CLAUD

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Meditation

I was at the University Hall for a project meeting and Yongquan's Ridge-mate (NUS monthly issue) Vincent were discussing how best to screw Eat, Pray, Love to bring realities into the movie/story.

Somehow, I can't help but feel that my inner hypocritical voice was made audible. How often do we actually have the choices to abandon all and 'find ourselves'?

So to partially hijack their concept (eh! i never plagerise ah!) :

I used to get peeved at advertisements in NUS or enthusiasts that teach people how to 'relax' and 'mediate' to find 'inner peace'. That's because if these advertisers and enthusiasts were to be in the exact same position as me (or most of NUS students during crunch time) - it's hard to find that 'inner peace' to 'relax' much less find time to 'medidate' when you are under a pressure cooker of deadlines, reading frustrating incomprehensible journals and dealing with the fuckup-ness of life in general.

And I also don't like to be told what to do - much less what I should do.

Maybe I've been influenced by Marxist and Political Geographical thought: that troubles are nothing like what it seems until we actually consider the underlying mechanisms behind all the superficial symptoms of our problems.

This stress we all face could be attributed to the university's efforts to squeeze the best out of us all the time, every semester. The idea that the student must be 'pushed' and 'driven' to make sure that their best attempts are captured in some term paper and research assignment. Yet, time and again, I can't help but wonder if I just had a little more time, can better miracles happen?

So we stress about our grades isn't it? To (mostly) always strive to produce the best we can in the shortest amount of time so that NUS can be a better, much more recognised university so that in return when we graduate, our 放屎纸 (read it in hokkein) will worth more in $. After all starting pay is a key contributing factor to your future income - according to linear regression analysis. We need $ because we can't buy the things we want to if we don't have $ and do the things we want to.

I like studying, reading and thinking - I just don't like the feeling of having the rotan (quoting Prof Savage) whipping me to go 'FASTER FASTER' everytime.

Everytime when my thought process reaches here, I feel calmer already because I know this is a means to an ends, not an end itself.

See? Relaxation doesn't have to result in 'inner peace'. That's because I'll already feel more peaceful when I know these deadlines will be over in November. That's meditation: the written (or spoken) discourse expressing considered thoughts on a subject. E.g. this blog entry is an intense meditation on why my life now is so stressful.

00:00