Thursday, July 31, 2003
Lost and Alone
"Nobody wants to be lonely,
Nobody wants to crrrrrry!!!"
Strains from a Ricky Martin song just popped into my head on this cold, wintry day. I sat in the library, rummaging through the huge pile of textbooks to research on the medical case I was given. The guy was lost in a mountain and was starving, and I was supposed to figure out why he wanted to run around stark naked in the snow. Ok, that wasn't exactly his wish, but that guy sure had a death wish. Why? Sure, he was starving, I sure would go beserk with you threw me in a godforsaken place with a mars bars and a caterpillar. However, another reason was that he was lonely. Lonely for his family and his girlfriend. Would I go bouncing down the mountain side screaming yo leh hee because I wanted to be with someone?
Human beings form attachments all the time. It's what gives us that warm, comfy feeling. It's also what gives us pain. Love and feelings cannot transcend death. It leaves us utterly torn apart. So why do we allow ourselves to be subjected to this utter suffering? Feelings and love can't be defined with science. I tried to argue with my friend about the definition of love earlier this year. I was rebuked for reducing the sacred feeling to love to a couple of atoms and molecules constituting hormones and some electrical signals buzzing around our brains. I pointed out that we shouldn't place our feelings on a pedestral just because they have been immortalised and revered. Love is a mystery. Not because it sounds like a good song title, but because it's amazing how our cognitive ability can device this extraordinary attachment. How did the processing of information in our brain conceive this emotion? ( there I go again, resynthesizing this most praised emotion as a cold, scientific fact.)
THe buddhist advocate not making attachments since everything in life is transient and egocentricity does not exist. And it makes sense. If we don't form attachments in this life, it's one less suffering to go through when your loved one leaves. Plus you know, he or she's probably emerging some where else in the samsara. But here, I'll pause a tad. I do bear a cynical view on love, having being so utterly hopeless in it. But for all the suffering it comes with, love is a beautiful thing while it lasts. And I'll bear the consequences gladly in light of what it can offer me.
Sitting in the library study hall on a bitterly cold and windy day, with a couple of crazy library all-nighters for company can delude your mind. The silence is an omnimous cloud that hangs over me and it constantly wrenches out the one emotion I've tried so hard to keep buried in my heart. Loneliness. The repressed feeling rears its ugly head whenever I'm alone. It is during those times that I understand what my friend always talks about. Keeping an upbeat, enthusiastic outlook in a foreign country has it's limits. It's not that I don't have friends. I have a lovely clique who is really funky to hang around with, but I've yet to form a strong bond with any of them or spend lots of time with them. And it's the large amount of time that you spend alone that really gets you down. Uni forces you to be independent. It's hard to establish a firm relationship with uni friends simply because you don't have time to. During lectures, interacting would draw the wrath of the irate lecturer. Out of class, you're raring to be alone to cram that riduculous amount of lecture notes into your head. That's one of the hard parts of coming out to a foreign land alone. You need time to find friends, but you're not equipped with the opportunities to do so. Plus establishing friendships requires opening up and giving each other chances and I guess we all aren't ready to do that. And so your heart longs for the firm old friends back home. I am happy in Melbourne, but sometimes the loneliness just creeps in on me when I least expect it.
I stared at the page on my worksheet, my eyes seeing but not reading the words. The feeling wasn't one of sadness. The loneliness simply provoked a restless yearning to see someone I knew. I tapped my feet impatiently.
" Excuse me miss, is the seat taken?" An exaggeratedly polite request made by a most familiar voice lifted my heart.
HH dumped her books on the table, burying my worksheets and that awful feeling of despair.
I first met HH in RGS days when we were both sitting miserably in the field in the blazing sun, melting while we waited for our sec 4 mass dance captain to devise another devious way to embarrass us in front of the school on sports day. The rest of our interaction in RGS simply involved greeting each other on the corridors of level 2. It's hard to imagine that a few years down the road, I would grow to view her as one of my best friends and confidants. I think I do believe in karma. Like my shi fu says, it's hard to explain how you take to certain people more than others. Our friendship bloomed from nothing more than a couple of emails when I decided to apply to Melbourne Uni. But since I"ve arrived in Melbourne, she's taken me under her wing and helped me cope in more ways than one with life. Whether it's studying in the lib till late at night, or running amok in Victoria markets on Saturday morning, having "sleepovers" that see us sacrificing our homework for a night of guitar playing and singing or panicking in the doom and gloom of the exams, her bubbly yet sensible nature has helped me pull through. She's an utter angel, and the only fault i can find in her is her ( and my tendency) to oversleep on Saturday mornings :) . It's hard to find such a good friend in such a short time and I must say that I"m extremely blessed that she's here. I 've no idea how i'm going to cope when she's gone next year...
" Fisherman's friend?" she held up the packet of sweets.
Nah, I didn't need a fisherman's friend, I already had one.
