just pretend they didn’t exist. But deep in the middle of the night, we all know the truth.

Did I ever imagine I would act so much on instincts in times to come? Hahaha… no way. There was only ever one exception. 24 Dec 2006. And look where that left me. I was so pained after that that I never thought I would be able to act on instincts anymore. It seems foolish now, it was merely a minor thing, but the fool that I was was really affected. But it happened anyway. See, there were times when my mind just shut off. And I knew without a doubt what I wanted to do. And just did it. “Cos I felt like doing it.” It was a pretty humbling experience. I guess my ego didn’t like it. Whenever he regained control, I was always scolded very harshly. But I knew deep down that I would have done it again nonetheless. And that left me very confused? Who the hell am I? Each act of instinct brought me closer and closer to confronting other fears. And each time, it left me more and more bewildered. It is one thing when my mind tells me to follow my gut instinct, another when the mind isn’t there.

In any case, OIAP meant that I had to come here, to Shanghai. Much less chances to act on instinct. But here, I was also much less bombarded by things to worry and think about. And it allowed me to learn more. And finally to act on that trap of the mind. See, I realized that fear is non-existent. Fear is a product of ego. There is nothing to fear, because the fear doesn’t come from what we associate fear with. It comes from ourselves. Realizing this provided me with a model to start dealing with it. But you know, I still can’t do it. Not completely anyway.

I read about a guy who had a stripper for a girlfriend. And all of a sudden, it clicked. The missing key. Lifestyle. When we choose to be with people, we are choosing a particular lifestyle. And much more so for the person we fall in love with. But as I already knew, it is pointless to change yourself to fit the likes of another person. It is not the true you, and it will crumble away within a short period of time. It is exactly what I said about friends. You can’t force people to like and be your friends, but you can give them an opportunity to be. Whether they take it or not is their choice. It has become their problem, not yours. Well.. if one doesn’t have a lifestyle to share, it is no wonder that one becomes so dependent on others to validate themselves. I’ve never had that problem, but I had one other. I’ve never been absolutely clear about what life it is that I want. I know the general direction. And I work towards it… gradually. But I know deep down that it has to change. In those times my ego isn’t active, I know I have to set down to it. And soon.

One night, I was writing about it. But I didn’t finish. See, my ego was attacking me all of a sudden. I hadn’t nearly begun to realize it. And to date, I have still put it off. It may sound very simplistic, but to change your life, you have to get really clear about what the change you want is. It is pointless to want to change only.. the changes will last a short while, before you slip back into old habits. The ego is a formidable adversary indeed.

So why am I posting about it? I know what I want to do. But before I do it, I have to change first. Give me time. And hopefully.. support. Hopefully, within the next week, I can finally set down to doing clear definitions! By the way, I don’t think ego can be defeated. It just happens to be one of the voices in the head. My advice is, choose which voice you want to listen to. Carefully. Choose the one that resonates with how you feel, deep down. Then act on it. Is it hard? VERY! For me at least. But I know it will be worth it. And so do you. I have but one message… to be ourselves, first we must be happy with who we are! We are works-in-progress, but that doesn’t stop us from loving ourselves.. both the strengths and the flaws.. Jiayou!