[Disclaimer]: This blog post may not be suitable for readers below their maturity level. Some of the parts are novelized dramatically and may have induced semi-truthful extremity. But the point of being said in here is partly to induce my fluidity and also to express what's been bugging me. Nevertheless, the content may have been quite graphical and difficult to digest. I suggest that when you read this post, read it at the time when you felt burdened by the sinfulness of the world, or that you read it as a concern out of our friendship. There are friends who I remained extremely grateful (Katie, Napthali_deer, Peter, Elijah, Jay being the few people who I knew are keen to know what prompted me to write this article), but for the rest, I welcome discussions on what is written (though lengthly - as you know I don't write frequent blog post unless I am highly inspired). But be warned first: you may not like what's written, though I would sincerely appreciate that you read the entire article before deciding whether to throw this aside or remained burden as a human.
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Chapter 1: The recognition of pain [poem]
Alas, as the night encroached by,
After days of torment within the heart,
Finally I settled down on the crimson bed,
While looking out to the window, silence in the head.
What's more important in life than mere existence,
'Cause everyday I see death as imminent answer in the end,
Finality will not proved everyday's life meaningfulness,
Till death does us part - what we all say - all in existence' due.
I looked at the life I lived, nothing much to give,
Everyday's momentum moved closer to the traps of death,
A walk out to the park exposed you to accidents on the street,
A walk out of the room exposed you to accidents within the alley.
I rather stayed on the bed, watching the silence due,
Because my fear of living engulfed my heart with all pain,
Nothing's meaningful anymore - to take existence by its core,
There hence I rode along the meaningless of it all.
Chapter 2: The reason for pain [poem]
Through it all, I see the reason for the bleakness of my perspective,
Nothing else matters, really no one else would understand,
Save the moment of silence eerily echoes,
Shouting out the chorus...
What is left of me? Nothing at all,
My attempt for success is bound to fail someday,
I tried hard to make amends, to make things right, but nothing work,
In the end, the pain arose because I tried hard, and nothing worked. Nothing.
Why am I so engrossed with recognition?
Does it matter that people recognized what I am doing?
Will it help if there are people seeing what's in my mind and my masterpiece?
Does it matter if in the end, people loved me for what I am doing for them at all?
I don't know. I wished they looked at me emphatically and lovingly,
Hoping the love rebounds multi-fold and never-ending,
But despite the genuineness of their love,
Nothing can escape hypocrisy.
Chapter 3: My tears for the pain (narrative)
I looked at the windows, and suddenly tears dropped felt across the cheek. It has been a while. Really.
I was loitering around the pub opposite the music shop that I frequently visit before, and thought that a visit would be good, after so much time is spent on the work. I remembered one pub that is particularly quiet and serene, and I decide to pay a visit. It was around 9 pm on a Saturday night.
Manchester United was already losing 0-1 to Blackburn by the time I reached, and few minutes later Rooney would have scored the crucial equalizer to claimed their 19th EPL Championship title. But that was the furthest in my mind.
I looked across the people around me. Their jovial mood really took on a pleasant stage of the place. And really, if ever I was the keen patron, I would have thought the same and enjoyed the scenery and perhaps go along with them. Not with this one. Unfortunately, something snapped in me.
Of all the time I have decided for work, and much of what's happening around me, I am consumed by the emotions in my heart. I am especially beguiled by the response of how I see things around me. Apathetic, meanness, corruption, materialistic, legalistic, sadistic, masochist - and plenty of our human's own fallacy.
I remembered seeing the Singapore General Election with great enthusiasm, thanks to the propaganda of the internet media across social network. Apparently opposition is the current era of democracy's support, and people were repelled at the actions of what the current government has provided for them. Complaints after complaints, and the people want the government to fulfill the promises, and enabled their lives.