.. and the loneliness was long gone
"Nobody wants to be lonely,
Nobody wants to crrrrrry!!!"
Strains from a Ricky Martin song just popped into my head on this cold, wintry day. I sat in the library, rummaging through the huge pile of textbooks to research on the medical case I was given. The guy was lost in a mountain and was starving, and I was supposed to figure out why he wanted to run around stark naked in the snow. Ok, that wasn't exactly his wish, but that guy sure had a death wish. Why? Sure, he was starving, I sure would go beserk with you threw me in a godforsaken place with a mars bars and a caterpillar. However, another reason was that he was lonely. Lonely for his family and his girlfriend. Would I go bouncing down the mountain side screaming yo leh hee because I wanted to be with someone?
Human beings form attachments all the time. It's what gives us that warm, comfy feeling. It's also what gives us pain. Love and feelings cannot transcend death. It leaves us utterly torn apart. So why do we allow ourselves to be subjected to this utter suffering? Feelings and love can't be defined with science. I tried to argue with my friend about the definition of love earlier this year. I was rebuked for reducing the sacred feeling to love to a couple of atoms and molecules constituting hormones and some electrical signals buzzing around our brains. I pointed out that we shouldn't place our feelings on a pedestral just because they have been immortalised and revered. Love is a mystery. Not because it sounds like a good song title, but because it's amazing how our cognitive ability can device this extraordinary attachment. How did the processing of information in our brain conceive this emotion? ( there I go again, resynthesizing this most praised emotion as a cold, scientific fact.)
THe buddhist advocate not making attachments since everything in life is transient and egocentricity does not exist. And it makes sense. If we don't form attachments in this life, it's one less suffering to go through when your loved one leaves. Plus you know, he or she's probably emerging some where else in the samsara. But here, I'll pause a tad. I do bear a cynical view on love, having being so utterly hopeless in it. But for all the suffering it comes with, love is a beautiful thing while it lasts. And I'll bear the consequences gladly in light of what it can offer me.
Sitting in the library study hall on a bitterly cold and windy day, with a couple of crazy library all-nighters for company can delude your mind. The silence is an omnimous cloud that hangs over me and it constantly wrenches out the one emotion I've tried so hard to keep buried in my heart. Loneliness. The repressed feeling rears its ugly head whenever I'm alone. It is during those times that I understand what my friend always talks about. Keeping an upbeat, enthusiastic outlook in a foreign country has it's limits. It's not that I don't have friends. I have a lovely clique who is really funky to hang around with, but I've yet to form a strong bond with any of them or spend lots of time with them. And it's the large amount of time that you spend alone that really gets you down. Uni forces you to be independent. It's hard to establish a firm relationship with uni friends simply because you don't have time to. During lectures, interacting would draw the wrath of the irate lecturer. Out of class, you're raring to be alone to cram that riduculous amount of lecture notes into your head. That's one of the hard parts of coming out to a foreign land alone. You need time to find friends, but you're not equipped with the opportunities to do so. Plus establishing friendships requires opening up and giving each other chances and I guess we all aren't ready to do that. And so your heart longs for the firm old friends back home. I am happy in Melbourne, but sometimes the loneliness just creeps in on me when I least expect it.
I stared at the page on my worksheet, my eyes seeing but not reading the words. The feeling wasn't one of sadness. The loneliness simply provoked a restless yearning to see someone I knew. I tapped my feet impatiently.
" Excuse me miss, is the seat taken?" An exaggeratedly polite request made by a most familiar voice lifted my heart.
HH dumped her books on the table, burying my worksheets and that awful feeling of despair.
I first met HH in RGS days when we were both sitting miserably in the field in the blazing sun, melting while we waited for our sec 4 mass dance captain to devise another devious way to embarrass us in front of the school on sports day. The rest of our interaction in RGS simply involved greeting each other on the corridors of level 2. It's hard to imagine that a few years down the road, I would grow to view her as one of my best friends and confidants. I think I do believe in karma. Like my shi fu says, it's hard to explain how you take to certain people more than others. Our friendship bloomed from nothing more than a couple of emails when I decided to apply to Melbourne Uni. But since I"ve arrived in Melbourne, she's taken me under her wing and helped me cope in more ways than one with life. Whether it's studying in the lib till late at night, or running amok in Victoria markets on Saturday morning, having "sleepovers" that see us sacrificing our homework for a night of guitar playing and singing or panicking in the doom and gloom of the exams, her bubbly yet sensible nature has helped me pull through. She's an utter angel, and the only fault i can find in her is her ( and my tendency) to oversleep on Saturday mornings :) . It's hard to find such a good friend in such a short time and I must say that I"m extremely blessed that she's here. I 've no idea how i'm going to cope when she's gone next year...
" Fisherman's friend?" she held up the packet of sweets.
Nah, I didn't need a fisherman's friend, I already had one.
.. and the loneliness was long gone
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