One more for the road...

it's interesting how some people know me well enough to be able to read between the lines of some of my seemingly innocuous posts (yes... this post is about you).

well... i'm off to Yunnan with students. hope to be back with interesting stories.

:)

Chasing Cars

We'll do it all
Everything
On our own

We don't need
Anything
Or anyone

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

I don't quite know
How to say
How I feel

Those three words
Are said too much
They're not enough

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

Let's waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads

I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see

I don't know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

A Beautiful Mind

watched the show again. the first time i watched it was in Bristol. the last time i watched i was also in Bristol. with a friend. whom i have since lost touch with because of chosen negligence.

it is unfortunate the way we lose friends as we age, some through circumstances of distance and lack of time, some through misunderstandings and the inability to forgive.

i gave a pen to a friend once. i wonder whether my friend still has that pen.

Conviction

no melodrama, no hysterics, just a quiet conviction to do what needs to be done.

Seasons

i was reading XH's blog when i got reminded of something. i can't remember which exact entry it was that reminded me of this or why it reminded me of this, all i know is that it did.

i used to study in Bristol. when i was there, i stayed in Manor Hall. when you looked out of my room, you would be looking directly into the garden of the hall. you open the window and you could touch one of the trees.

and i remember in autumn, the trees would sport an auburn crown. and as winter approaches, the leaves would come raining down, leaving the dreary brown and grey of barren trees when winter eventually arrives.

when winter turns to spring, you can see the green of life start to creep back, one leaf at a time at first, and then a sudden explosion as it finally turns to summer, leaving the trees with a lucious canopy of vibrant green.

i miss watching the seasons change.

Whose line is it anyways?

Don't work for my happiness, my brothers - show me yours , show me that it is possible, show me your achievement - and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.

- Ayn Rand, Fountainhead

To a better place

i have been assessing the Oral Presentation component for Project Work (which is an examinable subject of the A-Levels).

and it seems that the students that i assess really really hate it, so much so that many of them, at the end of their presentation, would like to pass on.

"I'd like to pass on to my next speaker..."

pass on, to die: The patient passed on after a long illness.

and so a lot of them have gone on to a better place.

Wee wee

this is a bit late, but i can't possibly not comment about this.

i tend to agree with her. i remember blogging once that the it would be more charitable to the poor to let them die a swift death (i can't find the entry now...). honestly, why do we let them drag on with their lives, if their lives are such suffering? only so that we can be charitable and feel good about ourselves? if that is the case, would it not be greater charity to just kill them?

further, why should the weak be allowed to hold the strong back from becoming even stronger? why should the weaker specimens of the human species be allowed to stop humanity from achieving the greatness that should be the right of thost strong enough to achieve it? if people are too weak to face up and challenge their weaknesses, then they should just die. otherwise, they are only impeding the march of humanity towards becoming supermen.

but evolution is not about the individual. it is about the species. it is about the collective movement of humanity towards greatness. that requires competition, so the strong must face competition from the weak. it requires obstacles, so the strong has to make themselves stronger by dragging the rest of humanity with them, just as runners strap weights to themselves when training. it requires diversity, where the weak of today might have something that would make them strong tomorrow. so there is reason for the weak to exist. because our march towards actualising the full potential of humanity, of becoming the ideal Man is not about an individual becoming Superman, but it is about the species becoming ideal Humanity.

but there is no way we can do that if we continue to help the weak, the poor by just giving them money, or even to retrain them to meet the restructured job market. it is easy to fill the stomach, only slightly harder to fill the mind. but it is the heart, the spirit that we must fill. and that is difficult, nigh impossible.

so, while i don't personally disagree entirely with giving money to the wrongly skilled, lowly educated people who find themselves jobless and poor, doing that is but addressing a symptom, not the root cause. it is the mind, heart and spirit that we must fill and develop. and i challenge the next person who proposes social welfare to develop a robust system to counsel the same people they want to help to want to help themselves, so that these people do not learn helplessness, so that these people, while poor in material wealth are not trapped in the poverty of aspirations. just like the case of this businessman who was bankrupt at 73 and became a millionare again at 83. it's about the heart and the spirit. and if we really want to do something charitable, fill the heart, fill the spirit, celebrate the greatness that humanity can achieve, not stifle it with handouts.