I thought about all these, and I saw apathy. Feeling pathetic for our human nature who wants people to satisfy us. We want cheaper rates of living, yet having a luxurious outlook in life. We want better welfare, yet also having the best of the welfare system for our own. We want better rebates on the hospital treatment, and remember - it has to be in the highest class of the hospital ward.
Then there's people who, across the religion (Buddhist, Christian, Catholic, Muslim) that strongly emphasized on the meaning of religious piety. You need to pray and meditate every morning (which is in essence something good), you need to give tithe, you need to pray 5 times a day, you need to arrange for confession every week, you need to read the Bible, you need to believe in the existence of God, or nothing. And these people genuinely took the theology behind, articulate them, and in the end stifled with the belief when one day, something happened that seemed to discount the existence of God. When someone they love die tragically, when something happened in their lives and they found it depressive and yet no solution was given, and countless of judgments poured over them with comments of them not being faithful, not religious enough and etc. They may have left God, but they left more humanity in them. They decide to be agnostic and in the end, apathetic.
Of course, with all the corruption of the people around, they are also those who enjoyed the fallacy of humanity in a sadistic and masochist manner. Violence and rapes are everywhere, and people seemed to enjoy being a spectator to the news that occurred everyday. It is good to watch commentary of issues such as rising violence against women on how to tackle the issues on personal and corporate level - but are we pouring enough judgment and play god ourselves also when we looked at these issues? I felt extremely sad when I watch a news article on an evangelical take on recent women's attire being indecent and invite males perpetration. When I read about it, I was seriously concern about what will happen if this evangelical happened to see a woman in front of that person. Would that person poured his/her point of view on her, and tell her to repent? What would happen if she wouldn't change the clothing? Would he/she took turned to 'thank God that he/she is not like this woman, who has no shame at all over her indecency?' I thought it awhile, and I felt that it may have been that we perhaps may have put an adverse effect on her while pouring our judgment. Perhaps she knew but that's the only way for her to find intimacy, even though it is a fake and cheap intimacy. Perhaps that is the only closeness to relationship that she ever knows. Do we ever think about that?
And of all - I am terribly silenced by the fact that the ability for me to write the social commentaries above made me the worst human to live on earth. I do all the talking, but would I walk the talk when the actual thing happened to my own life? When I am faced with human adversities, would I reach out to help? When I am down with my own financial difficulties, would I still think of giving to the poor when I can't live life properly myself. When I saw someone disobeying God (consciously or unconsciously) would I affirmed my love for him/her despite disagreeing with him/her? When I saw a lady dressing inappropriately in a general function, would I stopped myself from raining down my judgment calls on her?
With these thoughts in mind, with great burden, I can't seemed to find someone to talk to. So I poured out within my heart with Heineken, and several cigarettes - something that I haven't done for more than a decade.
These pains are hard to subdue, and I do not know where is the solution for them. In drunkenness and intoxicated with the nicotine, I forced myself to lie onto my bed, with images of knives on my both hands slicing across my abdomen being strangely the only comfort that I have as my dream, not the nightmare.
Strangely, killing myself seems an attractive option, living in this meaningless and wretched world.
Chapter 4: Where, hence are you, my beloved? [nostalgia, narrative]
I remembered waking up from that dream with instant prick of regret. It was quite weird, after realizing that I have just gone through the ordeal of having slices of scars that tore my abdomen, seeing inner organ being splashed through the bed I used to comfortably tucked myself into - and see that all of these are like cleansing the sins within me.
It was a graphic description, but that is because I can only take comfort that these are the necessary pain to achieve sinlessness. Then it dawned to me:
"These pains are necessary. Why?"
I thought for a while, and pondered in my head the time when I woke up. It registered as 9 am. Gosh, I am late for my church service, I reminded myself. But I saw the guitar lying across my bed, and I didn't realize that I might have played some melody in drunkenness the night before. Somehow the head seemed reeling from the intoxication, and I affirmed it first by smelling the remains of tobacco stains on my right fingers. Gosh, I smoked yesterday.
I took the guitar, and somehow a familiar voice came to me:
"Play that song that you wrote several years back. Play that without letup."
Epiphany of Misery came to mind. I find it strange that whenever something sinister happened in my life, I would tend to play that song. It was supposed to sound simple. Nothing fancy about the tune. Just a E major scale down in blues pentatonic major.
Though the tune is old, new lyrics came to mind. This is what was sung:
"Past the age,
Across the globe,
All that's found,
Is memories lost.
What's important,
No longer matters,
In the end, who's close,
Is the only thing left to know"
Strange, especially when I thought about the fallacy of humanity, how did this sentimental recollection - with hints of romanticism becomes the only comfort in my suddenly soothing heart?
And strangely, the fingers start to play some tune that was familiar to me, but it took some times for my mind to adjust what was played.
"God will make a way,
When they seems to be no way,
He works in way, we cannot see,
God will make a way for us,
He will be our guide,
Hold us closely to His side,
With love and strength, for each new day,
He will make a way, he will make a way,
By the roadway in the wilderness,
He'll lead us,
'N the rivers in the desert will us see,
Heaven and earth will fade,
But His word will still remain,
He will put something new today."
AA programs attendees will always be required to acknowledge first and foremost important lesson that started from humility: that we are alcoholics, whether or not we haven't drunk any since several decades or we are now trying to be sober. We need a higher power to save us from our apparent addiction, and knowing that in each and everyday we need Someone higher to guide us, and to lead us away. And we need the guide of a group of people who not only empathize with our predicament, but in every way acknowledge that we too are broken creatures that needed the help from Someone higher than us.
I am reminded of my faith in Christ, and how much the necessary pain that He went through on earth. At the point of time when Jesus went through the flocking of those terrible invention of humanity - I kindled the thought of what must have gone through in His head. But no human thought can understand the depths of what God must have thought in that moment.
"Human pain must have been difficult to go through. This is the pain of all the Nazi's atrocities' survival victims. This is the pain of all the brutal violence inflicted upon my beloved daughters created by love. This is the pain that must have inflicted on the poor victims of wars, no matter how guilty/innocent they are. This is the pain that must have inflicted my dear prisoners by their guards even though they deserve the pain inflicted for the crimes they commit. This is the pain my creations went through."
And when I thought about the moment when Jesus was betrayed by both Judas and Peter, it must have been bitter for us to see how much these 2 beloved disciples of Christ betrayed the Christ, who is above all innocent and pure, and in fact don't deserve such punishment. But I might not have fathomed the depths of what He must have thought about when He was betrayed:
"The pain of isolation, this must have been felled by my poor creation on earth. When husbands divorced them, when kids were abandoned, when government favored the work of Marxism, when ladies were cheated by their so-called boyfriend into porn industries, when boys are being bullied in school, when legions of armies were betrayed by a single marine who defected to the enemy, and died eventually, when politicians sugarcoated their promises and in the end blatantly blamed the request of the citizens - this must have been what they went through as human betrayal. How sad and fallen world is."
We often thought about how Jesus went through His difficult ordeals while on earth, especially on the day when He was being beaten and guided to Gethsemane. But often we are not aware that God is looking at the apathy of humanity and thus worked through this plan of salvation because He has seen (and is seeing) the atrocities that human beings are capable of.
And it is in this vision, that a silent, gentle whisper blew into my semi-intoxicated head:
"With this salvation, go thereforth and speaketh to the world, so that they may know that God has come not to condemn, but to save the humanity."
It is in this voice of the Beloved that I am being called to, and hope that day by day, the Lord sustains us through, despite the busy schedule, busy commitment at work, purposeful quiet time to seek His Face, purposeful life to seek His community, and continue to look out for people who are left behind in the journey to the Lord.
And with this thought, I smelled on the tobacco stain, and I told myself:
"Never again. And God, helps us all. For I am weak, and a sinner undeserving to be called Your love. But You call me, and now I give my life to you."
Amen. Thank You Jesus.
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